The mad hatter's tea party

Ask any artist, musician, writer, or researcher what holds them back and you will realize that there is an invisible third person in the room. Some refer to this third person as "the judge" or "the saboteur," but as a rule it is known as "the inner critic." The best-known depiction of this negative force is perhaps from a cartoon: Donald Duck, when an angel and a devil appear on either side of his head, offering both good and bad advice on what he should do. The duck's creators probably stole the idea from Christopher Marlowe's theater classic Doctor Faustus, written in 1592, where two figures – an angel sent from God, and a demon sent from the Devil himself—fight over Faustus's soul. The winner in Marlowe's piece is the Devil, the inner critic, and Faustus winds up in Hell. In modern times – and perhaps thanks to Donald Duck – this image of Christian morality has been transformed into a depiction of the forces we all struggle with, between the evil intentions and high-minded ideals we sometimes find wrestling inside us.

The inner critic gives you negative feedback on what you're doing, and can be quite an unpleasant voice to fight. You can be sure that for every word hammered into my keyboard, I have had a comprehensive argument with my inner critic. Every step I take through this book is like wading through a quagmire in rubber boots; it is hard work, it goes "schloop," and I have to drag my feet. But I keep going regardless, mainly because I'm extremely stubborn and, for some incomprehensible reason, refuse to give up.

You may think that all my talk of inner critics is just attention seeking, but it's actually quite logical, not something we – those of us whose livelihoods depend on being creative – just make up. We really do have one, all of us. The inner critic is actually a pretty smart invention. It stops you from making an idiot of yourself. It shouts, "Off with her head!" whenever you come up with a terrible idea, and actually just tries to look after you. I named my inner critic the Queen of Hearts, after Wonderland's tyrant in chief (who bears more than a slight resemblance to the short, squat, and all-powerful Queen Victoria, who reigned over the British Empire when Lewis Carroll wrote the book). She is powerful and slightly mean, perhaps, and a representative for the rules and norms of society. However, being creative – like Alice – you need to break the rules occasionally in order to create something genuinely interesting. Because you are curious! And imaginative! And have strange "aha" moments! And sometimes you want to make something new and avoid being conventional and boring. If this sounds like you, then it's most likely that the Queen of Hearts comes running after you shouting, "Off with her head!" But you have to be like Alice: drink from the bottle that makes you big, grow all the way up to the roof, and pick up the angry little queen by her dress and dangle her in front of your nose.

I think about my daughter, and her chocolate-milk-juice. No inner critic there. A real Einstein, except with none of Einstein's knowledge or experience. Immediately after crashing into the bridge, I too felt briefly like a four-year-old, equally uninhibited. But little by little, my inhibitions returned, and this time with a vengeance. It was like waking up after a year long party and thinking, "Was I dancing on the table in my underwear singing hits from the 1980s? At lunchtime, at work?" (I didn't do that, of course, but that's how it felt.)

One day the queen banged on my door. "Hello!" she bellowed, "I am the Queen of Hearts! Your desk is a mess, and research shows that a messy desk is bad for creativity! Look at those ugly shoes! Have you looked in the mirror lately? And what gave you the impression that you can write? Nothing you write has any significance!" I nodded, dumbfounded. This meant war. If I was going to write a single word of this book, I would have to deal with her.

So where does she come from?

When we are born, our brains are ready to accept every single impression we experience. And our 100 billion brain cells – neurons – quickly form an incredible number of connections: synapses, as they are called. We can safely say that this is an extreme form of openness. But not everything can continue to be possible; at some point your brain has to start providing ready-made answers to a range of questions. This is crucial for learning. You will know automatically that the transparent container in your hand is a glass, and the white liquid sloshing around in it is milk, without too much thought. We learn words for the things around us, and for the behavioral conventions within our own culture – a process that begins when we're about two years old and continues until we are adults. The technical name for this is "pruning," where the connections become fewer, but stronger – a network of tiny pathways within the brain that become roads, then avenues, and finally eight-lane highways. We become socialized; we learn what is important and unimportant.

