In a detailed engagement with the psychoanalytic theories of dreams, conscience, empathy, and creativity, Dan Merkur argues that the superego is an unconscious reasoning process, dedicated to the representation of the loved object. The superego’s access to the repressed and devotion of time to single topics make it both more knowledgeable and more intelligent than the conscious ego. This is the final installment in Merkur’s three-volume exploration of the psychoanalysis of religious experiences—volumes one and two are The Ecstatic Imagination: Psychedelic Experiences and the Psychoanalysis of Self-Actualization and Mystical Moments and Unitive Thinking, also published by SUNY Press.
Table of Content
Acknowledgments
Preface
Introduction
1. The Coherence of the Dream-Work
2. Conscience, Ego Ideals, and Self-Observation
3. Inspiration
4. Metaphor as a Tertiary Process
Works Cited
Index
About the author
Dan Merkur, an Associate Member of the Centre for the Study of Religion, University of Toronto, is a psychoanalytic psychotherapist in private practice. He has written several other books, including
Gnosis: An Esoteric Tradition of Mystical Visions and Unions, also published by SUNY Press.
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