For arts educators and all those concerned with fostering creativity, it seems reasonable to try to define inspiration. Yet, definitions of inspiration remain, well, uninspiring. Louis Pasteur’s quote is a prelude into the intellectual rationalisation of inspiration; a “prepared mind” presumably suggesting that novel ideas never arrive from ‘’out of the blue’’. This essay challenges psychological definitions, which render inspiration as an impassive cognitive process.

Before investigating the inspiration process according to psychology, it is interesting to note some earlier descriptions of the phenomenon. Socrates, for example, maintained that inspired thoughts originate with the gods, ideas coming not when a person is rational, but when someone is ‘beside himself’. (Cave, 2000) The origin of the word itself, like Socrates definition, contrasts greatly with the rational explanations conveyed by contemporary psychology. Stating that the word inspiration evolved from the Latin term inspirare, “to breath into”, David Perkins (2001) writes:

“Inspiration means first and foremost an influx of insight breathed into a human b

Macquarie Encyclopedic Dictionary 1990, The Macquarie Library Pty Ltd, Sydney.

eing from the Gods.” (Perkins, 2001, p. 179)

My point here then is that cognitive theories - pragmatic as they may seem - do not account for the experience of inspiration in its entirety. Ideas probably do not arrive from the nowhere, (or the gods for that matter) that is not the debate. However, the emotive and spiritual experiences affiliated with inspiration are not accounted for. Inspiration is evidently an emotional process, yet this has been ignored by psychological theory.

“The experience of sudden insight is so extraordinary that it is natural to turn to extraordinary explanations, including inspiration. The idea of inspiration echoes the common experience that insights arrive out of nowhere, bolts from the blue. Inspiration is the ultimate mental overdrive.” (Perkins 2001, p.180)

Some topics in this essay:
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