Is A Dip Still A Plunge? A Consideration of Immersion by Degree: Response to Corbett and Stephens

ABSTRACT

The author responds to discussions by Corbett and Stephens (this issue). She considers the discussants’ critique of Milner’s “plunge” metaphor as a way to capture the experience of entering immersive creative states and responds to the claim that the model does not capture the full range of ways individuals and groups may experience and live out such states. The author contends that the movements inward and outward are a central feature of creative life, even when they occur on a smaller scale and do not entail a totalizing retreat from the social world. Finally, the author suggests that creative experience emerges from transitionality as opposed to relationality and clarifies the British Independent group theorists’ contributions to this area of thought.

This article responds to:

Flow: A Discussion of Stacey Novack’s “Carried Away: Creativity, Immersive States, and the Abiding Relational World”

On “The Burning Beach”: Immersion, Errantry, and Caribbean Relation

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Stacey L. Novack

Stacey L. Novack, Psy.D., is a faculty member of the Massachusetts Institute of Psychoanalysis. Dr. Novack is in private practice in Northampton, MA.