Dan Merkur

This volume presents the first organized study of Jung's ethics. Drawing on direct quotes from all of his collected works, interviews, and seminars, psychoanalyst and religious scholar Dan Merkur provides a compendium of Jung’s thoughts on various topics and themes that comprise his theoretical corpus—from the personal unconscious, repression, dreams, good and evil, and the shadow, to collective phenomena such as the archetypes, synchronicity, the psychoid, the paranormal, God, and the Self, as well as his contributions to clinical method and technique including active imagination, inner dialogue, and the process of individuation and consciousness expansion. The interconnecting thread in Merkur's approach to the subject matter is to read Jung’s work through an ethical lens. What comes to light is how Merkur systematically portrays Jung as a moralist, but also as a complex thinker who situates the human being as an instinctual animal struggling with internal conflict and naturalized sin. Merkur exposes the tension and development in Jung’s thinking by exploring his innovative clinical-technical methods and experimentation, such as through active imagination, inner dialogue, and expressive therapies, hence underscoring unconscious creativity in dreaming, symbol formation, engaging the paranormal, and artistic productions leading to expansions of consciousness, which becomes a necessary part of individuation or the working through process in pursuit of self-actualization and wholeness. In the end, we are offered a unique presentation of Jung’s core theoretical and clinical ideas centering on an ethical fulcrum, whereby his moral psychology leads to a cure of souls. Jung’s Ethics will be of interest to academics, scholars, researchers, and practitioners in the fields of Jungian studies and analytical psychology, ethics, moral psychology, philosophy, religious studies, and mental health professionals focusing on the integration of humanities and psychoanalysis.

This volume presents the first organized study of Jung's ethics. Drawing on direct quotes from all of his collected works, interviews, and seminars, psychoanalyst and religious scholar Dan Merkur provides a compendium of Jung’s thoughts on various topics and themes that comprise his theoretical corpus—from the personal unconscious, repression, dreams, good and evil, and the shadow, to collective phenomena such as the archetypes, synchronicity, the psychoid, the paranormal, God, and the Self, as well as his contributions to clinical method and technique including active imagination, inner dialogue, and the process of individuation and consciousness expansion. The interconnecting thread in Merkur's approach to the subject matter is to read Jung’s work through an ethical lens. What comes to light is how Merkur systematically portrays Jung as a moralist, but also as a complex thinker who situates the human being as an instinctual animal struggling with internal conflict and naturalized sin. Merkur exposes the tension and development in Jung’s thinking by exploring his innovative clinical-technical methods and experimentation, such as through active imagination, inner dialogue, and expressive therapies, hence underscoring unconscious creativity in dreaming, symbol formation, engaging the paranormal, and artistic productions leading to expansions of consciousness, which becomes a necessary part of individuation or the working through process in pursuit of self-actualization and wholeness. In the end, we are offered a unique presentation of Jung’s core theoretical and clinical ideas centering on an ethical fulcrum, whereby his moral psychology leads to a cure of souls. Jung’s Ethics will be of interest to academics, scholars, researchers, and practitioners in the fields of Jungian studies and analytical psychology, ethics, moral psychology, philosophy, religious studies, and mental health professionals focusing on the integration of humanities and psychoanalysis.

In Relating to God: Clinical Psychoanalysis, Spirituality, and Theism, Dan Merkur conceptualizes religious discourse within psychoanalysis. He proposes that God be treated as a transferential figure whose analysis leads to a reduction of the parental content that is projected onto God. Merkur notes that religious conversion experiences regularly involve theological intuitions that are either rational or, owing to morbid complications, have undergone displacement into irrational symbolism. Analysis renders the religiosity more wholesome. Traditionally, psychoanalytic thought has been dismissive of religion. Freud is on record, however, as having called psychoanalysis a neutral procedure. He argued that religion, with its dependency on a providential God who punishes disobedience, imagines spirituality on the model of human parents and fails to approach spirituality in an appropriately scientific manner. He wrote little of spiritual phenomena, but mentioned both the rationality of the universe and the parapsychological occurrence of thought transference. Occasionally, later psychoanalysts used different language in order to contrast wholesome and morbid forms of religion. Erich Fromm distinguished authoritarian and humanistic religions, while D. W. Winnicott condemned fetishistic behavior while approving of playful illusions that require “belief-in.” These formulations constructed a middle position for clinicians, neither categorically opposed to religion as classical psychoanalysis was, nor do they embrace cultural relativity as “spiritually oriented” psychotherapists are currently advocating. What sorts of spiritual practices does psychoanalysis find unobjectionable? As examples of humanistic religion, Fromm named Zen Buddhism, Buddhist mindfulness meditation, and the via negativa or “way of negating” that some Christian and Jewish mystics have followed. Because the Bible-based approaches are little known, Merkur discusses their histories, procedures, and psychoanalytic understanding.

