Essay on the Creative Imagination

(1) Natural phenomena, the forces of the organic and inorganic worlds. In its scientific form, seeking to explain, to know, it ends in the hypothesis, a disinterested creation....

The diffluent imagination is another general form, but one that is completely opposed to the foregoing. It consists of vaguely-outlined, indistinct images that are evoked and jo...

We now pass from primitive to civilized man, from collective to individual creation, the characters of which it remains for us to study as we find them in great inventors who ex...

medium, Helene S......--very unlike others, who are satisfied with forecasts of the future, disclosures of unknown past events, counsel, prognosis, evocation, etc., without crea...

The study of the practical imagination is not without difficulties. First of all, it has not hitherto attracted psychologists, so that we enter the field at random, and wander u...

We come now to a unique period in the history of the development of the imagination--its golden age. In primitive man, still confined in savagery or just starting toward civiliz...

It is quite generally recognized that imagination is indispensable in all sciences; that without it we could only copy, repeat, imitate; that it is a stimulus driving us onward...

The influence of emotional states on the working of the imagination is a matter of current observation. But it has been studied chiefly by moralists, who most often have critici...

Taking the word "commercial" in its broadest signification, I understand by this expression all those forms of the constructive imagination that have for their chief aim the pro...

Considered under its intellectual aspect, that is, in so far as it borrows its elements from the understanding, the imagination presupposes two fundamental operations--the one,...

Mystic imagination deserves a place of honor, as it is the most complete and most daring of purely theoretic invention. Related to diffluent imagination, especially in the latte...

By this term I designate principally, not exclusively, what ordinary speech calls "inspiration." In spite of its mysterious and semi-mythological appearance, the term indicates...

Whatever opinion we may hold concerning the nature of the unconscious, since that form of activity is related more than any other to the physiological conditions of the mental l...

As the direct cause of invention, great or small, the imagination acts without assignable determination; in this sense it is what is known as "spontaneity"--a vague term, which...

The psychological nature of the imagination would be very imperfectly known were we limited to the foregoing analytical study. Indeed, all creation whatever, great or small, sho...

By "plastic imagination" I understand that which has for its special characters clearness and precision of form; more explicitly those forms whose materials are clear images (wh...

Successive appearances of ideal conceptions.--Creators in ethics and in the social realm.--Chimerical forms. Social novelists.--Ch. Fourrier, type of the great imaginer.--Practi...

Up to this point the imagination has been treated analytically only. This process alone would give us but a very imperfect idea of its essentially concrete and lively nature wer...

attributes of real existence is derived from a fundamental fact--the state of belief, i.e., adherence of the mind founded on purely subjective conditions. It does not come withi...

At what age, in what form, under what conditions does the creative imagination make its appearance? It is impossible to answer this question, which, moreover, has no justificati...

The golden age of the creative imagination.--Myths: hypotheses as to the origin: the myth is the psycho-physical objectification of man in the phenomena that he perceives. The r...

Indetermination of this imaginative form.--Inferior forms: the industrious, the unstable, the eccentric. Why people of lively imagination are changeable.--Superstitious beliefs....

It makes use of vague images linked according to the least rigorous modes of association. Emotional abstractions; their nature.--Its characteristic of inwardness.--Its principal...

Is a psychology of great inventors possible? Pathological and physiological theories of genius.--General characters of great inventors. Precocity: chronological order of the dev...

[23] Thus Howe (_American Journal of Psychology_, vi, 239 ff.), has published some investigations in the negative. One series of 557 experiments gave him eight apparently mediat...

Its internal and external conditions.--Two classes of creators--the cautious, the daring.--The initial moment of invention.--The importance of the intuitive mind.--Hypotheses in...

The great importance of this element.--All forms of the creative imagination imply affective elements. Proofs: All affective conditions may influence the imagination. Proofs: As...

Is the creative imagination, in its evolution, subject to any law?--It passes through two stages separated by a critical phase.--Period of autonomy; critical period; period of d...

Importance of the unifying principle. It is a fixed idea or a fixed emotion.--Their equivalence.--Distinction between the synthetic principle and the ideal, which is the princip...

Various views of the "inspired state." Its essential characteristics; suddenness, impersonality.--Its relations to unconscious activity.--Resemblances to hypermnesia, the initia...

Anatomical conditions: various hypotheses. Obscurity of the question. Flechsig's theory.--Physiological conditions: are they cause, effect, or accompaniment? Chief factor: chang...

It is distinguishable into genera and species.--The need for monographs that have not yet appeared.--The imagination in growing sciences--belief is at its maximum; in the organi...

Difficulties of the subject.--The degree of imagination in animals.--Does creative synthesis exist in them? Affirmation and denials.--The special form of animal imagination is m...

Its elements; its special characteristics.--Thinking symbolically.--Nature of this symbolism.--The mystic changes concrete images into symbolic images.--Their obscurity; whence...

Dissociation, preparatory work.--Dissociation in complete, incomplete and schematic images.--Dissociation in series. Its principal causes: internal or subjective, external or ob...

It makes use of clear images, well determined in space, and of associations of objective relations.--Its external character.--Inferiority of the affective element.--Its principa...

Division of its development into four principal periods.--Transition from passive to creative imagination: perception and illusion.--Animating everything: analysis of the elemen...