We talk about highways in the brain because the synapses become reinforced in a particular direction. This transformation from signals to superhighways is called long-term potentiation, and was discovered by the Norwegian scientist Terje Lomo in 1966. We don't want to simply repeat what we already know; we constantly learn new things as we grow up. The brain consolidates our memories, cutting and pruning all that we don't need. This creates a memory network you can build on when learning new things as an adult. When you follow a new and unexpected association or idea, it doesn't involve choosing the shortest route, from one point to the next; it means going from A to B via Q and X. Maybe you won't make it to B at all, once you are out on this new road? We cannot always move around via strange associations, of course; we also have to follow conventions and habits, to stay connected to each other and our culture. And this is where she enters the picture: she, the Queen of Hearts, represents socialization within society. For example, it was she who made us take it for granted in the 1400s that "the sun revolves around the earth," and, today, that "the earth revolves around the sun." It is she who reminds us of codes of politeness, such as saying "Thanks for having me," or looking presentable when you meet someone for the first time. The inner critic makes sure we have control over what's good and bad, what's acceptable and unacceptable, what's nice and what isn't so nice, and how the world – and culture in general – is held together.

"We can determine the point when a child starts to develop an inner critic. It happens roughly after the age of six, when children have internalized a personal standard for what a good drawing is, and evaluate it regardless of what their parents say about it," says Evalill Bolstad Karevold, a developmental psychologist at the University of Oslo.

Before six, children will show pictures they have drawn to their parents without thinking about the response they might get, but eventually they will become more concerned with the feedback. And in the end, it might not matter what the parents think, since the child will be relating to their own inner standard. The drawings will still be "ugly," no matter how much the parents insist that they are beautiful.

"Obviously, it can be good for a child to internalize criticism like this, but it can also shut the door to creativity. The main focus of my work is the temperament of the child. Every child is different, and some have a far greater fear response than others. Some have more rigid mannerisms than those who are more outgoing, open, and flexible. How the parents respond to the child in this situation will affect how the child responds later in life. It involves both genetic and environmental factors," says Karevold.

Being a parent means identifying this temperament and working either with or against it throughout the child's upbringing. If your child is outgoing and funny, you can provide them with something else, like structure and routine. If your child is introverted and more safety-seeking, you can encourage them through activities that explore their spontaneous and outgoing sides.

"This will lead to the child being more flexible, and better equipped for dealing with life's tasks and challenges. And being flexible is a part of creativity. But the most important thing of all is to give the child a feeling of safety. This is the main foundation for being creative: a child should feel safe enough to explore the world, to risk making mistakes," she says.

Exposure therapy can make an anxious child or adult less afraid. It involves gradual exposure to something you find dangerous, in small doses, until it no longer feels scary. To work creatively actually means you are constantly testing those boundaries. According to researchers like Joy Bhattacharya, a creative person is someone who has maintained some of the strange connections between the different areas of their brain, and who is not entirely conventional and predictable according to societal norms. Those defined as creative are unafraid of trying out things that are contrary to the generally accepted norms. It is likely that they have a bigger and more finely woven network of connections between the nerve cells in the brain, and a bigger than normal arsenal of associations—something that makes their brains more flexible, more robust, and, at the same time, more unpredictable. A bit like a child, perhaps.

"All children are artists. But very few of them continue to be. We streamline ourselves, and suppress what those of us in creativity research call 'divergent thinking.' We don't allow ourselves to think unusual thoughts; it's not something that is rewarded socially," says Bhattacharya. "To work creatively is to allow yourself to make mistakes. It involves having some kind of grit. Hard work over time will be rewarded. The idea of needing talent is overrated."

An experiment that involved music teachers and their students showed that the music teachers were unable to guess which of the students would become professional musicians as adults; the students who had a clear musical talent, but never practiced, never became especially good. Success comes through good interplay between talent and hard work—and between cultural codes and original ideas.

I think I might just try to get a more even balance between being totally free and being restricted. What works best seems to be a combination of stubbornness, hard work, knowledge of conventions, and original ideas. The philosopher Aristotle was perhaps right—Plato's student talked about "the golden mean" in all aspects of life. If what you are doing is to be of any cultural significance, you should retain some of your inhibitions; if you want your work to resonate with other people, you cannot be detached from them. It doesn't help to be a "mad genius." What actually happens when you're being creative is quite different: there is an exchange. The writer Suzanne Moore has revealed that she writes in bed, alone, wearing lipstick. "It is a sign I am moving between the inner and the outer world. That is what writing is, an oscillation between the internal and the external," she writes.

