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Creativity and Psychosis: Latent Inhibition as a Dual-Track Process

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Creativity and Psychosis: Latent Inhibition as a Dual-Track Process
Creativity and Psychosis:
Latent Inhibition as a Dual-Track Process

Russell Anderson
University of Louisiana at Lafayette
May 7, 2013

Creativity and Psychosis:
Latent Inhibition as a Dual-Track Process

The connection between genius and madness has been a popular colloquial association for thousands of years. Aristotle, for instance, once stated, “Those who have become eminent in philosophy, politics, poetry, and the arts have all had tendencies toward melancholia” (Prentky, 2001, p. 95). About 2,000 years after Aristotle made this statement, Morel argued that genius and degeneracy were biologically linked, claiming that the two populations stemmed from the same gene pool (Prentky, 2001, p. 95). Today, much debate surrounds the notion of the alleged relationship between psychosis and creativity, specifically. A disconcerting issue in the scientific examination of this supposed link is the confusion around the exact criterion of creativity. While a detailed discussion of this issue is outside the realm of the current paper, for the sake of the argument, creativity will be loosely described as problem-solving defined by the operational construct of divergent thinking which involves the ability to make associations between seemingly irrelevant ideas or stimuli (Prentky, 2001 & Carson, 2003).
This particular way of viewing creativity is conducive to investigating the creative individual’s suspected link to the psychotic individual because psychotic cognition is often perceived as divergent due to the psychotic individual’s inability to filter out information which leads to bizarre connections, hallucinations, and paranoia. The difference between this loose association within psychosis and the loose association within creativity has been linked to the ability or disability of attentional control (Chavez, 2006). In addition, deductive thinking has been shown to correlate with the personality trait of



References: Acar, S., & Runco, M. A. (2012). Psychoticism and creativity: A meta-analytic review. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, And The Arts, 6(4), 341-350. doi:10.1037/a0027497 Burch, G Chávez-Eakle, R., Lara, M., & Cruz-Fuentes, C. (2006). Personality: A possible bridge between creativity and psychopathology?. Creativity Research Journal, 18(1), 27-38. doi:10.1207/s15326934crj1801_4 Claridge, G Dudek, S. Z. (1993). Creativity and psychoticism: An overinclusive model. Psychological Inquiry, 4(3), 190-192. doi:10.1207/s15327965pli0403_6 Egan, M Eysenck, H. J. (1993). Creativity and personality: Suggestions for a theory. Psychological Inquiry, 4(3), 147. Fink, A., Slamar-Halbedl, M., Unterrainer, H. F., & Weiss, E. M. (2012). Creativity: Genius, madness, or a combination of both?.Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, And The Arts, 6(1), 11-18. doi:10.1037/a0024874 Flaherty, A Gray, N. S., Fernandez, M., Williams, J., Ruddle, R. A., & Snowden, R. J. (2002). Which schizotypal dimensions abolish latent inhibition?.British Journal of Clinical Psychology, 41(3), 271-284. doi:10.1348/014466502760379136 Kéri, S Martindale, C. (1993). Psychoticism, degeneration, and creativity. Psychological Inquiry, 4(3), 209-211. doi:10.1207/s15327965pli0403_11 Mednick, S Prentky, R. A. (2001). Mental illness and roots of genius. Creativity Research Journal, 13(1), 95-104. Schmajuk, N., Aziz, D. R., & Bates, M. B. (2009). Attentional-associative interactions in creativity. Creativity Research Journal, 21(1), 92-103. doi:10.1080/10400410802633574 Vartanian, O

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