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Albert Rothenberg coined the term 'Janusian Thinking', now 'Janusian process', to refer to the ability to conceive and use multiple antithetical or opposite thoughts simultaneously, a capacity Rothenberg found to be a component of outstanding creativity. His research has consisted of controlled experiments and empirical studies of literary and artistic prize winners and Nobel laureates in chemistry, physics, and medicine or physiology. He has also described the homospatial and sep-con articulation as critical factors in creative achievement. The homospatial process consists of actively conceiving two or more discrete entities in the same mental space, a conception leading to the articulation of new identities. Sep-con articulation consists of the conception and use of separation and connection concomitantly with the production of creative integration.
Born in New York, Rothenberg attended Harvard College, graduated in medicine at Tufts University School of Medicine, and received his psychiatric training at the Yale University Department of Psychiatry. He is currently Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. He has been a NIMH Research Career Investigator, has received a Guggenheim Award, and he has been a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences and the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences.
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