Creation of the self in the course of therapy is similar to the process of creation of all types of art. It involves the unearthing of self knowledge, new choices and alternatives.
Is the intense motivation of creative persons and geniuses, as manifested by months- or years-long devotions to a project in science, art, or other fields, due to inheritance or other family background factors? I describe a controlled empirical study of 435 Nobel laureates in science and 215 literary prizewinners.
Psychiatry is one of the most challenging fields in medicine. It has evolved through a series of creative developments, beginning with overcoming beliefs in demonic possession and the removal of chains from the hospitalized to current medicinal, psychotherapeutic and social treatments.
The sep-con articulation process was discovered in extensive empirical investigations with outstanding literary prizewinners and Nobel laureates in the sciences. It consists of constructing or conceiving connection and functional separation concomitantly.The wide use in creativity, examples, and application do's and don'ts are specified.
The homospatial process was discovered in extensive empirical investigations with outstanding literary prizewinners and Nobel Laureates in the sciences. It consists of conceiving two or more discrete entities in the same mental space or location, a conception leading to the articulation of new identities. The wide use in creativity and Does and Don'ts of use are specified.
The janusian process was discovered in extensive empirical investigations with outstanding literary prizewinners and with Nobel laureates in the sciences. It consists of conceiving and using multiple opposites or antitheses simultaneously. Application of the process in creative work is described through an outline of the appropriate do's and don'ts.
Treatment of psychotic patients is very difficult and many practitioners believe that it is impossible to employ psychotherapy ef with such patients. Frieda Fromm-Reichmann was a courageous and creative therapist who extended and improved treatment in dramatic and sustaining ways. Her work has been a model for all mental health practitioners treating severely ill patients.
In a previous post, I showed Jackson Pollock's creation of abstract expressionism during a healthy period. Here, we see Edvard Munch's use of healthy creative processes to produce the famous lithograph "The Scream." Although both artists suffered from Bipolar Disorders, their creative work and thinking consisted of healthy mental processes.
Creating and creativity are healthy processes in contradiction to contentions such as those of Kay Jamison and Nancy Andreasen and others who have carried out weak research purportedly showing connections between creativity and mental illness.
The term creativity has been positively applied to a wide variety of actions and activities ranging from changing course or successfully making and doing something differently to the achievements of great art, literature, and science. The work described reports empirically discovered specific cognitive processes leading to outstanding creative achievements.
![Photograph by Oren Jack Turner, Princeton, N.J. [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons](https://cdn.psychologytoday.com/sites/default/files/styles/thumbnail/public/field_blog_entry_teaser_image/Albert_Einstein_Head%20%281%29.jpg?itok=rBtjksid "Photograph by Oren Jack Turner, Princeton, N.J. [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons")
