The Homospatial Process in Creativity

The creative and great English sculptor Henry Moore said, “This is what the sculptor must do. He must strive continually to think of, and use, form in its full spatial completeness….He mentally visualizes a complex form from all round itself, he knows while he looks at one side what the other side is like.”

Creativity is at the core of the most important and far reaching achievements in sculpture, painting, literature, music, science, and organizations. I have previously described here my broad and long term investigation of this complex phenomenon through extensive empirical investigations of literary prizewinners and Nobel laureates in the sciences. Creativity of Nobel Laureates and Other Prizewinners

One of the creative cognitive processes I have discovered in a broad number of fields involves, as in Henry Moore’s sculpture application, spatial mental conceptions, and is named the homospatial process. Mental representation of space is potentially more far reaching, extreme, and diverse than any physical actuality. The homospatial process responsible for many types of creative results involves mental representations that defy or go beyond actual physical space. This process consists of actively conceiving two or more discrete entities occupying the same space or spatial location, a conception leading to the articulation of new integrations. In conscious mental space, creators may superimpose or interpose shapes, patterns, written words, dimensions, distances, and other concrete entities. Subjectively, eyes closed or open, other physical receptors attentive or inattentive, the resulting mental image totally fills the conceptualized perceptual space. Any sensory modality may be involved: visual, auditory, tactile, kinaesthetic, olfactory, and gustatory. The imaginary image location may be considered to be the "mind's eye", "mind's ear," "mind's taste," etc.

Superimposed Image Top: Nuns and Horses.

Source: Superimposed Image Albert Rothenberg

Once the discrete entities in the homospatial process are consciously brought together, the mental conception is a rapid, fleeting one. In the creator's mind, the superimposed and interposed elements begin immediately to interact and produce new identities, including new ideas. These ideas constitute solutions to scientific and other problems and in the arts, they consist of metaphors, plots, visual themes and constructions, musical passages, and other integrations.

For example, an effective poetic metaphor “the branches were handles of stars” was created by mental superimposition of tree branches and handles while the poet sat indoors at a desk. Nobel laureate scientist Pierre deGennes mentally superimposed noodles in boiling water upon snakes trapped in a tube to develop a theory of plastics construction and action. Not a matter of simple combination, unconscious condensation, or of the discrete entities considered in stepwise or analytic fashion, the homospatial process involves unstably related entities that interact.

The homospatial process evolves in four phases. The first phase consists of an initial motivation to create within a specific project, problem, or field. The second phase involves divergence and deviation from ordinary methods, conceptions, and knowledge--“thinking outside the box.” Two or more discrete entities, usually in the form of sensory images of concrete space and spatial locations, are wrested from their ordinary contexts. They may be meaningful in some way to the overall sphere of conception or production, but diverse other factors will also be included. Discrete entities chosen are emotionally and cognitively appealing, and though diverging from a general context, in all cases have some relationship with each other. For the poet, as in the handles and branches metaphor example, the components may often have sound as well as physical relationships. Sound and motion elements involving rhythm and theme as well as representative visual images are chosen by the musician. For the visual artist, there are both similar and related complementary and contrary connections in shape and color, and for the scientist there is some degree of component conceptual or physical relationship within the problem being worked on. In the third phase, deviation from the usual goes on. The homospatial process continues to be conscious and intentional and the related entities are interposed or superimposed in the mind because the creative thinker conceives that they ought to be together. Spatial continuities are broken. In the extensive last phase, the superimposed or interposed elements of the homospatial conception interact and are articulated into an integrated new identity, partial or complete, as a created new and valuable final product.

To use the homospatial process:

DO NOT: Simply bring together, connect, or combine two or more dissimilar ideas; or just imagine extraordinary or extensive pictures.

DO: Superimpose one image on top of the other to formulate the composition, spaces and appropriate colors of a painting; the structure of a musical passage; a new way of preparing food; a new type of factory or organizational practice or procedure; a new conception for a novel; or simply an effective metaphor in a poem. For example, branches imaged on top of handles may, instead of producing the aforementioned “branches are handles of stars,” gracefully interact in one’s mind to produce other creative metaphors such as “magically wanded trees” or "God’s spreading grip.”

References

Moore, H. The Sculptor Speaks. Listener, 1957; 18:338.

Rothenberg, A. Flight From Wonder: An Investigation of Scientific Creativity. NY: Oxford University Press, 2014

Rothenberg A. Creativity and the homospatial process: Experimental studies. Psychiatric Clinics of North America, 1988; 11:443-459.