INSPIRATION

Inspiration: the fruitful sub-conscious and the reflective conscious.

The etymology of the word inspiration has a certain ambiguity in so far as it may leave open the idea of the inspired person either, self-reliantly, breathing in or being breathed into as a willing but passive recipient of the gift of inspiration¹. The argument of this article seeks to preserve that double sense and to maintain that these alternative actions are cooperative; albeit without the engagement of any external agency (beyond the stimuli of experience).

The term inspiration is used quite broadly here to describe an event where the artist, in so far as they are aware, has nothing in mind one moment and in the very next, almost the same moment, has found that what they need – more precisely, exactly what they need – has occurred to them.

This discussion speaks mainly in terms relevant to poetic inspiration and generally to the inspired idea as it is expressed through and formed in language. However, it is not part of this argument to conclude that the inspiration of the poetic form is different in kind to the inspiration of any other form of artistic expression and it is assumed that both are likely to be similar in nature. It seems equally likely that the inspiration that leads to a solution, an invention, or even a witticism might enjoy that same similarity. Nevertheless, where artistic – specifically poetic – inspiration would appear to differ from the inspirational process impelling the solution or invention, is that it is not a single instance of inspiration. The poet may first be inspired to write a poem as an amorphous idea but, unless we believe the poem to arrive in the poet’s mind fully formed with every i dotted and t crossed, the poet will thereafter seek inspiration, or will be inspired, to find each word, phrase, and semantic interrelation that expresses that original idea and every ‘mutation’ in its evolution. In that process, for our purposes, it will be useful to reconsider the notion of having a word ‘on the tip of my tongue’ in the form ‘at the root of my tongue’: planted in the poet’s humus of feelings and unrealised ideas, waiting to be spoken into existence.

It is also worth noting that, in the main, what is being examined here is not what inspires – which may, one supposes, be just about anything – but the momentary process of that inspiration.

When the word inspiration is employed to describe the source, the fountainhead of literary – and, indeed, any artistic – creation, there may be some casual listeners who, without overthinking it much, will have conjured in their minds the idea of a seance-like process. This notion, of the poet or artist temporarily inhabited by a force of inspiration that speaks or creates ‘through’ them, will not withstand much modern scrutiny and where it persists it is presumably to be found at the extreme margins of critical analysis. However, even if some version of the quasi-divine, numinous, or force of nature is no longer generally believed to be that which assumes control when the poet is under the influence of inspiration, there may still be a belief that a very special instance of artistic intelligence is at work at the moment of inspiration. In other words, even if Calliope is no longer seen to be standing at the shoulder of the poet, some afterglow of the muse’s nimbus, her divinity, still surrounds the poet’s brow: as it were “Did she put on his knowledge with his power?”

Even those who do not gaze at the artist through the eyes of a worshipful exceptionalism may nonetheless feel them to have access to some sort of (often unspecified) transcendent ability. Alternatively, a reader may simply want his money’s worth and asks the question: “if the artist is not divine, how can his work be divine?” It is, I would argue, not unusual for the artist, assuming they are thought to be worthy of the title, to be considered other than an ordinary human being (the word preternatural is often casually employed).

The ‘impersonal theory’ of T.S. Eliot, in his essay Tradition and the Individual Talent, which makes of the poet a ‘finely perfected medium’ for poetry, still appears to put the mind of the poet into a special category when he describes it as catalyst for their emotions and feelings:

“The mind of the poet is the shred of platinum. It may partly or exclusively operate upon the experience of the man himself; but, the more perfect the artist, the more completely separate in him will be the man who suffers and the mind which creates; the more perfectly will the mind digest and transmute the passions which are its material.” (1964, p.7-8)

Although a process of perfection is allowed, the poetic mind seems to have a capability that is not readily accessible to the plain man; and the mature poetic mind appears even further removed or elevated.

