Journeying with the creative writing doctorate: whose story is it?

Why would a creative writer, whose ideas are born in images and dreams, whose expression flows from them first like a spring and then a fabulous waterfall lit up by a rainbow of light, want to be so curtailed, constrained and managed by the shape and journey of a doctoral thesis? What kind of story might they possibly want to tell in a mode that has historically been antithetical to what we recognise as creative writing? Or is there a way, in the contemporary doctoral space, to push the boundaries of academic thought and rigour? Is there a way of re-claiming the space to connect creativity with scholarship?