NATURAL IMAGERY AND CREATIVE PRODUCTION

Creative writing, whether in literature or science, may well seem like an enjoyable pastime to its readers, but it most certainly involves hard work, intense concentration, and periods of uncertainty and blockage for even the most productive of its practitioners. No wonder the ancient Greeks and Romans called on specific deities or immortals like the Muses to guide them past inevitable hesitancies into more freely flowing streams of thought. Even the Christian poet Dante sought the aid of the pagan epic poet Virgil as his leader through his literary traversal of the realms of the afterlife. Such breakthroughs into creative production often come about through vivid daytime fantasies or suggestive night dreams that we now can recognize are natural human occurrences and not necessarily visitations from Olympian deities.

Many anecdotal reports by creative scientists, artists, and writers suggest that periods of creative impasse can be terminated by the occurrence of vivid day or night dreams (Garfield, 1974; Shepard, 1978; Singer, 1975, 2004). Albert Einstein described how his waking fantasies of himself or some alter ego traveling through space at the speed of light and then picturing the consequences of such actions opened the way for his development of his theory of relativity. Niels Bohr described how learning of his son's involvement in an act of petty thievery led to his trying to reconcile his nearly simultaneous feelings of anger and disappointment about the boy with his fatherly feelings of love and protectiveness.