Creative individuals frequently describe the creative process as irrational. Even those luminaries who are in the most rational and logic-driven of fields, such as physics and mathematics, attest to the irrational and illogical nature of creative accomplishments. The empiricist Karl Popper, for example, wrote that “every discovery contains ‘an irrational element’ or ‘a creative intuition’” (Popper, 1959/2005, p. 8). The mathematician Poincaré suggested that “logic has very little to do with discovery or invention” (cited in Beveridge, 1957, p. 85). Regarding scientific creativity, Einstein wrote that “there is no logical way to the discovery of these elemental laws. There is only the way of intuition” (Einstein, 1952, p. 10).

Given that there is often a perceived illogical or irrational component to creative work (an intuitive leap, so to speak), it is reasonable to suggest that cognitive states that allow access to intuitive or irrational thought processes might promote creative ideation. Psychopathological brain states, which are often characterized by irrational thought processes, may act as doorways into the chaotic and irrational aspects of thought that can inspire intuitive leaps of imagination and creative ideas (see Jamison, 1993; Norlander, 1999; Prentky, 1989, 2000–2001).