Book Description

Creativity is about capturing those moments that make life worth living. The author's objective is to offer an understanding of what leads to these moments, be it the excitement of the artist at the easel or the scientist in the lab, so that knowledge can be used to enrich people's lives. Drawing on 100 interviews with exceptional people, from biologists and physicists to politicians and business leaders, poets and artists, as well as his 30 years of research on the subject, Csikszentmihalyi uses his famous theory to explore the creative process. He discusses such ideas as why creative individuals are often seen as selfish and arrogant, and why the tortured genius is largely a myth. Most important, he clearly explains why creativity needs to be cultivated and is necessary for the future of our country, if not the world.

Customer Reviews (22)

Interesting
I especially liked the part where he says that a good chunk of Eulers mathematical theorems came towards the latter part of his life and when he was blind. I was especially interested in the linkage between age and creativity since I'm in my early 30's & wanted to make sure that I still have some juice left in me. :-)

Excellent book
The description posted here doesn't do the book justice - I own a copy and still made 8 pages of notes for myself. Typed pages! Dr. Csikszentmihalyi distills and highlights the creative moments in life and how to create more creative moments in your own. It is not dry reading - the interviews and comments from his pool of world-class 'creative' people was very enjoyable and I liked that portion the least! Here's one of my favorite quotes: 'Creativity is a central source of meaning in our lives for several reasons.. First, most of the things that are interesting, important, and human are the results of creativity.

We share 98 percent of our genetic makeup with chimpanzees. What makes us different - our language, values, artistic expression, scientific understanding, and technology - is the result of individual ingenuity that was recognized, rewarded, and transmitted through learning. Without creativity, it would be difficult indeed to distinguish humans from apes.'

Long and deep but very interesting
Very interesting and detailed book.Helps explain the true reality and complexity of creativity - that it is a system of multiple environmental, technology and human personality elements which in combination and interaction bring about new products and processes.

A book for all psychology majors
If you're interested in any aspect of psychology then this is not only an informative book to read, but a fun one as well. As a psychology major, I enjoyed learning about how creative people live and work. Not only are the individual stories in the book interesting, but they also teach us ways of how to become more creative. The way Csikszentmihalyi describes the ways to enhance creativity makes us really believe we can do it. No, you don't need to come up with some incredibly brilliant invention. Just simply by waking up, setting a goal to achieve that day, enjoying your success, and increasing the complexity of the goal each day, you can develop the creative "flow" of everyday life.

In addition to helping people who lack creative qualities, Csikszentmihalyi also describes many ways to stay creative. For example, he suggests making time for reflection and relaxation. Also, he says to start doing more of what you love, and less of what you hate. These are just a few of the simple ways to help sustain your creative "flow" and again we feel confident that we can do these things. It's not brain science.

Even more importantly, Csikszentmihalyi does a great job of informing us about the so-called myths of creative people. These mostly deal with certain psychological traits that are given to the stereotypical creative person. We learn that creative people aren't as selfish, fanatical, crazy, and single-minded as we may assume. Psychologically, creative people tend to be very much a mixture of different levels of these stereotypes and the opposite of those stereotypes.

If I had to pick one downside of this book, it would be that there isn't a lot of detail on each creative person being interviewed by Csikszentmihalyi. For some of the people, we are given enough information to understand their creative story fairly well. However, for others it felt like not enough background information was given. A psychologist is interested in all perspectives of assessment: disease, dimension, behavior, and life-story. Thus, it would have been better to learn more about each person's life outside the creative world in order to see if creativity derives from psychological aspects of the person as a child or adolescent. Furthermore, the book could have contained more about the person's family, upbringing, hobbies, past achievements, IQ, etc. Again this is a bit of a personal preference and not necessarily a substantial flaw of the book.

This book "flowed", that's for sure. I enjoyed it!

The Real Facts About Creative People
Few activities are a misunderstood by the general public as inventing and creativity. Sadly, Hollywood and television often portray the great inventor, scientist or musician as some sort of "mad genius". This book seeks to put the study of creativity on a rational basis.