Personally, I spend far too much time arguing with my inner critic. So, I think I'll talk to a psychologist; perhaps he can get the Queen of Hearts to calm down a little.

"It's quite possibly just Freud's 'superego,'" says psychologist and writer Peder Kjos, when I talk to him about the problem.

Freud divided the human psyche into three parts: the id, full of repressed desire and longings; the superego, which represents societal norms (which, during the early 1900s, were pretty strong in Vienna, where Freud worked); and the ego, which constantly mediates between the two, between our instincts and societal conventions.

"You need to ask yourself where this merciless inner critic is coming from, and what purpose it actually serves you," Kjos says. It serves a lot of purposes: when I listen to my inner critic I'm able to behave more or less normally, and it's more of a comfort than not; I actually feel quite weird in general. When I overhear the Queen of Hearts, all kinds of strange things can happen; I have far too many weird thoughts and jokes on the tip of my tongue at any given time—I can never say everything I'm thinking out loud! "What's creative and what's free contrasts with what's disciplined and effective. An inner critic requires having a form of discipline. Order and belief in the future have brought us a lot of good things. In our time, however, we've placed a lot of importance on what's unique and individual, and artists like Munch have glorified madness and the forces of chaos. But discipline isn't necessarily an obstacle to creativity; the two just need to be balanced," says Kjos.

Kjos writes constantly, and is highly disciplined. In 2019 alone, he published three books and made a podcast and a TV program, in addition to contributing regularly to Norway's biggest newspapers. Yet he is seriously troubled by his own inner critic.

"Overcoming that voice isn't easy. I try to completely disconnect from it when I write, and then reconnect to it afterwards when I'm reading through the text. What I want above all is to find some kind of balance between order and chaos. There's a profound wisdom in Asian thinking. Kali is the Hindu god of both creation and destruction. They are parts of the same individual, not opposites," he says.

Kjos believes, for example, that to accept that everything has already been said can make it easier, not harder, to write.

"It isn't possible to tell an original story today. What's different is the perception of something, your perception. It is about the eye that sees, and precisely how you see the world. So you have to focus on that," says Kjos.

But for a while, a very long while, I had no perception.

After colliding with the bridge headfirst, my brain felt like it was continually bursting with energy and ideas. I was also quite rude and insensitive in the immediate aftermath. The concussion blunted my social intelligence (I've been told I have some normally) and my sense of humor; I was no longer able to tell jokes and make others laugh. I lost my rhythm, I lost my point of perception, I lost touch with other people. I lost myself a little.

I cried almost constantly after the crash. Not because I was sad, but because my brain was simply unable to distinguish between the impressions it was receiving. It was chaos, and not the kind of chaos that leads to great art. It was just . . . a mess. Most of the time I felt like a certain orange-colored former head of state: slightly out of control, slightly uncomfortable to be around, humorless, self-pitying, childish, and with a lack of self-deprecation – behavior that may have been due to me striking the right side of my forehead, near a part of the brain associated with inhibitions and sociality. Namely, the right temporal lobe.

In 2018, scientists in London moved a little closer to understanding the inner critic. They sent weak electric currents through the temporal lobe of a test subject who, at the same time, solved problems set by Sarnoff Mednick's Remote Associates Test. Mednick's test, along with the Torrance Test and Joy Paul Guilford's test, is the most recognized standard for measuring creativity. When the electric current was applied to the subject's head, they solved the problems in a far more original and less obvious or conventional manner than when they tried the same tasks without the electric current. All the test subjects were equipped with an EEG, and the current was applied so as to reduce the waves in the temporal lobe to alpha  a state similar to what you might experience during meditation, which occurs somewhere between dreaming and being fully conscious. This new research therefore attempts to replicate ancient meditation techniques!

During the interwar period, the German scientist Hans Berger discovered that there is constant electrical activity in the brain, measuring brain waves in cycles per second, or hertz.

While resting with our eyes closed or during meditation—or in any type of conscious relaxing—our brains are in alpha waves, which are between 8 and 12 hertz. Delta waves (less than 4 hertz) occur during deep sleep, and theta waves (4–8 hertz) during light sleep, while beta waves (13–14 hertz) occur during conscious activity – used for concentration and focus and executive function.

