The Creative Trance

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.

Study at a glance

Abstract

In those moments when focus on creative work overrides input from the outside world, we are in a creative trance. This psychologically significant altered state of consciousness is inherent in everyone. It can take the form of daydreams generating scientific or creative ideas, hyperfocus in sports, visualizations that impact entire civilizations, life-changing audience experiences, or meditations for self-transformation that may access states beyond trance, becoming gateways to transcendence. Artist and psychologist Tobi Zausner shows how creative trance not only operates in scientific inventions and works of art in all media, but is also important in creating and recreating the self. Drawing on insights from cognitive neuroscience, clinical psychology and post-materialist psychology, this book investigates the diversity of the creative trance ranging from non-industrial societies to digital urban life, and its presence in people from all backgrounds and abilities. Finally, Zausner investigates the future of trance in our rapidly changing world.