Creativity Research Journal

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An Exploration of the Intersection Between

Creativity and Psychotherapy

Daniel Gutterman & Katie Aafjes Van-Doorn

To cite this article: Daniel Gutterman & Katie Aafjes Van-Doorn (2022): An Exploration of
the Intersection Between Creativity and Psychotherapy, Creativity Research Journal, DOI:
10.1080/10400419.2022.2127566

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Published online: 11 Oct 2022.

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CREATIVITY RESEARCH JOURNAL
https://doi.org/10.1080/10400419.2022.2127566

An Exploration of the Intersection Between Creativity and Psychotherapy

Daniel Gutterman and Katie Aafjes Van-Doorn
Ferkauf Graduate School of Psychology, Yeshiva University

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

Creativity has been conceptualized not just as a measure of artistic ability, but also as an adaptive Received March 11, 2022
trait of everyday innovation. We posit the relevance of “everyday creativity” to the field of
psychotherapy. Although creativity has been theorized in psychotherapy models of change and
the therapy process, little empirical research has examined patients’ and therapists’ creativity in
psychotherapy treatments. Moreover, creativity research has been hampered by the vast array of
definitions and operationalizations of the construct. Despite a lack of direct evidence, there appears
to be substantial overlap between the empirically observed characteristics of creativity and the
aims of psychotherapy treatments. First, research on characteristics of creative individuals, by way
of personality, cognition, emotion, and psychopathology might overlap with what we know about
individuals who benefit from psychotherapy. Second, the therapeutic process might resemble
a creative process, suggesting that creativity could be a mediator of treatment outcomes. Third,
creativity may be seen as a treatment outcome in that it reflects the achievement of more open-
minded thinking, cognitive and emotional flexibility, as well as diminished psychopathology. We
take a hypothesis-generating stance, suggesting future research that could test a potential mediat­
ing/moderating role of creativity in psychotherapy.

When asked to consider the concept of creativity, our
first associations likely entail some form of artistic
achievement. The cultural connotations of creativity
largely boil down to (Freud’s, 1961) theory of sublima­
tion (1961), which speaks to an adaptive talent for
a unique expression or a complex articulation of
a particular experience or conflict. Historically, there
has always been a belief that creativity is the result of
a “divine gift” that few possess (Niu & Sternberg, 2006),
but in recent years psychological research has begun to
observe creativity less as a rarefied artistic prowess and
more as a complex and omnipresent trait (Wanot,
Wanot, & Fil, 2019). The lens of creativity now expands
well beyond the realm of the artistic, touching on
a universal drive to innovate and adapt in order to better
navigate through life in ways large and small.
It has been said that creativity is a one of the most
difficult constructs to define (Sternberg, 1988). There
have been many definitions over time, typically with
varying degrees of overlapping ideology. Currently, the
most agreed-upon definition frames creativity as the
production of novel and useful ideas or products
(Runco & Jaeger, 2012). While these parameters are
widely accepted nowadays, the term “useful” has since
been argued to characterize an evaluative quality. As
a result, some further clarify that creativity produces
some sort of “intentional novelty” (Weisberg, 2015)
that must be surprising, non-obvious, or otherwise
interesting (Harrington, 2018).
There has been an increasing interest in the notion of
“everyday creativity” (Fogarty, Creanza, & Feldman,
2015) within the field of psychology. Everyday creativity
is perhaps most clearly understood via Davis (2004)
categories of “Big C” and “Little c.” In contrast to crea­
tivity with a “Big C” that evokes a singular and remark­
able level of talent (Moneta & Rogaten, 2016), “Little c”
calls attention to an adaptive trait and universal ability
for complex problem solving (Kaufman, 2016).
Regardless of the definitions of creativity that have
been used over time, creativity has almost always been
viewed as a positive and desirable trait.
A historical overview of creativity and
psychotherapy
The metaphoric “big bang” of interest in creativity
research was the direct result of J.P Guilford’s efforts.
In 1950, when Guilford was the president of the
American Psychological Association, he centered his
presidential address around a call for creativity research
(Guilford, 1950). This was a controversial request at the
time, as the field was then in the throes of behaviorism,

