A new look at primary process thinking and its relation to inspiration

Abstract

It is suggested here that primary process thinking (usually regarded as primitive, unconsciously generated “drive organized” thinking) is the outcome of interactions between automatic mental routines triggering and distorting one another in the absence of intentional control. This implies that the content of primary process thinking is the product of learning. Further suggestions are that inspirations emerging from primary process thinking involve new combinations of existing items of (procedural or declarative) knowledge resulting from interactions of routines under the organizing influence of current concerns. The processes involved in creative inspiration are similar to those that result in nonsensical new combinations of knowledge during primary process thinking, but the content is not. Unlike the unexceptional products of primary process thinking, eminently creative inspirations are particularly meaningful, and are therefore arousing, remembered, elaborated upon, and recorded in the annals of history.