The effects of a dreamwork technique on creative potential

Katz, Linda

The effects of a dreamwork technique on creative potential

Master Thesis

1988

Publisher

University of Cape Town

Department

Department of Psychology

Faculty

Faculty of Humanities

Abstract

The aim of this study is to determine whether an awareness of unconscious processes, as elicited by a dreamwork technique, will increase creative potential. In the present investigation, 54 undergraduate students were randomly divided into three groups. Each group was tested for creativity on two measures: (1) The Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking, and (2) The Rorschach Test (movement response). For three weeks all subjects completed a dreamwork assignment, which was systematically varied across the three levels of the independant variable. The experimental group recorded their dreams daily, and answered questions on a dreamwork questionnaire designed to stimulate associations and amplifications to dream imagery (Group A). One control group recorded their dreams and performed a logical task on their content (Group B), while the other control group collected dreams from other people, and performed the same logical task on their content (Group C). It was hypothesized that those subjects who had an opportunity to work with and amplify the unconscious imagery occurring in their dreams would be more likely to increase in their creative potential, than those subjects who did not have this opportunity. Each subject met weekly with the experimenter for supervisory and motivational purposes. At the end of the study all subjects were retested with a parallel version of the Torrance and the Rorschach. Scoring on the Torrance yielded ten different measures, and six measures on the Rorschach. Using a two-way analysis of variance of repeated measures, no significant changes occurred on the Rorschach scores, but on the Torrance Tests, highly significant changes took place in Figural measures of Fluency, Originality, Elaboration and Figural Totals, as well as highly significant increases on all four verbal measures of Fluency, Flexibility, Originality and Verbal Totals. Since no interaction occurred, t-tests were performed, to discover that the increases in creativity on the Torrance occurred not only to experimental subjects in Group A, but also to subjects in Group C. These findings are discussed in relation to previous theoretical and empirical work on the creative process, and it is suggested that the increase in creativity, as measured by a divergent thinking test battery (Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking), was produced, not by the actual content of the tasks involved, but by the establishment of a problem-solving mind set.