CONTACT Daniel Gutterman dgutter1@mail.yu.edu Ferkauf Graduate School of Psychology, Yeshiva University 2127566 1165 Morris Park Ave, The
Bronx, NY 10461
© 2022 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
2 D. GUTTERMAN AND K. AAFJES VAN-DOORN
and “creativity” was little more than a specialized term
reserved for artists – the word “creativity” itself only
dates to the 1920s (Colin, 2017). Freud’s writings on
sublimation were essentially a component of prototypi­
cal analytic theory, categorized as an adaptive defense to
express unconscious drives (Roazen, 1995). Guilford
would eventually make strides of his own in creativity
research, conceptualizing both divergent thinking (the
ability to generate useful ideas) and convergent thinking
(the ability to synthesize ideas in novel ways) as two
sides of the same coin which comprise creative thought
(Guilford, 1967).
Soon after this address, an emerging humanistic wave
of psychologists came to value creativity as a prerequisite
for self-actualization (Maslow, 1973; Rogers, 1954).
Specifically, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs identified crea­
tivity as a pathway to self-fulfillment and emotional
stability (Maslow, 1968). Rogers (1954) theorized that
the psychological freedom of the therapeutic space pro­
vided a context in which creative thinking could flour­
ish, thus allowing the process of self-actualization to
commence. This concept was later echoed by
Winnicott (1971), who encouraged therapy to encou­
rage elements of “play,” explaining that the individual
can discover oneself by being creative, which further
considers creativity as a tool for building and maintain­
ing an enhanced quality of life through the power of
insight and understanding in psychotherapy.
Toward the end of the century, the cognitive revolu­
tion tabled much of this theory, but the positive psychol­
ogy movement has since picked up where the humanists
left off. Today, creativity is associated with proactive
behavior (Kaufmann, 2003) and everyday expressions
of creativity have been described as a “life elixir” that
contributes positively to mental health (Runco, 2014).
Positive psychology views creativity as a key metric of
the subjective experience, as well as a measure of poten­
tial of an individual to identify and achieve goals (Holm-
Hadulla, 2020). Creativity has subsequently been named
one of the four personality components of positive men­
tal health, alongside humor, playfulness, and honesty
(Yonatan-Leus, et al. 2019). In other words, creative
thought is currently theorized to help us better negotiate
and advocate for our needs and happiness.
Psychotherapy can therefore aim to actively leverage
this ability for the sake of therapy process and outcome.
Creativity as a characteristic
The construct of creativity has been widely researched in
correlation to different characteristics, traits, and ten­
dencies in individuals. This research does not directly
associate creative ability directly to psychotherapy.
Nevertheless, the findings reviewed below manage to
demonstrate a significant overlap between common
characteristics of creative individuals and common
goals in psychotherapy as reviewed above. While both
creativity and psychotherapy are broad constructs, each
containing a multitude of components, four psychologi­
cal domains of study appear to resonate with both crea­
tivity and psychotherapy most directly: personality,
cognition, emotion, and psychopathology.
Personality
The most influential research on creativity’s ties to per­
sonality can be traced directly to Gregory Feist’s (1998)
landmark study, which focused primarily on the rela­
tionship between creativity and the five factors of per­
sonality. This research identified “openness to
experience” as the personality factor most consistently
associated with creative ability. Also, creative people are
somewhat more extraverted, as well as less conventional
and conscientious, and more self-confident, self-
accepting, driven, ambitious, hostile, and impulsive
(Feist, 1998). Creativity’s positive correlations with
“openness to experience” and extraversion continue to
be supported in subsequent empirical studies and sys­
tematic reviews (Puryear, Kettler, & Rinn, 2017). On
a neurological level, openness to experience and diver­
gent thinking ability were most strongly associated to
creative achievements (Wang, Zhuang, Li, & Qiu, 2022),
shaping a tendency to engage with one’s surroundings in
a productive, normative, and non-deviant fashion (Sutu,
Serrano, Schultz, Jackson, & Damian, 2019).
While openness to experience generally holds strong
associations with creativity, the nature of that openness
can be more narrowly distinguished as a tolerance and
active curiosity toward the unknown. Most notably,
a tolerance for ambiguity, seen as a subset of openness
to experience, appears to be significantly related to crea­
tive ability (Sternberg & Lubart, 1996). Creative indivi­
duals indeed more often possess a willingness to
consider different perspectives, including those that are
unfamiliar, unrealistic, or underdeveloped (Zhao &
Seibert, 2006). Elements of proactive behavior, such as
risk taking and challenge seeking, were also found to be
associated with creative thought (Kim, 2019). The nat­
ure of these findings was recently reflected in Feist’s own
research, in which he reclassified the five factors of
personality into two, plasticity and stability, and
reported that plasticity was found to hold strong asso­
ciations to creative ability (Feist, 2019).
These links between creativity and personality are in
line with creativity’s two central theoretical components,
novelty and usefulness. The individual must be open to

