The Effects of LSD-25 on Creativity and Tolerance to Regression

Abstract

IN RECENT years, the interest shown by behavioral scientists in creativity has reflected what has for a long time been a popular preoccupation.^1-6 Willing authors have come forward, informing us how to acquire it, whether we must be neurotic to use it, and how to discover if we have that "divine fire." Attempts have been made to define the process involved, enumerate the steps essential to its functioning, and devise methods of testing an individual's creative potentiality. Dynamic psychiatry has played a major role in the investigation of creative personality. Early psychoanalytic writers stressed the role of instinctual demands and neurotic conflicts in providing the motivation for creative sublimation. Having searched the lives of geniuses throughout history, investigators presented evidence to demonstrate how certain basic needs and fantasies had become interwoven in the content and structure of their work.^7-10