Ego autonomy, creativity, and cognitive style. A neuropsychodynamic approach.

True creativity cannot be understood apart from its psychologic prerequisite, ego autonomy. This in turn may depend on some optimum level of functioning in what has been described as the frontal-interhemispheric axis. In this model, the frontal lobes facilitate the programming, guidance, and recursive evaluation of goal-directed behavior, while the left-hemisphere language system provides for the self-articulatory integration of experience and action into a stable self-system. Fluid interactions between the hemispheres provide the raw material for creativity but also for certain forms of psychopathology, particularly manic-depression. The capacity for reflectivity, enabled by the frontal-interhemispheric control system, permits the consolidation of diverse kinds of experience into forms that can be expressed creatively. Schizophrenic thought disorder and psychopathic impulsivity both seem superficially to embody the seeds of primary process-driven creativity, but the deficit in frontal-hemispheric consolidation mechanisms keeps these cognitive products at a noncreatively primitive level. Conversely, the superfocused, hyperrational cognitive style of the obsessive-compulsive precludes the degree of spontaneity in the personality facilitated by easy interhemispheric communication, and so while the machinery for creative production may be operative, the spark that could ignite the whole process dies for lack of fuel. Finally, the present neuropsychodynamic approach emphasizes the interaction of multiple of brain systems in varying and flexible ways as the substrate for complex aspects of human behavior and personality.