Transliminality was a concept introduced by the parapsychologist Michael Thalbourne

Michael Thalbourne

Michael Anthony Thalbourne, Ph.D., was an Australian psychologist and parapsychologist. He was educated at the University of Adelaide and the University of Edinburgh...

, an Australian psychologist who is based at the University of Adelaide. It is defined as a hypersensitivity to psychological material (imagery, ideation, affect, and perception) originating in (a) the unconscious, and/or (b) the external environment (Thalbourne & Maltby, 2008). High degrees of this trait have been shown by Thalbourne to be associated with increased tendency to mystical experience, greater creativity

Creativity

Creativity refers to the phenomenon whereby a person creates something new that has some kind of value. What counts as "new" may be in reference to the individual creator, or to the society or domain within which the novelty occurs...

, and greater belief in the paranormal

Paranormal

Paranormal is a general term that designates experiences that lie outside "the range of normal experience or scientific explanation" or that indicates phenomena understood to be outside of science's current ability to explain or measure...

, but Thalbourne has also found evidence that transliminality may be positively correlated with psychoticism

Psychoticism

Psychoticism is one of the three traits used by the psychologist Hans Eysenck in his P-E-N model model of personality. Psychoticism refers to a personality pattern typified by aggressiveness and interpersonal hostility.High levels of this trait were believed by Eysenck to be linked to increased...

. He has published articles on transliminality in journals on parapsychology and psychology.

Further reading

• Lange, R., Thalbourne, M.A., Houran, J., & Storm, L. (2000). The Revised Transliminality Scale: Reliability and Validity Data From a Rasch Top-Down Purification Procedure. Consciousness and Cognition, 9, 591-617
• Thalbourne, M.A., Bartemucci, L., Delin, P.S., Fox, B. & Nofi, O. (1997). Transliminality: Its Nature and Correlates. Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, 91, 305-332
• Thalbourne, M.A. & Delin, P.S. (1994) A common thread underlying belief in the paranormal, mystical experience and psychopathology Journal of Parapsychology, 58, 3-38
• Thalbourne, M.A. & Delin, P.S. (1999). Transliminality: Its Relation to Dream Life, Religiosity and Mystical Experience. The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 9, 45-61
• Thalbourne, M.A. & Houran, J. (2005). Patterns of Self-Reported Happiness and Substance Use in the Context of Transliminality. Personality and Individual Differences, 38, 327-336
• Thalbourne, M.A. & Maltby, J. (2008).Transliminality, thin boundaries, Unusual Experiences,and temporal lobe lability. Personality and Individual Differences, 44, 1617–1623.