Gamma waves (up to 140 hertz) are the most intense of all. In 2014, Professor Mark Beeman, head of the psychology department at Northwestern University, found that when people solve problems and have "aha" moments, their brains are in the low-frequency alpha waves for a split second before switching to the high-frequency gamma waves—just as the test volunteers solved the problems they had been given. It happened every time! First alpha, just before, and then gamma as they solved the problem. Gamma waves tell us something about how new connections are created in the brain, while alpha waves are generally associated with divergent thinking and creative solutions—it was as though the subjects turned inward and made themselves relax just before having the "aha" moment.

At Queen Mary University of London, neuropsychologist Caroline Di Bernardi Luft has attempted to demonstrate how the creative process can be controlled and the inner critic restrained by stimulating the temporal lobe – an area closely connected to the frontal lobe, located near the right temple, just above the ear. To do this, she used alpha waves. Bernardi Luft is a senior lecturer in psychology and creativity scientist, and her team suspected that by opening up the brain to all sorts of associative leaps they could unleash a person's creativity, since the temporal lobe normally tries to block visual noise and extraneous sounds. Our working memory works hard to stifle any extraneous impressions so that we can concentrate on one thing at a time. But it also means inhibiting associations that are in the temporal lobe, so that we can remain more focused.

It was this inhibition that wasn't working terribly well for me after my crash. Which is quite possibly why it was so difficult for me to walk through an airport—I was simply unable to keep the sounds and visual impressions at bay. But we also repress mental leaps in the temporal lobe, and, although they disrupt our concentration, strange and unexpected associations are important for creativity—and after my accident, wild leaps of thought were things I had in abundance.

You could say that when the executive network is functioning, the temporal lobe works almost like a pair of blinders, making you more focused—much like a horse pulling a cart through a chaotic marketplace; however, it also blocks a great deal from your field of vision. With alpha waves, your brain adjusts the blinders to increase your field of vision—along with all the pros and cons that that entails—so that you no longer see the obvious path, and your brain has to find other, new, and alternative routes.

If the brain's obvious associations could be inhibited, then the brain would make new leaps of thought, reasoned Bernardi Luft and her team. They were quite sure that anyone could acquire a greater range of associations if their conventional associations were repressed. One year earlier, Bernardi Luft's team had attempted to do this by passing electricity through the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, the center for executive function. And the result was overwhelmingly clear: 32 percent of the participants solved the problems they were given when they received the electric current, compared with only 5 percent of those who received the wrong type of current or none at all.

"We can improve very specific think-out-of-the-box [processes], but at the same time we decrease working memory processes," explains Bernardi Luft.

This electric method can ruin your concentration, but increase your creativity when it comes to basic problem-solving. It's not especially useful when you want to juggle a lot of ideas simultaneously, such as when you are working on a book and need to keep track of all the chapters—because then you need a well-functioning working memory. What Bernardi Luft's experiment showed was that creativity increased when the executive function decreased, something that also occurs when you are tired.

"If you are a morning person and you are working at night, your dorsolateral prefrontal cortex is going to be suboptimal. So you can potentially use that in your favor to try to work on specific problems that you are stuck on, [as] you have a little bit less cognitive control," she points out.

In her latest experiment on the temporal lobe, Bernardi Luft and her colleagues gave the test subjects a placebo, and yes, it showed that the temporal lobe could be one of the keys to creative thinking. It is, after all, part of the executive function: when the brain is put in alpha (wakeful rest), the doors to our obvious associations close, and the paths to our more unusual ones open. As soon as I read about this, I knew I had to give it a try; it sounded like a bona fide queen killer!

When I asked Bernardi Luft if she could repeat her temporal lobe experiment on me, she showed me the equipment, which was locked in a separate office.

The test she performed on me involved questions about language, logic, associations, and consequence thinking – the same questions her own test subjects had been given—and was divided into four parts.

Before turning the power on, we did a baseline test (one without electricity) which I actually found quite difficult, since much of it contained not only logical mathematics, but several pages where I had to combine three words with a fourth that was often only vaguely associative. English isn't my first language so it all felt pretty frustrating, but I got through it anyway. For the consequences test, I had to answer questions like "What might happen if humans were unable to speak?" or "What can be made from a brick?" – Guilford's test. This went very well and I had masses of ideas.

