Schizophrenic and Creative Thinking

Up to the present time psycho-analysis has not been applied to the psychology of thought. This is due to the nature of the psycho-analytic method, which was developed for the purpose of investigating unconscious content, that is, of examining the mode of function of mental strata which, phylogenetically older, underlie the layer of co-ordinated thought-processes. This more archaic function can be observed in dream-processes and in schizophrenia. From this point of view psycho-analysis is not called upon to make any comment on the laws regulating thought, which is a matter for experimental research; the relation of the individual phenomena of thought to unconscious processes is, however, a subject which concerns it, as is also the expression of instinctual functioning through the creation of thought-images.

For the purposes of this brief study, the intention of which is mainly to point out certain problems, we shall adopt the familiar procedure of examining pathological manifestations. We do so, not because we share the general impression that there is only a quantitative difference between the normal and the pathological or that a pathological state merely magnifies what can be observed in normal life. On the contrary, we believe that, although they are often difficult to formulate, there are many important qualitative differences on both sides which are easily overlooked on account of the quite striking analogies. We start from pathological data because we hope in this way to elucidate some aspects of the problem, not because we hope to explain all its aspects.

Considering first of all schizophrenic forms of thought, we find that paranoidal and hebephrenic forms, although not the only types, are nevertheless the most striking and the most fully described. To illustrate the paranoidal type we shall select the most thoroughly analysed example of paranoia, viz. Freud's dissection of Schreber's delusional system.1