The Uncanny Edge of Mind
Updated: May 6
Dr. Dragana Favre is a psychiatrist, psychotherapist, and seeker of the human psyche's mysteries. With a medical degree and extensive neuroscience education from prestigious institutions like the Max Planck Institute and Instituto de Neurociencias, she's a seasoned expert.
There is a moment, so brief that we usually miss it, when the mind loosens its grip on the world, but does not yet fall into sleep. A slipping. A soft fracture in continuity. You are still here, but not entirely. Thought becomes image. Logic dissolves into suggestion. Something begins to speak that is not fully you, and yet unmistakably yours. This is N1.
Neuroscience describes it plainly, a transition from waking alpha rhythms into slower theta activity, a fading of sensory anchoring, the beginning of dream fragments (American Academy of Sleep Medicine, 2014). But the description feels insufficient. Because what happens here is not just a change in frequency. It is a change in authority. The waking mind is no longer fully in charge. Yet, it has not disappeared.
This is the paradox that recent research has finally begun to touch. In the study by Antoine Lacaux and colleagues, participants who briefly entered N1 were significantly more likely to experience sudden insight, almost three times more likely than those who stayed awake (Lacaux et al., 2021). But those who went deeper into sleep lost that advantage. Something fragile was crossed. Something necessary was lost.
So N1 is not simply “sleep onset.” It is a narrow corridor. Not unconsciousness. Not consciousness. It is a tension. Perhaps this is the essential point, creativity does not come from the switch itself, but from the instability of the switch.
Because in N1, two conditions coexist that rarely tolerate each other, the loosening of control, where the unconscious begins to recombine freely, and the persistence of awareness, where the mind can still notice. In other words, too much control, and nothing new emerges. Too much dissolution, and nothing can be remembered. But here, just here in N1, the system trembles between both. There is enough unconscious recombination to produce novelty, and enough conscious capture to hold it. This is why insight appears not as effort, but as arrival. It is not constructed, but encountered.
This fragile coexistence has also been explored experimentally by Adam Haar Horowitz, who used hypnagogic states to guide creative thinking. His work suggests that N1 can be entered, even cultivated, as a space where thought becomes more associative, more fluid, yet still retrievable (Horowitz et al., 2019). Again, the key is not sleep itself, but remaining at its edge.
From a brain perspective, one might say that the usual hierarchy softens. Executive networks loosen their grip, while associative networks begin to speak louder. But the system has not yet collapsed into full dream logic. It is still listening, and this listening matters, because without it, nothing would return. But neuroscience is only telling one side of the story.
Long before EEG, depth psychology already knew something about this state. Jung called it active imagination. Active imagination is not a technique, but rather a posture, a way of allowing images to emerge without immediately mastering them, and a way of remaining present while something other is speaking.
Contemporary post-Jungians like Robert Bosnak describe this as a “dual consciousness”, being both inside and outside an image at once. Mary Watkins speaks of “waking dreams,” where imagination unfolds but is not lost to us. These are not metaphors. They are descriptions of a structure of experience that neuroscience is now rediscovering. What they all point to is that the psyche becomes creative not when it is free, but when it is held in a precise kind of openness. Too rigid, and it repeats. Too dissolved, and it disappears. So the work, whether in therapy, art, or science, is always the same, to remain at the threshold without collapsing it.
There is something unsettling about N1. Anyone who has touched it consciously knows this. The images are familiar, but slightly off. Faces shift. Spaces bend. Thoughts feel both intimate and foreign. This is where the philosophical notion of the unheimlich emerges, what Freud described as the uncanny, not the unknown, but the strangely familiar. The return of something that was always there, but hidden. N1 is full of this. Because when control loosens, the mind no longer organizes reality in the same way. Boundaries soften, categories leak, the world is no longer entirely “home-like.” Yet, it is not alien either. It is both. This is the signature of the liminal.
Anthropologically, liminality is the phase where identity dissolves but has not yet reformed. Psychologically, it is the space where meaning becomes unstable. Neurologically, it may correspond to precisely these transitional regimes, like N1, where the system is reorganizing itself without fixed structure. It is here, in this instability, that something new can emerge. But emergence is not comfortable. Because the same openness that allows creativity also allows the uncanny. The same weakening of structure that permits new connections also exposes what was previously held back. In this sense, creativity and the unheimlich are not opposites. They are twins. Both arise when the familiar loses its rigidity. Both require the courage to remain in between.
If we follow this to its end, a different image of creativity appears. Not as production. Not as problem-solving. But as threshold work. To create is not to force something into being, but to enter a state where something can appear, and to stay there long enough to receive it. This is what N1 shows us in its most minimal, biological form, a fleeting instability in the brain, a slight loosening of the world, a moment where the unconscious begins to speak, but has not yet taken over. If we are attentive, if we do not fall, and do not resist, we catch it. An idea. An image. A solution. A-ha.
Read more from Dragana Favre
Dragana Favre, Psychiatrist and Jungian Psychotherapist
Dr. Dragana Favre is a psychiatrist, psychotherapist, and seeker of the human psyche's mysteries. With a medical degree and extensive neuroscience education from prestigious institutions like the Max Planck Institute and Instituto de Neurociencias, she's a seasoned expert. Her unique approach combines Jungian psychotherapy, EMDR, and dream interpretation, guiding patients towards self-discovery and healing. Beyond her profession, Dr. Favre is passionate about science fiction, nature, and cosmology. Her ex-Yugoslav roots in the small town of Kikinda offer a rich backdrop to her life's journey. She is dedicated to helping people find their true selves, much like an alchemist turning lead into gold.
References:
Lacaux, A. et al. (2021). Sleep onset is a creative sweet spot. Science Advances.
Horowitz, A. H. et al. (2019). Dormio: Interfacing with dreams. Consciousness and Cognition.
American Academy of Sleep Medicine (2014). International Classification of Sleep Disorders.
Freud, S. (1919). The Uncanny.
Jung, C. G. (1960). The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche.
Bosnak, R. (2007). Embodied Imagination.
Watkins, M. (1976). Waking Dreams.
