Explorations of the Psychoanalytic Mystics

Little discussed by psychoanalysts and almost unknown outside the profession, a small but distinguished group of psychoanalysts were or are mystics: Otto Rank, Erich Fromm, Marion Milner, D. W. Winnicott, Heinz Kohut, Hans W. Loewald, Wilfred R. Bion, James S. Grotstein, Neville Symington, and Michael Eigen. All favoured an extrovertive mysticism that perceives unity throughout physical reality. Several saw creativity as an application of mystical consciousness to the physical material of artwork, artefact, or, more generally, culture.