With the analogy of the conversion of oxygen and sulphur dioxide into sulphurous acid – the mind of the poet, as filament of platinum, providing the catalyst to its own contents – we appear to be far removed (by virtue of the relative modernity of this knowledge of chemical processes) from the notion of a furor poeticus. Yet when Plato in Ion has Socrates speak of the poetic gift as being not an art but an inspiration, he uses the strikingly comparable analogy of ferromagnetism. [Strikingly comparable because the notion of a chain of poets linked to the muse suspended in a magnetic field has a considerable similarity to Eliot’s idea of tradition and the mutual and simultaneous modification, complementarity if you will, affecting all works of art: “what happens when a new work of art is created is something that happens simultaneously to all the works of art that preceded it.” (Eliot,1919)]

Plato/Socrates says:

“You know, none of the epic poets if they’re good, are masters of their subject; they are inspired, possessed, and that is how they utter all those beautiful poems…a poet is an airy thing, winged and holy, and he is not able to make poetry until he becomes inspired and goes out of his mind and his intellect is no longer in him. As long as a human being has his intellect in his possession he will always lack the power to make poetry or sing prophecy.” (Ion, 1997)

Not in the same way but no less effectively, Eliot removes, if not the poet’s senses, then his personality: the mind of the poet, his private mind, should not be present for the poetic process to succeed, only the neutrality of the catalyst. Although Eliot does not ascribe the totality of the poetic creative² process to a state of possession – since he emphasises the combination of emotions found in the poet (just not personally expressed) – the poetic mind is not the common mind of personality but the mind in which personality is continually extinguished without which the poet would ‘lack the power to make poetry’.

In The Theory of Inspiration, Timothy Clark says:

“For Wordsworth those aspects of invention or composition that surprise a poet in the space of composition are to be appropriated in a scene of self-constitution – as the result of sub-conscious processes of mind suddenly bearing fruit.” (1997, p.94)

Prior to this observation, he discusses Wordsworth’s own discussion of the poetic process in his 1802 Preface to the Lyrical Ballads. In this, Wordsworth extolls the image of the poet who, by his quiet and concentrated attention to (effectively) the contents of his own mind, surpasses the ordinary workings of both the non-poet but, more pertinently, the ordinary workings of the poet himself:

“Among the qualities which I have enumerated as principally conducing to form a Poet, is implied nothing differing in kind from other men, but only in degree…the Poet is chiefly distinguished from other men by a greater promptness to think and feel without immediate external excitement, and a greater power in expressing such thoughts and feelings as are produced in him in that manner.” (2013, p.108)

Clark continues by examining William Hazlitt’s slightly later contributions to the same theme in his essay ‘On the Differences between Writing and Speaking’ in The Plain Speaker (1826) in which he says that authors “are never less alone than when alone. Mount them on a dinner-table, and they have nothing to say; shut them up in a room by themselves, and they are inspired.” Hazlitt explains the resulting “torrent of words” flowing from their pens as being due to that which they have to say lying “not at the orifices of the mouth ready for delivery” but being “wrapped in the folds of the heart and registered in the chambers of the brain.” (1931, p.278)

“In the sacred cause of truth that stirs them, they would put their whole strength, their whole being into requisition; and as it implies a greater effort to drag their words and ideas from their lurking-places, so there is no end when they are once set in motion. The whole of a man’s thoughts and feelings cannot lie on the surface, made up for use; but the whole must be a greater quantity, a mightier power, if they could be got at, layer under layer, and brought into play by the levers of imagination and reflection. Such a person then sees farther and feels deeper than most others.” (1931, p.279)

This is by no means identical to Wordsworth’s argument in the Preface to the Lyrical Ballads but it quite clearly follows the same vein:

“I have said that poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity: the emotion is contemplated till, by a species of reaction, the tranquillity gradually disappears, and an emotion, kindred to that which was before the subject of contemplation, is gradually produced, and does itself actually exist in the mind. In this mood successful composition generally begins, and in a mood similar to this it is carried on…” (2013, p.111)

It is worth noting that both of these accounts, perhaps unsurprisingly, stress that the precursor, whether temporary or continuous and whether a precondition or not, to poetic inspiration is, so to speak, a logjam of raw material. There is much to be said, much is unspoken, before the poet is inspired. This is no mere itch to create: what is being described is a weight of pre-conception already in place.

