Using game theory and examples of actual games people play, Nobel laureate Manfred Eigen and Ruthild Winkler show how the elements of chance and rules underlie ...

Illuminates the emergence of race as a central concept in philosophy and the social sciences.

John Wood the Elder's The Origin of Building: Or, The Plagiarism of the Heathens Detected (1741) appears a late contribution to a widespread early modern polemic that engaged architects, scholars, antiquarians, and exegetes. Yet the startling originality of Wood's treatise resides in his accusation against the heathen Vitruvius, for it was he who allegedly committed the culminating act of plagiarism Wood set out to detect. This essay shows how Wood's model of architectural history—that is, history as the legacy of plagiaristic (...) depredation—was framed by the notion of translatio imperii (translation of empire), particularly as articulated in the prophetic book of Daniel. The essay places Wood's attempt to expose the mistaken posterity of classical architecture within the context of contemporary debates on the origin and transmission of primordial wisdom. (shrink)

Contains conversations that provide an insight into the mind of one of the most original psychoanalysts - Michael Eigen. This book covers various subjects, spread over a wide range of interest, which Michael Eigen talks about. It aims at helping readers to enter the ideas of Eigen more directly than they could have via Eigen's books and papers.

This book explores ways we make contact with the depths in ourselves and each other. We are deeply moved by contact we make with life, yet also puzzled by a need to break or lose contact, and often suffer wounds by failure of contact to be born. Our sense of contact is tenacious and fragile, subject to deformations, plagued with a sense of jeopardy. Chapters focus on ways we make-and-break contact in the wounded aloneness of addiction, the wounded beauty of (...) psychosis, the importance of not knowing and wordlessness, ways we transmit emotions, the need to start over, and harm we cause by trying to get rid of and misuse tendencies that are part of our makeup. Our contact with life, ourselves, each other is challenged. And through it all, we have need for deep contact, contact with the depths, fulfilling and suspenseful. Contact we never stop growing into, part of the mystery, care and love of everyday life. (shrink)

This book explores psychoanalytic faith and, more generally, the role of faith in the therapeutic process. In his earlier work, Eigen distinguished faith from beliefs used to organize it, the latter at once bringing people together and creating violent oppositions - belief as a defense against faith. In this new work, Eigen dives into faith experience itself and shares what he finds.Faith spans many dimensions. The opening chapters focus on variations of faith, beginning with nature, sleep, beauty, goodness, the opening-closing (...) of the human face, and the paradox of the growth of faith through pain and shattering. Accounts of faith in the author's life lead to creative readings of Winnicott followed by meditations on evil. A chapter is devoted to teaching and learning Bion, who called faith the psychoanalytic attitude (or called the psychoanalytic attitude Faith). Another chapter discusses variants of everyday mystical participation and a climactic moment in the Zohar, a principal part of the Kabbalah. The book ends with interviews involving the author's development as a psychotherapist-psychoanalyst, his views on mental health and society today, followed by a note on faith-work. (shrink)

Primary aloneness -- Incommunicado core and boundless supporting unknown -- Guilt in an age of psychopathy -- I killed Socrates -- Revenge ethics -- Something wrong -- Emily and M.E. -- Faith and destructiveness.

This book presents a vivid argument for the almost lost idea of a unity of all natural sciences. It starts with the "strange" physics of matter, including particle physics, atomic and quantum mechanics, cosmology, relativity and their consequences (Chapter 1), and it continues by describing the properties of material systems that are best understood by statistical and phase-space concepts (Chapter 2). These lead to entropy and to the classical picture of quantitative information, initially devoid of value and meaning (Chapter 3). (...) Finally, "information space" and dynamics within it are introduced as a basis for semantics (Chapter 4), leading to an exploration of life and thought as new problems in physics (Chapter 5). Dynamic equations - again of a strange (but very general) nature - bring about the complex familiarity of the world we live in. Surprising new results in the life sciences open our eyes to the richness of physical thought, and they show us what can and what cannot be explained by a Darwinian approach. The abstract physical approach is applicable to the origins of life, of meaningful information and even of our universe. [T]itle presents a vivid argument for a unity of all natural sciences. This unity engenders the 'complex familiarity' of the world in which we live and which can be described in 'strangely simple' theoretical terms, leading to new insights into the mysterious phenomenon of life. (shrink)

Wilfred Bion once said, "I use the Kabbalah as a framework for psychoanalysis." Both are preoccupied with catastrophe and faith, infinity and intensity of experience, shatter and growth of being that supports dimensions which sensitivity opens. Both are preoccupied with ontological implications of the Unknown and the importance of emotional life. This work is a psychospiritual adventure touching the places Kabbalah and psychoanalysis give something to each other. Michael Eigen uses aspects of Bion, Winnicott, Akivah, Luria and Nachman (and many (...) more) as colours on a palette to open realities for growth of experience. Bion called faith "the psychoanalytic attitude" and Eigen here explores creative, paradoxical, multidimensional aspects of faith. Eigen previously wrote of psychoanalysis as a form of prayer in The Psychoanalytic Mystic. In Kabbalah and Psychoanalysis he writes of creative faith. Sessions as crucibles in which diverse currents of personality mix in new ways, alchemy or soul chemistry perhaps, or simply homage to our embryonic nature which responds to the breath of feeling moment to moment. This book brings out ways that a sense of infinity interweaves with everyday life, at the same time it faces the destructiveness of life and human nature and attempts to work with it. Read these chapters and see where they take you. They are meant as personal support for your own inner work, touching nooks and crannies hungry for touch. (shrink)

This book contains an eighteen hour seminar - given over a three day period - presented by Michael Eigen in Seoul, Korea. The seminar traces transformations of madness and faith in psychoanalysis - particularly Freud, Klein, Bion and Winnicott - emphasizing basic rhythms of experience steeped in clinical details, social issues and personal concerns, and takes up problems of madness and faith besetting the world today. It is filled with clinical portrayals and discussions of personal and social issues. Eigen describes (...) ways we live through challenging experiences in therapy relevant for how life is lived. Discussions go back and forth between clinical details and cultural dilemmas, touching the taste of life, how one feels to oneself. This work is at once personal, learned, and down-to-earth. One gets the feeling that a lifetime of dedicated work is being condensed and transmitted, mind to mind, person to person, soul to soul. (shrink)

Many people seek help because they feel dragged down by a sense of inner deadness that persists in an otherwise full and meaningful life. These individuals who seem filled with emotions somehow remain untouched by even their own inner experiences. This is a deadness that persists in the midst of plenty, a deadness that can cripple their entire life or part of it. This book portrays attempts to fathom psychic deadness, but more important, it shows what is involved in enduring (...) and working with deadness on a day-to-day, session-by-session basis. Often, the therapy relationship becomes a laboratory in which varying states of deadness-aliveness can be tied to what is going on between patient and therapist, as well as in the patient's life. In many cases, according to Eigen, the emotional tone of the therapy can be the most important element. Patient and therapist work to discover what the patient is looking for, that is, the precise combination of psychic nutrients, responses, attitudes, and tones required for a given individual, or even a given moment, so that a person can begin to open, and the deadness can lift. (shrink)

Understanding the psychodynamics of madness is essential to the therapy of most patients, including those who are not diagnosed as mad in the literal sense. This volume draws on Freud, Jung, recent object relation and self psychologies, and, particularly, the work of Winnicott, Bion and Elkin. It describes and critiques the basic ideas on the dynamics of psychoses and provides a framework for interpretation.