Distinction–Union Structure

Abstract

This article posits distinction–union tendencies as parts of one structure, a kind of DNA/RNA of psychic life, co-tendencies that play organizing roles in culture and in individuals. The work of these tendencies are traced in clinical experience, psychoanalytic theory (Matte-Blanco, Bion, Balint, and Winnicott), physics (David Bohm), culture, and mystical experience (Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist). Further explorations are suggested.

Acknowledgments

This article first appeared in Contact With the Depths by Michael Eigen (Karnac, 2011: ISBN 9781855758476), reprinted with the permission of Karnac Books Limited.

Notes

Michael Eigen, Ph.D., is a faculty member and control/training analyst at the National Psychological Association for Psychoanalysis and Associate Clinical Professor of Psychology and supervisor at the New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis. He is author of Flames From the Unconscious: Trauma, Madness, and Faith and Eigen in Seoul: Madness and Murder.

¹The individual I call Abe here, I called Ben in the original publication (Eigen, 1973). Since then, I have used the name Ben for other people in other contexts, and I thought it best to rename him here, rather than confound him with other patients. This article greatly expands on the original description.

²In this clinical sketch, I emphasized wounded aloneness. Wounded togetherness or union is also at stake but not focused on here. I picked a moment in our work when Abe reached for a deep alone point as a turning point. When trauma hits, damage is potentially widespread, and it is unlikely that either term of distinction–union escapes it.

³For an early note on the generative sense of emergent self–other, see Eigen (1977).

⁴Stephanie Teitelbaum brought these sculptures to my awareness and helped focus my attention on the fertility of their unfinished nature.