experience what is new (novelty), and then embrace it by
successfully adapting to it, defying expectations or
norms (usefulness). These links between personality
and creativity also bolster existing theories of creativity
in psychology. Self-actualizing creativity was argued to
result from an interest and curiosity in unfamiliar and
complex circumstances (Maslow, 1970). Openness to
experience was once associated with imagination, aes­
thetic sensitivity, attentiveness to emotional states, intel­
lectual curiosity, and interest in new experiences (Costa
& McCrae, 1985), all of which are qualities which have
since been reflected by subsequent research as positively
associated with creativity.
Cognition
Creativity can be described as a complex cognitive pro­
cess that requires a certain degree of flexibility and
interaction amongst disparate areas of cognitive ability.
If creativity is a process of identifying a problem, search­
ing for a solution, and modifying the approach as neces­
sary, it can be understood as a kind of highly evolved
cognitive process akin to the scientific method. In the
years since, research has demonstrated creativity to be
achieved via cognitive flexibility, set-breaking, and
restructuring (Ashby, Isen, & Turken, 1999). Indeed, it
appears that creative processes are the result of very
complex cognitive processes (Leung, Maddux,
Galinsky, & Chiu, 2008) that entail an interaction of
lower-level cognitive processes via high degrees of neu­
ronal interconnectivity (Kenett et al., 2020, 2018).
Specifically, divergent thinking ability has been demon­
strated as relevant to working memory, fluid and crystal­
lized intelligence, and mental processing speed (Weiss
et al., 2020).
While creativity can be attributed to some adaptive
and fluid mixture of cognitive processes, it does not
appear to be related to overall intelligence (Barbot,
Hass, & Reiter-Palmon, 2019; De Nakano, Wechsler,
Campos, & Milian, 2015). That said, intelligence may
increasingly benefit creativity when IQ is measured up
to one standard deviation above average (Feist & Barron,
2003). This suggests that some level of intelligence may
serve as a prerequisite or enhancement for creative
thinking, but overall, individuals with intelligence levels
in a normative range are capable of creative thought.
Thus, integration and flexibility across cognitive
domains is likely more important for creative thought
than intelligence alone.
The notion of creative flexibility has been cited in past
theories of creativity. Guilford, the aforementioned pre­
sident of the APA who called for creativity research in
1950, would later designate a theory of creativity
CREATIVITY RESEARCH JOURNAL 3
centered around ideational fluency, flexibility, and ori­
ginality (Guilford, 1967). Today, this holds increasing
empirical ground based on research on cognitive flex­
ibility and its positive associations with creative thought.
Emotion
Another psychological construct that has been examined
in relation to creativity is emotion. A relationship has
been demonstrated between positive mood/affect and
increased dopamine levels, leading to increased ability
in cognitive tasks, including creative problem solving
(Ashby et al., 1999). Similarly, an induced positive affect
in research participants has been found to improve
performance in tasks requiring creative ability (Isen,
Daubman, & Nowicki, 1987), as well as lead to more
inclusive categorization (Isen & Daubman, 1984; Isen,
Niedenthal, & Cantor, 1992), suggesting that positive
affect may better prime convergent thinking. It has also
been shown that experiencing a mixture of emotions can
more clearly enhance creative thinking (Fong, 2006).
Looking at it another way, creative individuals have
a propensity to experience a broader range of affect
(Filipowicz, 2006). Specifically, it appears that the ability
to shift between affect states, while experiencing both in
a proactive fashion, is what best induces creative thought
(Bledow, Rosing, & Frese, 2013). Beyond having a rich
emotional experience, creativity is also associated with
emotional awareness and acceptance. Creative indivi­
duals are more aware of emotional stimuli (Drus,
Kozbelt, & Hughes, 2014), have fewer maladaptive emo­
tion regulation strategies (Kopcsó & Láng, 2017), and
are overall more emotionally competent, responsible,
and understanding (Hernández-Jorge et al., 2020).
It has been similarly theorized that a range of emo­
tions may provide different experiences and perspectives
that can all significantly contribute to the act of creative
thought. Barron (1963) wrote that creative people
appear to be both labile and controlled, picking up on
an element of enriched emotional expression and aware­
ness. Charyton, Hutchison, Snow, Rahman, and Elliott
(2009) reported that creativity allows individuals to cope
with emotional fluctuations in everyday life. Salovey,
Mayer, Goldman, Turvey, and Palfai (1995) reported
that for mood to contribute to creativity, one must
have a clarity toward their feelings. In essence, while
positive emotions allow us to more fully engage with
new experiences, negative emotions may produce more
powerful introspection and more detailed thinking for
considering new ways of navigating these experiences
(De Dreu, Baas, & Nijstad, 2008; Verhaeghen,
Joormann, & Khan, 2005). Another way of thinking
about this concept is that a positive mood may be
4 D. GUTTERMAN AND K. AAFJES VAN-DOORN