For the purposes of this book, creativity is defined as "... to bring into existence something genuinely new that is valued enough to be added to the culture". Ninety-one noted contemporary people have been systematically interviewed. While only two -- Jacob Rabinow and Frank Offner -- are full-blown inventors, their creative processes have a fascinating similarity to the composers, architects, astronomers, biologists and others interviewed.

The book does not just quote the people interviewed, but cites their views regarding various facets of the creativity process.

Jacob Rabinow (200 patents in diverse areas) believes most original thinkers share three common traits -- 1) their curiosity, from early childhood, results in acquiring a great deal of information, 2) they enjoy thinking up and combining ideas, and 3) they recognize their "good" ideas and don't hesitate to discard "junk" ideas.

Frank Offner (first electronic controls for jet engines and developer of the only successful heat-homing missiles in World War II) notes that while a "solid grounding in physical sciences" is an asset, knowledge from other fields may trigger a creative person's mind to override what is assumed to be true in one field. He also feels the love or joy of solving problems is a key to finding solutions. This fun aspect is so strong that Rabinow is quoted as saying that, given a choice between money-making and fun, he would go for the fun.

Creative people are sometimes thought to be arrogant. However, this often stems from the need for self-assurance or, simply, overriding modesty. As Rabinow notes, "... I always assume that not only it can be done, but I can do it".

Robert Galvin (head of Motorola for 30 years) is reported as saying two traits are essential: 1) anticipation, i.e., having a vision of the future, and 2) commitment, which keeps you going when you or others have doubts. He also practices a mental exercise worth considering -- flip the problem by asking, "What if the opposite were true?".

Freeman Dyson, the physicist, observes, "... it is easy when you have a problem to work on. The hardest part is finding your problem".

The book cites how being in the right place at the right time contributes to being recognized. In Florence, Italy, between 1401 and 1425, an explosion of creativity took place. For example, for eighty years the cathedral of Florence lacked a dome, and yet the Pantheon of Rome had a dome (142 feet in diameter!) for a thousand years. Suddenly, Brunelleschi, who had analyzed the structure of the Pantheon, applied it to the problem at hand. The social, economic and political factors that made Florence the "right place at the right time" are detailed in the book.

Are we, today, providing incentives for creativity to flourish? One aspect of this is what we can do as a society. The author notes children who suffer from hunger or discrimination are less likely to be curious or interested in novelty. Another aspect is what as individuals can we do to promote our own creativity. The author offers various ways to cultivate creativity. For example, preserve the awe of childhood, "be surprised by something every day". Write down some of your observations and follow-up with some research. Don't think certain things are not your business -- life is your business.

While the author is a professor and former chairman of the Department of Psychology at the University of Chicago, the book is free from pompous phraseology and is readable by just about anyone who is interested in understanding creativity. If you want to dispel myths, such as "creative people are hyperactive", "have very high IQs" and "lack humor", then read this book and find out the real facts about creative people. A big book -- 456 pages -- but a delightful book. Read it and donate it to your local library -- the truth is there, so get it out there.
... Read more

Book Description
In Psychology, Folklore, Creativity and the Human Dilemma, the author explores the meaning of folklore and its usefulness in education and psychotherapy. The author?s interesthas expanded into other fields that challenge and question the limits of our everyday horizons, namely, into operas, plays, and humor, as well as into new approaches to the meaning of human existence explored by modern thinkers. These various fields often interact, explain, and enrich each other. The book aims for deepening the awareness of our ultimate human concerns, the meaning of authenticity, and the urgent need for radical, long-term commitments. The present volumes focuses almost entirely on the role of folklore in expanding and enriching a person's horizons, on the challenges by modern writers in terms of the need to radically alter the paradigm of Western society that has brought the blessings of technology, led to a fragmentation of our psyche, and threatens the very essence of our subjectivity. Throughout the book there is both the hidden and the overt implication that simply liking, appreciating or agreeing with insightful ideas and suggestions presented by anyone are absolutely worthless, or may even be counterproductive if the readers do not translate into changes and actions the ideas that are most meaningful to them, and if they do not do so in their family, social, political and spiritual life. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

1
This book is so dry that I thought that I was reading soda crackers.If there is valuable information between these covers, it is buried in dust.