If one is to ask where Hazlitt’s ‘lurking-places’ may be thought to reside, it must seem obvious that the ‘fruitful sub-conscious’ that Wordsworth is described as affirming by Clark (p.94) would be a useful place to start looking.

Hazlitt has denied that the whole of a man’s ‘thoughts and feelings’ can ‘lie on the surface’ but require getting at ‘layer under layer’ It is a tenuous link – but perhaps a productive one nonetheless – to recall Carl Jung speaking of a “more or less superficial layer of the unconscious” as being the personal unconscious (1969, p.3). This “personal unconscious rests upon a deeper layer” the collective unconscious.³ If we include the conscious mind we are now presented with three layers.

Elsewhere Jung says:

“But just as conscious contents can vanish into the unconscious, new contents, which have never yet been conscious, can arise from it…in addition to memories from a long unconscious past, completely new thoughts and creative ideas can also present themselves from the unconscious – thought and ideas that have never been conscious before.” (1964, p.37-38).

In beginning to argue that (in some way and to some extent) inspiration is the transfer of some of the contents of mind from the unconscious to the conscious – which is not so very remarkable or original a claim – what occurs at the limen of those two loci or states; what occasions that transfer and how is it effected? As a stimulant to the consideration of that question, it will be useful to offer up the well known remark of Maurice Merleau-Ponty “My own words take me by surprise and teach me what I think.”⁴

This description of a process in which the writer does not become fully aware of what he is expressing until the form of that expression is ‘solidified’ in language is extremely common and very similar ‘anecdotal evidence’ from writers reporting almost identical experiences can be found in abundance wherever one looks for these sorts of accounts. It would seem fairly straightforward to argue that a weight of unexpressed thought in the unconscious or ‘fruitful sub-conscious’ becoming aware of itself in the conscious mind would provoke these kind of observations. Essentially, of thoughts being written into existence: more accurately of consciousness becoming aware of their existence.

With this, perhaps arriving by the back door, we return to Eliot’s ‘impersonality’ because, if the poet is not fully aware of what he or she is about to say, they cannot be said to be intending to say something – assuming we equate ‘he’ and ‘she’ with their conscious personality. [And as an aside, the more we remove conscious artistic intent, the more we undermine the question ‘what did the artist mean?’]

J.F Kihlstrom in his article The Cognitive Unconscious examines nonconscious mental structures and mental processes and discusses the connectionist or parallel distributed processing (PDP) theory:

“It is assumed in PDP models that information about an object or event is distributed widely across the processing system, rather than localized in any particular unit…it is not necessary for an object to be fully represented in consciousness before information about it can influence experience, thought, and action.” (1987, p. 1446)

One could say he takes the words out of Merleau-Ponty’s mouth.

Kihlstrom goes on to say that:

“Information may also reach consciousness if the relaxation process” [where processing systems reach a steady state] “is slowed by virtue of ambiguity in the stimulus pattern; in this case, however, the contents of consciousness will shift back and forth between alternative representations. In either case, the clear implication of the PDP framework is that unconscious processing is fast and parallel, while conscious processing is slow and sequential.” (1987, p. 1446)

This would seem to be an obvious explanation of the backlog of material that exists in the poetic unconscious: the dazzling, slightly hyper ingénue of the torrential unconscious and the slower conscious mind that must attend to the sequences and relations of the work in formation, combining (each presumably unaware of the others involvement) to produce the poem. Furthermore, since much of poetry, art, and indeed expression of any kind has to do with ambiguity, in that ‘slowing’ one may discover a part of the process of the emergence of the unconscious contents into awareness. There is always ambiguity between the experiential stimulus and its representation, between the representation and its interpretation, and between the frequent disparities in interpretation and their meanings (the tension arising between which will be accessible to the poets themselves). This ambiguity in the ‘stimulus pattern’ emerging into consciousness and shifting back and forth may be exactly the loop of creative inspiration and the sustenance of the creative process in continuing to produce the poem: the finding of sequential and interrelated semantic resonances in the discovery of (to be guilty of an over-banalisation) successive mots justes. At the same time, the reaching of consciousness in this way echos Wordsworth’s ‘spontaneous overflow’.

