A STUDY OF CREATIVITY - The psychology of the creative mind, process, and personality
INTRODUCTION
“The creative process starts with a sense that there is a puzzle somewhere, or a task to be accomplished. Perhaps something is not right, somewhere there is a conflict, a tension, a need to be satisfied.”
If you are involved with any form of art or craft, you’ve probably experienced the frustration of trying to come up with something novel or creative.
Creative ideas are among the most elusive commodities we value, and yet how to reach them remains, for the most part, a mystery. The creative inspiration we look for seems so out of reach when we focus on it, and then it comes to us when we least expect it: in the shower, going for a walk, or just before falling asleep. Suddenly the perfect answer to our problem comes to us out of nowhere and with seemingly no effort. Where do these thoughts come from? Are the Muses really whispering in our ears? The answer we were looking for seems so obvious in hindsight that we wonder why we couldn’t see it before.
DEFINING CREATIVITY
It’s hard to talk about something if we don’t all agree on its definition, and since the word “creativity” can be used in so many ways, we need to make sure we’re all on the same page. For my intents and purposes, we will define creativity and creative ideas as having two essential characteristics: Originality and utility.
Originality is the novelty of an idea or a product. This may be a unique way a product or idea is designed, or it may be a novel way to utilize it. But, originality alone is not creativity; many things can be created in a novel design, but they have no value if they lack utility.
Utility means that the results or consequences of the original thought are the solutions to a problem, although in the case of the arts that utility is more likely intrinsic to the art piece and defined by the creator. Without the utility component, the creative thought wouldn’t be as valuable and as pursued as it is. This brings us to my next point: a problem to solve.
Having a problem that needs resolving is the essential set-up for creative insights. Having a well-defined problem gives us the opportunity to speculate on novel ways of thinking around it, and, once we find the original insight, to test its utility against that original problem we set out to solve.
High-level creativity is the moving force of all arts, innovations, science, and scientific revolutions, from the creation of the first spear to the theory of evolution to the personal computer and the internet. All these products were first the results of creative minds. The main characteristics of the creative personality are hard to enumerate because the traits are full of opposites and contradictions, but what stands out and seems to touch every aspect of creativity, from the process to the person, are exactly those contradictions.
Both extremes of each trait are present in the creative act: sociability and solitude, distraction and deep focus, novelty and routine, a focus on details and a focus on the big picture. You’ll see these contradictions play out as we investigate the creative mind, process, and personality.
THE DIMENSIONAL MIND
“Chance favors the prepared mind”
Let’s start with a story that outlines the creative process and the difference it can make.
During the late 1870s, the French countryside suffered a pandemic wave of chicken cholera. At the time, this lethal bacteria could kill a chicken in less than 48 hours, and its virulent nature was exterminating the French chicken population.
Different scientists were studying the illness seeking a cure, and in the year 1877, Louis Pasteur (1822-1895), already a renowned chemist and biologist, decided to dedicate his energy and attention to combatting chicken cholera. In order to find a cure to counter it, he began by isolating the bacteria responsible. Once he identified the bacteria and could reproduce it, he and his assistant began to inject the disease into groups of healthy chickens to use for testing potential cures. Unfortunately, he worked for several years with no success. All the chickens in every group died. No doubt feeling like he was getting nowhere, Pasteur left for a month and put the tests on hold.
When he returned, perhaps with a refreshed perspective, Pasteur resumed his experiments injecting the cholera bacteria from his laboratory into a new group of chickens. This new group of chickens began showing the usual symptoms, but surprisingly, all the chickens in the group recovered and survived. Imagining that his culture of cholera that had been sitting in his laboratory for a month might have weakened over time, he created new cultures for testing. He decided to inject the disease in a new group of chickens as well as the previous survivors. As expected, all the chickens in the new group died, but amazingly, the chickens in the survivor group survived again. Not sure exactly how to read these data, Pasteur began pondering on his results to try to understand what it might mean. This novel information broke his thinking pattern and started him in a new direction.
This phenomenon had been recorded before, in the case of smallpox—the fact that a small dose of the disease can help fight that same illness—but the case was thought to be limited to that particular illness, just an eccentric outlier.
