The Sound of Muse

Psychoanalysts and researchers in the field of psychology identify several stages in the creative process, the most compelling or exciting of which is the muse or the “rush” stage. Many connect this stage with the transitional space and claim that aggression, disintegration, and chaos are preliminary stages. In this article, I will explore the creative process with particular emphasis on the rush stage. I will rely on Bion’s theory of thinking and the concepts of the ‘selected fact’ and reverie in order to distinguish between pathological dissociation and dissociation that is at the core of the creative process, a state of dissociative immersion in which the artist lets go of the present in terms of time and space awareness thereby becoming receptive to what emanates from within and outside. I suggest that dissociative immersion differs from pathological dissociation in the person’s ability to shift between levels of consciousness freely without falling into pathological dissociation.