For those of us who think of the unconscious as being a deeper layer with an almost ‘subterranean’ location in the mind’s cellar that is chiefly filled with occasional dreams, repressions, complexes, atavistic desires and other murky primal elements, the cognitive sciences have revealed models of a less unstructured unconscious (albeit not necessarily excluding those elements). Therefore, where there is some chauvinism on the part of the conscious, thinking how can this unruly, uneducated, brute of a fellow, my unconscious, possibly help me in the delicate art of poetic composition, it must think again:

“Experiments on automaticity are important because they indicate that a great deal of complex cognitive activity can go on outside of conscious awareness, provided that the skills, rules, and strategies required by the task have been automatized…it is clear that there are circumstances under which the meanings and implications of events can be unconsciously analyzed as well…this does not mean that cognitive activity is not involved in such judgements and inferences; it only means that the cognitive activity, being automatized, is unconscious in the strict sense of that term and thus unavailable to introspective awareness.” (1987, p. 1447)

I take this to mean that it is the cognitive activity during the period of its happening as an automatized event that is unavailable to introspective awareness but that the product of this event will or may be introspectively examined at the moment that that product emerges into the conscious. I believe that it is preliminary introspection that may itself cause this event or some other event of unconscious cognitive activity which may then shuttle back and forth between these two states or processes. A roughly simultaneous exchange of these ‘judgements and inferences’ must, in my view, result in their modification merely as a result of the change from unconscious activity to conscious thought (and, by means of provocation, back again).

It may be worth considering the possibility that, since there will be some people, poets amongst them, who engage in the process of productive introspection more frequently than some other people, this species of conscious-unconscious interaction can be enhanced as a result of the strengthening of synaptic transmission (or plasticity).

When discussing subliminal perception and preconscious processing (broadly speaking, the analysis by the mind of stimuli prior to reaching awareness) Kihlstrom says:

“Preconscious processing can influence the ease with which certain ideas are brought to mind, and the manner in which objects and events are perceived and interpreted.” (1987, p. 1448)

Later on Kihlstrom reinforces this sense of the sophistication of unconscious activity:

“One thing is now clear: consciousness is not to be identified with any particular perceptual-cognitive functions such as discriminative response to stimulation, perception, memory, or the higher mental processes involved in judgement or problem solving. All of these functions can take place outside of phenomenal awareness. Rather, consciousness is an experiential quality that may accompany any of these functions.” (1987, p. 1450)

What I should like to underline and emphasise is that idea of accompaniment: that, by this way of imagining it, the metaphorical relationship between the conscious and the unconscious is not one where the former sits atop the later and benefits, sometimes suffers, from its rising heat but is one where the two walk side by side engaged in a complex (subliminal) conversation⁵.

Soren R. Ekstrom in ‘The mind beyond our immediate awareness: Freudian, Jungian, and cognitive models of the unconscious’, quotes Fischer and Pipp (1984) “the unconscious is a type of process—a way of constructing perception, memories and other kinds of cognition that changes systematically with development. It is not a portion of the mind. “(p.91) (2004, p.676)

Discussing the neuroscientific research of Joseph LeDoux, Ekstrom says:

“Who a person is, what he or she thinks, feels, or does, is not only influenced by consciousness; almost everything that the brain does, involves one or more unconscious process. Discovering the mechanisms of consciousness would not explain how our brains work and how they make us the individuals we are.” (2004, p.670)

LeDoux, he explains, divides the self into an explicit and an implicit self. The implicit self is that part of us of which we are not immediately aware (at that time), that is not therefore embraced by self awareness. Amongst other examples, those processes we have no awareness of include “decoding sentence meaning and sounds of words (phonology); assigning the proper meaning to words (semantics); knowing the grammatical relation between words (syntax);”

Ekstrom summarises LeDoux’s conclusions concerning human learning processes and it may be instructive to present a further précis of that analysis.