Probably reflecting on this connection, Pasteur entertained the seemingly counterintuitive idea that a weakened version of the disease could prevent it in the future. Maybe the solution wasn’t to cure the disease after its onset, but to prepare the immune system and teach it to recognize and eliminate the invading bacteria beforehand. That was his insight. The immediate results led to success in eliminating the disease and saving the chicken population. In the years to come, he expanded, tested, and strengthened his research, applying the same preventive techniques in humans and giving rise to the field of immunology and modern vaccines, saving millions of lives worldwide.
THE ORIGINAL MIND
“It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child”
We can think of ourselves as having three types of mind. In his book Mastery, Robert Greene describes them as the original mind, the conventional mind, and the dimensional mind.
The original mind is essentially the mind of a child. It’s often what artists like Picasso are referring to when they talk about creativity. The mind at this stage is open, curious, free to explore, and to make outlandish associations between ideas before it becomes hampered by preconceptions. While they still definitely have such free thinking, children indeed tend to be more original, but they rarely create new inventions or make important discoveries. What the mind significantly lacks at this stage is the discipline, knowledge, and practical skills to make original insights useful and real. This knowledge can only come with experience and the store of information we gain during the apprenticeship phase in our field of choice. The moment we decide to immerse ourselves in a field, we begin to quell the natural fruits of the original mind. We start gaining knowledge and practice in a way that is structured under the watchful eye of a mentor who can guide us in the acceptable directions. We start internalizing the intrinsic rules of our field, learning the right thing to do, when to do it, and how to do it. With this valuable set of instructions comes a hidden danger. We can become locked into certain ways of doing things, closing our minds off to alternate routes. We incorporate without question the underlying rules we’ve learned, and we become adept at regurgitating the same old ideas, the work of a conventional mind. A mind in this stage, even the very expert mind, rarely creates something new or makes innovative discoveries.
The dimensional mind is a combination of the previous two. This mind has a high level of knowledge in its domain but also retains the qualities of curiosity and openness typical of the original mind. The ability to make connections between two seemingly unrelated bits of knowledge is the key to this higher level of creativity. It’s no coincidence that most discoveries in any field come from people who were originally outsiders to that field, as in Pasteur’s case, who was schooled as a mineralogist and chemist, not a microbiologist or a physician. Outsiders bring a fresh perspective and a new way of thinking, attacking the issue from a different angle. Thinking in a different way, they can often detect new associations between unique pieces of information and bring their own original knowledge into play.
In their stories, we can almost always see the intervention of a random lucky event that favored them. It would be a mistake to ignore the role of the chance event or encounter in many creative outcomes, but at the same time, it would be a mistake to ignore the trait of dimensional thinking that prepared the mind to see and make use of the opportunity.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS
“Creative observation is a skill that requires a balance of paying attention to the world around us and tuning in to our own inner landscape—a balance of mindfulness; a focused, nonjudgmental awareness of the present moment; and mind-wandering.”
The details of the creative process itself remain mysterious to this day, but there is a good theory on the macroscopic elements of it.
I’m sure you’ve experienced first-hand at least once in your life how frustrating this process can be. You have a problem that needs solving but the more you try to think about it, the more it feels like you’re stuck running back and forth between the same two or three solutions you already know are not gonna work. Then, almost out of nowhere, the perfect answer comes to you while you are distracted doing some unrelated task. However bizarre this may appear, it is part of the process, and there is good evidence to suggest why that would be.
The creative process can be divided into four main parts.
1 - PREPARATION
When we look at examples of innovations and creativity, both in history and in our own experience, we tend to focus mostly, if not exclusively, on the moment of insight. This is the eureka moment when all the pieces of the puzzle finally fit together, and we find the solution we were looking for. What we usually do not see, or tend to disregard, is the time we spent stressing about the problem. We either ignore this time of pondering or we judge it as an unlucky period that could have been avoided. We rarely recognize it as a necessary part of the process. After all, it is part of our nature to focus on what is clear, in plain sight, and catches our attention: the highlight reel of the story, if you will, and the period of preparation isn’t something that stands out.
