I am having some serious issues at the moment… I had, a few months ago, what can only be described as a breakdown, following a prolonged period of mental unrest.

My main problem is critically /destructively analysing everything – therefore not being able to switch off and enjoy anything.

Before, IQ test measured at 147. Now, it is 168.

I did one of the right-left assessments… 58% right brained showing 84% random processing:

I know these tests are limited but this ‘result’ certainly rings true – I live in chaos, ‘see’ patterns in everything, being able to make unrealistically accurate inferences from little source information.

I am completely lost. I have had to quit my consultancy work and have no idea what is happening to me or what I should do with my life.

Does anyone recognise anything here – does anyone have any ideas as to what I should read or do to help myself. Does anyone have an idea as to what kind of work is suitable for me?

(“The left-brain/right-brain” metaphor is just a really easy meme to grab onto and spread.)

In any research data, the more wiggle room you have in your basic concepts, the easier it is to define them in a way that confirms your existing theory and lets you derive different conclusions from the same heterogeneous data.

I think it’s reasonable science to do that so long as you specify what you are measuring and how, but it is poor science when you smuggle in conclusions about “creativity” and such to give your paper more attention or try to tie it to popular myths.

Take a different but similar example. Consider the damage done to our understanding of mental ability by defining “genius” as very high IQ, which was done for a long time in psychometrics based on the theory that IQ measures mental power in general. Not entirely unreasonable, but it obscures the heterogeneity of the data.

The problem in that case is that there are so many counter-examples of “genius” in specific areas that do not have high IQ and so many people with high IQ that do not resemble even vaguely contribute what we think of as genius – that the technical definition takes on a very over-reaching quality.

My argument is that this very same thing happens with “creativity”. All we have in terms of definitions of how creative problem solving happens are hammers, so the problem looks like a nail suitble for the hammer we have at hand.

I hope that clarifies my thinking somewhat.

kind regards,

Todd

As I read it, it is very well supporting the “right brain and creativity” idea.

http://www.psychology.csusb.edu/facultyStaff/SilviaKaufmanPretz.pdf

I agree that original thinking could and should be encouraged more. I also think calling it “right brained thinking” is probably inaccurate and to me seems to serve no useful purpose in the long run.

From my perspective, encouraging and appying original thinking is an art, it is at least partly domain specific (people are very often usefully creative in some areas and not others), and it is not useful to think of it as a simple switching of sides of our head. In my opinion.