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The propositions I shall present derive from findings about psychological processes involved in creativity in the arts and in science. These findings primarily consist of special types of thought processes operating at early and late phases of the creative process. Discovered initially through intensive and extensive research interviews (totalling over 1700 hours to date) with highly creative subjects, not patients in therapy, they have been further demonstrated through objective psychological and quantitative analyses of creative works in progress, and through controlled experiments with large numbers of creative persons and controls (Rothenberg, 1969, 1973a, 1973b, 1976, 1979a, 1979b, 1982; and Sobel, 1980, 1981; Sobel and Rothenberg, 1980). Research subjects have consisted of Nobel Prize laureates in science and literature, awardees of distinctions such as the Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award, and other literary prizes, membership in the United States and British institutes and academies of arts and sciences, or science alone, as well as neophyte and potentially creative persons from a wide age range.
In applying these findings to the theory and practice of psychoanalytic psychotherapy I shall not be directly concerned