Publication Announcement by Loray Daws (Canada) and Keri Cohen (USA)

Loray Daws and Keri Cohen have co-edited two companion books on Michael Eigen’s work which explore the Obstructive Object and the Welcoming Object. Eigen has written the foreword to each Routledge volume.

Toxic Nourishment and Damaged Bonds in the Work of Michael Eigen: Working with the Obstructive Object

Daws, L. & Cohen, K. (Eds). (2024). Toxic nourishment and damaged bonds in the work of Michael Eigen: Working with the obstructive object. Routledge.

Toxic Nourishment and Damaged Bonds in the Work of Michael Eigen examines Eigen’s rich phenomenological work on the Obstructive Object. Co-editors Loray Daws and Keri Cohen have each contributed a chapter and brought together influential authors to explore and expand upon Eigen’s themes in psychoanalysis, literature and clinical work.

The contributors to this collection explore the core theme with reference to key Eigen works, including The Psychotic Core, Psychic Deadness, Toxic Nourishment, and Damaged Bonds. This volume seeks to elaborate on the Obstructive Object through essays and poems that include poignant clinical examples, the impact of exceptionally traumatized patients on their analysts, literature comparisons, and the more “mystical aspect” of Eigen’s influence on working with the obstructive object. Essays draw from Virginia Woolf, Elena Ferrante, Wilfred Bion, D.W. Winnicott, Andrè Greene, Christopher Bollas, and Adam Phillips, among many others, in exploring injury-rage, unwanted patients, psychoanalytic faith, toxic nourishment, and damaged bonds.

www.routledge.com/Toxic-Nourishment-and-Damaged-Bonds-in-the-Work-of-Michael-Eigen-Working-with-the-Obstructive-Object/Cohen-Daws/p/book/9781032346007

Primary Process Impacts and Dreaming the Undreamable Object in the Work of Michael Eigen: Becoming the Welcoming Object

Daws, L. & Cohen, K. (Eds). (2024). Primary process impacts and dreaming the undreamable object in the work of Michael Eigen.  Routledge.

This second book on Michael Eigen examines a key aspect of his transformational aesthetic, his rich phenomenological work on becoming a welcoming object. The contributors to this collection explore the core theme with reference to key Eigen works including Feeling Matters and Contact with the Depths.

As a primary process psychoanalyst, Eigen writes with a unique rhythm of faith that is able to “revivify” union-distinction body-affect-thinking potentialities within a creative psychoanalytic dyad. Alongside its companion volume, Toxic Nourishment and Damaged Bonds in the Work of Michael Eigen, contemporary Eigen readers and writers articulate the various welcoming processes and attitudes needed to cultivate a “Hearing Heart,” a central ingredient in reaching and touching those parts of self-deemed unwanted, unwelcomed, and even traumatized. This volume represents a wide range of psychoanalytic perspectives, and the chapters describe the genius of Eigen as well as contribute their own clinical and academic acumen.

www.routledge.com/Primary-Process-Impacts-and-Dreaming-the-Undreamable-Object-in-the-Work-of-Michael-Eigen-Becoming-the-Welcoming-Object/Daws-Cohen/p/book/9781032346045

Keri S. Cohen, LCSW, BCD, a psychoanalytic psychotherapist in private practice in Pennsylvania, USA, graduated from the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Social Policy and Practice and holds a certificate from the William Alanson White Institute’s Online Intensive Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Program. Having attended Eigen’s weekly seminars for nearly 20 years, she regularly teaches and co-moderates seminars on his work. Keri co-edited Healing, Rebirth and the Work of Michael Eigen  (Routledge, 2021), and wrote the introduction to Eigen in Seoul 3  (Routledge, 2021) and the forward to Bits of Psyche: Selected Seminars of Michael Eigen  (Routledge, 2024).

Loray Daws, Ph.D., a registered Clinical Psychologist in South Africa and in British Columbia, Canada, is currently in private practice in British Columbia. He completed his psychoanalytic training at the New York Object Relations Institute for Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis (ORI) and serves as a board and faculty member. He is also a faculty member at the International Masterson Institute in New York. Loray is the writer and editor of eight books on psychoanalysis and dasein-analysis and serves as assistant editor and evaluator for various journals.

Keri S. Cohen, LCSW, BCD
Brownstown, Pennsylvania, USA
Email Keri S. Cohen
www.kericohen.com

Loray Daws, Ph.D.
Comox, Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada
Email Loray Daws