This time of preparation is essentially the initial period we use to immerse ourselves in the problem, to load into our brain and memory all the pieces of information related to solving the problem, even the information around it that might not seem directly related. This is the period of research and study, of focus and deep concentration on a subject. It can require a lot of time, tedium, and hard work.
As romantic as the ancient idea may be of a Muse inspiring you and magically providing you with insight, in real life, the phase of preparation is an essential part of creative work that has value. Avoiding or trying to skip this step will most likely handicap your results, leaving you with work that is mediocre and insipid, or something that is at best original, but not creative.
2 - INCUBATION
After the preparation, we find ourselves in a period of incubation, which is generally a time of rumination on the problem we are trying to solve; that question is always in the back of our minds.
The conscious mind functions in a linear fashion, through logic, but our unconscious mind tends to function more through association of ideas. By letting the problem percolate in the background, we allow the mind to escape the linear and conventional A-B-C where the conscious part of our brain is trapped. Our mind becomes free to branch out in different directions and make use of the varied input we are naturally soaking up as we go through our days.
Moderate mind-wandering enhances our capacity for insight by breaking up the framework in which we are working—in which we are stuck. Distractions at this stage can be helpful, in the sense that they help us escape linear and logical thinking. When we think intensely about a single issue, our whole mind is focused on it, creating a framework through which we see the world and the events around us. Only when we pause can we start blurring the boundaries of the issue and absorbing different input that breaks through our focal frame. At this stage, our mind is primed to see connections to the problem at hand; when offered external input, our brain is prompted to create connections back to the original problem, revealing insight into a new way of seeing things.
Sometimes we almost sense the birth of an idea moments before its conscious manifestation; we can sense our mind being distracted and working in the background, even if we’re not sure where it’s going. We are suddenly compelled to drop what we’re doing, stare out the window, and lose ourselves in thought, freeing our mind to wander aimlessly, just seconds before the conscious realization dawns on us.
Side note: you can see the similarities between the initial steps of the creative process and Flow States, with both of them containing a build-up time before a release. It’s no wonder that the flow state is also one of the most creative states we can be in.
3 - INSIGHT
The moment of insight is the celebratory moment we’ve been waiting for throughout the creative process. If creativity is about making novel connections, insight is recognizing that a useful connection just occurred. In order to provoke useful insights, we need to have an optimal grasp on the framework mentioned above and the structure of our problem. If we’ve built too rigid a frame around the problem, our ideas will remain conventional—we’re not really thinking outside the box. On the other hand, if we’ve built too loose a frame, we chase connections between two entirely disparate ideas with no solid structure to support an insight. In this case, we end up with a crazy idea that is not grounded in reality.
Unfortunately, insight is not the final step in the creative process. We’ve all had solid insights and creative ideas at some point, but we rarely do anything with them. Sometimes our most astonishing insights are not applicable. They need to be tested and brought to fruition.
4 - TESTING AND EXECUTION
We’re not always as brilliant as we would like to think, and just because we had a moment of insight doesn’t mean we’re right or that the problem is automatically solved. The insight needs to be tested to confirm or disprove its validity. If it passes, we then move to the next step: execution.
Insight has little or no value, as long as it remains only in our heads. Now it’s time to get to work and execute our idea, a process that will usually add more twists and challenges to the insight than we anticipated. During the execution phase, we encounter unforeseen problems that can alter our original idea or send us back to the drawing board. All the labor we put into it will eventually yield the results we were seeking, hopefully leaving us with a sense of satisfaction at the end of it all.
THE CREATIVE PERSONALITY
“The truth is that creative activity is one that involves the entire self - our emotions, our levels of energy, our characters, and our minds.”
Most of us are born with the full spectrum of human qualities—a sometimes contradictory set of traits that define us as individuals. We can be both complacent and angry, collaborative and competitive, lazy and persistent, rational and sentimental; but as we mature, we tend to identify with and nourish our own locus somewhere on one side of this continuum of contrasting traits and let the opposite extreme fade.
