Creativity

An ability to see new relationships, to make or otherwise bring into existence something new (possibly of aesthetic value), to produce new ideas and new solutions to problems, and to deviate from traditional patterns of thinking. When the innovation refers to the world of values of an entire culture, original and unique in terms of society and history and therefore unrepeatable, then it is distinguished as of such a standard as to be social creativity. When it refers to the world of individual experience, and is new as far as the individual is concerned, then it is termed individual creativity. This does not contribute directly to the progress of the culture, but is essential for the development of the individual.

Creative thinking may be divided into a number of stages. The preparation stage includes description of the problem and collection of information on it, which thus constitutes the raw material on which the individual works to reach the scientific solution, the artistic creation or any creative product. Predominant qualities at this stage are: sensitivity to new stimuli, discrimination, deliberate naïveté, deferral of judgement and categorization, use of analogies. The incubation stage takes place in the unconscious and involves weighing of the problem in the light of the acquired information and maturation of an idea. This stage is characterized by: restless moods, doubt, perplexity, and inferiority feelings requiring recognition by the person of his own value and considerable tolerance of unfamiliar situations. This is followed by the insight stage which is an involuntary sudden moment in which the material becomes clearly conscious and meaningful, accompanied by extremely powerful and often uncritical emotions. The qualities of the individual at this stage are: tolerance of situations of conflict, the knowledge that he cannot be accepted by everyone, a sort of sense of destiny, and ability to integrate contradictions. The final stage is that of verification and communication in which the subjective recognition is moulded into symbolic objective forms, usually accompanied by impatience and tension. The qualities required of the individual at this stage are: preference for complexity, independent judgement, search for possible implications, perseverance and audacity.

From the above, creativity may therefore be defined as a personal quality which enables the individual to withstand the presence of the emotions accompanying the creative process, to tolerate the paradoxical situations involved in the process, namely: involvement with maintenance of distance, freedom of creation and discipline of execution, integration and dispersal, restriction to the known from which confidence is drawn and a drive to explore the new and unknown, focus on a detail and on the whole, and to maintenance of a simultaneously active and passive attitude. For some, the need to be innovative may become compulsive and dominate their lives.

The growth of a creative process is facilitated in an atmosphere of freedom and security. When the individual feels secure he can leave the hot-house of the closed world for the new, the unknown, the open, accepting the stimuli of the external world. When he feels free, he can be himself, make use of the abilities he has in him (and not only those which he is supposed to have in him) and can dare to react to external stimuli by means of the talents in his internal world. A mildly elated mood in which self-judgement is temporarily suspended facilitates creativity, although manic elation overwhelms it. Some researchers have correlated the existence of creative and of manic depressive persons in the same family, suggesting the same genetic tendency nurtures both, the former simply having smaller swings of mood than the latter. Creativity requires a degree of uncertainty and freedom of choice. Some societies and environments therefore have greater potential than others for the encouragement of creativity - being watched while working or having to produce creative ideas to demand are both said to stifle the trait. An index of creativity may be used to evaluate inventiveness and to identify factors which stifle or encourage it.

Highly creative people tend to exist in a state of tension between the establishment and maintenance of environmental constancies and the interruption of achieved equilibria in the interest of new possibilities of experience. Such people are usually highly intelligent (although their abilities may not show up in conventional tests which do not always allow for original and nonconformist thinking); but the converse is not necessarily true. Whilst occasionally giving an impression of psychological imbalance or extremism, such persons may have exceptionally deep, broad and flexible awareness of themselves. It is suggested that the unconventionality may be in part a resistance to acculturation and the surrender of the person's unique and fundamental nature.