Great Use of What Good Research Can Do Which is Limited
The limitations of this book do not come from its author.She has covered a tremendous territory in a superbly orderly, clear, convincing, rigorous fashion. Rather the limitations come from what modern best-practice social psychology research methods are capable of--not all that much. We have known for about a 100 years (more if you are willing to take aristocratic idea play as pseudo-research) that creators operate more out of intrinsic than extrinsic motivation. We have known common folk opinions about what aspects of extrinsic motivation hinder creation. We have even had sources that suggested something like a distraction effect--any extrinsic motive that takes your eye off your process-of-creating contents and onto goals not yet reached or results not yet gathered reduce the quality and intensity of your process of creating.So this was known before Amabile came along with the first really competent application of social psychology research methods from the publish-or-perish generation of scholars raised up in universities by an older generation that did not abide by publish-or-perish norms themselves though they imposed such norms on a younger generation.

The result is paradoxic--Amabile is very thorough, systematic, comprehensive, rigorous in her research.Her virtues as a scholar and a person stand out so well in her work that the somewhat modest increments of overall new knowledge produced by that work suprises.It is not her fault.He is using imperfect tools masterfully. It literally is the fault of the tools.Modern social psychology has good enough tools to frame somewhat precisely research topics like "creativity". However as a sub-field of psychology and sociology it lacks tools adequate for a host of extremely important recent research questions about creativity.Wolfram in New Kind of Science (and his late 1980s papers) and Kauffman in Investigations along with a Santa Fe Institute host of others have put major conceptual underpinning under the old creativity conundrum--is it eras and fields that create creators and their creations or is it individual heroic Western style people who create fields and eras with their creations. Probably the single most important conceptual frame for such issues is Epstein and Axtel's Brookings/MIT Press book on Growing Artificial Societies.It reports simulated software hunter gatherer agents from which new social institution inventions arose without any individual agent, planning, intending, or inventing them. In other words it proved that new inventions can come into the world, the human civilized world, without any creator creating them. This result is percolating through the social sciences the way chaos theory percolated through the physical sciences years ago. Amabile is wonderful, make no doubt about it, buy everything that she writes if you are interested in creativity and well done research. However, in pursuing her own research frame on creativity she gets separated from major side frames invented by others, like the Wolfram, Kauffman, Epstein/Axtel 1996 one just mentioned. That makes her musings on "social" effects hindering/helping creativity less than complete, comprehensive, and unfortunately less than correct in a strict research sense.There are so many bright people in the world today that being wonderful yourself is not enough--you have to suffer daily the immense pain of importing into the core of your own barely formed work/ideation the wonders just discovered/invented by others.Amabile pursues one tool set and what it can show about social and motivation-in-particular effects on creation but in doing so she omits extremely powerful frameworks by others that undermine, enhance, contradict, and elaborate her own discoveries. THere is no blame here--she is only a human being and cannot simultaneously pursue even with a Harvard budget every creative avenue of social effect research on creativity--no one can. Only a super-human could. She is a good as human researchers get. Her books are never fast, sloppy, or commercial.She is wonderful, pure and simple.However, such wonderfulness has very severe limits, given the limited tools we have for social research these days and for the foreseeable future. Therefore, the other reviewers here who suggest her book is a final or complete source on social effects on creation are simply wrong--dangerously wrong. She is as good as it gets for her chosen tools, but there are other tools around that are extremely powerful in handling the same questions and that have produced immensely powerful results, some of which her tools cannot now handle as well. Read her and more, in sum.

