ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the mental posture, or frame of mind—phrases with sufficient common-sense meaning for enquiry—by examining the mental phenomena evoked subjectively when in the process of creative thinking. Although conscious thinking has a place insofar as creative products are integrated into culture, it is from another place that the creative spark comes. The chapter examines the phenomenology of creativity. The linking of creativity on, the one hand, to madness and irrationality, and, on the other, to religious ecstasy or inspiration, has a long history. With Freudian psychoanalysis came the linking of creativity to eros and sexuality. For S. Freud, madness is avoided through the process of sublimation. Libido and sexual tension is transformed in creative endeavour. Creativity begins with the irrational, irrespective of the form in which it is realized, whether that is a scientific discovery, an innovative engineering achievement, an original building, or a work of art.
