A reading of Erich Neumann’s The Mystical Man and the role of mysticism in human development, transformation, and psychopathology
For Neumann, mystical experience is not an exceptional event outside development, but a recurring dimension of the human life process. At every developmental stage, the ego may encounter the numinous: an extra-conscious archetypal reality that can expand the self, deepen consciousness, and open the person to transformation, but can also endanger the ego’s stability. Such encounters therefore require human containment and a sufficiently formed ego. This essay asks when mystical experience becomes a source of development and transformation, and when it turns instead toward regression, demonization, and psychopathology at any stage of our life.
Neumann states that the formation and development of human personality and consciousness are grounded in mystical processes: encounters with the noumenon that take place between the self, as the subject of personal contents, and numinous contents that pulse beyond personal and conscious space. (Archetypal world) (The Mystical Man, 29)
Freud’s theory of development is grounded in the dynamics of impulse and in the psychosexual stages of childhood. As the ego develops, it learns to regulate and transform instinctual drives through the formation of ego consciousness, conscience, and the superego.
Neumann describes the development of self and consciousness as a process in which the self gradually becomes central and, later in life, the ego-Self axis is revealed. The developing self is shaped not only by encounters with human figures and culture, but also by the collective unconscious from within. It encounters the archetypal world and responds to it through "centroversion", the principle by which each archetype can support development at the appropriate stage.
For Freud, pathology centers on fixations caused by inadequate satisfaction or frustration, which impair the development of the self and stand at the core of neurosis. Neumann adds another dimension: beyond instincts and caregiver relations, pathology may arise from an improper encounter with the noumenon. Such an archetypal experience can produce idealization, fascination, or demonization within the developmental environment, and may crystallize as an autonomous complex, madness, deviation, or other pathological form. Edinger, in The Ego and the Archetypes, also emphasizes the self’s relation to the archetypal world, but he locates pathology mainly in detachment from that world. Neumann, by contrast, stresses transformative mysticism and the danger of being overwhelmed by the noumenon without sufficient mediation or containment.
Jung describes archetypes as systems of readiness for action that include images, emotions, behavioral patterns, and psychic events. Yet he does not present the self’s encounter with the archetypes as beginning in a mystical state or as risking regression into the demonic. Instead, he emphasizes self-expansion through relation to the archetypal world.
In the opening passage of The Mystical Man, Neumann grounds personality formation and the development of consciousness in mystical processes. Encounters with the noumenon accompany human personality at every stage of development. At each stage, psychic development involves a specific archetypal encounter, and the noumenon's contents shift according to the developmental situation. The crucial questions are what resources exist in the person’s environment and psyche, what forces activate or accompany the encounter, and what allows the ego to transform it into life-enhancing development rather than trauma. Conversely, we must ask what obstructs this transformation or demonizes the numen, fixing terror and anxiety. Such encounters may involve the Great Mother, the mother, the father, the hero, society, the Anima/Animus, and the Self in midlife.
Neumann adds that the creative process is marked by the ego’s inability to remain confined to its position within consciousness. In creativity, the ego must surrender to the encounter with the non-I, relinquishing its exclusive hold on conscious reality and turning toward the world experienced as other than the ego. (30)
Neumann adds that, even in creativity, the ego must relinquish some rational control and make room for the unconscious, the non-I. Creation becomes possible when something new emerges from the meeting between the ego and what exceeds it. Creativity therefore arises from an encounter between the self and the unconscious, an encounter that may lead to either transformative and therapeutic development or traumatic and demonic outcomes.
For Neumann, all mystical forms share the same intensity of encounter. This intensity awakens in the self a dynamic, revolutionary impulse that lies beyond its conscious structure. The noumenon therefore appears as the opposite of consciousness.
