these narratives. The de-centred self that emerges from reading and writing; a
conversation where the self is either speaking or spoken to, also experiences a
hermeneutic of contextuality similar to that involved in the relationship between
place and SC; in that both the reader and writer respondents reported the
perception of imaginal places more substantial than those of actuality that seemed
to correspond to or complement the measure of their involvement in that altered
state of reverie or MLC.
(b) I nitiation
All of the respondents were introduced to reading in early childhood either
by an adult reading to them or as a result of their own imaginative inquisitiveness.
However, most of them suffered early childhood trauma, sometimes life threatening
or emotionally and psychologically painful; two were the only child in families where
parents remained aloof or distant. These circumstances brought about a withdrawal
from other children and adults, occasioning a greater involvement in the life of the
imagination or what some might explain as the development of a fantasy-prone
personality. I t was as if their childhood illnesses, psychological or emotional
traumas and isolation facilitated initiation to the Imaginal Realm.
Colleen McCullough, who suffered extremely serious childhood illnesses, at
first dismissed any possibility of parapsychological involvement or altered states of
consciousness and also any suggestions that place might be anything other than an
extension of physical locale; she was insistent that characterisation was the be-all-
and-end-all of plot. Her questionnaire responses indicated a rather practical,
precise, scientifically disciplined personality given sometimes to nonchalant
descriptions of the writing process. Yet, her responses confirmed my suspicion, and
those of other researchers such as Kenneth Ring, Mercea Eliade and the late
Professor John Mack, that incidents of childhood illness or trauma and or isolation,
often emulate shamanic initiation, producing a fantasy-prone type personality (Ring,
1992:116, Eliade, 1951:xii, 33, and Mack, 2000).
Colleen McCullough confirmed this as her personality type when, in
expressing her distaste for using computers, preferring a typewriter, a quirk she
shares with David Malouf; she spoke of her typewriter in personified almost
anthropomorphic terms. This is the same way she spoke of the characters in her
fiction, as having an independent life of their own beyond her will, as existing in the