ABSTRACT
The essential characteristic of the mental imagery method presented in this book is its dialogical nature. In this chapter the author explores how the discipline of creative behaviour views creative processes, in particular, how it has theorised the relationship between the ‘conscious’ and ‘unconscious’ aspects of the self involved in creativity. It describes the emergence of two main approaches to operationalise creativity roughly characterised as either a stage process or an interactive process and how the field has moved on towards understanding creativity as a complex integrated phenomenon which is dynamic and cyclical. The chapter discusses dual processing theories which have proven attractive to theorists seeking a way of operationalising creativity construed as an interaction between two types of cognitive processing. It explores the current interest in the mechanisms that facilitate the engagement between the two different modes of thinking. These theories of mode switching are critiqued in terms of their explanatory potential for imagination-based methods that are more concerned with the phenomenology of creativity. In search of a bridge between the phenomenological and the empirical/creative cognition approach to creativity, the author steps outside the discipline of creative behaviour to explore the salient features of McGilchrist’s thesis on brain hemispheric asymmetry.
