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In December 1952, a conference on creativity was called by a group of sponsors from Ohio State University. It featured artists, writers, dancers, musicians, as well as teachers of these arts. In addition, there were also those who are interested in the creative process: philosophers, psychiatrists, psychologists. It was a very important and fruitful conference, as a result of which I made some rough sketches about creativity and what can contribute to its development. Later they were expanded, so this work turned out.
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I believe that there is an acute social need for creativity and creative individuals. It is this need that justifies the development of a theory of creativity — the nature of the creative act, the conditions for its implementation and the means that contribute to its successful development. Such a theory can contribute to scientific research in this area and guide it.
I contend that much of the serious criticism of our culture has more than anything to do with a lack of creativity. Let us briefly dwell on some remarks.
Once educated, we tend to become conformist, stereotyped, «finished» educated people, rather than free, creative, and original thinkers.
Our free time is mostly occupied with passive entertainment, recreation in organized groups, while creative activity takes up very little space.
There are very few people in the natural sciences who are able to creatively put forward fruitful hypotheses and theories.
In industry, creativity is reserved for the few—the manager, the designer, the head of research—while the life of the majority is devoid of originality and creativity.
The same is observed in family and personal life. In the clothes we wear, in the food we eat, in the books we read, in the ideas we profess, everywhere there is a desire for conformity, for a stereotype. To be original, to be different, seems «dangerous».
Should I be worried about this? If we as a nation prefer conformity over creativity, why shouldn’t we? In my opinion, such a choice could be considered quite reasonable, if not for one gloomy cloud covering the horizon. At a time when creative and destructive knowledge is rapidly ushering us into a fantastic atomic age, the only way to keep up with the kaleidoscope of changes in the world is for a person to truly creative adaptation. When scientific discoveries and inventions increase, as we are told, exponentially, the passive and culturally limited person cannot cope with the ever-increasing flow of questions and problems. Unless individuals, groups of people, and entire nations can imagine, invent, and creatively rethink how to approach these complex changes in new ways, we will perish. If a person cannot adapt in a new way, in an original way to the world around him as quickly as science changes it, our culture will perish. The retribution for the lack of creativity will be not only poor adaptation of the individual and group tension, but also the complete annihilation of all peoples.
As a result, it seems to me extremely important to study the process of creativity, the conditions under which this process takes place, and the methods of its development.
The following sections propose a conceptual framework that can help to successfully conduct such a study.
Creative process
There are different approaches to defining creativity. To make the following discussion more clear, let’s look at the elements that I think are part of the creative process and then try to define it.
First of all, as a scientist, I must have something that can be observed, some product of creativity. Although my fantasies may be completely new, they cannot be called creative until they are embodied in something real, for example, expressed in words, written down on paper, conveyed in a work of art, or reflected in an invention.
These works must be completely new, their novelty stemming from the unique qualities of the individual in his interaction with the objects of experience. Creativity always leaves a trace of the individual on its product, but this product is not the individual or his materials, but the result of the relationship between them.
Creativity, in my opinion, does not depend on any particular content. I believe that there is no significant difference in creativity when creating a picture, a literary work, a symphony, inventing new murder weapons, developing a scientific theory, searching for new features in human relationships or creating new facets of one’s own personality, as in psychotherapy. (Indeed, it was my experience in this last area, and not in any art form, that gave me a special interest in creativity and its development. A close acquaintance with how the individual remakes himself in an original and effective way in the course of a psychotherapeutic relationship, inspires confidence. into the creative possibilities of all people.)
I understand the creative process as an activity aimed at creating a new product, growing, on the one hand, from the uniqueness of the individual, and on the other hand, conditioned by the material, events, people and circumstances of life.
