TOBI ZAUSNER, PhD, LCSW
Tobi Zausner, PhD, LCSW, is a research psychologist, a Fellow of the American Psychological Association in Division 10, The Society for the Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity and the Arts, and Division 32, The Society for Humanistic Psychology. She is a clinician in private practice and a visual artist with works in major museums and in private collections around the world. Dr. Zausner investigates multiple aspects of creativity, altered states of consciousness, and the relationship between nonlinear dynamics, human psychology, and neuroscience, and has taught at the C G Jung Foundation, Saybrook University, Long Island University, and The New School. She is on the Advisory Board for the Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research, a member of the Society for Consciousness Studies, and is an officer on the Board of A.C.T.S (Arts, Crafts, and Theatre Safety), a non-profit organization investigating health hazards in the arts.
Dr. Zausner’s first authored book, When Walls Become Doorways: Creativity and the Transforming Illness, was published by Harmony/Random House in 2007 and translated into Turkish and Chinese. Used as both a textbook and a trade book, it came out in a new edition as an e-book in 2016. In 2024 it was selected for the Book Club at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard Medical School. Dr. Zausner’s second authored book, The Creative Trance: Altered States of Consciousness and the Creative Process, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2022 as a hardcover, a paperback, and an eBook. Used as a textbook and a trade book, it won a Nautilus Book Award in 2023.
Mandorla
(Pastel and Graphite on Paper, 42” x 28”)
This jubilant drawing shows my great joy at the successes achieved by women of color. Here, a woman shatters the glass barrier of previous limitations and breaks forth into the light of a new dimension of Self. The shape of her entry is a mandorla, a form created by the intersection of two circles that can symbolize the union of the physical and the divine.