I then put on a rubber cap full of holes that were perfectly adapted for the electrodes, which were in turn attached to the right side of my head and forehead, using a little jelly to conduct the electricity into my brain. Bernardi Luft assured me that the current was very weak and told me to let her know if it became uncomfortable, in which case she would turn it down. Slowly the EEG locked in on my beta waves and moved down into alpha to draw my brain waves from beta down to alpha.

At first I didn't even notice it; I just thought the light was behaving a little strangely. It started flashing. Then I realized that it was flashing only when I used my right eye. The flashing was coming from my brain! The current was passing through my optic nerve, which made it look like the light was going on and off.

It also tickled, and I had a really weird pulsating sensation in my head. The whole world seemed to be vibrating slightly – the light, the colors, and me; it was as if my brain was quietly humming. It was uncomfortable, but I felt like I needed to hold it together and go outside my comfort zone, to endure a little electric current for the sake of creativity!

Strangely enough, the current made me worse at solving the language problems and the mathematical ones. My mind just went blank when I tried solving them, yet I managed to solve nearly all of them when I tackled them without the current. I was so distracted by the pulsing in my head. But the consequence test, where I had to suggest what might happen if the world's gravity were halved, went much better. I had a huge giggling fit, and a bunch of weird images and ideas popped into my head—although the suggestions I wrote down were almost incomprehensible, clearly only making sense to me. I suddenly felt quite tipsy and stupid, and I regretted having drunk nothing but canteen coffee all day.

"What we're doing here is opening our minds to different ideas," Bernardi Luft told me. "Statistically, there have been more good solutions to our tasks while using alpha wave oscillation than without, so we have seen that his affects creative thinking and causes people to see a larger number of, and more creative, solutions than normal," she said.

Bernardi Luft also found it strange that I'd been seemingly blocked by the current for some of the tasks. Perhaps I was already so creative that the current simply disrupted the strange pathways in my brain? Or maybe something weird happened when I crashed headfirst into the bridge? The scientist couldn't really say anything about that.

"What if I wanted to become more creative by using an electric current in my brain, through alpha stimulation of the temporal lobe – how would I do that?" I asked.

"You'd have to wear this cap on your head all the time," she replied. "Your brain is only being stimulated while you are connected to the electricity, and maybe up to an hour after you've been disconnected."

The prospect of walking around with a rubber hat permanently attached to my head didn't feel hugely tempting. The obvious benefit would, of course, be the stream of weird and original ideas I might get. And it would make me less interested in social conventions and used to humiliating myself. But a rubber cap with electrodes attached would be a fashion statement too far.

But first, I needed to find out more about what had happened to me, behind the right side of my forehead, the part of the head I'd smashed so hard. The temporal lobe connects the language system and the limbic system – which controls all your emotions and is therefore the control center when it comes to the art of writing; the right temporal lobe is also more associative than the left, and usually the least dominant. The temporal lobe at the right temple is responsible for face recognition and nonverbal perception. It is where we perceive music and images, and where we perceive space. The temporal lobes, along with the frontal lobe, are the areas that control our executive function, which in turn affects our concentration and focus. While the temporal lobes block associative noise, sounds, and visual impressions, helping the captain of the ship to hold the course, the frontal lobe is responsible for impulse control and planning, and these areas of the brain are responsible for your more advanced social skills. Damage to the temporal or frontal lobe can drastically affect and change your personality. While investigating how my accident may have affected me, I found, among other things, that damage to the temporal lobe can ruin your sense of humor (something I had experienced) and your sex drive, which can vanish completely. It can also make you very irritable. Damage to the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex can also lead to a loss of direction and willpower, and a reluctance to take the initiative for yourself or others – all quite central elements for social functioning and having a good life. The first time this kind of brain injury was seen to have an effect on someone's personality was almost two hundred years ago…

Adapted with permission of the publisher from the book The Key to Creativity: The Science Behind Ideas and How Daydreaming Can Change the World, written by Hilde Østby, translated by Matt Bagguley and published by Greystone Books in May 2023. Available wherever books are sold.

See also 'The memory alchemists turning rain to gold'.