Finally, and I hate to say this, when famous wonderful scholars develop really significant commercial consultancy operations from their work, businesses and others tend to apotheisize what they buy from such consulting scholars. These messages blend in academic and commercial markets making partial, tentative results, not representative of all that plural research approaches are now producing, into "the" knowledge on social effects on creativity. This chthonian exaggeration harms research and confuses markets, driving customers away from less famous emerging scholars and their alternative approaches. It unfortunately can turn into Harvard drawing so many funds for one research tool set and approach that a dozen less famous approaches emerging get nothing and are not heard or pursued.Society is the loser and history is hurt by these institutional forces. Again no individual is at fault--this is an institutional context flaw we all work in--but being aware of it in one's own work means inviting in for reader notice approaches not taken by oneself and recently emerging with potential for great contribution.She does a bit of this but only for well trodden famous other researchers, I am afraid.

Great Use of What Good Research Can Do Which is Limited
The limitations of this book do not come from its author.She has covered a tremendous territory in a superbly orderly, clear, convincing, rigorous fashion. Rather the limitations come from what modern best-practice social psychology research methods are capable of--not all that much. We have known for about a 100 years (more if you are willing to take aristocratic idea play as pseudo-research) that creators operate more out of intrinsic than extrinsic motivation. We have known common folk opinions about what aspects of extrinsic motivation hinder creation. We have even had sources that suggested something like a distraction effect--any extrinsic motive that takes your eye off your process-of-creating contents and onto goals not yet reached or results not yet gathered reduce the quality and intensity of your process of creating.So this was known before Amabile came along with the first really competent application of social psychology research methods from the publish-or-perish generation of scholars raised up in universities by an older generation that did not abide by publish-or-perish norms themselves though they imposed such norms on a younger generation.

The result is paradoxic--Amabile is very thorough, systematic, comprehensive, rigorous in her research.Her virtues as a scholar and a person stand out so well in her work that the somewhat modest increments of overall new knowledge produced by that work suprises.It is not her fault.He is using imperfect tools masterfully. It literally is the fault of the tools.Modern social psychology has good enough tools to frame somewhat precisely research topics like "creativity". However as a sub-field of psychology and sociology it lacks tools adequate for a host of extremely important recent research questions about creativity.Wolfram in New Kind of Science and Kauffman in Investigations along with a Santa Fe Institute host of others have put major conceptual underpinning under the old creativity conundrum--is it eras and fields that create creators and their creations or is it individual heroic Western style people who create fields and eras with their creations. Probably the single most important conceptual frame for such issues is Epstein and Axtel's Brookings/MIT Press book on Growing Artificial Societies.It reports simulated software hunter gatherer agents from which new social institution inventions arose without any individual agent, planning, intending, or inventing them. In other words it proved that new inventions can come into the world, the human civilized world, without any creator creating them. This result is percolating through the social sciences the way chaos theory percolated through the physical sciences years ago. Amabile is wonderful, make no doubt about it, buy everything that she writes if you are interested in creativity and well done research. However, in pursuing her own research frame on creativity she gets separated from major side frames invented by others, like the Wolfram, Kauffman, Epstein/Axtel 1996 one just mentioned. That makes her musings on "social" effects hindering/helping creativity less than complete, comprehensive, and unfortunately less than correct in a strict research sense.There are so many bright people in the world today that being wonderful yourself is not enough--you have to suffer daily the immense pain of importing into the core of your own barely formed work/ideation the wonders just discovered/invented by others.Amabile pursues one tool set and what it can show about social and motivation-in-particular effects on creation but in doing so she omits extremely powerful frameworks by others that undermine, enhance, contradict, and elaborate her own discoveries. THere is no blame here--she is only a human being and cannot simultaneously puruse even with a Harvard budget every creative avenue of social effect research on creativity--no one can. Only a super-human could. She is a good as human researchers get. Her books are never fast, sloppy, or commercial.She is wonderful, pure and simple.However, such wonderfulness has very severe limits, given the limited tools we have for social research these days and for the foreseeable future. Therefore, the other reviewers here who suggest her book is a final or complete source on social effects on creation are simply wrong--dangerously wrong. She is as good as it gets for her chosen tools, but there are other tools around that are extremely powerful in handling the same questions and that have produced immensely powerful results, some of which her tools cannot now handle as well. Read her and more, in sum.

