The Creative Trance
June 30, 2022 Tobi Zausner
Creative trance is an altered state of consciousness inherent in everyone, occurring when focus on creative work overrides outside input. It can manifest as daydreams generating scientific or creative ideas, hyperfocus in sports, visualizations impacting civilizations, life-changing audience experiences, or meditations for self-transformation that may access states beyond trance. Artist and psychologist Tobi Zausner shows creative trance operates in scientific inventions and works of art in all media, and is important in creating and recreating the self. Drawing on cognitive neuroscience, clinical psychology, and post-materialist psychology, the book investigates creative trance's diversity from non-industrial societies to digital urban life, and its presence in people from all backgrounds and abilities, also exploring its future.