more ideal for ideation and divergent thinking, but
a negative mood may be better for problem solving
and convergent thinking (Davis, 2009). Overall, holding
an accepting stance toward all emotions, including an
ability to experience and regulate intense emotional
states, may be a powerful mediator between previously
identified personality traits and creative cognition
(Sanchez-Ruiz & Hernández-Torrano, 2014). When
considering the role of emotions in creativity, it may
thus be helpful to view emotional and creative compe­
tencies as complementary (Hernández-Jorge et al.,
2020).
Psychopathology
Psychopathology has long been associated with creativ­
ity. The relationship between creativity and psycho­
pathology arguably travels as far back as Aristotle.
Aristotle stated being a genius is to some degree the
result of madness, implying that innovation is born out
of some level of mental instability. Freud’s theory of
sublimation additionally characterizes creative output
as a remediation of intrapsychic conflict, staging crea­
tivity as a kind of beneficial byproduct of mental distress.
Despite these assumptions of positive correlations
between creativity and pathology, the presence of differ­
ent psychopathologies, including depression and anxi­
ety, bipolar and mania, as well as schizophrenia and
psychosis, have been empirically linked with lower levels
of creativity.
First, depression and anxiety symptoms predict very
little variance in observed creative output (Silvia &
Kimbrel, 2010). The presence of depressive symptoms
has been found to predict lower observed levels of crea­
tive thinking Schuldberg (2000-2001). To contrast these
findings, it has been theorized that depressive episodes
may eventually provide inspiration for creative work,
due to raised emotional awareness and insight into the
human condition (Richards, 1994). This theory has been
somewhat supported by research, which found that
while ruminative brooding does not lead to creativity,
self-reflective pondering does (Verhaeghen, Joormann,
& Aikman, 2014). Depressive symptoms are directly
associated with a reduced quantity of original ideas, yet
the ideas produced were rated as higher value (Forgeard,
2018). Overall, neuroticism did not predict creativity
(Batey & Furnham, 2006), and obsessional thinking
was not related to creativity at all (Binik, Fainsilber, &
Spevack, 1981). In terms of anxiety and creativity, think­
ing patterns which were classified as repetitive,
uncontrollable, unconstructive, or over-generalized (i.e.
“maladaptive”) were found to impede cognitive flexibil­
ity and spontaneous thought (Andrews-Hanna,
Christoff, & O’Connor, 2020), suggesting symptoms of
anxiety antagonize the systems of creative thought, All
in all, depressed and anxious mood disturbances do not
appear to enhance creativity, and may actively impede
such abilities.
Second, bipolar disorder and mania likely have the
strongest anecdotal and self-reported positive associa­
tions to creativity. In a recent sample of over 200 parti­
cipants diagnosed with bipolar disorder, 82% reported
feeling more creative when manic, as well as generally
more creative than average (McCraw, Parker, Fletcher,
& Friend, 2013). A meta-analysis studying the link
between creativity and mood disorders (Taylor, 2017)
concluded that the associations between creativity and
psychopathology was able to discern that creative indi­
viduals have a somewhat higher propensity for mood
disorders overall (apart from dysthymia), and that bipo­
lar diagnoses had a higher propensity for creative output
than unipolar diagnoses. However, the effect of mood
disorders on creativity was not statistically significant,
with some exceptions (cyclothymic disorder and unspe­
cified bipolar disorder). While the volume of creative
output is observably higher during manic episodes, it
seems to be of poorer quality relative to output during
non-manic states (Weisberg, 1994). In other words, even
though many people with bipolar disorder believe their
mania is more conducive to creative productivity, this is
mostly reflected in the quantity, not quality, of what is
produced (Murray & Johnson, 2010). Furthermore,
there was no significant difference in the evaluated qual­
ity of creative output between people with manic symp­
toms and people with no bipolar symptoms (Miller,
Perich, & Meade, 2019). This phenomenon has been
conceptualized in multiple ways. There is a theory that
creativity is increased in “approach-oriented” disorders,
in which the individual is more impulsive and engaged/
overinclusive toward their surroundings (Baas, Nijstad,
Koen, Boot, & De Dreu, 2020), corresponding to the key
creativity metrics of openness to experience and ability
for divergent thinking (generation of new ideas). An
alternative theory posits that mania is successfully har­
nessed by a few individuals with high predispositions for
achieving creative breakthroughs (Johnson, Tharp, &
Holmes, 2015).
Third, schizophrenia and psychosis could theoreti­
cally lend inspiration for creative output as it often
consists of poor reality testing, arguably providing
unique perspectives. Psychosis is associated with a high
level of primary process thinking, a primitive thought
system which is reflexive and reactionary (Russ, 2001).
This hypersensitivity to one’s surrounding environment
can be understood as a reduced latent cognitive inhibi­
tion, a quality that is also observed in creative