Explores the unacknowledged psychological element in Maimonides' work, one which prefigures the latter insights of Freud. Is Moses Maimonides an unacknowledged ancestor of the psychoanalytic movement? In this book, David Bakan, Dan Merkur, and David S. Weiss look at the great medieval Jewish philosopher's prescription for the cure of souls and its psychological significance. In the Guide of the Perplexed, Maimonides, who was also a physician, describes the soul's illness: when sinners rationalize evil as good, they limit their capacities to reason, imagine, and behave well, which also produces physical symptoms. The cure depends on repentance in love and fear of God that is attained through philosophical knowledge, the interpretation of dreams and visions, and mystical contemplation. The authors look at the Aristotelian background of Maimonides' psychology, Maimonidean mysticism, his beliefs about prophecy and sexuality, and what is known of Maimonides' client population. A final chapter discusses Maimonides and Freud, noting that many distinctive features of the cure of souls are shared by Freud's original formulation of psychoanalysis. Indeed, the many points of convergence suggest Freud's direct or indirect contact with Maimonides' legacy.

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.

Contra both Freud and Jung, argues that the unconscious is not exclusively irrational. In a detailed engagement with the psychoanalytic theories of dreams, conscience, empathy, and creativity, Dan Merkur argues that the superego is an unconscious reasoning process, dedicated to the representation of the loved object. The superego's access to the repressed and devotion of time to single topics make it both more knowledgeable and more intelligent than the conscious ego. This is the final installment in Merkur's three-volume exploration of the psychoanalysis of religious experiences-volumes one and two are The Ecstatic Imagination: Psychedelic Experiences and the Psychoanalysis of Self-Actualization and Mystical Moments and Unitive Thinking, also published by SUNY Press.

Provides an alternative to the traditional psychoanalytic explanation of mystical experience by viewing unitive thinking as a line of cognitive development and mystical moments as creative inspirations on unitive ideas. Merkur proposes an alternative to the traditional psychoanalytic explanation of mystical experiences as regression to the solipsism of earliest infancy. He does this by viewing unitive thinking as a line of cognitive development, and mystical moments as creative inspirations on unitive topics. Utilizing classical self-reports by Christian, Jewish, and Muslim mystics, Patanjali's Yoga Sutras, and modern Western peak experiences, Merkur argues that experiences of mystical union are manifestations of a broader category of psychological processes that manifest in scientific and moral thought, as well as in mysticism. Unconscious as well as conscious, unitive thinking is sometimes realistic and sometimes fantastic, in patterns that are consistent with cognitive development in general. Mystical moments of unitive thinking may be considered moments of creative inspiration that happen to make use of unitive ideas. Building on the psychoanalytic object-relations theory that the self is always in relationship with an object, Merkur argues that the solipsism of some varieties of mystical union always implies unconscious ideas of a love object who is transcendent.

Presents the first comprehensive survey of the varieties of psychedelic experience since 1975. The Ecstatic Imagination provides the first general theory of psychedelic experiences. Merkur refutes several theories that have been used to explain single categories of psychedelic experience, and offers instead a unitary theory that is applicable to all varieties. The book treats self-reports of psychedelic experiences as a wealth of neglected data which forms the basis to expand the psychoanalytic model of human imagination. An exhaustive phenomenology of the varieties of LSD, mescaline, and psilocybin experiences in Western and Native American cultures is joined together with psychoanalytic theories drawn from the classical, ego psychological, and object relations schools. Where existing theories prove inadequate to the discussion of data, original formulations are offered. The result is a rigorously psychoanalytic approach to the process of self-actualization.

Traces the use of powerful gnostic visionary techniques from Hellenistic Gnosticism and Jewish merkabah mysticism, through Muhammad, the Ismaeilis, and theosophical Sufism to medieval neoplatonism, and renaissance alchemy. Gnosis traces the use of powerful gnostic visionary techniques from Hellenistic Gnosticism and Jewish merkabah mysticism, through Muhammad, the Ismaeilis, and theosophical Sufism to medieval neoplatonism, and renaissance alchemy.