Intuition and Creativity in Psychotherapy

Human beings use cognition creatively. Rather than concepts and schemas forming the structure of mind through which stimuli are filtered and processed, human beings are continually modifying and using concepts to try to deal with everyday life problems. Creativity also arises from tacit, intuitive knowing. Such knowing is grounded in bodily, experiential knowledge, which is nonconceptual. At the most basic level, human beings know the world more in terms of its aesthetics than in terms of the kind of conceptual analysis postulated by those who model the human after a naive scientist. The creative process is one of articulating tacit or experiential knowing in words or symbols, and then revising those words and symbols. Therapists also use this process. Creativity and the use of intuition in therapy are described, and a case history given.