individuals (Fink, Slamar-Halbedl, Unterrainer, &
Weiss, 2012). Reduced latent inhibition is a term that
speaks to one’s decreased ability to discard irrelevant
stimuli, and this overactive engagement with one’s
experience and surroundings provides ample grass for
both creativity and psychosis to graze upon (Drus et al.,
2014). Additionally, genetic overlap has been found
between creative behaviors, schizophrenia, and risk tol­
erance (Li et al., 2020), furthering the concept of an over
engagement with one’s surroundings. However, the dis­
tinction between psychosis and creativity is control:
psychotic thinking is disorganized, while creative think­
ing is goal oriented (Prentky, 1989). Like with bipolar
disorder, individuals with a high predisposition for crea­
tive thought may be inspired by the intensity and
novelty of a psychotic episode. More often, the simila­
rities between psychosis and creativity are simply in
their qualities of originality (Acar & Runco, 2012), as
well as a tendency toward reduced latent inhibition to
stimuli. Aligning this with the stated definition of crea­
tivity, while psychoticism may lead to more novel ideas,
those ideas aren’t likely to be useful.
Although it remains impossible to draw definitive
conclusions about the relationship between psycho­
pathology and creativity (Taylor, 2017; Zhao, Tang, Lu,
Xing, & Shen, 2022), it appears that a small amount of
mental disturbance might assist creative output
(Abraham, Parraman, & Rizzi, 2014; Simonton, 2019).
Both well-being and sub-clinical levels of psychopathol­
ogy are related to creative behaviors (Acar & Runco,
2012; Acar, Tadik, Myers, Sman, & Uysal, 2020).
Overall, it appears that the link between psychopathol­
ogy and creativity may be too general to answer defini­
tively (Silvia & Kimbrel, 2010).
All in all, the traits and behaviors which are most
often associated with a creative individual were found to
be the following: an openness to new experiences,
a tolerance for or interest in ambiguity, a capacity for
cognitive flexibility and integration of discrete cognitive
processes, an ability to experience and regulate intense
emotions, as well as a minimal exacerbation of any
mental illness and a propensity for positive affect.
These findings cumulatively invoke a high-functioning
individual who can productively interact with them­
selves as well as their surroundings; arguably an ideal
set of characteristics for an individual to benefit from
a psychotherapy treatment.
Theoretical links between the psychotherapy
process and the creative process
When considering creative and therapeutic processes,
the methods and desired outcomes share substantial
CREATIVITY RESEARCH JOURNAL 5
philosophical overlap. Creativity, like psychotherapy,
can be understood as a process born from the need for
a solution (Hecker & Kottler, 2002). Both the creative
and psychotherapeutic processes unfold by noticing new
relationships among objects or ideas, which can then
lead to novel and adaptive solutions (Roazen, 1995).
This formation of associative elements into new and
useful combinations (Batey & Furnham, 2006), thus
producing innovative ideas using seemingly unrelated
materials and sources, is apparent in both creative and
therapeutic processes. Simply put, creativity and psy­
chotherapy are both operationalized as identifying
a problem, then formulating an innovative approach
which leads to a new and useful construct (Walia,
2019). Arguably, this process is a key component of
many different theoretical orientations, as most all psy­
chotherapy modalities focus on developing novel for­
mulations of the patient’s symptoms and concerns in
hopes to overcome them. As result, creativity has
recently been labeled a “common factor” of clinical
practice (Holm-Hadulla, 2020), stressing broad applic­
ability across theoretical orientations.
The therapeutic process has been described as
a collaborative creative act, akin to two people solving
a puzzle (Lichtenberg, 2012). This emotes a collaborative
process of combining information in new ways, harnes­
sing the creative potential of both the patient and thera­
pist (Holm-Hadulla & Hofmann, 2012). Some feel that all
creativity is collaboration (Barron, 1999), and that analy­
tic methods mimic a mentor-mentee relationship in crea­
tive teaching (Chen & Ling, 2010). Alternatively, the
therapeutic process has been discussed as inciting an
exchange of perspectives that facilitates a creative process
(Glăveanu, 2020). Warner (2012) theorized that the thera­
pist is meant to assist a patient hone their creative instru­
ment by providing an environment in which patients
can achieve a greater sense of self. Rooted in
Winnicott’s (1971) writing on the importance of play­
fulness in psychotherapy, it has been argued that
employing an exploratory, non-risk-averse approach
can best help clients utilize their creative ability
(Rosenthal, 2002). In other words, a therapeutic envir­
onment that nurtures imagination, reflectiveness, and
tolerance may better prompt insight and innovation
(Lawrence, Foster, & Tieso, 2015). The overall interplay
of coherence, incoherence, and novelty has been argued
to result in elevated levels of everyday creativity
(Weisberg, 2006), and those values are additionally
fundamental to the aims of psychotherapy. The thera­
peutic process may facilitate new emotional and cogni­
tive perspectives via the harnessed creativity of the
patient, therapist, and the creative collaboration
between them.
6 D. GUTTERMAN AND K. AAFJES VAN-DOORN