Let me add a few critical remarks to this definition. It does not distinguish between «good» and «bad» creativity. One person may be looking for a way to alleviate the pain, while another may invent new, more sophisticated ways to torture political prisoners. Both of these actions seem to me creative, even if their social significance is quite different. Although I will discuss these social evaluations later, I have refrained from including them in my definition due to their extreme volatility. Galileo and Copernicus made creative discoveries that were regarded as blasphemy and evil in their time, and today are considered fundamental and constructive. We do not want to obscure the meaning of our definition by using terms that have a subjective meaning.
We can consider this problem from a different angle, noting the following: in order for a product to be considered in the historical aspect as the result of creativity, it must be recognized by a certain group of people at some point in time. This fact, however, is irrelevant to our definition due to the fluctuations in valuation already mentioned, and also due to the fact that many products of creativity were never noticed by society and disappeared without being appreciated. Therefore acceptance by the group as an aspect of creativity is missing from our definition.
In addition, it must be said that our definition does not distinguish between the degree of creativity, since this is also a very variable, evaluative definition. According to our definition, the actions of a child who invents a new game with his comrades have a creative character; Einstein, who formulated the theory of relativity; a housewife inventing a new meat sauce, a young author writing her first novel. We are not trying to arrange their actions in any sequence as more or less creative.
Creativity Motivation
The main motive for creativity, as it turned out, is the desire of a person to realize himself, to show his capabilities. It, as we have found out, also acts as the deep healing power of psychotherapy. By this desire, I mean the guiding principle that manifests itself in all forms of organic and human life — the desire for development, expansion, improvement, maturity, the tendency to express and manifest all the abilities of the organism and personality. This desire may be deeply hidden under several layers of rusty psychological defenses; it can be hidden behind an artificial façade that is unconscious to man. However, I am convinced, based on my experience, that this longing is in every individual and awaits only the right conditions for liberation and manifestation. It is this that serves as the main motivation for creativity, when the body enters into new relationships with the outside world, trying to be itself most fully.
Now let’s deal with this mysterious phenomenon — the social significance of creativity. Probably not many of us are interested in encouraging creative activity that is harmful to society. Consciously, we do not want to help individuals whose creative genius manifests itself in inventing new and more and more perfect ways of stealing, exploiting, executing and killing other people or in creating some kind of political organizations or art forms that lead humanity to the path of physical or mental self-destruction. . However, how can one make the necessary distinction to encourage constructive rather than destructive creativity?
Such a distinction cannot be made by examining the product. The most important thing in creativity is its novelty, and, therefore, we do not have a standard by which to evaluate its product. In fact, history shows that the more original the product of creativity and the wider the consequences of its application, the more likely it is to be judged by contemporaries as evil. A truly significant creation—be it an idea, a work of art, or a scientific discovery—is likely to be seen as wrong, bad, or stupid. Later, it may seem something obvious, self-evident. And as a rule, after many years it receives the final assessment as a creative contribution. It seems clear that none of the contemporaries can correctly evaluate the product of creativity at the time when it was created, and this statement is all the more true, the greater the novelty of this creation.
It is also useless to study the goals of the individual involved in the creative process. Many, perhaps most, of the creations and discoveries that have proven to be of great social significance were based on a desire to satisfy personal interest rather than social significance. Along with this, history knows many sad examples when the appearance of certain creations (various utopias, prohibitions, etc.), which proclaimed their goal to achieve social welfare, led to tragedy. No, we must recognize the fact that a person creates primarily because it satisfies him, because he feels self-actualization in it. We will not achieve anything if we try to distinguish between «good» and «bad» goals in the creative process.
