Lateral Thinking in the Development of Creativity

One of how psychotherapy can improve your mood is to change your mind. What we might call lateralization or lateral thinking is a creative process, as opposed to logical thinking.

Lateral thinking is creative because it involves unexpected ways of looking at a problem and solving it. Instead of going straight, classic and beaten, on the "main road", as logic might urge you or as "usually thinks" in solving a problem, in the case of applying side thinking is if you will as if you were "cutting the Gordian knot."

According to a Greek legend, an oracle predicted that the misunderstandings in Phrygia would end when the king drove the chariot to the temple of Zeus.

Gordius, a simple peasant, was elected king of Phrygia and, as a thank, you, went up to the temple in a chariot worshiping Zeus. But the cart was tied to the yoke with a knot so complicated that no one could untie it. The oracles predicted that the one who managed to untie the Gordian Knot would become the master of Asia.

Later, Alexander the Great knotted his sword, fulfilled his predictions and took possession of western Asia. Alexander the Great did not approach the knot problem in the usual way, trying to unravel the impossible, but proceeded differently.

Or… if we were to think differently: let's say that in redecorating an apartment that has only one room - a studio, that is - an architect encounters a difficulty. The owner of the apartment wants to have a table large enough to accommodate eight people, but the size of such a table would mean that there would be very little room left to move around.

A folding table would not be a solution, because even when folded, it would still take up too much space. A small but significant detail: the room in question has a small floor, but a high ceiling. What would you do instead of the architect?

The beauty of lateral thinking is that it can produce more solutions than logical thinking, thus discovering a space that seemed non-existent by taking the classical path of logical thinking.

What happened in the case of that studio was that the architect had the idea of ​​dividing the room by height, suspending the table vertically, in a similar way to the construction of a drawbridge so that at the top was the table, and below it contained an area with shelves - obtaining at the same time more space, but also an object with double function.

What makes this case a case of lateral thinking is that the architect shifted his approach from one angle of view to another and considered a vertical arrangement instead of a horizontal arrangement.

Deadlock and deadlock

Has it ever occurred to you that when you have a problem to solve, the same and the same ideas come to your mind, even if you already know that they do not work? Like when you make a conundrum and the word that doesn't fit keeps coming to mind over and over again as if you could make it fit.

Somehow, just like Cinderella's ugly sisters, who were trying to shrink her leg to fit her shoe. This harmful persistence stands in the way of lateral thinking, hindering progress and evolution. Logical thinking is so valued in our culture that most of us tend to approach problems only in a linear, always the same way. Sometimes it may be the best approach, but there are many situations in which classical logic does not prove to be useful. Let's think about the next problem, proposed by the British psychologist Edward de Bono, who developed extensive studies on lateral thinking patterns.

A moneylender credited an honest man, but a bit unlucky. The moneylender offers the man the opportunity to pay off all his debts through what seems to be an honorable proposal. He will put two pebbles in a bag, one black and one white, and the debtor's beautiful daughter will draw a stone with her eyes closed. If he pulls the white one, then everything is fine, the man's debt will be erased; but if he pulls the black one, then she'll have to marry the moneylender to save her father from prison.

The moneylender has no intention of playing fair, and the girl sees him putting two black pebbles in the bag and making the white one lost. What should she do? If your attention is focused on the pebbles, let your face standstill. On the one hand, it does not make sense to expose the deception, because it will only infuriate the moneylender. On the other hand, if he throws a stone, it will be black, and the girl will be in trouble.

But, if you think about the remaining stone, the white one, you might have the answer. In this way, you come to realize that there are only two possibilities (only two pebbles). One solution could be, for example, for the girl to throw a stone and escape on foot.

There are so many black and white pebbles on the floor and it is impossible to find the stone that had been drawn. "It's okay," the girl might say at the time, "We can tell what we shot by looking at the stone left in the bag." It makes you wonder why such a smart girl didn't want a rich husband…

The game of ideas

A creative way of thinking is to let your mind play with all kinds of possibilities. Logical thinking, very useful in many situations, has the disadvantage of discouraging playful activity (play). Often, visual thinking, in images, can contain the seeds of practical achievement.

Leonardo Da Vinci, in his sketches, discovered the principles of flight, even if the technique of those times was not advanced enough to be able to put them into practice.

Mistake as an opportunity

Another aspect of lateral thinking is the ability to use the chances that arise, to see opportunities from mistakes, instead of making mistakes out of the horizon of attention. The history of science is full of examples in this regard. When Louis Pasteur experimented with cholera germs, one of his assistants forgot to go on vacation to inject a batch of chickens with germs. As the nurse's vacation lasted two weeks, the germ culture lay forgotten in the lab all this time.

On his return, the nurse tried to cover up his mistake, administering the outdated crop and the remaining uninjected batch. The surprising finding was that all the chicks in the group injected with the old germs lived and the others died. Pasteur's mind was flexible enough to ask, "Why?" If he had thought in linear terms, he would have seen that it was a mismanaged experiment, because not all batches of chickens had been injected at the same time.

But Pasteur saw the other side of the mistake in the experiment, concluding such an important conclusion for medicine: a culture of germs with a weakened vitality protects the disease, stimulating the production of antibodies. Chance, of course, favors well-prepared minds. But even if we open our minds to more possibilities, the chance can make us smile.

Small lateral thinking exercise

Try to look at the situation that is troubling you from several points of view.

Use your imagination, use your thinking in pictures, let your mind run wild (a few tens of minutes a day or at least a week), without rushing to censor your ideas.

Mentally review your or others' mistakes or unforeseen or accidental situations that have occurred around you and see if new ideas can come up.