Abstract
This chapter attempts to account for the production of complex texts that followers believe neither Joseph Smith nor Helen Schucman could have produced on their own. Smith and Schucman made different claims when it came to the production of the Book of Mormon and A Course in Miracles. Smith claimed to translate the Book of Mormon from ancient gold plates inscribed in Reformed Egyptian, and Schucman claimed to scribe words dictated by the voice of Jesus. In order to identify underlying processes that allowed them to generate “selves” that seemed as if they were “other” both to themselves and their collaborators, we need to reconstruct what it was like to “translate” in Smith's case and “scribe” in Schucman's case based on the evidence supplied by them and those who observed them firsthand.