On the Importance of Developing Creative Imagination

1983 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert E. Valett
Keyword(s):  
Creative Imagination

LSD, madness and healing: Mystical experiences as possible link between psychosis model and therapy model

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Isabel Wießner ◽  
Marcelo Falchi ◽  
Fernanda Palhano-Fontes ◽  
Amanda Feilding ◽  
Sidarta Ribeiro ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Therapeutic Potential ◽  
Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire ◽  
Psychotic Experience ◽  
Creative Imagination ◽  
Double Blind ◽  
Alteration Of Consciousness ◽  
Therapy Model ◽  
Aberrant Salience ◽  
Mystical Experiences ◽  
Meaning Attribution

Abstract Background For a century, psychedelics have been investigated as models of psychosis for demonstrating phenomenological similarities with psychotic experiences and as therapeutic models for treating depression, anxiety, and substance use disorders. This study sought to explore this paradoxical relationship connecting key parameters of the psychotic experience, psychotherapy, and psychedelic experience. Methods In a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, crossover design, 24 healthy volunteers received 50 μg d-lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) or inactive placebo. Psychotic experience was assessed by aberrant salience (Aberrant Salience Inventory, ASI), therapeutic potential by suggestibility (Creative Imagination Scale, CIS) and mindfulness (Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire, FFMQ; Mindful Attention Awareness Scale, MAAS; Experiences Questionnaire, EQ), and psychedelic experience by four questionnaires (Altered State of Consciousness Questionnaire, ASC; Mystical Experiences Questionnaire, MEQ; Challenging Experiences Questionnaire, CEQ; Ego-Dissolution Inventory, EDI). Relationships between LSD-induced effects were examined. Results LSD induced psychedelic experiences, including alteration of consciousness, mystical experiences, ego-dissolution, and mildly challenging experiences, increased aberrant salience and suggestibility, but not mindfulness. LSD-induced aberrant salience correlated highly with complex imagery, mystical experiences, and ego-dissolution. LSD-induced suggestibility correlated with no other effects. Individual mindfulness changes correlated with aspects of aberrant salience and psychedelic experience. Conclusions The LSD state resembles a psychotic experience and offers a tool for healing. The link between psychosis model and therapeutic model seems to lie in mystical experiences. The results point to the importance of meaning attribution for the LSD psychosis model and indicate that psychedelic-assisted therapy might benefit from therapeutic suggestions fostering mystical experiences.

C. F. Meyer's Der Heilige in Relation to Its Sources

PMLA ◽  
1943 ◽  
Vol 58 (1) ◽  
pp. 245-263 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. Travis Hardaway
Keyword(s):  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Creative Imagination ◽  
Conrad Ferdinand Meyer

The first purpose of this paper is to review the question of just what sources Conrad Ferdinand Meyer used in writing Der Heilige; the second and more important aim is to interpret in some detail Meyer's use of his material, to show how he adapted it to his purposes and added to it from his creative imagination. Both matters have been discussed by students of Meyer, but usually incidentally, sometimes under mistaken impressions, and never comprehensively. Before proceeding with the actual investigation, it will perhaps serve the purpose of clarity to state my conception of Meyer's purpose in writing the Novelle: it was not primarily to retell or to vivify history, nor to glorify a saint; it was rather to narrate an “unerhörte Begebenheit.” To be sure, Der Heilige is a historical Novelle, but so far as history was concerned Meyer's chief solicitude was to give a vivid background for the characters and events presented, and at the same time to avoid disturbing unduly the preconceived notions of readers with some knowledge of twelfth-century England. This attitude of Meyer's, which he held in general toward history as fictional material, permits many significant deviations from history—deviations which are made for specific artistic purposes. They therefore merit our particular attention.

Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn 'Arabi

1970 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 433
Author(s):  
Toshihiko Izutsu ◽  
Henry Corbin ◽  
Ralph Manheim
Keyword(s):  
Creative Imagination ◽  
Ibn Arabi

The Place of Myth in Philosophy

Philosophy ◽  
1936 ◽  
Vol 11 (42) ◽  
pp. 131-145
Author(s):  
W. R. Inge
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Religion ◽  
Creative Imagination ◽  
The Real ◽  
Space And Time ◽  
The World ◽  
Scientific Fact ◽  
The Mind

My subject is the place of myth in philosophy, not in religion. If I were dealing with the philosophy of religion, I should, of course, have much to say on the place of myth in theology; and what I have to say may have some bearing on this subject; but I am not dealing with particular dogmas of Christianity or of any other religion. My thesis is that when the mind communes with the world of values its natural and inevitable language is the language of poetry, symbol, and myth. And, further, that philosophy has to deal with a number of irreducible surds which cannot be rationalized. They must be accepted as given material for reason to work upon. For example, we do not know why there is a world; we cannot unify the world of what we call facts and the world of values; there are antinomies in space and time which do not seem to disappear when we put a hyphen between them. Our reason–some would say reason itself— has reached its limits. We are driven to mythologize, confessing that we have left the realm of scientific fact. We give rein to the imagination, not exactly claiming with Wordsworth that it is reason in her most exalted mood, but hoping that the creative imagination may reveal to us some of the real meaning of questions which we cannot answer.

Religious Rivalry in the Seventeenth Century: A Buddhist–Christian Case in China

2021 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 102-123
Author(s):  
Amy Yu Fu
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Chinese Society ◽  
Creative Imagination ◽  
Rene Girard ◽  
René Girard ◽  
Religious Perspectives

To shed new light on the place of Christianity in seventeenth-century Chinese society and the debates and conflicts between Christians and Buddhists, this paper reflects on Christians' critiques of Buddhist dogma and praxis as well as rejoinders from the Buddhists. It will focus on the sustained debates, roughly between 1590 and 1690, with regard to the relative ‘merits and defects’ as represented in polemical texts. Several treatises serve as the essential link of the continuous debates, eliciting back-and-forth elaboration and rebuttals from both sides. Through an analysis of the polemical discourse, I argue that the Buddhist–Christian case offers an instance of what René Girard termed ‘mimetic rivalry’. The conflict entails internal rivalry resulting not only from different religious perspectives but also from social, cultural and economic ones. Seeking interconnectedness between traditions by creative imagination and analogy may offer a way out of ignorance and enmity in dealing with interreligious relationship. 1

scholarly journals Exercising Musical Minds: Phrenology and Music Pedagogy in London circa 1830

2015 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 99-124
Author(s):  
David Trippett
Keyword(s):  
Music Pedagogy ◽  
Journal Articles ◽  
Creative Imagination ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Popular Appeal ◽  
Life Of The Mind ◽  
Dynamical Nature ◽  
Loss Of Contact ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Cost

The icon of the machine in early-nineteenth-century Britain was subject to a number of contemporary critiques in which pedagogy and the life of the mind were implicated, but to what extent was education in music composition influenced by this? A number of journal articles appeared on the topic of music and phrenology, bolstered by the establishment of the London Phrenological Society (1823), and its sister organization, the British Phrenological Association (1838). They placed the creative imagination, music, and the “natural” life of the mind into a fraught discourse around music and materialism. The cost of a material mind was a perceived loss of contact with the “gifts of naturer … the dynamical nature of man … the mystic depths of man's soul” (Carlyle), but the concept of machine was also invested with magical potential to transform matter, to generate energy, and can be understood as a new ideal type of mechanism. These confliciting ideals and anxieties over mechanism, as paradigm and rallying cry, are here situated in the context of music pedagogy during the second quarter of the century, with particular reference to amateur musicians and the popular appeal of phrenological “exercise,” and of devices such as Johann Bernhard Logier's “chiroplast.”

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