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The Marriage Between Ego and Id: Cognitive Integration and its Relation to Mystical Experience

The Marriage Between Ego and Id: Cognitive Integration and its Relation to Mystical Experience THE MARRIAGE BETWEEN EGO AND ID: COGNITIVE INTEGRATION AND ITS RELATION TO MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE Antoon Geels ABSTRACT The author suggests a new model for interpretation of mystical expe- rience, based on a fruitful combination of cognitive psychology and depth psychology. O ff ering a rather wide de fi nition of mystical expe- rience, the author then turns to two basic assumptions—a general sys- tems approach and an organismic-holistic view of development. Hans Loewald’s analysis of primary process cognition is combined with a multi-dimensional model of cognitive activity called “Interacting Cognitive Subsystems” (ICS), presented by John D. Teasdale and Philip J. Barnard. These two complementary theoretical perspectives are applied to the analysis of both historical and contemporary examples of mystical expe- rience, understood as a result of a dialectical interplay between these di ff erent coding systems, or the marriage between Ego and Id. A twenty-one year old Swiss medical student wrote in his diary that his greatest current anxiety stems from “suddenly having discovered that the foundation of personality is a nothing, that the human soul is simply compounded of feelings and thoughts, and what I sought beyond this does not exist at all.” The day after, he http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Archive for the Psychology of Religion Brill

The Marriage Between Ego and Id: Cognitive Integration and its Relation to Mystical Experience

Archive for the Psychology of Religion , Volume 28 (1): 219 – Jan 1, 2006

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References (51)

Publisher
Brill
Copyright
© 2006 Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands
ISSN
0084-6724
eISSN
1573-6121
DOI
10.1163/008467206777832625
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

THE MARRIAGE BETWEEN EGO AND ID: COGNITIVE INTEGRATION AND ITS RELATION TO MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE Antoon Geels ABSTRACT The author suggests a new model for interpretation of mystical expe- rience, based on a fruitful combination of cognitive psychology and depth psychology. O ff ering a rather wide de fi nition of mystical expe- rience, the author then turns to two basic assumptions—a general sys- tems approach and an organismic-holistic view of development. Hans Loewald’s analysis of primary process cognition is combined with a multi-dimensional model of cognitive activity called “Interacting Cognitive Subsystems” (ICS), presented by John D. Teasdale and Philip J. Barnard. These two complementary theoretical perspectives are applied to the analysis of both historical and contemporary examples of mystical expe- rience, understood as a result of a dialectical interplay between these di ff erent coding systems, or the marriage between Ego and Id. A twenty-one year old Swiss medical student wrote in his diary that his greatest current anxiety stems from “suddenly having discovered that the foundation of personality is a nothing, that the human soul is simply compounded of feelings and thoughts, and what I sought beyond this does not exist at all.” The day after, he

Journal

Archive for the Psychology of ReligionBrill

Published: Jan 1, 2006

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