The benefits of incorporating knowledge about creativity into the supervision of doctoral candidates are considered. It is suggested that supervisors of doctoral candidates should use the language of the creative process. The stages of the creative process can serve as a specific, verbalized reference point for supervision. From the beginning of the project, the candidate can be helped to understand the gestalt of the long, arduous period of the work on the dissertation in a more positive, challenging perspective. In choosing a topic and developing it into a proposal, the candidate is involved in the ability to combine, recombine, or transform the cognitive elements of a problem in a novel and adaptive way. An effort should be made to explain the specifics involved in the preparatory stage of creative problem solving. Next, time should be spent to help the candidate maintain an open cognitive system to help avoid the rigid categorizations that may arise. The doctoral process can be a stimulating experience if the inevitable blockages that occur are seen with the perspective of research findings on creativity. The process requires an alternation between openness and closure, since analytical perception can conflict with creative insight. Sensitivity in supervision implies a knowledge of the functioning of either too much or too little motivation. The creative process results in a creative product, but it also does something to the person, the effect of which may sometimes be more important than the concrete product which is produced. The individual may become sensitive to a new range of phenomena or may develop new strategies of problem solving, which are important outcomes in preparing for future creative activity. (SW)