I suggest that the following list, using Eisenbud's patient as exemplar, highlights the major events that occur sequentially in any occult event.
I present the list first, and discuss each portion of it in m o r e detail in the following chapters.
1. Eisenbud's patient formed an intense relationship to Eisenbud, just as he had to his wife, to his maid, and to his secretary.
2. W h e n the patient feels sure about the security of these relation- ships he feels secure about his capacity to govern himself.
3. T h e patient's wife and his female colleagues reflected back to h i m a positive, sustaining image of his self-worth and a sense of self-cohesion.
4. This complex process of mirroring proceeds unconsciously, that is, it occurs without any party recognizing explicitly that it is taking place.
5. A rupture occurred. T h e idealized other, whose help and love were so essential and w h o aroused such intense, unspoken hopes, failed to sustain and mirror these conscious and unconscious needs. T h e wife, secretary, and maid all failed to b e near Eisen- bud's patient and sustain him just as he confronted losing his ana- lyst, the m a n w h o had also taken away his drugs and alcohol.
6. T h e rupture is an external event, but its effect is to remove in- ternal supports. T h e loss of the selfobject induces fragmentation anxiety. T h e source of the patient's suffering is not evident, that is, there is no apparent upsurge in intrapsychic contents (a so- called id irruption).
This m a y seem impossible. Yet w e recall that the vital mirror- ing that occurred between the patient and the w o m e n and his analyst was, for the most part, unconscious. Selfobjects function as do internal organs. T h e selfobject relationship is not evident until a disease process takes place. Most people, for example, cannot locate their kidneys exactly within the a b d o m e n . But a severe kidney infection changes this. Suddenly one can pinpoint
the exact location of an organ that otherwise remains merely an abstract name.
7. A n internal loss remains unrecognized; instead, the patient seeks to locate the source of his suffering in the external world.
8. That external solution takes the form of an object, person, or personage (like a god) w h o performs, actively and externally, the same function performed by the now-lost object. Here w e may speculate that Eisenbud's patient focused his attention upon birds because they are precisely creatures that connect earth and sky, this world and the heavens. Numerous myths and rituals from both ancient and modern religions describe birds as creatures w h o carry divine messages. The baptism of Jesus, for example, is marked by a dove sent by G o d to announce God's pleasure (Luke 3:22).
9. Occult actors understand the occult moments as best they can.
For example, Eisenbud's patient attempted to find a scientific- like explanation for his occult moment. Other actors from other cultures will use other forms of discourse, depending upon what myths and other public stories are available. I say myths because myths are precisely stories designed to explain what remains in- explicable.
10. Regardless of the mythic system employed to account for the oc- cult moment, occult teachings must attempt to unify the apparent paradoxes of occult experience: an internal event is experienced as if it were external. In cultures like ours, where a radical dis- tinction is made between one mind and another, occult events will tend to evoke powers that transcend the problem of other minds. In the West, occult teachings and beliefs often incorporate references to thought-transference, mind reading, telepathy, and the like. Each of these terms names a power that transcends the usual boundaries that separate one mind from another.
11. Because occult experience occurs as the result of breaches in selfobject relationships, and because these relationships are vital to the sense of self, occult experiences are remembered. To the degree that occult moments actually do help heal the breach in selfobject relationships, they are also treasured.
12. In persons especially vulnerable to fragmentation, occult experi- ences are treasured and incorporated into larger thought sys- tems or schools. W e see this especially in the teachings of Jung.
But w e will also see it in the earliest, and some say greatest, spiritual autobiography, The Confessions of Saint Augustine.
O c c u l t M o m e n t s in the Life o f Saint A u g u s t i n e
Augustine's psychological genius has given an account of the trouble of having a divided self which has never been surpassed.
—William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience
William James, America's greatest philosopher-psychologist, made the above comments about Saint Augustine (354-430) at the turn
of the century. His remarks hold true; today, three-quarters of a century since James lived, few people would claim that the saint's descriptions of mental torment have been bettered. But I do claim that w e can offer explanations for the divided self that are better than those offered by Augustine, and even better than those of- fered by James himself.
