The therapy situation provides a special, limited milieu for birthing or exercising contact with feelings and patterns of feelings in a more sustained, concentrated way than usual. It supports explo-ration of a psychosphere, cousin of the noosphere (de Chardin, 1959; Bion, 1994), finely nuanced psycho-spiritual domains. Here, without apology, one can pay attention to elusive processes one might not be able to access without dedicated support.
One of the side benefits of becoming a therapist is—if one has the need, bent, sensibility—the chance to open psychic reality by system- atic exercise of capacities often downplayed by the dominant culture and common sense—dimensions of uncommon sensing crucial for the feel and taste of life. A life that includes working with problematic, invisible emotional currents that add to the richness of being. I once heard Hanna Arendt (Eigen, 2001a) speak of the secret ecstasy of thinking. I feel, too, deep satisfaction and joy in the profound beauty of analysis, while all too cognisant of its pitfalls. The beauty, awe, and wonder of working with the forever unknown.
Eigen, Michael. The Birth of Experience. (2014) Karnac Books.
authentic analysis 