Lost at Sea

Freud's Analysis of the Oceanic Feeling.

Jonah Bossewitch

PSY 365

Professor Sugarman

December 7, 1995

In the arena of scientific theories there is a delicate balance between data and explanations. At what point should the theorist stop straining to fit a piece of data into the framework of an existing theory and develop a new theory that fits the data better? The situation is often complicated by the fact that it is often difficult to describe an observation without using a particular paradigm. This makes it harder to recognize disconfirming cases when they occur. Successfully overthrowing a theory is a process that is so rare and difficult that it is called a revolution.

Freud was an extraordinary revolutionary thinker and was very sensitive to the pitfalls of getting stuck in a paradigmatic rut. Most memorably, he grappled with this issue in Beyond the Pleasure Principle when he dealt with the baffling case of traumatic dreams. In the end, Freud found this phenomena to be sufficient grounds for revision of his theory of instincts. However, this was only after repeated attempts to fit the compulsion to repeat into his preexisting theory.

In Civilization and Its Discontents Freud discusses an analogous discovery, the so called 'oceanic' feeling, that could have forced a radical revision of his topology. He says that this phenomena "sounds so strange and fits in so badly with the fabric of our psychology that one is justified in attempting to discover a psycho-analytic - that is a genetic - explanation of such a feeling." (Civ. and its Dis., p. 12) Unlike the case of traumatic dreams, Freud makes rapid work of this phenomena and neatly describes it in terms of his preexisting theory. Did Freud give this new piece of data the full analysis it deserved? Was he a little too hasty trying to fit it in to his theory? Is the oceanic feeling strange enough to justify a revision psychoanalytic theory? Did Freud even have a complete grasp of the concept of the oceanic feeling?

Freud learned of the oceanic feeling in a letter from his friend Romain Rolland dated December 5, 1927. Rolland was writing in response to The Future of Illusion in which Freud argued that religion was nothing more than an illusion. Rolland alerted Freud to an important fact which Freud had overlooked in his treatment of religion. Rolland described "a peculiar feeling, which he himself is never without, which he finds confirmed by many others, and which he may suppose is present in millions of people. It is a feeling he would like to call a sensation of 'eternity', a feeling as of something limitless, unbounded-as it were, 'oceanic'." (Civ. and its Dis., p. 11)

Rolland's description is rather vague and consequently it seems as if it can serve as an umbrella definition for an entire class of feelings. In fact, it sometimes might be more appropriate to describe this 'oceanic feeling' as an oceanic state, distinct from the "normal" or ground state that Freud operates in. A conscious state can be understood as the reference frame that defines all feelings within this context. All feelings are felt, understood, or experienced, with respect to the conscious state active when they occur. In this sense, the oceanic 'feeling' might sometimes be more than a feeling, and actually refer to a state of being through which all other feelings are (re)defined.

Freud's understanding of the phenomena is further complicated by the fact that he "cannot discover this 'oceanic' feeling in [him]self." (Civ. and its Dis., p. 11) This statement alone betrays Freud's ignorance and possible unwillingness to fully explore the oceanic feeling. It is quite possible that oceanic feelings do not lie dormant in the psyche waiting around to be found. On the contrary, they often need to be created in the individual through a variety of techniques. Freud had previously turned down the opportunity to learn Yoga, and this makes the reader wonder how much Freud wanted to discover the oceanic feeling in himself. Was he afraid of something? Was he worried that he might have an experience that contradicted his earlier beliefs, or was the hesitation based on personal motives (fear encountering something greater than him, fear of experiencing the divine, etc.)?

Freud does humbly admit that lack of experience with the oceanic feeling "gives [him] no right to deny that it does in fact occur in other people." (Civ. and its Dis., p. 12) He continues by dismissing this lack of personal experience and claims that "The only question is whether it is being correctly interpreted and whether it ought to be regarded as the fons et origo of the whole need for religion" (Civ. and its Dis., p. 12) It is precisely at this point that Freud underestimates the problem he is up against. A rigorous analysis of the phenomena would add to these questions whether this enigmatic feeling is being accurately described (especially relevant without personal experience) and under what conditions it occurs. Their absence in Freud's investigation can only be categorized as negligent and sloppy.

