Moreover, Dr. Naiman, who has worked one-on-one with a grip of musicians, explains, “There’s a concept called the Puer, the colloquial term is Peter Pan Syndrome. It’s this notion of getting high and getting higher and higher and higher, and never coming down. The difficulty with that is a lot of people never want to come down.”
According to Naiman, Puer energy is quite common among music industry professionals and, while it can be beautiful, a lot of his work with entertainers has been centered around preparing these individuals to exit that high. “You need to be willing to descend,” he stresses. “This is a challenge in our world today.”
While Ostrovsky contends artists who hit creative dry spells are more likely to trigger these hypomanic episodes in order to hit a productive high, both doctors attest drugs can produce a similar effect. This might be, in part, why we’ve seen countless rap artists battle and overcome addiction in tandem with a project release.
Or consider all of the interviews in which artists discuss the eureka moment that occurred at three or four in the morning—that stroke of inspiration was no accident.
“People who burn the midnight oil have readier access to their unconscious,” Ostrovsky points out. “You dream more after sleep deprivation, so if they’re dreaming about music, they will have readier access to things like musical melodies and choruses in their dreams.”
This state of sleepy consciousness, as Dr. Naiman describes, will find artists immersed in “waking dreams.” The antithesis of the escapism of a daydream, Naiman says, is that waking dreams bring you deeper into your unconscious, which can strengthen your creative process and your writing.