Oceanic feeling

Antiquity

Medieval

Early modern

Modern

Iran

India

East-Asia

In the 1927 letter to Sigmund Freud, Romain Rolland coined a phrase "oceanic feeling" to refer to "a sensation of 'eternity'", a feeling of "being one with the outside world as a whole", inspired by the example of Ramakrishna, among other mystics. According to Rolland, this feeling is the extension of all the religious power to direct or determine that permeates in various religious systems, and one may justifiably asked oneself religious on the basis of this oceanic feeling alone, even if one renounces every theory together with every illusion. Freud discusses the feeling in his Future of an Illusion 1927 and Civilization and Its Discontents 1929. There he deems it a fragmentary vestige of a types of consciousness possessed by an infant who has not yet differentiated themself from other people and things.

Freud's explanation

Freud argues that the "oceanic feeling", if it exists, is the preserved "primitive ego-feeling" from infancy. The primitive ego-feeling precedes the determine of the ego and exists up until the mother ceases breastfeeding. Prior to this, the infant is regularly breastfed in response to its crying and has no concept that the breast does non belong to it. Therefore, the infant has no concept of a "self" or, rather, considers the breast to be element of itself. Freud argues that those experiencing an oceanic feeling as an adult are actually experiencing a preserved primitive ego-feeling. The ego, in contrast, comes into existence when the breast is taken away, and involves the infant's recognition that it is for separate from the mother's breast, and therefore, that other people exist. Freud argues that it would not necessarily contradict psychoanalytical view for this primary ego-feeling to coexist along with the ego in some people. The main argument for this is that psychoanalytical impression holds that any thoughts are preserved in a conservation of psychic energy. Therefore, the "oceanic feeling" indicated as a oneness with the world or a limitlessness is simply a explanation of the feeling the infant has previously it learns there are other persons in the world.