The Ecstatic Imagination: Psychedelic Experiences and the Psychoanalysis of: Psychedelic Experiences and the Psychoanalysis of Self-Actualization - Softcover

Merkur Ph.D., Dan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0791436063 ISBN 13: 9780791436066

Publisher: State University of New York Press, 1998

Synopsis

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.

About this title

About the Author

Dan Merkur is a psychoanalyst in private practice and a research reader in the study of religion at the University of Toronto. He is the author of many books, including Unconscious Wisdom: A Superego Function in Dreams, Conscience, and Inspiration, also published by SUNY Press.

Edition details

• Publisher: State University of New York Press
• Publication date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0791436063
• ISBN 13: 9780791436066
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 226