Finally, and I hate to say this, when famous wonderful scholars develop really significant commercial consultancy operations from their work, businesses and others tend to apotheisize what they buy from such consulting scholars. These messages blend in academic and commercial markets making partial, tentative results, not representative of all that plural research approaches are now producing, into "the" knowledge on social effects on creativity. This chthonian exaggeration harms research and confuses markets, driving customers away from less famous emerging scholars and their alternative approaches. It unfortunately can turn into Harvard drawing so many funds for one research tool set and approach that a dozen less famous approaches emerging get nothing and are not heard or pursued.Society is the loser and history is hurt by these institutional forces. Again no individual is at fault--this is an institutional context flaw we all work in--but being aware of it in one's own work means inviting in for reader notice approaches not taken by oneself and recently emerging with potential for great contribution.She does a bit of this but only for well trodden famous other researchers, I am afraid.

Best Book for Understanding the Social Impact on Creativity
I am a management consultant for major corporations and also write business books.My clients frequently ask me to help them understand how to make their companies more creative.Almost all books on this subjectignore the influence of other people on the creative person.TeresaAmabile does just the opposite, and puts creativity into a context toexplain how to establish a creative environment for everyone.This book isan update of her earlier work, and the additions are very valuable.If youare a business person who wants to learn how to grow sales and profitsfaster, you need to understand the lessons in this book.She wrote asummary of this book recently in HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW that you may wantto read, also.CORPORATE CREATIVITY is another good book on this subject.

Required reading for students of creativity.
Outstanding analysis of psychological research on creativity andmotivation. Must reading for scholars and laypeople alike who areinterested in creativity. ... Read more

Book Description
In this exciting new contribution to the study of creativity,psychologist, artist, and writer Dr. Patricia Stokes delves into the minds of famous creative artists and discovers the surprising source leading totheir creative breakthroughs. From Picasso to Stravinsky, Kundera toChanel, to Frank Lloyd Wright, it is not boundary-less creative freedomthat inspires new ideas, but self-imposed, well-considered constraints.Monet forced himself to repeatedly paint the way light broke on, between,and around his subjects, contrasting color instead of light and dark, andsoftening edges in the process. His constraints catapulted the art worldfrom representational to impressionist art. Whatever your creativefield-be you an artist, educator, or psychologist who studies creativityand problem solving-Stokes shows you how to think clearly about yourcreative development and design the vital constraints that will take youto breakthrough. ... Read more

Book Description
Hands are our creative contact point with the world. To Jungian analyst Sonoko Toyoda, they represent feminine spirituality and offer a way to achieve wholeness, in women and men alike. But in the contemporary world, many women have lost the wisdom their hands represent and now must recover the memory of them.

Through a traditional story told by the Grimm brothers and similar folk tales from around the world, Toyoda explores the ancient meaning of a woman's hands and the wound of losing them. In the details of these stories she finds common threats to feminine independence and creativity and hopeful clues for how these qualities can be regained. She considers, as well, cultural variations in the tales and how the tasks of spiritual wholeness differ for women in Japan and the West.

Turning to the biographies of two prominent women artists-Frida Kahlo and Camille Claudel-she discovers similar themes played out in two historical lives. In these women's relationships with their fathers, brothers, and lovers, she considers further the sources of spiritual wounding. In both paintings and sculptures, Toyoda examines what feminine creativity is.

For today's world, the cult of the Black Virgin in Europe and that of the Senju Kannon (bodhisattva) in Japan represent remnants of feminine spirituality. Toyoda looks at these to discover universality before considering through stories of her own analysands how clinical work can help individuals claim their own feminine spirituality.