W h a t James calls the divided self, a self in which one part seems to war against the other, I place within the spectrum of feeling states w e described earlier as the fragmented self. The two terms are not interchangeable in all instances. James uses his term, the divided self, to describe experiences that extend from ordinary moments of indecision to states of severe psychopathology. Kohut's 75
term, the fragmented self, is more restrictive. It designates not just a m o m e n t of conflict or feeling divided in oneself. Rather, to b e or feel fragmented is to feel that the central part of one's ordinary self- structure is n o longer capable of holding one together. In this sense, the fragmented self suffers m o r e severely a far deeper terror than a self in conflict.
In James's masterpiece of description, The Varieties of Religious Ex- perience, he refers to m a n y persons as "divided selves' w h o w e would say suffer severe fragmentation anxiety. I think this is particularly true of Augustine. It is also true of James himself, however. Like other great psychologists of religion, James used his scientific talents to locate and stabilize his o w n troubled religious spirit. James's difficulties with religion are well k n o w n . His father, H e n r y James, Sr., w a s a wealthy philosopher-theologian w h o showered u p o n his three sons and one daughter an idiosyncratic mysticism. In addition to these familial sources of theological ideas, William lived through the intellectual turmoil of the nineteenth century, in which one form of thought and world view, Christianity, seemed to s u c c u m b finally to the onslaughts of science. James experienced firsthand the revolutions inspired by D a r w i n and Marx. At the end of his life, James m e t Freud and glimpsed a psychology that w a s to outlive him.
For personal and cultural reasons, James b e c a m e a public representa- tive in w h o m the intellectual conflicts of the nineteenth century found expression. T o his credit, James describes in detail one of his o w n expe- riences which, using the terms developed above, w e can call a fragmen- tation experience. James gives the account, disguised slightly, in The Varieties of Religious Experience. This account was written in 1 9 0 2 ; yet it parallels almost exactly some of the feelings that M r . Z reported to Kohut two generations later. James's account is also very similar, in part, to the account Eisenbud's patient gave of his premonition about the war- bler. James and Eisenbud's patient encountered their occult m o m e n t s in twilight mental states. Eisenbud's patient w a s just waking u p w h e n he had the premonition about the warbler. In the following story, James enters a darkened r o o m at twilight:
I went one evening into a dressing-room in the twilight to procure some article that was there; when suddenly there fell upon m e without any
warning, just as if it came out of the darkness, a horrible fear of m y o w n existence. Simultaneously there arose in m y mind the image of an epilep- tic patient w h o m I had seen in the asylum, a black-haired youth with greenish skin, entirely idiotic, w h o used to sit all day on one of the benches . . with his knees drawn up against his chin. . . . H e sat there . . . looking absolutely non-human. This image and m y fear
entered into a species of combination with each other. That shape am J, I felt, potentially.1
James rescued himself from this state by calling upon his knowledge of biblical texts like "The Eternal G o d is m y refuge" and " C o m e unto m e , all ye that labor and are heavy-laden." Without these representa- tions of a loving, listening, and compassionate G o d , James says, "I think I should have g r o w n really insane."2 W e can reformulate this proposition using Kohut's terms. T o grow really insane m e a n s that one's self has fragmented beyond repair: H u m p t y D u m p t y cannot b e put together again.
Augustine's great text, The Confessions, tells a deeply personal story of his youthful sins and later conversion to Christianity. Alongside his m a n y well-articulated reasons for writing these detailed confessions, one also finds a deep need to create an audience w h o will hear his con- fession again and again.
In the following sections I discuss Augustine's Confessions. I suggest that w e can understand it, in part, as his attempt to consolidate a newly w o n sense of unification with his mother's religion and therefore with her. In the language developed above, The Confessions prevented frag- mentation anxiety because it provided Augustine with a n e w selfobject relationship. Augustine wrote The Confessions, I will suggest, in part to preserve his relationship to his mother, his primary selfobject. H e also wrote The Confessions in order to establish a n e w selfobject relationship to his readers.
Assuming that this point of view is plausible, w e should expect to find that Augustine will have particularly intense needs to feel united with his mother, Monica, and that she (or secondary representations of her) will appear stage center in his struggles. I believe they do.