The Significance of Transpersonal Experiences, Emotional Conflict, and Cognitive Abilities in Creativity

Abstract

Nineteen visual artists and eighteen actors were compared to twenty-one imaginative controls, matched for high levels of imaginative absorption, all subjects female. Creatives had mystical experiences significantly more frequently than controls. In particular, the visual artists reported having had significantly more current, positive altered states of consciousness (lucid and archetypal-mythological dreaming, out of body experiences, and waking mystical experiences). These findings, taken with the fact that the creatives did not show a significantly greater tendency toward psychopathology as indexed by the multiple measures of trauma and emotional conflict, suggest that contrary to the stereotype, creatives may not be driven by conflict so much as by intense and constructive states of consciousness. Most previous studies of productive creatives have used lower absorption controls, making it more difficult to locate specific factors that make imaginative subjects into productive artists and actors.