The Mystical Unconscious: Holding the Sublime, the Spectral, and the Sacred in Psychoanalysis
Shalini Masih
The Psychoanalytic Review March 1, 2026 DOI: 10.1521/prev.2026.113.1.39 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Topics | Mysticism |
| Keywords | Psychoanalytic theory Unconscious mind Psychic Dimension graph theory Psychoanalysis Religious experience Cultural studies Jungian analytical psychology |
| Key points | Argues that psychoanalysis can be reframed as an aesthetic and spiritual communion that welcomes mystical experiences as meaningful rather than pathological. |
Abstract
This paper explores the mystical unconscious as a dimension of psychoanalysis that moves beyond psychoanalysis's emphasis on repression and interpretation. Drawing from psychoanalytic insights, mystical traditions, and personal clinical encounters with states of spirit possession, the author argues for a psychoanalytic stance of witnessing. Through concepts such as the mystical vertex, internal third, and the analyst as a double, the author presents psychoanalysis as an art of profound attunement-one that welcomes spectral, sublime, and sacred psychic experiences not as pathology, but as meaningful enactments of suffering, cultural memory, and transformation. This reframes psychoanalysis as an aesthetic and spiritual communion.
Comparable studies
Other theoretical and historical papers on mysticism, most cited first.
| Study | Year | Design | Participants |
|---|---|---|---|
| The mystical mind: probing the biology of religious experience | 2000 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Religious and Mystical Experiences as Artifacts of Temporal Lobe Function: A General Hypothesis | 1983 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| The Problem of Pure Consciousness: Mysticism and Philosophy | 1993 | Edited collection of essays | |
| Irreducible Mind: Toward a Psychology for the 21st Century | 2020 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Mysticism and schizophrenia: A phenomenological exploration of the structure of consciousness in the schizophrenia spectrum disorders. | 2016 | Theoretical or philosophical paper |