An ego-psychological theory of altered states of consciousness

Hypnotizability, Creative Capacity, Creativity Styles, Absorption, and Phenomenological Experience During Hypnosis

“…Downloaded by [University of California Santa Cruz] at 17:13 13 October 2014 belief in unconscious processes as an element to their creative act (see Fromm, 1977;Krippner, 1965;May, 1975). The Use of Techniques subscale was significantly and positively correlated with the SPCC, HGSHS:A, and TAS, suggesting another possible common element to hypnosis, absorption, and creativity: the use of an active (strategy-based) problem solving approach to enhance their experiences of creativity, hypnosis, and absorption.…”

Temporal Cognition and the Phenomenology of Time: A Multiplicative Function for Apparent Duration

“…A state of absorption can be induced by such techniques as meditation (West, 1987b;Pekala, 1987) and hypnosis (Fellows, 1986;Fromm, 1977Fromm, , 1979Hilgard, 1979;Sheehan & Bayliss, 1984). Using such techniques, one can check to see whether the experimental manipulation has a systematic effect on apparent duration.…”

Silence and Emptiness in the Service of Healing: Lessons from Meditation

“…Such a state would be more receptive to any pregnant silence emergent from the analytic dyad. Fromm (1977), in an excellent article, descriptively contends that the practice of meditation helps to make the unconscious conscious by enhancing ego receptivity, primary process mentation, fantasy, imagery, free-floating attention, and adaptive regression. Finally, on this theme, Coltart ( 1992) argues that since much of what patients present to us is`beyond words' (as in psychosomatic symptoms and hysterical conversions) it cannot simply be dealt with at the level of language.…”

“…This is precisely what mindfulness meditation is all about. This process has also been referred to as the`de-automatization' of cognitive construing ( Fromm 1977, Del Monte & Kenny 1985, Del Monte 1987, and is akin to Bion's use of the expression`negative capability', which refers to the analyst's capacity to suspend logic and dwell in uncertainties, mysteries and doubts.…”