(Side note: This process of identification is a normal part in our development and is generally guided by feedback from peers and elders, like our friends, parents, or teachers. We listen to their opinions and, consciously or unconsciously, internalize their observations of our character. For instance, a remark about a bit of shyness on our part in a certain situation can exacerbate our self-awareness, and reinforce the same behavior in the future.)
Highly creative people, on the other hand, seem to maintain and nourish the opposites in their personality creating a complexity of character, this gives them access to the whole spectrum of human experience. These traits, for example, aggressiveness and passivity, can show up at the same time, or the person may swing from one to the other, depending on the situation. They can have simultaneously an openness to new ideas and feedback and the singlemindedness or stubbornness required to bring their creative ideas to fruition, pushing past the naysayers.
Both extremes of any spectrum remain available to us; it is up to us to rediscover the lost traits we’ve avoided and bring them back to the surface in the way we feel most appropriate. Both playfulness and seriousness can play a role in reaching our goals. The best thing we can do is not suppress parts of our character, but rather learn how to use all of them in constructive ways, giving us more strength and liberating more energy. We can use that energy to mold our anger or competitiveness—traits that are usually seen as negative—and channel them to push our limits and create great work, going the extra mile. Every part of our character can have value; our job is to find the best place for it and put it to use.
THE CREATIVE ENVIRONMENT
A similar paradox seems to exist in the environment of creative people during the creative process—the dichotomy of routine versus novelty. Both types of surroundings are recommended at different stages of the process.
In the preparation stage, a routine environment is preferred, because at that stage we are overloading the brain with data; all our energy is spent there. Routines offer us the mental freedom of automatic processes going on around us; spending minimal effort on the day-to-day tasks frees us to focus more intensely on other thoughts. Due to the higher intensity of thinking required, solitude can allow one to focus on the problem.
During the incubation process leading to insight, more novelty to shake up the routine is favorable—seeing new places, meeting or talking to new people can trigger different thoughts. This gives the brain the opportunity to gather all kinds of input, and with the mind primed from the preparation phase, it’s easier to see the problem from a different perspective or to make connections between seemingly unrelated ideas.
In the execution stage, more routines may be required again to direct more energy to the task at hand. Periods of solitude interspersed with social interactions will occur spontaneously as we swing between execution (work) and feedback (testing).
CURIOSITY
“Let go of certainty. The opposite isn’t uncertainty. It’s openness, curiosity and a willingness to embrace paradox, rather than choose up sides. The ultimate challenge is to accept ourselves exactly as we are, but never stop trying to learn and grow.”
Of all the confusing and contradictory characteristics of the creative personality, I will focus more on the element that we cannot exclude: curiosity.
The extent of our curiosity is the trait that most often drives the creative person to his or her dimensional mind. It influences our openness to new kinds of experiences, our wild exploration of the world, and the relentless quest to find the truth. A higher-than-normal degree of curiosity doesn’t just come out of nowhere. It is usually tied to the core of our individuality and under certain circumstances can be manifested as borderline obsessive. This individuality is a reflection of our unique character and development. We might feel this type of curiosity when we read an article or book about a certain topic or during a particular activity that we find intrinsically rewarding. The affinity you feel with the subject or activity leaves you energized and wanting more. This energy and obsession are what pushes creative people to dive deep into a subject and all it entails, beyond the point at which most people would be sated and give it up.
This type of curiosity isn’t just for its own sake, it can be extremely applicable. Our world is constantly evolving and changing. Something out there is always missing or needs improvement, and our product or idea could fill the gap. There we’ll find our niche, when our individuality and curiosity align perfectly with a particular problem, and we’ll feel like we’ve met the perfect challenge, having to apply our unique set of skills and interests to the solution of a problem that hasn't been tackled before.
However, a creative life can have its darker side. As the Japanese saying goes: “The nail that sticks out gets hammered down.” Human bonds and having a sense of community with the people around us are basic human needs. Because of this universal need for social approval, the force acting upon us to conform and be accepted can lead us to mute our colors in order to better fit in and have peaceful relations. We might feel that our interests and the traits that make us unique are weird and out-of-step with the social norms. The moment we break out of the norms and create something new, we will almost surely attract attention, and with it, inevitably, a good dose of criticism. We become an easy target for attack. But creating something that is yours and unique, with all its challenges, will leave you with a sense of satisfaction and fulfillment that living passively can never duplicate. Creative individuals are essential to moving us forward. Our culture, our field, and our species evolve because of them. We all have a niche to fill, but finding it requires hard work, the wisdom to listen to our inner calling, and the courage and persistence to follow it through.