Although it is brief, Rolland's description of the oceanic state resonates deeply and associates with a variety of sources. The most ancient of these include the various disciplines of Yoga and Transcendental Meditation originating in Eastern religions and forming the core of Jewish and Christian Kabbalistic tradition. These schools of thought often start with the assumption that reality is best understood as subjective - existing in (or a product of) our own minds. According to this schema reality can initially be divided into three states: waking, dreaming, and sleeping. The goal of many of these school's techniques was to enter a fourth state of consciousness that was somehow beyond (or a union of) these three ordinary states. Some even claimed to travel to other worlds using these techniques, in contradiction with Christian Grabbe's assertion that "we can not fall out of this world." (Civ. and its Dis., p. 11)

Perhaps as ancient, although only recently studied are the flow states described in Mihaly Csikszintmihalyi's book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. These states can be entered by engaging in any type of behavior that balances the challenges and skills of the subject. These behaviors may include dancing, painting, reading, rock climbing, playing music just to name a few. The flow state is characterized by a loss of the sense time, and a loss of self. The "loss of self-consciousness does not involve a loss of self, and certainly not a loss of consciousness, but rather, only a loss of consciousness of the self."1 It is important to note that the flow state seems to be distinct from the fourth state aimed for by mystics.

In The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test Tom Wolfe relates how experiences with LSD can approximate the states that it takes yoga masters forty years to attain and bring about oceanic feelings. "But these are words, man! And you couldn't put it into words... the visual stuff was just the decor with LSD. In fact, you might go through the experience without any hallucination. The whole thing was... the experience... this certain indescribable feeling! Indescribable, because words can only jog the memory, and if there is no memory of... The experience of the barrier between the subjective and objective, the personal and the impersonal, the I and the not-I disappearing... and now that your soaring on LSD that feeling is coming on again - only now the creation is of the entire universe-"2 Even though LSD may have appeared after Freud's time, the fact that a chemical high can emulate the feelings of a natural state would not surprise him. It is analogous to the relationship between mania and intoxication of which Freud was well aware. (Civ. and its Dis., p. 28)

In addition to these (usually) individual methods for achieving oceanic feelings there are also many ways to experience them in groups. Concerts, dances, and rituals (religious or otherwise) are just a few of the group activities that come to mind. All of these seemingly disparate cases have certain key features in common. They are all characterized by a "loss" of self and a corresponding sense of unity with the world/cosmos/universe. Although the differences can be quite subtle, this loss of self does not seem to be identical in all of these cases. In Freudian terms we can predict three separate scenarios that might account for oceanic feelings: (1) The ego expands infinitely so that it encompasses the entire world (this corresponds to Freud's analysis of oceanic feelings in which the ego is not differentiated from the rest of the world). (2) The attention is so focused on a particular object that the ego effectively shrinks into nothingness, temporarily forgotten. (3) The Psychoanalytic framework can not describe the feeling since the subject has entered a new state that has a different topology than the one described by Freud.

Freud did not recognize that there may be a family of feelings/states that fall under the heading of oceanic feeling. He accounts for every occurrence of the oceanic as a result of (1). He never really explores the alternative two possibilities which might have forced themselves on him had he researched the phenomena more fully. He is sure that the oceanic feeling can be traced back to an earlier phase of development and never entertains the possibility that there might be some states which are developments of the psyche (as opposed to regressions) and require training to go beyond anything previously experienced in mental life.

Perhaps Freud's opinions about the oceanic feelings would have changed in light of scientific discoveries that were after his time. His intuition that these feelings would defy attempts to characterize their physiological signs was wrong. In 1967 the American physiologist Robert Wallace began to conduct experiments on transcendental meditation. He found that after a few minutes "his subjects entered a state of deep relaxation, marked by the appearance of alpha waves in their EEGs, and decreased oxygen consumption... In sleep the drop [of Oxygen levels] is usually less than 16 percent, whereas meditators achieved reductions that momentarily dipped almost twice as low... What this showed was that the subjective feelings reported during meditation - inner silence, peacefulness, and relaxation - had a real physical basis."3

It is clear that the subject of oceanic feelings is still open to further questions and speculations. Had Freud more thoroughly explored the phenomenon he might have given it more thought and a richer treatment. Ultimately, he might have been forced to agree that he was talking about a variety of different feelings under the same heading, and this would have led him to reexamine the psychoanalytic analysis of them. It is only after figuring out what exactly the oceanic feeling is and when it occurs that Freud can address its relationship to religion.