IntroductionProblem is a process that is declared important for and education. Schoenfeld (1992), after citing national studies by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics and the National Research Council, stated that is general acceptance of the idea that the primary goal of instruction should be to have students become competent solvers (p. 3). While education researchers continue to investigate to understand mechanisms that a solver goes through, many components of this problem-solving process built upon seminal work of Polya (1957) that provided four stages: (i) understanding the problem, (ii) developing a plan, (iii) carrying out the plan, and (iv) looking back. Polya's four-stage framework influenced other problem-solving frameworks, including Carlson and Bloom's (2005) Multidimensional Problem-solving Framework. However, the term problem solving has been defined in many ways, to the point where Chamberlin (2008) stated: There is rarely an agreed upon definition of and reaching consensus on a conceptual definition would provide direction to subsequent research and curricular decisions (p. 1).Similarly, the term mathematical has been defined in many ways, to the point where Mann (2006) stated: An examination of the research that has attempted to define creativity found that the lack of an accepted definition for creativity has hindered research (p. 238). However, Mann (2006) also claimed that not investigating creativity to enhance students' efforts could drive the creatively talented underground or, worse yet, cause them to give up the study of altogether (p. 239). Mathematical creativity is either a process or a product (depending on the definition) that is declared important for and education. The Committee on Undergraduate Programs in Mathematics (Schumacher & Siegel, 2015) stated that, A successful major offers a program of courses to gradually and intentionally leads students from basic to advanced levels of critical and analytical thinking, while encouraging creativity and excitement about mathematics (p. 9). According to Liljedahl (2009), is through creativity that we see the essence of what it means to 'do' and learn mathematics. (p. 239). While creativity has been researched (e.g., Sriraman, 2004), many components of the creative process come from the psychologist Wallas (1926). Wallas stated that there are four stages of creativity: i) preparation (thoroughly understanding a problem), ii) incubation (when the mind goes about a subconsciously and/or automatically), iii) illumination (internally generating an idea after the incubation process, sometimes known as the AHA! experience), and iv) verification (determining whether that idea is correct). Mathematicians (Hadamard, 1945; Poincare, 1946) have stated that they have experienced similar stages in their process, and primary and secondary school education researchers have used Wallas' stages to explore (e.g., Prusak, 2015).As discussed in the previous two paragraphs, there seems to be a connection between both and creativity, which evokes the following research question: are stages of problem solving and mathematical equal sets, or is one a subset of another? In this article, the stance is that the stages of are a subset of creativity, applying Wallas' four-stage process as a basis for discussion of solving. Utilizing the psychodynamic lens, the consideration of creativity is more in the process of (e.g., Guilford, 1967; Pelczer & Rodriguez, 2011) and less in the product created by said process (e.g., Runco & Jaeger, 2012). …