Summary This article highlights the relevance of the humanities to psychiatric discussions. It considers Thomas De Quincey’s autobiographical Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1821), where the author charts his opium experiences and dependence. The text provides an intersection of subjective and objective evaluations of drug use, and records experiences undertaken before establishment of...
This article explores clinical encounters with experiences of the 'empty ego' which arise from early relational trauma. The ego's emptiness is held in repetitious complexes and arises out of affectively charged experiences between self and other which remain split-off from awareness. This kind of consciousness is viewed as dualistic, separating non-dual subjectivity from its dualistic objects...