Muses, Spirits, and Deities: Social Cognition and Inspired Texts

Catalog description

Inspired writers, alleged supernatural authors, and imagined characters that seem to act autonomously point to automatic aspects of the writing process that have long interested psychologists and psychical researchers, as well as writers and religious believers. Course includes close analysis of the experience of selected individuals (e.g., psychologist Carl Jung, channelers Jane Roberts and Helen Schucman, and mediums Helene Smith and Leonora Piper) accompanied by recent psychological research on automaticity, authorship processing, and the nature of the self.