So: neural systems function more or less independently but encode the same events; thus different systems experience the same world. Neural systems work in parallel at the same time and communication (also called binding) is achieved through parallel plasticity (probably synchronously). Learning takes place through convergence zones: regions where information from diverse systems can be integrated. “Since convergence happens hierarchically—and the increasingly sophisticated processing of an experience forms entire ensembles of cells—, mental and behavioural functions, as well as language comprehension, may be accomplished by convergence zones.” (2004, p.674)

In convergence zones, neural processes which typically work more or less automatically, from bottom up, can be reversed. “Such reversals or downward mobile thoughts work on the principle that cells processing a thought will change the connections of cells with which they communicate…Language may in fact be one of the tools with which reflexive and abstract connections between concrete elements of perception and memory occur (Solms & Turnbull 2002).” (2004, p.674)

It would appear that this relationship between the conscious and unconscious has very strong ties to language; and that these are particularly productive and constructive ties. Without wishing to overly privilege the poet, it is of course particularly pertinent for our discussion that the poet is largely concerned with producing and constructing linguistic structures (often simply referred to as poems).

It is possible that there will be those who have read this far and who will be considering it to be a glaring omission that dreams have not been mentioned as a part of this discussion of the interconnection between the conscious and unconscious mind. However it is my opinion that dreams can, for our purposes, be divided into two aspects: one of which is not truly relevant to those purposes, whilst the other is only incidentally relevant.

Where a dream is considered as a source of inspiration, what is meant by that? If it is claimed that the poet is simply presented with a fully formed poem from within the dream, then this must obviously be accounted a form of inspiration. However, arguably, this would seem to be a very unusual set of circumstances and (pace Coleridge) if one refrains from calling it doubtful, one must at least be allowed to call it a marginal occurrence.

Where the dream’s influence over the poem is to be found in the manifestation of symbolic forms in the dream then that would seem to require a separate, different (and not unfamiliar) discussion.

However, in the event that dreaming, in the words of D. Todman Inspiration from dreams in neuroscience research (2007, p.4), “reflects ‘off-line’ processing of acquired information consolidating or integrating it into a more useful form”, we seem obliquely to be reaffirming much of what has been said before about unconscious processing (but not so very much more). If it is possible to look past the rather colourless terms, in relation to poetry, and can imagine a poem as being a more useful formation of acquired information, then we have done little more than restate the concept of unconscious processing being one element or strand in the moment of inspiration. Beyond this sense of dreaming dutifully performing some cognitive housework, it is clear that it is also capable of producing new associations, interpretations, and solutions. Nonetheless, although a particular form, normally requiring sleep, it does seem to be another dimension of unconscious cognitive activity coexisting with conscious awareness (in this case, via the waking memory) rather than something categorically different.

Furthermore, the chief interest of this discussion has been in the circumstances of the artist or the poet seeking inspiration. It is clear that the poet may be affected by the ‘sudden flash of inspiration’ that provides not only the general thrust of the poem but a good deal of its expressive form. However, I would suggest, for the majority, that that is an exceptional occurrence rather than the rule of inspiration. I would further suggest that if poets relied solely on that kind of explosively rich and detailed inspiration, there would be a great deal less poetry in the world. Much more often, it seems to me, the poet is responding to the diffuse experience of life in general – broadly the experience of being alive – and to their particular and profound need to express themselves. Poems are specific instances of this response to instances of that experience: inter alia, perhaps initiated haphazardly, perhaps by repeated coincidence, or perhaps by virtue of deliberate attention. In especially simplified terms, the poet has a sense or feeling of that which they wish to express, of which they are not fully cognisant, and in the process of expression they are inspired to find the words that reveal to them what it is they have been thinking (à la Merleau-Ponty). One might think of this as being the full Damascene journey, in which there is a moment of poetic apprehension that is nevertheless ‘blind’ until inspiration, acting for Ananias, restores the poet’s ‘sight’.

It is also the argument behind this discussion that it is often (though admittedly not always) precisely in those instances of this seeking of inspiration that the inspiration itself is produced. Furthermore, the more often it is sought, the more likely it is to be found.

