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By the expression "creative pause" is meant the time interval beginning from the moment the thinker interrupts his conscious occupation with an unsolved problem, and ends when the solution of the problem or a partial solution or otherwise an insight suddenly and unexpectedly occurs. In their introspective accounts, creative persons usually describe the end of the creative pause; but neither the mental events during this pause nor the specific conditions on which its termination depends can be understood through introspection. In the present work psycho-analytical observations on the creative pause are reported. The analysand is a technologist who for more than four weeks endeavoured to solve a certain problem. The analysis of his dreams and of a parapraxis made it possible to obtain an insight into the mental events occurring during the creative pause. During this period creative pauses were twice terminated. On both of these occasions it was the interpretation, of active, infantile conflicts occuring in transference, that caused the termination of the pause, and made the solution of the problem possible.
The detailed analysis of one creative process does not permit any extensive, theoretical generalization. It led only to the formulation of some preliminary assumptions.