Should we then abandon any attempt to distinguish between creativity that is potentially creative and creativity that is potentially destructive? I don’t think this pessimistic statement is justified. And it is the recent clinical discoveries in the field of psychotherapy that give us hope. It was found that when an individual is «open» to all his experience (further this concept will be revealed more fully), then his behavior becomes creative, and it can be hoped that this creativity is creative in nature. Let’s discuss this difference very briefly. To the extent that an individual refuses to be aware of (or suppresses, if you prefer that term) a significant part of his experience, his creations may be pathological or socially harmful, or both. To the extent that an individual is open to all aspects of his experience, and all the diverse feelings and sensations of his body are available to his consciousness, new products of his interaction with the outside world will be rather creative both for himself and for others. For example, a person with paranoid tendencies can creatively develop a completely new theory of the relationship between him and the world around him, seeing evidence of his theory in a variety of little things. His theory has little social value, perhaps because there is a huge layer of experience that this individual cannot admit into consciousness. On the other hand, Socrates, who was considered «crazy» by his contemporaries, developed new ideas that proved to be socially constructive. It is very likely that this was because he had no defensive reactions at all and was extremely open to his experience.
The logic of these considerations will probably become clearer in later sections. But above all, they are based on the new data of psychotherapy that when an individual becomes more open, more aware of all aspects of his experience, the likelihood that he will act socially increases significantly. If he is able to be aware of his hostility, but also of his longing for friendship and acceptance of others, of the expectations of his culture as well as of his own goals, of his selfish desires, but also of his tenderness, attention and concern for the other person, then he behaves harmoniously, holistically and creatively. The more open he is to his experience, the more his behavior suggests that the human race is by nature inclined toward a constructive social life.
Internal conditions of creative creativity
What conditions, relating to the individual himself, are most associated with potentially creative actions? I consider them next.
A. Openness to experience: extensionality.
This is the opposite of psychological defense. Protecting the structure of one’s «I» prevents the awareness of some experience, or it is recognized in a distorted form. In a person who is open to experience, each stimulus is freely transmitted by the nervous system, without being distorted by any protective process. It is available to awareness, whether the stimulus originates in the surrounding world, affecting the sensory nerves with form, color or sound, or it comes from the internal organs, or it is a memory trace in the central nervous system. This means that instead of assigning the stimulus to predetermined categories (“trees are green,” “college education is good,” “modern art is stupid”), the individual is aware of a certain moment of being in the present as it is. In this way, he can perceive a huge experience that is not the usual (“this flower is lavender”, “the education in this college is terrible”, “this modern sculpture makes a strong impression on me”).
The last statement leads me to think of another way to describe openness to experience. Openness means the absence of rigidity and the permeability of the boundaries of concepts, beliefs, images and hypotheses. It means tolerating ambiguity where it exists. It means the ability to accept a lot of conflicting information without rejecting the whole situation. It means what in general semantics is called «extensional orientation».
This complete openness to the consciousness of what exists at the moment is, it seems to me, an important condition for creative creativity. No doubt, just as strongly, but much more limitedly, it is present in all types of creativity. A mentally unbalanced artist may not understand and be unaware of the cause of his depression, and yet he may accurately and subtly be aware of form and color. A tyrant (whether on a small or large scale) who does not admit his weakness to himself, nevertheless can accurately notice and clearly recognize vulnerabilities in the psychological armor of those with whom he deals. If there is openness to one side of experience, creativity is possible; if there is openness to only one side of experience, the result of such creativity can be destructive to people and society. The more an individual is inclined to sensory awareness of all aspects of his experience, the more we can be sure that his creativity will be creative for the individual and society.
B. Internal locus of evaluation.
Perhaps the most important condition for creativity is that the location or locus of the source of evaluation is within the individual. For a creative person, the value of his work does not depend on the praise or criticism of others, but is established by himself. Am I satisfied with what I have created? Does it express some part of me — my feelings and thoughts, my pain, my delight? These are the only questions that really mean anything to a creative person or to any person when they are creative.
This does not mean that he neglects the opinions of others or does not want to understand them. It simply means that the basis for evaluation lies within him, in the reaction of his own organism, in his own perception of the work. If a person “feels” that by doing so he “brings himself to life”, that this is the realization of his previously unmanifested possibilities, then his work is a creative product, and no external assessment can affect this obvious fact.