In The Scientific Study of Inspiration in the Creative Process: challenges and opportunities Victoria Oleynick et al., maintain:

“inspiration is evoked rather than initiated volitionally by the individual. In other words, one does not feel directly responsible for becoming inspired; rather, a stimulus object, such as a person, an idea, or a work of art, evokes and sustains the inspiration episode.” (2014)

I believe that this may be too restricted a conception of inspiration. It seems to ignore the possibility that the stimulus may be unspecific and perhaps asynchronous – for example feelings that have built up over time and whose relationship may be ambiguous (which it feels inaccurate to call a stimulus object) – and for the description of which, the poet must struggle to find expression; in which process the poet seeks inspiration. I think of the image of a poet, sitting at a desk, staring into the unfortunately empty virtual space of, say, their imagination, chewing on the end of a pencil, and seeking inspiration for the next line. Facetiousness aside, there are clearly instances where the artist, more or less successfully, volitionally initiates the ‘inspiration episode’. After all inspiration cannot be identical with that which stimulates it: otherwise it should produce the same inspiration in all who experience it and, furthermore, how would we account for those instances where there is no obvious stimulus (for example in the more fantastical writings of someone like Rabelais⁶).

I am persuaded that the poet, inconvenienced by not knowing what to say next, attending conscientiously to the original impetus of the poem, its original inspiration if you like, and to the life of the poem thus far, does, in this depth of reflection, find his or herself taken by surprise or rewarded by their own next words. Those next words, where inspiration has struck, will not simply be some next consecutive statement, they will be a fulfilment of the poem’s preceding words, they will alter the sense of those preceding words, modifying the poem, and they will have the effect of changing the words to come: all in a way the poet did not foresee or foretell.

Admittedly, for the unconscious to take a hand, which is what is being claimed here, it will not be volitionally initiated in the strictest sense of the conscious mind being aware of that happening but, on the other hand, nor will the poet be prevented from feeling directly responsible for having, whether knowingly or not, sought assistance from that unconscious process. As Bernard J. Baars concludes in Global Workspace Theory of Consciousness:

“Consciousness is the gateway to the brain.” (2005, p.52)

Although it is possible that the unconscious may not always be a part of the moment of inspiration, I would argue that it usually is and that the conscious processes are often chiefly a means to unlocking that cooperation.

For those who may consider all this to be the reduction of the wonder of inspiration to a lot of dry, dull talk about neurons and processes, Joseph LeDoux’s observation may be apposite:

“Given the importance of synaptic transmission in brain function, it should practically be a truism to say that the self is synaptic. What else could it be.” (2002, p.3)

If the details of poetic passion, daring, and gifted brilliance can be found within the ‘celestial’ loom of the trillions of firing synapses (there are, at a rough count as many synapses in the brain as there are stars in fifteen hundred galaxies) in the most complex entity known to man (and thus, wondrously, to itself), it is hard to understand what is thereby detracted from the beauty of either.

Nevertheless, for those who cannot help regretting the passing away of a more unexplained and therefore ‘magical’ source of inspiration, perhaps some slight solace can be derived (a little ironically) from the ideas of quantum science. In Quantum Physics in Neuroscience and Psychology, Schwartz et al., writing about the role of calcium ions in nerve terminals (being the links between nerve cells), refer to the extreme smallness of the opening in calcium ion channels as having profound quantum mechanical implications:

“the quantum state of the brain has a part in which the neurotransmitter is released and a part in which the neurotransmitter is not released. This quantum splitting occurs at every one of the trillions of nerve terminals. This means that the quantum state of the brain splits into a vast host of classically conceived possibilities, one for each possible combination of the release-or-no-release options at each of the nerve terminals. In fact, because of uncertainties on timings and locations, what is generated by the physical processes in the brain will be not a single discrete set of non-overlapping physical possibilities but rather a huge smear of classically conceived possibilities.” (2005)

(Like much of quantum theory, this would seem to return to the physical world, in this instance the world of physical cognitive activity, much of the mysteriousness that it was robbed of by classical mechanical solutions.)

I make no claims for the implications of this quantum splitting on the origination of inspiration. I only observe that to have this component of unpredictability and literal unquantifiability placed into the cognitive process seems to accord satisfyingly well with a general notion of inspiration. So too, I wonder at what seems to be the existence of a profound physical ambiguity at its heart.

