What Is Transliminality?

The subset of HSPs that we'll serve best

A few times throughout in these posts I’ve mentioned a quality called transliminality that I would tell you about in a future article. Well, the future is now! :)

I had never heard of transliminality—or HSP for that matter—before graduate school. My first career was in music, primarily as a pianist, and part of what led me to go back to school and become a therapist was a desire to better understand the gifts and shadow of the “artistic temperament.” There was some elusive quality that I had a taste of, but that others around me had in an even more intense form. Why was it that the most deeply creative people seemed to have access to this mystical, transcendent plane of existence, while also experiencing intense psychospiritual suffering?

During my PhD research, I learned about a personality trait called transliminality that helps provide an answer. The late Australian psychologist Michael Thalbourne (1955-2010) had a hunch that several different personality phenomena (paranormal belief, creative personality, mystical experience, hypomania, and manic/depressive symptoms) tended to correlate with each other, and in 1994 he ran an experiment with colleague Peter Delin to test this hypothesis. Not only were they correct, but statistical analysis revealed that there was so much correlation that they were actually dealing with one, as-yet-unnamed “meta-trait”!

They decided to call this meta-trait transliminality, meaning “the hypothesized tendency of psychological material to cross (trans-) thresholds (limin-) into and out of consciousness.”

Over the next several years, Thalbourne and colleagues continued to run experiments to elucidate just what transliminality was and wasn’t. It turns out that transliminality involves nine different aspects:

1. Absorption

2. Creative personality

3. Dream interest & interpretation

4. Fantasy-proneness

5. Hyperaesthesia (heightened senses)

6. Magical ideation

7. Manic-like experience

8. Mystical experience

9. Paranormal belief & experience

Sure enough, this described to a “T” (ha!) what I was seeking to understand as the “artistic temperament.” I wrote my dissertation about it, and you can access the whole thing at this link.

Meanwhile, I had also learned about Highly Sensitive Personality (HSP), and it seemed clear to me that the two were connected. There are many HSPs who are not particularly transliminal, but it seems that most everyone who is highly transliminal is also an HSP. My theory is that sensation-seeking is the extra ingredient that tips a highly sensitive person over into being transliminal as well.

I wanted to share with you about transliminality because while CATHARSIS Nashville will be designed for “Highly Sensitive Healing” across the board, it will be especially suited for the needs of those HSPs who are also very transliminal.

Of course, if transliminal people are flourishing, they will likely be enjoying a creative and mystical lifestyle, not looking for mental health treatment! But the thing about this trait is that it sets a person up for either great flourishing or decompensation. Clinically, the latter often presents as psychosis and/or depression, which could include diagnoses of bipolar, schizoaffective disorder, or schizophrenia. This is where high-quality holistic treatment can make a crucial difference.

As you reread the nine aspects of transliminality above, you can probably think of a few people you’ve known who fit this description. If they were to begin exhibiting symptoms of mental illness, as long as they are not at the point of posing a danger to themselves or others, what environment would likely be the most healing for them to receive clinical treatment—the often-terrifying confines of a hospital, or a calm and beautiful center with a chapel and music room and café and garden?

Additionally, transliminal clients in particular can benefit from having pastoral/spiritual care available and integrated with psychological treatment. With their bent toward mystical and paranormal experience and dream interpretation, they often gravitate toward therapists who are open to a more spiritual, holistic understanding of them beyond their illness or diagnosis.

Now, we envision that plenty of the clients at CATHARSIS Nashville, transliminal or not, will be at a “lighter” level of suffering than what I’ve described above. But for people who are in that difficult boat—which, I might add, was the story of Anton Boisen, the father of Clinical Pastoral Education and the reason we now have chaplains in mental hospitals—we will be prepared and equipped to welcome and serve them and accompany them back to wholeness.