C. The ability to unusual combinations of elements and concepts.
Although this is probably not as important as points A and B, it is nevertheless a condition for creativity. Associated with openness and lack of rigidity, described in section A, this ability involves spontaneous play with ideas, shades, shapes, relationships — juggling elements and making incredible combinations of them, putting forward crazy hypotheses, finding problems in common knowledge, expressing the ridiculous, turning one form to the other, the connection of the unconnectable. It is from this spontaneous game-exploration that intuition grows, a creative vision of the new and essential in life. It is as if out of a vast, superfluous agglomeration of thousands of possibilities, one or two evolutionary forms emerge with qualities that give them an unchanging value.
The creative act and its attendant circumstances
When these three conditions are achieved, creative creativity takes place. But we cannot expect an accurate description of the creative act, because by its very nature it is indescribable. It is something unknown that we must regard as unknowable until it happens. It’s incredible, becoming probable. It is only in the most general terms that we can describe the creative act as the natural behavior of an organism, which usually manifests itself when the organism is open to all its internal and external experience and when it is free to establish flexible relationships of all kinds. From the many half-formed possibilities, the organism, like a powerful computer, chooses the one that most accurately satisfies the inner need, or the one that establishes more effective relations with the outside world, or another that opens up a simpler and more satisfying way of perceiving life.
There is one feature of the creative act that can still be described. In almost all products of creativity, we note selectivity, orderliness, an attempt to reveal the most essential. The artist depicts the surface, or texture, in a simplified way, neglecting the small deviations that exist in reality. The scientist formulates the basic law of relations, brushing aside particulars and circumstances that can obscure the real beauty of the law. The writer selects such words and phrases that give integrity to his statement. We can say that the influence of a specifically personal, one’s «I» is manifested in this. Reality exists in a variety of intricate facts, but “I” introduces structure into my attitude towards it, I have “my” way of perceiving reality, and it is this (subconsciously?) organized personal selectivity that gives the products of creativity their aesthetic properties.
Although this is all we can say, describing the different aspects of the creative act, it is worth noting some of the features of its course in individuals. The first is what we might call the «Eureka!» feeling: «That’s it!» «I opened!» «That’s what I want to express!»
Another feature is the exhilarating sense of detachment. I don’t think many great creations have been made without the feeling, “I’m alone. Nobody has done this before. I dared to step into territory where no one had been before. Maybe I’m stupid, or wrong, or deluded, or abnormal.»
At the same time, another experience that usually accompanies creativity is the desire for communication. It is doubtful that a person can create without feeling the desire to share his creation with someone. This is the only way to alleviate the disturbing sense of isolation and reassure yourself of belonging to a particular group. He can only trust his theories to his personal diary. He can record his discoveries with a secret code. He can hide his poems in a locked desk drawer. He can store his paintings in a closet. With all this, he longs to communicate with a group of people who would understand him. Sometimes he is forced to imagine such a group. He does not create in order to communicate, but when the creative act is completed, he wants to share with others a new quality — «himself-in-relationship-with-the-out-world.»
Conditions conducive to creative creativity
Up to this point, I have tried to describe the nature of creativity, to note those qualities of individual experience that increase the likelihood that creativity will be creative. I have outlined the conditions necessary for the creative act and identified some of the circumstances that accompany it. But if our goal is to contribute to the satisfaction of social needs, as discussed above, we need to find out if creative creativity can be promoted, and if so, how.
The very nature of the internal conditions of creativity is such that their appearance cannot be provoked, but they must be encouraged. The farmer cannot force the sprout to develop and germinate from the seed, he can only create conditions for its growth that will allow the seed to manifest its own latent potentialities. The same is true with creativity. How then to create external conditions conducive and favorable to the internal conditions described above? My experience in psychotherapy leads me to believe that by creating conditions of psychological security and freedom, we maximize the likelihood of creative creativity. Let me describe these conditions in detail by labeling them X and Y.
