The poet and the criminal: Dreams, neuroscience and a peculiar way of thinking

Abstract

There is a growing interest in bringing the latest findings in both psychology and science to bear upon questions of creativity. This essay bring some of Freud’s most influential ideas into contact with neuroscience, in order to reconceive understandings of creativity. Freud’s sometimes startlingly acute and complex descriptions of the two realms of waking and sleeping foreshadowed some later findings in neuroscience, presenting us now with an opportunity to modify and extend his version of the mind. This essay surveys research findings on brain lateralization with the aim of identifying an emerging model of a self composed of, not two fully formed consciousnesses, but two wills never quite ..