Creative arts therapy
Besides the creative process that generally occurs in
talking therapies described above, some types of psy­
chotherapies focus on creativity explicitly. For example,
creative arts therapies utilize artistic creative activities
(e.g., painting, dancing) as a clinical intervention to
encourage non-verbal forms of expression and commu­
nication (Abbing et al., 2018; Hackett, Ashby, Parker,
Goody, & Power, 2017). While the theoretical under­
pinnings of these types of therapies vary (Naumburg,
2001), the common thread is the utilization of creative
activity to provide an opportunity for feelings and emo­
tions to surface through the created work (Hackett,
2012; Rothwell, 2008). Art psychotherapies offer an
alternative outlet for patients who may not be able to
benefit from traditional talk therapies (i.e., cognitive or
social functioning deficits), making it a popular imple­
mentation in many inpatient and community/social care
settings symptoms (National Institute for Clinical
Excellence [NICE], 2009, NICE, 2015, NICE, 2016;
Schouten, De Niet, Knipscheer, Kleber, &
Hutschemaekers, 2015; Uttley, Stevenson, Scope,
Rawdin, & Sutton, 2015). In these contexts, creative
arts therapies have been shown to bolster an ability for
communication and self-reflection (Hackett, 2012;
Rothwell, 2008; Taylor, 2017). In contrast, systematic
reviews on the efficacy of art therapy have criticized
a lack of standardization in such treatments, warning
that beneficial outcomes are difficult to generalize
beyond the specific interventions and client populations
(Maujean, Pepping, & Kendall, 2014; Slayton, D’Archer,
& Kaplan, 2010). While these therapies are variable and
specialized, they provide an example of how creative
processes and psychotherapy processes can be explicitly
linked.
Creativity and psychotherapy outcomes
Very few studies have examined creativity in psycholo­
gical treatment. Research suggests that patients’ creativ­
ity increases over treatment as mental distress decreased
(Yonatan-Leus, Tishby, Shefler, & Wiseman, 2017), and
that creativity relates to life satisfaction across the life­
span (Peterson & Park, 2006). Similarly, very few studies
have examined the therapists’ level of creativity and its
potential role in treatment outcome. In one study,
patients treated by therapists who were rated as more
creative by observer-coders achieved significantly
greater decreases in clinical symptoms (Čukurs &
Sebre, 2013). However, in a more recent study, the
observer-rated creativity of the therapist was not found
to predict patient treatment outcomes (Yonatan-Leus,
Shefler, & Tishby, 2019). Taken together, this lack of
direct research on the intersection between creativity
and psychotherapy outcomes provides the opportunity
to instead explore areas in which these constructs
overlap.
Discussion
Despite creativity’s longstanding relevance to mental
health, the intersection between creativity and psy­
chotherapy has received little empirical research atten­
tion. As of 2011 there were no empirical studies that
examined the direct relationship between creativity and
psychotherapy patients, process or outcome (Flaherty,
2011), and, as of 2021, only one study on patient out­
come (Yonatan-Leus et al., 2017). This gap in the litera­
ture may be partly blamed on the nebulous and
essentially unquantifiable definitions of creativity, as it
is most often discussed in theoretical and abstract terms.
Empirical research on creativity is mainly focused on
defining the construct itself, such as identifying which
traits and tendencies creativity correlates with. This
sprawling ideology is further reflected in the fact that
there are currently dozens of measures to evaluate crea­
tivity, all of which have identified strengths and short­
comings (Puryear et al., 2017), with none successfully
encapsulating the construct entirely (Puryear & Lamb,
2020).
Based on the little and limited empirical research so
far that examines the intersection between creativity and
psychotherapy, it is worthwhile to explore the ways in
which the two concepts overlap. A beneficial focus for
future research may focus on if psychotherapy treat­
ments may or may not be mediated by patient creativity.
If the therapeutic process can be heralded as a creative
act, then a patient may be able to implicitly learn the
creative process of first generating many thoughts and
ideas before subsequently synthesizing these effectively
to arrive at novel and useful solutions. Taken together,
several patient characteristics were reflective of creative
individuals: an openness to new experiences, a tolerance
for ambiguity, a capacity for cognitive flexibility, an
ability to experience and regulate intense emotions, as
well as a minimal exacerbation of any mental illness.
A successful treatment may thus result in patients
who demonstrate qualities of a creative individual:
They may be better able to accept and be curious about
new and uncertain experiences, to tolerate ambiguity, to
access and understand a diverse array of emotional
experiences, to exhibit cognitive flexibility and integra­
tion amongst discrete cognitive processes to problem
solve, and to show fewer clinical symptoms. This sug­
gests that there might be some evidence for the theory