QUOTES
“Creative people are certainly not immune to the disappointments and tragedies that cast shadows on the lives of everyone else. They are fortunate, however, to have a calling that makes it possible for them to dwell as little as possible on what might have been and go on with their lives”
“The future belongs to those who learn more skills and combine them in creative ways.”
“Study hard what interests you the most in the most undisciplined, irreverent and original manner possible.”
“Beyond all sciences, philosophies, theologies, and histories, a child’s relentless inquiry is truly all it takes to remind us that we don’t know as much as we think we know.”
“Become who you are by learning who you are.”
YOU MAY ALSO ENJOY:
5 Roads to Creative Insight
Even after all our preparation work, we need a little help from fate. Some random little accident that will help us break our frame of mind and hints us in the right direction.
Bibliography and references
Csíkszentmihályi, Mihaly. Creativity, the psychology of discovery and invention. Published: 1996.
Greene, Robert. Mastery. Published: 2012.
Greene, Robert. The Laws of Human Nature. Published: 2018.
Jonathan Littman, Tom Kelley. The Art of Innovation. Published: 2001.
Pressfield, Steven. The War of Art. Published: 2002.
Grant, Adam. Originals. Published: 2016.
Kelley, David, Kelley, Tom. Creative Confidence. Published: 2013.
Kleon, Austin. Steal Like an Artist. Published: 2012.
Ward, Thomas B. Finke, Ronald A. The Creative Cognition Approach. Published: 1995.
Wilson, Edward O. The Origins of Creativity. Published: 2017.
Klein, Gary. Seeing What Others Don’t. Published: 2013.
Barry Kaufman, Scott, Gregoire, Carolyn. Wired to Create. Published: 2015.
P. Berche. Louis Pasteur, from crystals of life to vaccination.
https://www.clinicalmicrobiologyandinfection.com/article/S1198-743X(14)61355-0/fulltext
Louis Pasteur and the Development of the Attenuated Vaccine
https://www.vbivaccines.com/wire/louis-pasteur-attenuated-vaccine/
Ep. 26 to 33- Awakening from the Meaning Crisis: Insight and Relevance Realization
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqsUDNkBt-Q
The Neuroscience of Creativity, Flow, and Openness to Experience - Scott Barry Kaufman, Ph.D.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Un_LroX0DAA
The Creative Person and the Creative Context
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tr1vXxJE8to
Lectures: Exploring the Psychology of Creativity
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxGPe1jD-qY
Pictures:
Lightbulb, Idea, Innovation by Mohamed Mahmoud Hassan:
https://www.publicdomainpictures.net/en/view-image.php?image=255601&picture=lightbulb-idea-innovation
Rubik’s cube on a book by Igor Alshin:
https://www.pexels.com/photo/rubik-s-cube-on-book-2873277/
Louis Pasteur from Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Albert_Edelfelt_-_Louis_Pasteur_-_1885.jpg
Vintage Chicken by Venita Oberholster:
https://www.publicdomainpictures.net/en/view-image.php?image=167271&picture=vintage-chicken-image-retro
Kid reading by Aaron Burden:
https://unsplash.com/photos/6jYoil2GhVk
Hands by Amaury Salas:
https://unsplash.com/photos/IhXrWDckZOQ
Light bulb by Rohan Makhecha:
https://unsplash.com/photos/jw3GOzxiSkw
Design sprint by Startaê Team:
https://unsplash.com/photos/36Aai16fubc
Puzzle by George Hodan:
https://www.publicdomainpictures.net/en/view-image.php?image=55279&picture=puzzle
View by Simon Abrams:
https://unsplash.com/photos/k_T9Zj3SE8k
Brainstorming by Helloquence:
https://unsplash.com/photos/5fNmWej4tAA
https://www.photojoiner.net/ for the photo edit