THE HYPNOTIC TRANCE, the PSYCHEDELIC EXPERIENCE, and the CREATIVE Actl
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THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF CLINICAL HYPNOSIS Volume VII, Number 2, October, 1964 Printed in U.S.A. THE HYPNOTIC TRANCE, THE PSYCHEDELIC EXPERIENCE, AND THE CREATIVE ACTl Stanley Krippner, Ph.D.2 As long as men have reflected about their lated records of other people's experience, the world, a basic issue has divided them. Some victim in so far as it confirms him in the belief that reduced awareness is the only awareness and have regarded man's conceptual models as as it bedevils his sense of reality, so that he is all straightforward reflections of reality. Others too apt to take his concepts for data, his words have looked upon these models as a frag- for actual things." ment imposed by the limitations of man's General semanticists have also recognized consciousness upon the unlimited variations the necessity of language for human sur- of his internal and external world. vival but have warned against confusing The eminent philosopher, Henri Bergson concepts and data, words and things. Haya- (5), took the latter position, maintaining kawa (10, pp. 32, 58-60) has differentiated that the function of our brain is basically between the extensional world, which we eliminative. The nervous system attempts are capable of knowing through our experi- to protect-us from being overwhelmed and ences, and the intensional world of words, confused by the mass of irrelevant knowl- expressions, and "maps" which represent edge available to us. It shuts out most of extensional "territories." what we should otherwise perceive at any moment and leaves only that small and "If a child grows to adulthood with a verbal special selection which is useful in practical world in his head which corresponds fairly closely to the extensional world that he finds around situations. Aldous Huxley (11, p. 21) states him in his widening experience, he is in relatively that: small danger of being shocked or hurt by what he finds, because his verbal world has told him what, "According to such a theory, each one of us is more or less, to expect .... If, however, he grows potentially Mind at Large. But in so far as we up with a false map in his head ... he will con- are animals, our business is at all costs to survive. stantly be running into trouble, wasting his To make biological survival possible, Mind at efforts, and acting like a fool. He will not be ad- Large has to be funneled through the reducing justed to the world as it is; he may, if the lack valve of the brain and nervous system. What of adjustment is serious, end up in a mental comes out at the other end is a measly hospital." trickle .... " Agreeing with Hayakawa, and arguing Huxley (11, pp. 21-22) further describes that children are "naturally extensional," the set of verbal symbols that is needed to Campbell (6) suggests that more direct help us utilize this reduced consciousness. sensory experiences be used in school class- "To formulate and express the contents of this rooms and calls for a "deverbalization" of reduced awareness, man has invented and end- education; many other educators, such as lessly elaborated those symbol-systems and im- Maria Montessori and Julian Huxley have plicit philosophies which we call languages. likewise called for more nonverbal educa- Every individual is at once the beneficiary and tion of children. the victim of the linguistic tradition into which he or she has been born-the beneficiary inas- It has frequently been pointed out that much as language gives access to the accumu- the child's natural tendency is to experience his world directly. However, the child's parents and culture soon teach him to im- 1 Presented at the winter meeting of the Kent pose linguistic concepts upon extensional Area School Psychologists, December, 1963, Kent State University, Kent, Ohio. events. 2 Research Director, Department of Psychiatry, A few individuals in each culture, accord- Maimonides Hospital of Brooklyn. ing to many thinkers, have succeeded in 140 TRANCE, PSYCHEDELIC DRUGS, CREATIVITY 141 altering consciousness to such an extent LSD, seem to expand awareness in such a that they have regained rapport with the way that the nervous system is flooded with extensional world. Their number includes new and unusual stimuli. the artists, the mystics, and the visionary Both hypnosis and psychedelic drugs can prophets who have broken through the cul- aid the breakthrough into the preverbal turally-imposed "word-game" to achieve realm where creative inspiration has its esthetic, spiritual, and intellectual goals. To origins.Many creative artists and scientists attain these states of altered consciousness, claim that their creative efforts exist as and to achieve a closer contact with both moods and feelings before they are ex- the inner and the outer reality, they have pressed in words and symbols. Aaron Cope- used Yoga, religious rituals, sensory depri- land states that a musical theme comes to vation, physical shock, relaxation, pro- him almost like