Creative Flow as an Altered State: Trance, Focus, and Originality

It was the Hungarian-American psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi who first articulated the notion of “flow.”

Accordingly, an artist, author, sportsperson, or other such creative types of people are able to enter a highly-focused state that is conducive to creativity (or, we might also say, adaptability).

That state is was coined “flow” by Csikszentmihalyi (1934-2021).

Before him, the Spanish Surrealist painter, movie maker, and jewelry designer Salvador Dali developed a routine of self-hypnosis and sleep that he would put himself through in preparation for a work of art.

Entering these “altered states of consciousness,” Dali was able to cultivate inspiration.

The rational side of the brain was quietened. Another, more poetic side was ignited, enabling him to make novel Connections in his work, with one thing morphing into another in each painting.

In hypnosis sessions, notably, people are often able to overcome long-embedded fears or blockages, and can feel inspired.

Such states of consciousness serve evolutionary, or survival, purposes.

In their most basic form, they emerge as the instinct to “fight, flee, or freeze” when threatened by a predator.

At a more elevated level, our dreams sometimes give us clues to situations in our daily lives, and, on rare occasions, can even enable us to transcend the limits of rationality and dream a solution to a difficult problem. (For example, around the middle of the 19th century, German chemist August Kekulé realized the structure of the benzene molecule after dreaming of a snake biting its own tail.)

And such states sometimes appear as direct inspiration, so that (in a state of flow) a work of art feels as if it is creating itself.