Psychoanalytic Approach to the Mystical Thinking Phenomenon

The Psychoanalytic Approach to the Phenomenon of Mystical Thinking" is a graduation work devoted to the study of magical and mystical thinking and its significance for an individual both in modern psychology in general and in the psychoanalytic approach. What is more, it also appears to be extremely important for understanding the processes of thinking of people who turn to practices affecting the phenomenology of mystical or magical thinking, which, in its turn, can not only help a person but also have a negative impact on him or her. Besides, in some cases it can eventually lead to the destruction of his or her pathological conditions. The relevance of the work lies in the fact that nowadays there is a widespread speculation about the echoes of magical or mystical thinking which is oftentimes expressed through an appeal to their phenomena in various webinars, workshops and training sessions aiming to increase awareness, the development of business thinking, positive thinking, etc. The work consists of two parts: theoretical and practical. The theoretical part deals with different approaches to mystical thinking: from historical sources to the modern view of science on this subject. In the practical part of the work two cases with cases of fundamental reliance of the psyche on magic-mystical thinking are analyzed, in the course of which conclusions that mystical thinking in its pathological manifestations can have a negative impact on a person are drawn. The conclusions of the work made are that magic or mystical thinking is the result of wrong passage of the process of deidealization of the surrounding world in children at preschool age. Such types of thinking work as a psychological protection of one, because the person has not developed constructive protections and models of relations with reality, or develops them slowly and with distortions caused by disturbances of development of secondary thinking. At the end, it has been proved that magic-mystical thinking is a normal stage of development of psyche. Furthermore, it has been verified that in adults’ echoes of magic-mystical thinking can be useful for development and realization of their personalities, but the priority of magic-mystical thinking will promote development of psychopathologies and bring harm to a person.