Neumann shows that the power of transformation appears differently across the life cycle, as each stage opens a new archetypal region and exposes the self to a distinct risk of regression. In childhood, the self first encounters parental archetypes, especially the Great Mother and the father; when this encounter is not contained, the need for protection may turn into engulfment, separation anxiety, or terror of abandonment. This early danger becomes the background for the next developmental task: separation from the parental field.
As the child moves toward adolescence, the problem of dependence gives way to the struggle for strength, identity, and symbolic independence; the center of conflict shifts toward the hero, the masculine and feminine, and the eternal youth. Here, heroic energy may collapse into narcissistic inflation, destructive rebellion, or attachment to an antisocial group. Once identity begins to take shape, the archetypal problem moves into the field of intimate relation.
In young adulthood, love, sexuality, the beloved, and the anima/animus reorganize the archetypal field; without mediation, desire may become obsessive idealization, punitive guilt, or a destructive first love. After the tasks of separation, identity, and relation, the movement turns inward again. In midlife, the person is drawn toward the Self, individuation, aging, and death; at this stage, the numinous search may regress into cultic identification, extreme religiosity, or withdrawal from life's concrete demands. Thus, each life transition entails a double possibility: the emergence of a new archetype may intensify fascination, anxiety, and regressive tendencies, yet when the encounter is adequately mediated and contained, the same archetypal force can be integrated as a source of transformation.
For every consciousness and every self, the noumenon constitutes difference itself: the Absolute Other. It cannot be defined, for it is essentially free. (32)
The psychological category of autonomous unconscious contents, particularly as expressed in complexes, is therefore uncanny, unsettling, and independent of conscious control.
The noumenon presents itself to the ego as an indefinite yet dominant and powerful factor. It appears from the side opposite consciousness, precisely where consciousness cannot fully define or master it.
At this point, the mystical encounter can be defined more precisely as an encounter between the self and the non-I. (32)
For Neumann, the experience of the noumenon is an encounter with the Absolute Other: something strange, extra-conscious, and not yet assimilated into the self. Even a momentary encounter can shock the self in ways that may become either constructive or destructive, and its developmental consequences cannot be known in advance.
This is why the archetypal world can both shock and transform. The encounter may take place around the Great Mother, the father, the hero, monsters, evil, sexuality, or the opposite sex. In every case, Neumann stresses both developmental necessity and danger: the same encounter that can bring change can also overwhelm, distort, or endanger the self.
Mysticism, understood as an encounter with the noumenon, is therefore an archetypal encounter marked by fascination, shock, change, and at times sabotage. Human containment is crucial: the powerful, exciting, and frightening experience must be brought down to human scale through the mother, father, family, society, inner resources, friendships, and other mediating forms.
Neumann continues that in the process of encountering the numen, a change takes place. This change occurs in the person to whom the numen is revealed, but it also includes the numen itself, which comes from the archetypal world.
The two poles of this event, which we call mystical—the self and the non-I—are both transformed as their boundaries loosen, dissolve, and are reconfigured. (33)
Neumann emphasizes that, when the process is sufficiently contained, both poles of the encounter change. The shaken self changes, and so does its experience of the numen: what first appeared overwhelming and frightening becomes personified and descends to a human level. The archetypal world becomes real, personal, and subjective. The mother who gives birth mediates the archetype and is herself changed by seeing the child as a real child. The hero, once a fascinating superhuman figure, can become a real and powerful part of the self—neither grandiose nor frightened. Likewise, the intensity of an initial infatuation charged with the numen may become genuine human love rather than morbid obsession. Without such transformation, however, the encounter may regress dangerously toward the Great Mother.
From this point of view, Neumann writes, the supra-personal noumenon is present in the human being and only there, because the human being serves as the site of the mystical encounter between the self and the non-I. (34)
Neumann therefore presents the human person as the place of encounter and containment. Self and consciousness must remain present around the mystical experience so that the encounter can become transformative rather than disintegrating.
Humanity, both from without and from within, is what contains the encounter and allows it to become effective and transformative. When the encounter lacks a human container—such as a mother, father, community, positive relationships, or grounding in the world- the same powerful process may become demonic, chaotic, or anxiety-producing.
