Abstract
OPINION article Front. Psychol., 19 June 2014Sec. Psychopathology https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00613
Highlights
Edited by: Anna Abraham, Kuwait University, Kuwait Reviewed by: Mahesh Menon, University of Toronto, Canada Anna Abraham, Kuwait University, Kuwait
Can the therapeutic benefits of creativity explain its documented association with psychopathology (Andreasen, 1987; Ludwig, 1995)? Past research seems to have devoted most of its attention to another hypothesis in order to explain this relationship: that features of some disorders may be beneficial for creative cognition—for example, the racing thoughts, energy, and openness characteristic of hypomania in bipolar disorder (Johnson et al, 2012), or the rumination observed in depression (Verhaeghen et al, 2005)
We propose that the time is ripe to collect such evidence in order to provide a richer understanding of the nature of the therapeutic benefits of creative thinking
Summary
Edited by: Anna Abraham, Kuwait University, Kuwait Reviewed by: Mahesh Menon, University of Toronto, Canada Anna Abraham, Kuwait University, Kuwait. Past research has investigated the role of other potential mechanisms including adaptive emotion regulation, flow, meaning-making, or growth from adversity in order to explain the benefits of creative activities (Csikszentmihalyi, 1996; Drake and Winner, 2012; Forgeard et al, 2014). It remains unclear whether the benefits of creative activities are due to creative thinking, or to other factors. Both anxious and depressed individuals tend to overestimate future www.frontiersin.org
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