Through her sensitive, insightful, and creative book, Toyoda evokes the memory of women's lost hands to help recover them. ... Read more

Book Description
The goal of this handbook is to provide the most comprehensive, definitive, and authoritative single-volume review available in the field of creativity. The book contains twenty-two chapters covering a wide range of issues and topics in the field of creativity, all written by distinguished leaders in the field. The volume is divided into six parts. The introduction sets out the major themes and reviews the history of thinking about creativity. Subsequent parts deal with methods, origins, self and environment, special topics and conclusions.All educated readers with an interest in creative thinking will find this volume to be accessible and engrossing. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

Thick and plentiful - worth it but not easy
Sternberg's Handbook has an almost mythical reputation amongst the Creative Studies Students at Buffalo State College.While there are shortcomings to the Handbook, areas where key authors or subjects are missing (it is written from the behavioral scientist point of view, and there are other, equally valid viewpoints in creative studies), each chapter will have plenty of food for thought.

And, guaranteed, you will have the time to digest this food for thought, as each and every chapter requires slow and careful reading.If the writing were to be any denser, it would tear free from the pages and sink to the very center of the Earth!Yet, there is so much information that, in the end, the knowledge derived is more than worth the work needed to get at it.

One last note: This is a handbook for those interested in the deep research on creativity.It is NOT suitable a "first book" for anyone starting out to learn about creativity!

Using The Left Brain Too Much To Understand Right Brain
Although all the contributors of the book wrote about creativity, their writing and presentation styles are stiff, dry, and boring--- totally uncreative!

They used too much of their left brain to discuss a fascinatingsubject like creativity, which is supposed to be fun,lively, and thoughts provoking.

The only merit of this book is that it is a well-researchedfacts book on creativity, very suitable for the academicpeople. It focuses more on the WHY side of creativity, rather than on theHOW TO side, which makes it less practical and appealing to thecreativity practitioners or end-users!

Still a good book to put on the bookshelf though.

Using The Left Brain Too Much To Understand Right Brain
Although all the contributors of the book wrote about creativity, their writing and presentation styles are stiff, dry, and boring--- totally uncreative!

They used too much of their left brain to discuss a fascinatingsubject like creativity, which is supposed to be fun,lively, and thoughts provoking.

The only merit of this book is that it is a well-researchedfacts book on creativity, very suitable for the academicpeople. It focuses more on the WHY side of creativity, rather than on theHOW TO side, which makes it less practical and appealing to thecreativity practitioners or end-users!

Still a good book to put on the bookshelf though.

Not for getting informed but to understand the subject!
Dr.Sternberg's book on the evolution process of creativity research is a splendit source for anybody who deals with social sciences, a must for organizational behaviorists and a very satisfactory piece of reading for general reader.

The book does not give mere descriptions on the scope of creativity but it provides great amount of knowledge on the evolutionary process of creativity research from ancient times up to today! Furthermore, the subject of creativity has been examined both from theoretical and methodological perspective in such a creative manner which gives a very good knowledge about the major approaches, the outcomes of the previous researchs, main obstacles in the course of investigation, and finally the probable studies for further research on the creativity.

Consequently, the reader finds a good chance not only to have a detailed theoretical and practical information on the subject but also to learn the main approaches of outstanding social scientists towards the subject and not mentioning about the meticoulisly prepared bibliography.

I am amazed with the intensity of Dr.Sternberg's study the language of which is clear enough those of us whose Mother tongue is not English (like me!).

Wonderful design, good but not great execution
I was looking for a comprehensive introduction to creativity research for students that combined a mapping function--showing what is out there by whom trending where--and a grounding interest function--showing how theresearch really does elucidate and give insight on insights, creation,etc.. Well..... The table of contents was perfect--absolutely perfect. But half of the articles served purely as mappings, with little or noinsight provided.One does not know immediately whether to ascribe this toa fault in the articles included on in the research surveyed. Studentswho happened to get assigned good chapters came away excited, but those whohappened to get assigned purely mapping chapters were bored by creativityresearch and hard to keep motivated. So now I have to use Sternberg'searlier book on Insight along with this Handbook.I apologize for thehonesty of this review.It is a great mapping book and a moderate insightprovider in sum. ... Read more

Book Description

"In this excellent, concise volume, Rothenberg reports his current views on this fascinating subject... Well argued and judicious... I cannot recommend this book too highly."--Journal of the American Medical Association.