X. Psychological safety.
It can be achieved through the following related processes.
Recognition of the unconditional value of the individual. A teacher, parent, therapist or other person who creates conditions for development always promotes creativity if he feels that this individual is valuable in itself, whatever his manifestations, states and actions at the moment.
Such an attitude can, in all likelihood, be sincere only when teachers, parents, and others feel the potentialities of the individual and therefore can believe in him without any conditions, regardless of his state at the moment.
The individual feels safe in this attitude. He gradually realizes that he can be who he really is, without falsehood and pretense, because he is considered a worthwhile person no matter how he behaves. As a result, he does not need to be rigid, he can discover what it means to be himself, he can try to express himself outside the box, in a new way. In other words, he moves towards creativity.
Creating an environment in which there is no external evaluation. When we stop judging the individual in terms of our own value system, we encourage creativity. The individual feels liberated in an atmosphere where he is not judged by external standards. Evaluation is always perceived as a threat, always leads to the need for a defensive reaction, always means that some part of the experience will be closed to consciousness. If something is judged good by external standards, I shouldn’t admit that I don’t like it. If what I am doing is bad by external standards, I should not be aware that it seems to me that I am doing it, that it is part of me. But if judgments on the basis of external measures are absent, I can be more open to my experience, I can more clearly and definitely recognize my likes and dislikes, the nature of phenomena and my reaction to them. I begin to understand that the source of evaluation is inside me. That’s why I go to art.
In order to calm the possible doubts and fears of readers, it is necessary to make the following remark: the absence of an assessment does not mean that we do not react in any way to the work of a person. In fact, we can do it more freely. “I don’t like your idea” (or a painting, or an invention, or a book) is not an assessment, but my reaction. And it subtly, but quite definitely, differs from a judgment like: «What you are doing is bad (or good), according to such and such external criteria.» The first assertion allows the individual to retain his own source of evaluation. It may mean that I am probably incapable of appreciating something that is actually very good. The second statement, whether it contains praise or condemnation, tends to make a person dependent on external forces. He is told that he cannot simply ask himself if his creation is the true expression of his being, he must be concerned about what others think. He is taken away from creativity.
Understand, empathize. In combination with the previous two, this is the last element of psychological security. If I say that I «accept» you, but I don’t know anything about you, then in reality this is a superficial acceptance, and you understand that it can change if I really get to know you. But if I understand you, empathize, look at you and what you are doing from your point of view, enter your inner world and see it through your eyes, and at the same time accept you, then this is really security. In such an environment, in dealing with the world, you can afford to express your true self and express it in a variety of new creations. This is the main factor that promotes creativity.
Y. Psychological freedom.
Creativity develops if the teacher, parents, therapist, or other developmental person gives the individual complete freedom of symbolic expression. This means for the individual complete freedom to express his innermost in his thoughts, feelings and states. This promotes openness, as well as the bizarre and unexpected combination of images, concepts and meanings that is part of creativity.
Note that we are talking about complete freedom of expression with the help of symbols. Not all behaviors that express feelings, intentions, and results can be liberating. In some cases, behavior may be subject to the restrictions of society, as it should be. But the symbolic expression need not be restricted. Therefore, the destruction of the symbol of the object of hatred (whether it be the symbol of the mother or the symbol of the Rococo building) is liberation. The actual destruction of objects can lead to feelings of guilt and narrow the sense of psychological freedom. (I feel unsure about this paragraph, but so far this is the best wording I can offer that is consistent with my experience.)
The «permissive» approach described here is not the same as gentleness, condescension, or conniving. This permission to be free also implies the acceptance of responsibility. The individual is free to fear or to pursue a new enterprise, free to pay for his mistakes as well as accept the consequences of his achievements. It is this type of free responsibility — being yourself — that contributes to the development of a reliable internal source of assessments and, as a result, leads to the creation of internal conditions for creative creativity.