“Let Him Rejoice in the Roseate Light!”: Teaching Psychoanalysis and Mysticism

Abstract

Abstract In the present climate of fascination with mystical experience and spirituality, an informed grasp of the resurgent psychoanalytic theory of mysticism has become a desired end for those invested in teaching religion and psychological studies. Of course, the literature on this topic is rich and complex enough to be packaged for pedagogical purposes in diverse ways. What follows, then, is hardly meant to be an exhaustive or comprehensive survey of the variety of pedagogical options afforded by psychoanalytic studies of mysticism. On the contrary, I concentrate on but one instance of psychoanalytic forays into mysticism: Freud’s interpretation of the famous “oceanic feeling.” I do so partly because the latter is the locus classicus of the psychoanalytic theory of mysticism. But more, this one text also contains the fundamental keys needed to unlock the historical drift of subsequent psychoanalytic theorizing on mysticism.