Table of Contents
Introduction: Psychological Diversion as Adult Play 1
1 Absorbed Attention 4
Degrees of Diversion 8
The Changing Relationship between Work and Play 13
2 Breaking Out of Everyday Consciousness 18
Invisible and Silent Recreation 18
Absorption as Hypnotic Involvement 20
Mental Relaxation 25
Suspending the Master Codes 27
3 The Enjoyments of Being Absorbed 33
Feeling a Different Identity 34
Spellbound in a New Reality 38
High-Quality Experience: Relaxed Arousal 43
4 Story Enjoyment 49
The Story Spell vs. the Illusion of Reality 50
The Fallacy of Vicarious Experience 57
Being One-With Fictional Characters 62
5 Ever More Absorbing Stories 66
Early Developments in Story Entertainment 66
The Movies 68
Television 74
6 Recreational Drugs 80
Getting High 81
Alcohol 84
Marijuana 88
The Psychedelics 94
7 The Recreational Value of People 98
Human Interaction as Personal Business 99
Sociable Recreation 104
Falling in Love 106
8 Sexual Experience 110
From Procreation to Recreation 110
Absorption and Erotic Fantasy 114
9 Motion and Emotion in Music 123
Music as Relaxed Arousal 124
From "Stardust" to Rock: Mild to Extreme Diversion 127
Listening to Classical Music 132
10 Cultivated Diversions: Art 137
Appreciation vs. Enjoyment 138
Absorption as Psychic Distance and Empathy 143
Peak Experience through Aesthetic Absorption 147
11 Cultivated Diversions of Body and Mind 152
When Action Is Absorbing 153
Zen Sport: Letting the Body Take Over 157
Inspiration and the Play of Ideas 160
12 Meditation: The Cleansing of Awareness 170
The Limits of Lulling 170
Spiritual Effects through the Suspension of Perceptual Codes 177
Sensing the Supernatural 180
13 High-Processing Psychological States 185
The Four Major Orientations of the Organism 185
The Everyday Business of Living 188
Mental Distress 191
Ego-Involvement as a Basis for Distress and Mental Breakdown 195
14 Low-Processing Psychological States 201
Sleep and Dreams 203
A Declaration of Independence for the State of Absorption 209
Chapter Notes 215
Index 237
