“All creativity is a kind of  do-it-yourself therapy, an attempt to come to terms with traumatizing challenges.,,In the artist’s case, challenge and response are manifested in his tantalising struggle to

express he inexpressible, to conquer the resistance of his             medium, to escape from the distortions and constraints imposed by the conventional styles and techniques of his time….”

Discussing creativity in the sciences,  Koestler quoted Einstein who said, “The words of the language as written or spoken do not seem to play any role in my mechanism of thought, which relies on more or less clear images of a visual and sometimes muscular type. It seems to me that what you call full consciousness is a limited case which can never be fully accomplished because consciousness is a narrow thing.”

“There are always large chunks of irrationality embedded in the creative process, not only in art (where we are ready to accept it). but in the exact sciences as well.”

From Arthur Koestler’s  The Ghost in the Machine, Macmillan 1967.