automatic writing. For the longed starvation, sleeplessness, hypnosis, late Robert Frost, a poem began as "a lump and psychedelic ("mind-manifesting") in the throat ... a homesickness, or a love- drugs. sickness, a loneliness." It was "never a Altered states of consciousness have thought to begin with." Wagner is reported proved to be effective in fostering creativity to have heard music spontaneously, and because the creative act is basically pre- Brahms to have heard fragments of his verbal and unconscious in origin. Torrance themes as "inner harmony". The renowned (23, p. 16) recognizes the preverbal origins 18th century German chemist, August of creativity when he defines it as the proc- Kekule, produced a conceptualization of ess of sensing gaps or missing elements, the benzene ring which was inspired by a forming ideas or hypotheses concerning dream of a snake holding its tail in its them, testing these hypotheses, and com- mouth. municating the results. Freud (9, pp. 46-50) Some individuals, especially religious associates curiosity with unconscious drives mystics, attempt to foster this type of ex- which can "put themselves in the service of perience. Ben-Avi (3, p. 1819), while dis- intellectual interests" although they do not cussing Zen Buddhism, counsels that tI ••• originate in the conscious state. "In the change, illumination, or growth, must be case of a creative mind," Freud states else- rooted in the immediate, the concrete ex- where, "... the intellect has withdrawn its perience of the individual" rather than be- watchers from the gate, and the ideas rush ing based on conscious abstractions and in- in pell-mell.... " He and many others have tellectual formulations. Zen Buddhism, with also stressed the necessity of breaking its emphasis on concentration, is often re- through the culturally-imposed language garded as a modification of autohypnosis. structure if creativity is to emerge. In autohypnosis, as in Zen, meditation leads Under properly controlled situations, per- to increased concentration, a focusing of haps the safest and simplest methods of con- attention, and an increased receptivity to sciousness-alteration employ hypnosis and creative ideas. psychedelic drugs. The creative act goes The history of creative effort is filled with beyond the mere recombination of similar examples demonstrating the value of altered elements, and thus, altered consciousness consciousness.Rachmaninoff wrote his most can be of considerable assistance in ena- celebrated piano concerto while under hyp- bling an individual to conceptualize novel notic treatment. Coleridge was inspired to solutions to artistic, technological, and sci- write the poem "Kubla Khan" while half- entific problems.Hypnosis appears to focus asleep from the effects of an anodyne pre- consciousnessso intensely that subthreshold scribed for an illness. Poincare discovered stimuli are perceived; in fact, it is fre- a major class of mathematical functions quently defined in terms of a heightened while in a state between waking and sleep- responsiveness to suggestion. Psychedelic ing. Estabrooks and Gross (8, p. 24), among drugs, such as psilocybin, mescaline, and others feel that hypnosis can release crea- 142 KRIPPNER tive functioning among children as well as experience. The technique of progressive re- adults. laxation was used to induce the trance state. Among the recent research reports in Cues were introduced to provide the sub- hypnosis, the following four studies assun:e jects with the structure of algebraic prob- significance in delineating the relationship lems that they would be called upon to between the hypnotic trance and the crea- solve in the waking state. tive act. Upon awakening, the subjects insisted they could remember nothing that hap- THE HYPNOTIZABILITY OF CHILDREN pened in the hypnotic trance. Yet, in al- most every instance, all three subjects im- London (17) reports, after studying 57 mediately gave the correct answer when boys and girls aged five and older, ~hat the problems were presented. They were not children are significantly more susceptible aware of how they solved the problems so to hypnosis than are adul~. In stand.ar.d!z- quickly: "It just popped into my mind," ing the Children's Hypnotic Susceptibility was a typical report. Scale, he also found that the older children One of the subjects experienced the an- could "simulate" hypnosis with a great deal swer as a momentarily visual hallucina- of effectiveness. Furthermore, susceptibility tion; the other two experienced the answer and age had a curvilinear relationship. as a sudden flash of certain knowledge. Both London's study bears a striking resem- of these events suggest how hypnosis might blance to the findings of Torrance (23, p. increase and improve an individual's crea- 97-98). His subjects showed drops in origi- tive output. Tinnin's conclusion is consist- nality upon entering kindergarter:, fourth ent with creativity theory; he states that grade and junior high school, WhIChmay cognitive awareness can utilize cues with- be regarded as a tendency of individuals to out full awareness.