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Kekule's Dream Solution Jung saw the future in his dream house. Einstein found his life's work in a profound experience he had in the form of a dream. Dreams also solve problems driving our minds past blocks of not only of how we perceive reality but our points of view as well. A famous example of using of a problem solving dream is from the German chemist August Kekule. He dreamt of fiery swirling serpents biting their tails with such brightness and intensity that it was very memorable to him and helped him overcome his mental block. This is how he describes the experience at a dinner commemorating his discovery: "I turned my chair to the fire [after having worked on the problem for some time] and dozed. Again the atoms were gamboling before my eyes. This time the smaller groups kept modestly to the background. My mental eye, rendered more acute by repeated vision of this kind, could not distinguish larger structures, of manifold conformation; long rows, sometimes more closely fitted together; all twining and twisting in snakelike motion. But look! What was that? One of the snakes had seized hold of its own tail, and the form whirled mockingly before my eyes. As if by a flash of lighting I awoke... " Many days after this dream, Kekule intuited that the benzene molecule might not possess a chain shape but instead might be a hexagonal shape.
Kekule kept trying to solve the problem assumming that the structure of the benzene molecule was linear. This perception was holding him back and his lab experiments continued to perplex him. His dreaming mind helped him past this block and his frustration. Kekule was able to combine his scientific mind with his creative intelligence better when released with the freedom of his dreaming mind to solve the problem. Intuition was key as well. Kekule was able to connect the emphasis and information in the dream to the problem at hand, and its solution. Kekule ends his speech with, "Let us learn to dream, gentlemen." Quote From "Creativity, Beyond the Myth of Genius" by Robert Weisberg
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