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After discussing modern psychoanalytic theories concerning creativity, the author introduces the working hypothesis of creativity as a transcallosal symbollexia (the transferential process of verbalizing presentational symbols) and as hemispheric bisociation (the synthesis of two different cerebral planes). This hypothetical concept is based on clinical observations of commissurotomy (“split-brain”) patients and an experimental study in which commissurotomy patients and normal control subjects were shown a three-minute videotaped film symbolically depicting the death of a baby and of a boy conveyed by the combination of music and visual images without spoken words. The surgical disconnection of transcallosal interhemispheric exchange and, therefore, of communication between the two hemispheres leaves commissurotomy patients with an outstanding lack of creativity that could be demonstrated on a lexical, sentential, global, affective, and EEG-spectra level. In contrast with split-brain or nonoperated alexithymic people, expressive-creative persons verbalize presentational symbolization and imagery of the right hemisphere, which is transformed via corpus callosum to the left hemisphere, called symbollexia. Thus, creativity can be understood as the opposite of alexithymia.
The hypothetical concept of creativity as hemispheric bisociation was supported by EEG findings, suggesting an interhemispheric as well as intrahemispheric inhibition in the left hemisphere, and a lack of inner speech in this hemisphere between the two language centers in alexithymic people, versus a higher interhemispheric coherence level in expressive-creative persons.
Further on, the difference of expressed feelings of anxiety and hostility suggests a restrictive set of rules and of
* Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, UCLA and Director of Research, The Hacker Clinic, Los Angeles.
Page 253early superego components in commissurotomy patients in contrast with expressive creative people who empathically experienc