"Creativity is both a commonplace and a mystery. Everyone has to be creative in order to meet the challenges of daily life, and yet high creativity is seen as an aspect of genius, as radically Other - even divine - and the artist becomes a shamanic figure bringing visions from beyond. Altered States is an exploration of this heightened form of creativity, looking at the conditions and personality traits that make the artist, and the ways in which artistic production can be related to other areas of human experience."--BOOK JACKET.