Advancing the clinical science of creativity

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 (especially in the arts)—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). Other explanations, however, should not be ignored or considered mutually exclusive. Creative work may sometimes exacerbate psychopathology. For example, Kaufman and Baer (2002) suggested that poets may be especially susceptible to mental illness because poetry requires emotional expression and introspection, and unlike prose, may not provide adequate opportunities for making meaning out of one’s experience. Conversely, and leaving aside third variable explanations (which also deserve further research), we explore the hypothesis that psychopathology may motivate individuals to engage in creative activities as a way to alleviate their suffering and enhance their well-being. To date, two main empirical literatures have examined this claim. First, reviews of art therapy trials have found that such interventions typically lead to small but statistically significant improvements on a range of psychological measures (Slayton et al., 2010; Forgeard and Eichner, 2014; Maujean et al., 2014). Second, studies examining the benefits of “everyday creativity” suggest that engaging in day-to-day creative activities may both reflect and foster psychological health (Richards, 2007). In keeping with this, findings of a recent experience-sampling study showed that young adult participants were more likely to be engaged in creative activities than other activities when they reported feeling happy and active (Silvia et al., 2014). In spite of these efforts, important gaps exist in our understanding of the therapeutic benefits of creativity. The first and foremost of these gaps is the following: to the best of our knowledge, little empirical evidence has demonstrated that creative thinking per se is one of the specific active ingredients accounting for the benefits of creative activities. To date, 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). Thus, it remains unclear whether the benefits of creative activities are due to creative thinking, or to other factors. 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. We outline a research agenda to advance the clinical science of creativity from a cognitive-behavioral perspective.