It's a fascinating theory, new to me but am looking further. (See wiki article at source). I'm reminded of R.D. Laing's phrase"break through, not break down". This may give some solace or nourishment to those feeling that their distress is something to do with a broadly spiritual crisis.

I"ll get back to you when I"v read it all,interesting,

Nancy Andreason in "The Creative Mind: the physiology of genius" suggests a view of REM sleep that bears a little resemblance to this. As I understand it, the memory connections we've been building all day may actually be dismantled during REM sleep, and reconnected in new ways, perhaps integrating with other memories that do not at first appear related. It may be why many have bursts of creativity after rest.

That's an interesting idea, masbury. You could link too to the idea first proposed by Thomas de Quincey that the mind is a 'palimspset' in which everything is overwritten so that there is no fixed mental identity (mind) even between a few milliseconds: you cannot have the same memory twice. So even in waking, the creative mind is constantly making infinite connections across infinitely thick levels of 'data'.

I've been watching my 2-yr-old grandson, and I think this is why he needs naps. He gets overloaded with information, which is unpleasant, which makes him unable to cope with what's going on around him. So he naps, his mind reorganizes, the data become manageable, and he wakes up ready to absorb more of his world. Napping may be important to creativity.