To end: I would retain the same idea (as at the beginning) of inspiration being ‘breathed in’ and of ‘breathing into’, only all within the same organ. Inspiration, I maintain, is the inhalation and exhalation of the conscious and the unconscious in a process of mutual cooperation and exchange. The most interesting aspect of which is the gentle but firm concentration of the conscious mind to occasion this unconscious reciprocity. This, I believe, may be variously stimulated, whilst the artist is enthused by the creative act itself through, amongst other possibilities, introspection, reflection, the act of apprehension, or simply by succumbing to the creative processes of mind.

References:

Baars BJ. (2005) Global workspace theory of consciousness: toward a cognitive neuroscience of human experience. Progress in Brain Research;150: p.45-53. doi: 10.1016/S0079-6123(05)50004-9. PMID: 16186014.

Ekstrom, S.R. (2004). The mind beyond our immediate awareness: Freudian, Jungian, and cognitive models of the unconscious. Journal of Analytical Psychology, 49(5), pp.657–682.

Eliot, T.S. (1964). Selected essays, 1917-1932. New York, Harcourt, Brace And Co.

Hazlitt, W. (1931) On the Differences between Writing and Speaking, In: P. Howe, ed., The Complete Works of William Hazlitt, London and Toronto : J.M. Dent. 278-79

Jung, C.G., Marie-Luise Von Franz, Henderson, J.L., Aniela Jaffé and Jolande Jacobi (1964). Man and his symbols. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday.

Jung, C. (1969) The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, In: Sir H. Read, M. Fordham, G. Adler, ed., The Collected Works of C.G. Jung Vol 9 Part 1, Princeton : Princeton University Press

Kihlstrom, J. (1987). The cognitive unconscious. Science, 237 (4821), pp.1445–1452.

LeDoux, J. (2002). Synaptic Self: How Our Brain Becomes Who We Are. New York: Viking.

Oleynick, V. C., Thrash, T. M., LeFew, M. C., Moldovan, E. G., & Kieffaber, P. D. (2014). The scientific study of inspiration in the creative process: challenges and opportunities. Frontiers in human neuroscience, 8, 436. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2014.00436

Plato. Complete Works. Ed. J. M. Cooper and D. S. Hutchinson. Hackett, 1997.

Schwartz Jeffrey M, Stapp Henry P and Beauregard Mario (2005) Quantum physics in neuroscience and psychology: a neurophysical model of mind–brain interaction In: Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B 3601309–1327

Todman, D. (2007) Inspiration from dreams in neuroscience research. The Internet Journal of Neurology, Volume 9, No 1.

Wordsworth, W., Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Stafford, F.J. (2013). Lyrical ballads : 1798 and 1802. Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press.

1Clearly, where it served as the Latin translation of the Greek enthusiasmos, the latter sense is markedly privileged.

2The term creative is used here (and elsewhere, unless otherwise indicated) to describe the fact of something being created and not to suggest some special category of work.

3 Without wishing to embark upon any such investigation here, there is an intriguing relationship between Eliot’s notion of personality and Jung’s notion of personal unconscious as well as the former’s conception of artistic tradition and the latter’s conception of the collective unconscious.

4Quoted by Derrida in ‘Force and Signification’ apparently from a fragment he intended to devote to the Origin of Truth. It is preceded by the statement that ‘The writer’s thought does not control his language from without; the writer is a kind of new idiom, constructing itself.”

5George A. Miller has been quoted as saying “In some sense not yet defined we are both conscious and unconscious at the same time.” Unconscious Mind (2010) Ezequiel Morsella, John A. Burgh

6Admittedly any product of the human imagination will be composed of discrete elements which must be known to the artist’s experience in some way. Nonetheless, how the artist might be inspired to combine them into some incredible form via direct stimulus from that experience seems unclear.

Miller has been quoted as saying “In some sense not yet defined we are both conscious and unconscious at the same time.” Unconscious Mind (2010) Ezequiel Morsella, John A. Burgh

6Admittedly any product of the human imagination will be composed of discrete elements which must be known to the artist’s experience in some way. Nonetheless, how the artist might be inspired to combine them into some incredible form via direct stimulus from that experience seems unclear.