that a successful psychotherapy treatment results in
a more creative patient (Watts, 1962). The claim that
psychotherapy can creatively shape adaptive perspec­
tives, beliefs, and behaviors (Holm-Hadulla, 2020)
might eventually be supported by empirical evidence,
but there is still much to study and learn about how to
build on this research clinically.
Future research directions and challenges
Psychotherapy research has its own conceptual and
methodological challenges, but the intersection with
creativity brings a set of additional measurement chal­
lenges to the table. Creativity remains a broad construct,
and the measurements of creativity used in the empirical
studies are substantially diverse, each holding significant
limitations of their own. For example, up to 40% of
empirical papers assess creativity of research partici­
pants via self-report measures (Forgeard & Kaufman,
2016), which is potentially problematic when consider­
ing participant self-favorability bias. Self-report mea­
sures of creativity were found to be unreliable on their
own (Snyder, Hammond, Grohman, & Katz-
Buonincontro, 2019), and may be of better use as
a supplementary to observer-rated measures (Silvia
et al., 2021).
Moreover, popular measures of creativity most often
assess divergent thinking ability, such as the ability to list
as many uses for common objects as possible. While the
capacity for divergent thinking may be regarded as
a potential for creativity (Runco, 2008), the capacity
for convergent thinking isn’t assessed nearly as often
(Barbot et al., 2019). This limitation speaks to a well-
known dilemma in the field of creativity research but is
nevertheless worth mentioning here when considering
how creativity is in fact defined and assessed in psy­
chotherapy research.
Moving forward, it is worthwhile to expand the field
of research on the role of creativity in psychotherapy
patients, process and outcome. If creativity can be
hypothesized as a beneficial ability that can be harnessed
in psychotherapy, it is worth considering exactly how
and when that phenomenon could occur. There are
several options for how to investigate this topic. First,
a research study could attempt to assess patient and/or
therapist creativity and treatment outcomes throughout
a course of psychotherapy. In addition to measures of
clinical symptoms and the working alliance, an exter­
nally rated measure of patients/therapists level of crea­
tivity could be administered at the start of the treatment
as well as at different intervals of a treatment. This would
allow for time-series prediction models if creativity pre­
dicts an increased working alliance or symptom
CREATIVITY RESEARCH JOURNAL 7
reduction later in treatment. Comparing assessed levels
of creativity across different treatment modalities might
identify differences in these creative change processes
and its relation to treatment outcome,
Additionally, it is worthwhile to examine constructs
related to both creativity and psychotherapy to identify
possible key mechanisms of change in treatment. First,
comparing assessed levels of creativity across different
treatment modalities might identify differences in crea­
tive change and subsequent treatment outcome. For
example, creativity might be more important in treat­
ments that require more active collaboration. Creativity
might be a mechanism of change in a psychoanalytic
therapy that is less structured and more metaphorical,
but be less important in the more directive and psycho-
educational approach often taken in cognitive beha­
vioral therapy? Similarly, creativity might be more
important in treatments that require more active colla­
boration. Another variable of interest might be cognitive
flexibility. Observing changes in cognitive flexibility,
especially for people who struggle from maladaptive
repetitive thought (Andrews-Hanna et al., 2020) may
relate to creative ability and reflect a therapeutic out­
comes, especially in modalities such as cognitive therapy
and mentalization based therapy.
Additionally, researchers might want to utilize case
studies to investigate patient/therapists changes in level
of creativity over time, examining within treatment
changes moment-to-moment. Detailed analyses of
therapists’ techniques and patients’ responses could
help to clarify how exactly patients’ creativity is facili­
tated in treatment. This could include identifying crea­
tive processes such as problem solving and ideation, or
enhancement of traits associated with creative thinking
