301By a curious twist, the words Art and Creativity have become closely linked in our society. It is for this reason, that during the recent decades I was generally considered to be studying creativity. There is no necessary association: People can be creative in any sphere of life and the arts can be the scene of bathos and boredom, as well as of beauty, beatitude, or bedlam. (Continued).
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3021) Creative individual spend a considerable amount of time reflecting on what they are trying to accomplish, whether or not they are achieving success.
2) Creative individuals leverage their strengths. They determine their strongest area and build their achievements around these potent intelligences...
3) Creative individuals frame their experiences. Such people are highly ambitious, and they do not always succeed, by any means. But when they fail, they do not waste much time lamenting, blame; or at the extreme, quitting. Instead...they try to build upon its lessons in their future endeavors.
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303I believe that in a number of ways, the kind of solitary individual, the lonely creativity of earlier eras, is far rarer.
xix
304Books
Amabile T: Creativity in context
John-Steiner V: Creative Collaboration
Kaufman, J eds.: Cambridge handbook of creativity
Runco: Creativity: Theories & Themes
Sawyer: Explaining Creativity
Simonton: Origins of Genius
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305Yet Einstein was able to effect a breakthrough precisely because he did not simply accept as given the paradigms and agendas of the physics of his time. Instead, he insisted on going back to first principles in setting for himself the most fundamental problems and in looking for the most comprehensive yet simplifying explanatory axioms.
p
306The Gruber team has uncovered a number of principles that seem to characterize the work of major scientists, like Darwin and Piaget. Such individuals engage in a wide and broad interconnected network of enterprises; exhibit a sense of purpose or will that permeates their entire network, giving direction to their daily and yearly activities, force the creation and exploitation of images of wide scope; and display a close and continuing affective tie to the elements, problems, or phenomenon that are being studied.
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307In a representative study conducted by the Berkeley Institute of Personality Assessment, "creative Architects," as distinguished from their less creative peers, exhibited a greater incidence of such personality traits as independence, self-confidence, unconventionality, alertness, ready access to unconscious processes, ambition, and commitment to work. However, it is not clear whether people who already exhibit these characteristics become creative or whether, as a result of acknowledging creativity, people come to exhibit such positively tinged traits. Also, individuals who work closely with those deemed creative seemed to exhibit a similar profile of traits.
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308In Freud's view, creative individuals are inclined (or compelled0 to sublimate much of their libidinal energy into "secondary" pursuits, such as writing, drawing, composing, or investigating scientific puzzles. He would have found many data of interest in the seven cases presented here.
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309"Might we not say that every child at play behaves like a creative writer, in that he creates a world of his own, or, rather, rearranges the things of his world in a new way which pleases him?...The creative writer does the same as the child at play. He creates a world of phantasy which he takes very seriously--that is, which he invests with large amounts of emotion--while separating it sharply from reality. Freud,
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310Intrinsic Motivation:
Contrary to what is predicted by classical psychological accounts, A(??) has shown that creative solutions to problems occur more often when individuals engage in an activity for its sheer pleasure than when they do so for possible external rewards.
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311Mihaly Csikszentmijalyi--Flow State/Flow Experience
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312During an individuals' immersion in a domain, the locus of flow experiences shifts--what was once too challenging becomes attainable and even pleasurable, while what has long since become attainable no longer proves engaging. Thus, the journeyman musical performer gains flow from the accurate performance of familiar pieces in the repertoire; the youthful master wishes to tackle the most challenging pieces, one most difficult to execute in a technical sense; the seasoned master may develop highly personal interpretations of familiar pieces; or, alternatively, return to those deceptively simple pieces that may actually prove difficult to execute convincingly and powerfully. Continued.
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313Such studies have led to the findings that maximal productivity typically occurs between ages 35-39, but that profiles differ appreciably across disparate domains of knowledge. Thus, poets and mathematicians reach an apogee in their 20s-30s, while historians or philosophers may peak decades later.
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314Childhood discovery becomes both information and journey.
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315Capital of creativity-nurturing childhood = creativity
30
316Definition of a creative individual:
...who regularly solves problems, fashions products, or defines new questions in a domain in a way that is initially considered novel but that ultimately becomes accepted in a particular cultural setting.
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317The analysis of creativity in all its forms is beyond the competence of any one accepted discipline. It requires a consortium of talents: Psychologists, biologists, philosophers, computer scientists, artists, and poets would all expect to have their say. That "Creativity is beyond analysis" is a romantic illusion that we must now outgrow.
Peter Medownar (?)
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318Diagram: Talent (individual)-Domain/Discipline-Field (Judges, inst)-Back to talent.
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319Thus, creativity lies not in the head (or hand) of the artist or in the domain of practices or in the set of judges: Rather, the phenomenon of creativity can only--or at any rate, more fully--be understood as a function of interactions amount these three modes. I have sought to capture the complexity of this dialectic interaction through the multidirectional arrows in the figure.
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320Creativity, however, does not result from such perfect meshes. In using the term asynchronity(?), I refer to a lack of fit, an unusual pattern, or an irregularity within the creative triangle.
39
321...Not only did the creators all have some kind of significant support ssystem at the time, but this support system appeared to have a number of defining components.
1. Affective support from someone with whom he/she would feel comfortable.
2. Cognitive support from someone who understood the breakthrough.
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322Freud's weekly meetings
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323Freud--The Project
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324At times when creators are on the verge of a radical breakthrough, they feel the need to ty out their new language on a trusted other invdividual--perhaps to confirm that they themselves are not totally mad and may even be on to something new and important. This desire to communicate has both cognitive and affective aspects, as the creators seek both disciplinary understanding and unquestioned emotional support.
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325Ten-year rule: A creative individual makes a breakthrough after 10 years of work in a domain and then depending on various factors, may or may not realize additional breakthroughs in subsequent decades.
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326Einstein actually attended a wide variety of classes, including surveys of geography, the financial markets, Swiss politics, anthropology, geology, and the works of Goethe. However, he was not happy with the mainstream science courses.
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327The words of the language, as they are written or spoken, do not seem to play any role in my mechanism of thought. The psychical entities which seem to serve as elements in thought are certain signs and more or less clear images which can be "voluntarily" reproduced and combined...from a psychological viewpoint this combinatory play seems to be the essential feature in productive thought. The elements are, in my case, of visual and some of muscular type. Conventional words or other signs have to be sought for laboriously only in a second stage, when the mentioned associate play is sufficiently established and can be reproduced at will.
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328Of the once prodigious Camille Saint-Saens, Berlioz quipped "He knows everything, but he lacks inexperience."
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329"Did not Eliot and I set out to refit old ships? And refitting old ships is the real task of the artist. He can say again, in his way, only what has already been said." Stravinsky
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330Stravinsky's Routine
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331"I am an average man with less than an average ability. But I don't mind. There is a limit to the development of the intellect but none to that of the heart." Gandhi.
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332Statistically, the exemplary creator.
334 et seq.
333Gardner references Wallas.
345 et seq.
334The essential burden of the "Triangle of Creativity" has been to investigate the dialectics among the individual person, or talent; the domain in which the individual is working, and the field of knowledge experts who evaluate works in the domain.
Connection requires all three.
352
335Arts and Politics, as part of the contemporary world, can be expected to reflect secular events. It is not surprising when a poet or a politician reacts to an event as dramatic as a famine, a depression, or a would war. Science and mathematics are different kinds of domains. Workers in such domains seek principles, rules, and patterns, which presumably operate in a universal fashion, irrespective (?) of what is happening in the next community or halfway around the world.
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