When the human figures surrounding the person are destructive, the encounter with the numinous may itself become destructive. Instead of enabling transformation, it may produce a negative and possibly irreversible regression that becomes embedded in the structure of personality.
At any developmental stage, the absence of a sufficiently containing human environment—or the presence of an abusive one—may turn the archetypal encounter that was meant to support transformation into the source of profound injury.
Neumann adds that the reality of this encounter is one of the basic conditions of human existence.
Once the encounter and transformation between the self and the non-I have been defined as a mystical process, the mystical category can be understood as a fundamental category for interpreting human forms of experience. (35)
Neumann treats the encounter between the self and the archetypal world as a basic condition of human existence. It is built into the human psyche, the development of consciousness, and the very experience of meeting the non-I.
Thus, development depends not only on a protective environment but also on how people experience, mediate, and integrate archetypal encounters.
Where psychoanalytic theory explains development through sublimated impulses, the formation of the ego and superego, and object relations shaped by the environment, Neumann adds the encounter with the non-I—the archaic and archetypal world—as a constitutive part of development.
The unconscious and the non-I therefore remain present throughout development. Neumann normalizes this encounter, presenting it as part of ordinary human experience and as a permanent element of the experiential repertoire.
We can now return to the question of pathological transformation: what happens when the encounter with the numinous becomes abnormal, traumatic, or demonic and descends into disorder? In such cases, the failure of mediation—by the parent, the environment, or the ego’s own strength—turns the encounter with the noumenon into a negative transformation that may become part of psychopathology.
For example, when the hero struggles with the Terrible Mother, a numinous encounter may lead to inflation, catastrophe, or narcissistic pathology if the ego lacks a visible, containing human environment that can reconnect the boy to himself. Similarly, an initial numinous encounter with sexuality may evoke powerful experiences that require explanation and containment. Without such mediation, the encounter may be marked by punitive guilt, sexual exploitation, fascination, or traumatic demonization of sexuality and the opposite sex.
A similar danger appears when the Anima or Animus is projected into a first love that becomes painful, distorted, and potentially destructive, at times even leading to a suicide attempt with irreversible consequences.
In the second half of life, the numinous encounter with the Self may also become distorted. Instead of deepening individuation, it may draw the person into an abusive cult, immature religious conversion, extreme religiosity, or disengagement from the concrete demands of life.
Identifying the specific form of the failed encounter with the numen, and the developmental stage at which it occurs, can therefore deepen our understanding of the psychopathology that emerges.
Neumann states that every encounter with the numinous draws the self into the embrace of the non-I. This encounter necessarily brings about transformation and change in personality: it may appear as a momentary apprehension of the non-I within the self, or as a prolonged upheaval. It may unfold in an orderly way, yet it may also alter or destroy the structure of personality, leaving it chaotic and without direction. Such change may take the form of religious experience, love, artistic creation, an idea, or madness. Wherever the mystical element appears, the seemingly stable world around the self is shaken; in such moments, the hidden and dynamic ground of the world becomes visible and begins to change. (36)
Neumann’s account helps clarify the destabilizing and potentially destructive force of the encounter with the noumenon. When the self is drawn into the embrace of the non-I, the encounter may become transformative if it remains mediated and contained; without such containment, however, the same process may become chaotic, disorganizing, and bordering on madness. Even a brief glimpse of the hidden, dynamic ground of reality can therefore be decisive for the person’s further development.
As noted above, human development moves toward expanding consciousness and strengthening the self. Yet this development rests on a mystical phenomenon: the creative process in which the self encounters the non-I and is changed by that encounter.
The synthesis of the dual movement lies in the relationship between the development of consciousness and the changing forms in which the noumenon appears.
Every experience of the noumenon both releases the self from the limits of consciousness and draws it closer to the primordial state. The same movement that expands consciousness therefore also exposes the self to a partial return to its earliest, less differentiated mode of experience.
