ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that for many readers the combination of creativity and dream under a single topic heading might be somewhat perplexing. Creativity is after all associated with the process of making something or at least the process of thinking something up; both examples of actively doing. The chapter focuses on a “whole brain” account of creativity as a conscious process that forms some kind of final product. Arne Dietrich and his colleagues have developed a detailed model that differentiates and relates deliberate and spontaneous creativity, with particular regard to the role of the prefrontal cortex. A related late twentieth-century notion that continues to be researched and debated today is the proposition that creativity requires a “disinhibition” function that allows the brain to activate creative capacities that are otherwise usually kept on lockdown. The central stage of the much-debated classical model of creativity circles around a process of incubation and illumination.
