The effects of the mirror in the psychomanteum process on thoughts, emotions, self-efficacy, consciousness, and creativity for finding solutions to ordinary life issues

This research explored the effect of the mirror in the psychomanteum on changes in emotion and thought, in self-efficacy, and in the states of consciousness when used as a creative solution method for addressing real life questions. Historically, the psychomanteum process was used by individuals who were interested in contacting deceased people. However, the essential composition of the psychomanteum booth, a dimly lit room with a relaxing chair with a mirror, may help people enter states of mind that differ from the normal state---to access a hypnagogic-like state---which may help to create some moments in which people's natural creativity for solving questions may be enhanced, much as they were for the mathematician Poincare, who saw complex mathematical solutions in a shallow sleeping state. The booth uses a mirror that is set up at an angle so as not to reflect the seer's face and figure in the dimly lit meditative environment of the room. In this research, using two room environments --one with mirror one without---40 participants were recruited for the purpose of solving their real life questions, such as "What will my next career look like?" "In terms of my next step, will street performing be a good decision?" "Should I gradually phase out my family entertainment business for my writing career?" "How can I improve my self-confidence and transfer that into professional and personal life?" and others. The psychomanteum process consisted from administering prequestionnaires, preinterviewing participants, having them sit in the psychomanteum room, administering a postsession interview, and administering a postinterview questionnaire. Participants, who were recruited and selected from the local community were randomly assigned to either Mirror Group (MG), in which people gazed into the mirror in the psychomanteum booth, or Space Gazing Group (SG), in which people gazed into the empty space. Each person met a trained psychomanteum facilitator with humanistic and transpersonal tradition, who carefully listened to his or her question with a human, centered, and spiritually caring attitude. The measurements used for this research were either original or modified questionnaires such as the ITP Life Questionnaire (ILQ) for measuring emotions and thoughts regarding their life questions, the Psychomanteum Self-Efficacy Scale (PSS) for assessing their self-efficacy regarding their life questions, the Modified Epworth Sleep Scale (MESS) for sleepiness, and the Retrospective Drowsiness Scale (RDS) for assessing the state of consciousness from the respondents' physical and bodily reactions and sensations. Both MG and SG conditions showed improvement for participants toward positive emotions and thoughts over the pre- and postpsychomanteum sitting session on the ILQ question no. 6 items (F=50.86, p=0.00) and no. 7 items (F=49.65, p=0.00), on the PSS (F=10.96, p=0.03), and on the MESS (F=32.47, p=.03). For the "Fell asleep" item on the RDS, the scores reflected a significant difference (U(df)=93.5, Z=-2.23, p=.03) between results for the before and after the sessions. These data suggest that the psychomanteum process, as a whole, with or without mirror, had an impact on solving their life questions, as is evident from outcomes of these measurements. This also suggests that the sense of falling sleep, or of the shifting back and forth of consciousness between the sleeping and awake states has some relationship with a creative approach to resolving questions. This research proposes to promote further in-depth research on the psychomanteum process that would include such an in-depth pre- and postinterview with sitting in an environment of low audio and visual input. Limitations of this research lie in the non-standardized nature of the assessments used, the restricted locality of the population from which participants were recruited, and the nature of the statistical analysis. This method can also be further developed as a facilitator of creative solutions in future research.