Neumann therefore places the development of consciousness and the development of the individual personality on the same trajectory. Each encounter with the noumenon can advance this trajectory, opening new possibilities for differentiation and integration. Yet the same encounter also exerts a regressive pull toward a primordial, less differentiated state.
Pathological transformation begins when the encounter with the numinous no longer advances differentiation, integration, or self-creation but instead becomes traumatic, demonic, and disorganizing. Rather than opening consciousness to a new field of discovery, the encounter fixes the psyche at the developmental stage at which it occurs—whether in childhood, adolescence, or adulthood. To understand this process more precisely, we must follow the personality's life path and examine how each new stage brings the self into contact with a different archetypal region.
Having established this life-cycle sequence, Neumann traces the personality’s path from birth to death: from original containment in the unconscious to the possibility of integration in the final stage of life. Each chapter of life is not merely biographical but also archetypal: as the personality develops, it enters a different region of the archetypal world and encounters the images, powers, and dangers proper to that stage. Like the sun’s arc from east to west, the ego’s path crosses the archetypal firmament within the collective unconscious. Yet this firmament is only one layer of a broader psycho-cosmic field; beyond the realm of archetypal images lies the more primordial ouroboric-pleromatic space from which development first emerges and to which it may regress.
Ouroboric is the pre-formal space of the formless pleroma. It belongs to the cosmic mists of divinity that fill Anthropos’s inner psychic world, where they constitute the undefined noumenon: the divine void. According to Neumann, the initial stage of infancy is pre-formed and undifferentiated; all is one, and the human being remains part of the formless whole. This initial experience of unity is essentially numinous. When mediated through a human environment, it becomes a basic positive element in the human being’s relation to the universe, giving rise to a fundamental confidence in oneness with the world.
Yet this positive potential depends on mediation by the personal mother—or by another containing figure who fulfills a similar role. When the ouroboric element is translated into embodied care, holding, and protection, it can become a basic sense of emotional security. Without such mediation, however, the same primordial experience may be felt as catastrophic loss, the end of the world, or a terror that lingers with the ego and reappears later in moments of danger.
The mystical encounter between the ego and the non-I occurs when the ouroboric-pleromatic element breaks into the sphere of human life. In other words, the encounter begins wherever this primordial element enters lived experience and confronts the ego with what transcends it.
As a mystical phenomenon, the self moves through the archetypal firmament until it reaches the ouroboric-pleromatic sphere of existence. According to Neumann, the developing self, grounded in this primordial foundation, journeys through the archetypal firmament and encounters a different archetype at each stage. Each encounter may advance development, but it must also be integrated into the ordinary structure of personality and life. Moreover, every stage leaves a mystical imprint that continues to accompany the person in particular ways. When development is marked by trauma, however, this mystical point may also become associated with madness; in moments of danger, the person may then experience catastrophe and the apparent end of the world.
The claim that human beings are essentially "Homo mysticus" refers to the stage-by-stage nature of development: each encounter with an archetype leaves a mystical imprint on the developing self, even when that imprint goes unrecognized. This influence becomes most evident during crises of personality transformation, when the sequential activation of archetypal “psychic organs” shapes the crisis's form and intensity.
This crisis of transformation becomes especially dangerous when the Ouroboros's archetypal ground pulls the ego backward rather than supporting a new stage of development. To engage in more advanced encounters with the noumenon, the ego must be sufficiently strong and resilient; otherwise, it may regress into basic, primitive ouroboric mysticism. The attraction to cults, strange mystical rites, or false messianism can therefore be understood as a symptom of difficulties rooted in this early stage.
The decisive question, then, is what happens after the mystical experience. When the ego, transformed by the encounter, returns to the sphere of human life, the result is a mysticism of transformation within the human world. By contrast, when the ego is torn away from that sphere, becomes detached or alienated from it, or seeks to withdraw from it, the experience becomes nihilistic-ouroboric mysticism. The direction of the ego’s movement after the encounter therefore determines whether the process is developmental or regressive.
