The numinous and immanent nature of the psychoanalytic subject
James S. Grotstein
Journal of Analytical Psychology 1998 DOI: 10.1111/1465-5922.00007 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Key points | Argues that a numinous or ineffable subject of the unconscious organizes mental life and registers everything, connected to the conscious/preconscious subject, contrasting with Freudian and Kleinian views that deny unconscious drives an organization or personality. |
Abstract
In the Freudian and Kleinian conception of unconscious mental life, credence is given to the existence and functioning of peremptory instinctual drives as the putative causation of all mental life, yet they are denied an organization or a personality. It is especially when we come to the notion of how dreams are created or how the free associations of an analytic hour are orchestrated that we begin to wonder about the hidden order, the cryptic intelligence or presence, that seems to cohere our chaos and present it to us in mystically encoded forms for us to translate.In this contribution it is posited that there is a numinous or ineffable subject of the unconscious which organizes our mental life and which unconsciously registers everything that happens to us. Mysteriously connected with this is the immanent subject of conscious/preconsciousness which registers the impact of stimuli from the external world but which has contact with the numinous subject.