Editing Ramakrishna (section)

====Romain Rolland and the "Oceanic feeling"====
{{See also|Geschwind syndrome}}

The dialogue on [[psychoanalysis]] and Ramakrishna began in 1927 when [[Sigmund Freud]]'s friend Romain Rolland wrote to him that he should consider spiritual experiences, or "the [[oceanic feeling]]", in his psychological works.<ref name="roland_mystic"/><ref>"Oceanic Feeling" by Henri Vermorel and Madeleline Vermoral in ''International Dictionary of Psychoanalysis'' [http://www.enotes.com/psychoanalysis-encyclopedia/oceanic-feeling] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090411121930/http://www.enotes.com/psychoanalysis-encyclopedia/oceanic-feeling|date=11 April 2009}}</ref> Rolland described the trances and mystical states experienced by Ramakrishna and other mystics as an "'oceanic' sentiment", one which Rolland had also experienced.<ref>''The Enigma of the Oceanic Feeling: Revisioning the Psychoanalytic Theory of Mysticism'' By William Barclay Parsons, Oxford University Press US, 1999 {{ISBN|0-19-511508-2}}, p 37</ref> Rolland believed that the universal human religious emotion resembled this "oceanic sense".<ref>{{cite book|page=12 |title=Primitive Passion: Men, Women, and the Quest for Ecstasy |author=Marianna Torgovnick |publisher=University of Chicago Press |date=1998}}</ref> In his 1929 book ''La vie de Ramakrishna'', Rolland distinguished between the feelings of unity and eternity which Ramakrishna experienced in his mystical states and Ramakrishna's interpretation of those feelings as the goddess Kali.<ref>Parsons 1999, 14</ref>