Dancing Tree Frog Dreams And Creativity example essay topic

Dreams and Creative Writing: A review of a New York Times article by Thomas Fleming, Instant novels? In your dreams! Dreams do they spawn creative ideas in writers? Well known authors Robert Louis Stevenson, Edgar Allen Poe and Samuel Taylor Coleridge are said to have found inspiration in their dreams for their writing (Temple of Dreams). This article is somewhat like a phenomenological study, in the way the author describes his own experiences of dreams and creative writing.

Thomas Fleming describes several instances in which dreams played a major role in several of his novels. Fleming (2000) is convinced that dreams help illuminate some of the unconscious thoughts a writer has on a subject. The psychologist in me finds this an interesting idea and asks the following question. Does a creative mind form dreams that are more easily recalled or is it that recalled dreams provide fuel for the creative process?

This article mentions no experiments or studies that may have been done. Wilkerson (1998) mentions a study and a book by Harry Hunt (1989), The Multiplicity of Dreams. Unfortunately (and one of the problems with non-professional sources) Wilkerson does not cite the researcher or the date this "study" was done. I have not been able to located anything as of this writing, since I could not access Psych -Lit from home (I found lots of "commonsense psychology", but no research on the web). So, let me continue by planning a study I might undertake (assuming a more exhaustive search turned up nothing to start with), should I be so inclined. The next step might be to conduct some case studies of authors who have gotten creative material from dreams.

Perhaps starting with Amy Tan, author of The Joy Luck Club. Amy has had experience with dreams and her own writing. In an interview for Writers Dreaming by Naomi E pel, Amy said, .".. dreams are not just flotsam and jetsam". and continues with "The kind of writing I do is very dreamlike. The process I go through is similar to what happens when I dream". (Dancing Tree Frog). The case studies would help focus possible research on the connections that writers experience between their dreams and the creative process.

At this point I would do a correlation study to see if there is any relationship between remembering dreams and creativity in writers. If I had some money I could also do a correlation study looking at amount of time spent in dream sleep (EEG) and creativity. In both cases, I would look for existing instruments / procedures that measure dreaming and creative writing in an objective fashion using an interval or ratio scale (so I will have data I can manipulate). Next I would do an experiment where I measured the effect on creativity (my dependent variable) of the amount of dream sleep and recalled dreams (my independent variables). This would be a quasi-experiment since my groups would be randomly selected but not randomly assigned (based on dreaming and recall of dreams, both pre-existing conditions). I would have to be cautious and use a large enough sample to insure that the sorted groups where equal in other (extraneous) variables (or control for them) that might influence creativity.

If I got significant results and the experiment had internal validity, I could show that it is likely that dreams enhance creativity (in the population I sampled). However, the case and correlation studies might lead me to suspect that creativity causes dreams and / or their recall, not the other way around. So, if I want to show a cause and effect relationship I would first need to gather what research and theory is out there. But before I go any further, I think I will sleep on it and see what creative experiment ideas I dream up. Resources: Dancing Tree Frog (N.D.) Dreams and Creativity. Dancing Tree Frog.

Accessed January 6, 2000 web Fleming, T (2000, January 3). Instant novels? In your dreams! [Arts section]. The New York Times p.

E 1-E 2. Temple of Dreams (N.D.) Dreams & Creativity. Temple of Dreams. Accessed January 6, 2000 web Wilkerson, R. (1998, November 19). Re: Dreams versus Creativity [6 short paragraphs]. ASD public message board [online posting].

Accessed January 6, 2000 web Resources: Dancing Tree Frog (N.D.) Dreams and Creativity. Dancing Tree Frog. Instant novels? The New York Times p. E 1-E 2. Temple of Dreams.

Accessed January 6, 2000 web.