“Creative products are always shiny and new; the creative process is ancient and unchanging.”
– Silvano Arieti, The Magic Synthesis (1914 – 1981) Sent to us by Wizard of Ads partner Craig Arthur
Arieti – a psychiatrist – suggests that the mind is not binary, containing only logic and emotion, but that we sometimes blend rational with irrational, sophisticated with primitive, conscious with subconscious, in a wild and spontaneous act called “creativity.”
Arieti was also among the world’s foremost authorities on schizophrenia. Coincidence? Perhaps. But it seems to me that creativity could simply be a mild form of schizophrenia.
“Silvano Arieti’s book Interpretation of Schizophrenia was awarded the 1975 U.S. National Book Award in the Science category. More than 40 years later, it remains the most significant contribution to the psychological understanding of schizophrenia since Kraepelin and Bleuler. Contemporary psychiatrists and psychotherapists would be wise to review Arieti’s vast contributions to the field.”