such as openness to experience. These case studies could
then test if certain patient traits may predict requisite
gains in inherent creative ability in therapy, which may
in turn predict further positive progress in psychother­
apy treatment.
Regardless of research design, creativity may be con­
sidered as a possible mediator, moderator, and/or out­
come of treatment progress. Three hypotheses can be
posited: 1) Patients who experience a significant
improvement in psychotherapy treatment will also
report a significant increase in creative ability. This
views creativity as a possible treatment outcome; 2) If
patients are assessed as creative before treatment begins,
they will see more positive treatment outcomes. This
views creativity as a possible treatment moderator;
Hypothesis 3) Patients who experience a significant
increase in creative ability throughout treatment will
show more treatment improvements. This views crea­
tivity as a possible treatment mediator.
8 D. GUTTERMAN AND K. AAFJES VAN-DOORN
Implications and limitations
If empirical research were to support the proposed
hypotheses and demonstrate a relationship between
a patients’ level of creativity and treatment outcomes,
this would have potential clinical implications.
Clinicians might want to empower their patients by
leveraging their latent creative ability in order to max­
imize progress in treatment. In the future, clinicians
might possibly benefit from training in how to attend
to patients’ creative capacities, possibly as an assessment
before and during treatment to model and bolster the
creative process in psychotherapy itself.
Therapist creativity also remains an empirically
ambiguous subject that warrants further consideration.
If the collaborative therapeutic process has been theo­
rized as facilitative to the patient’s creative ability, then
therapist creativity must be subject to examination as
a potential key variable. After all, the reviewed patient
traits can also be considered as therapist traits. While
implications for therapist creativity are currently nebu­
lous, they are far from unapplicable.
Furthermore, creativity can be argued as a valued
asset in today’s world, and it is a trait worth focusing
on in psychotherapy regardless of the reviewed empiri­
cal and theoretical links. Creativity has amassed increas­
ing cultural relevance as society continues to transition
into an age of information and innovation (Fogarty
et al., 2015), and can now be increasingly considered to
be a culturally essential ability (Freedman, 2010). If the
primary goal of psychotherapy is to help patients func­
tion better in their day-to-day lives, then creativity must
be understood as a valuable and potentially necessary
asset for establishing and maintaining a rewarding life­
style (Gladding, 2008).
Conclusion
The construct of creativity has been reviewed as theo­
retically aligning with the field of psychotherapy.
Recent empirical research in the field of psychology,
in conjunction with theory from humanistic and posi­
tive psychologists, culminates in an association
between creativity and positive mental health. This is
due in part to the contemporary understanding of
creativity as a form of adaptive functioning to generate
new and useful ideas for applications in day-to-day life,
rather than a measure of specialized artistic talent. If
a therapeutic environment can aim to bolster this kind
of “everyday creativity” through a modeling of the
creative process as well as encouragement of character­
istics associated with creativity, treatment may poten­
tially open new pathways toward resilience, acceptance,
adaptation, self-actualization, and overall positive men­
tal health. With future research, creative ability is
hypothesized to hold a positive relationship with psy­
chotherapy treatment process and outcomes. It is
worth exploring exactly how creativity might influence
psychotherapeutic work, and how patients’ and thera­
pists’ creativity may best be fostered. We posit that the
described indirect evidence – correlations between
creativity and healthy patients’ traits and treatment
progress – might imply the importance of harnessing
latent creative ability in psychotherapy, and thus war­
rants further research.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
ORCID
Daniel Gutterman http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3753-384X
Katie Aafjes Van-Doorn http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2584-
5897
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