Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-8bljj Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-27T04:56:36.505Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Chapter 3 - Unconscious Origins of the Creative Trance

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 June 2022

Tobi Zausner
Affiliation:
C. G. Jung Foundation for Analytical Psychology, New York
Get access

Summary

We live in a multiplicity of personal worlds, all connected through the power of our unconscious mind and its capacity for trance. This vast unconscious, far larger than conscious awareness, appears to initiate all our movements. The cognitive unconscious, with its perceptual-cognitive abilities, automated motor skills, and implicit memory, facilitates creative expression while clinically, our unconscious emotions, internal conflicts, and repressed desires drive the inspiration and passion of a creative trance. Relinquishing conscious control in the creative process can be a type of artistic projective identification. As the visual artist Joan Mitchell says, “the painting tells me what to do.” Unlike the slow sequential thinking of the conscious mind, the unconscious is a parallel processor quickly integrating multiple variables to bring depth and complexity into the creative process. It carries out multipart repeated behaviors that become automatic fluid expertise, as in the violinist no longer concentrating on finger positions and the archer instinctually positioning a bow.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Creative Trance
Altered States of Consciousness and the Creative Process
, pp. 37 - 48
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×