A mystic who passes through all stages of mystical introversion reaches the point of emptiness and then returns with a creative stance that affirms and requires the human world to belong to the category of transformative mysticism within life.
Neumann therefore warns against the pathology of ouroboric mysticism: a form of mysticism that neither returns to life nor produces transformation within it. Instead of becoming a force for development, it hardens into psychopathology. At each developmental stage, a mystical form—or even an ideology—may then serve as a mask for an unresolved developmental task.
For example, the hero may fail to fight his own developmental battle and instead attach himself to a rebellious, antisocial group that opposes society or authority without a clear personal aim. In that case, aggression does not become transformative; it remains trapped in collective acting out.
Similarly, a cult of sexuality or love may acquire a mystical aura—whether in ancient sacred rites or in modern movements of “free love”—without fostering genuine personal development or the transformation of the anima or animus.
In the second half of life, when the person is called to encounter the Self, the numinous search may also become pathological. Instead of deepening individuation, the person may drift into collective religious, spiritual, or mystical identifications that distance him from himself and from the concrete demands of life. In this form, the numen becomes collective, demonic, and impersonal: it no longer serves life, certainly not the personal life from which a more developed mysticism can emerge.
This pathological movement becomes clearest in the figure of the Ouroboric mystic. Though unaware, he remains under the decisive influence of the very archetype he fears: the Terrible Mother. What he rejects as predatory, destructive, weakening, or satanic is projected onto the world—often imagined as a hostile, feminized world—while the same force overwhelms him from within. His appeal to God, together with his rejection of the world, therefore, expresses not liberation but fixation in the initial ouroboric state. Behind this hostility stands the castrating power of the Great Mother: he fears it and seeks to escape it, yet precisely for that reason he has already been seized by it internally.
Neumann repeatedly emphasizes that a genuine mystical encounter with the archetypal noumenon can enrich life and deepen individuality, but it also carries the constant danger of regression into the realm of the Great Mother. This danger arises whenever the psyche lacks the strength or consciousness to withstand and mediate the encounter. Unlike Jung, Neumann emphasizes this regressive possibility and the destructive power it may unleash when the encounter is not sufficiently contained.
The same danger allows personal, social, and cultural pathologies to be understood more deeply. These pathologies emerge when the encounter with the numen fails or becomes demonic: the ego and psyche are then swallowed, overwhelmed, or fragmented rather than strengthened. What should have opened a path toward development may instead lead to regression, demonization, psychic flooding, or psychotic disintegration.
Against this pathological background, the experience of the noumenon can also appear as an experience of the Self: an inner voice that brings a new revelation. Through this experience, the ego is drawn into a process that necessarily unsettles the values, authorities, and dominant forms of consciousness that have governed it up to that moment. By its very nature, the mystical and creative experience stands in tension with the morality of the prevailing cultural conscience, the dominant religion, and the established contents of consciousness that constitute the cultural canon.
This tension between revelation and separation can be clarified by the Baal Shem Tov’s reading of the verse “Noah walked with God” [Gen. 6:9]. The human self is not meant to distance itself from the divine Self, yet the divine may withdraw to allow the human self to develop. Noah understands this withdrawal not as abandonment but as a pedagogical distance through which he learns to walk on his own.
The conclusion returns to the question this essay began with. Mystical experience is neither simply pathological nor simply redemptive. For Neumann, it is a constitutive dimension of development: an encounter with the numinous that can expand consciousness, deepen the self, and open the person to transformation. Yet when the ego is too weak, when human containment fails, or when the encounter remains unmediated, the same experience may become regressive, demonic, and destructive. The difference between development and psychopathology therefore depends on whether the encounter with the non-I can be
reintegrated into human life, integrated by the ego, and transformed into a lived relation to the world.