"This intriguing theory will no doubt provoke lively debate both in and outside professional circles. For lay readers, however, the book's real pleasure lies in the substantive analyses of Sylvia Plath, August Strindberg, Emily Dickenson, Tennessee Williams, Eugene O'Neill, and William Faulkner."--Wilson Library Bulletin

Intrigued by history's list of "troubled geniuses,"Albert Rothenberg investigates how two such opposite conditions -- outstanding creativity and psychosis -- could coexist in the same individual. Rothenberg concludes that high-level creativity transcends the usual modes of logical thought -- and may even superficially resemble psychosis. But he also discovers that all types of creative thinking generally occur in a rational and conscious frame of mind, not in a mystically altered or transformed state.

Far from being the source -- or the price -- of creativity, Rothenberg discovers, psychosis and other forms of mental illness are actually hindrances to creative work. Disturbed writers and absent-minded professors make great characters in fiction, but Rothenberg has uncovered an even better story -- the virtually infinite creative potential of healthy human beings.

Customer Reviews (3)

Interesting insights about creativity
I found Rothenberg's insights about the characteristics of creativity the most meaningful ideas in the book.He has learned several methods of those who are creative, and these are helpful anyone wanting to be creative or help someone else like a child become creative.

He does a good job debunking some of the myths that associate creativity with mental illness by showing several cases of mentally ill creators.He shows that their creative times did not coincide with the severe bouts of mental illness.

He profiles a few artists, Sylvia Plath, Emily Dickinson, Eugene O'Neil, and JOhn Cheever among others.It is interesting to read how these successful people dealt effectively or ineffectively with mental illness.

The author offers his conclusions about creativity and its association with mental illness.Whether they are ultimately conclusive, the reader can decide.He is a thorough researcher and writer, so this is a book worth reading if you are interested in the subject matter.

Rothenberg's false prophecy
Rothenberg's 1994 book claims to have supposedly "debunked" the "myth" between creativity and madness based on his "new findings and old stereotypes" that many geniuses such as aristotle have proclaimed a link between the two for thousands of years.He states that previous studies linking bipolar disorder to creativity were biased and a link to schizophrenia is nonexistent.He bases this on sketchy evidence with nobel laureates where there responses to a creativity test called a word association test had a slightly different response style then psychotics.He then comes to the narrow conclusion that creativity is mostly based on juxtaposition and homospatial thinking which he contends is the part of the test that nobel laureates have scored high in and psychotics didn't based on the results of his word association test.

However, since then a rigourous longitudinal study has come out in a book called "The Price of Greatness: Resolving the Creativity and Madness Controversy" found that Bipolar Disorder, Schizophrenia like psychosis, and other disorders are Much more prevalent among creatively eminent people then they are found in the general population.Studies by Hans Eysenck and others have also shown that psychopathology (or personality traits that predispose to psychosis) is much higher in creative people then in non-creative people in the general population.Also relatives of people with mental disorders are on average more creative then in the general population.To top it all off a study done by Peter Jordanson and colleagues has found one of the biological basis to creativity, which is that creative people score low on measures of latent inhibition which measure one's openness to novel stimuli or new possibilities.People with mental illness, particularly Schizophrenics, also score low on latent inhibition showing they have a trait that is essential for creativity, and that creative achievers also have.Of course Rothenberg obviously wasn't open to this possibility (which has now been scientifically proven), when he wrote this book.While at the same time other creativity researchers were (go figure).While Rothenberg's theory does have some truth in it such as obvious facts that creative achievement and insanity aren't the same thing and in fact that insanity in itself can be destructive to creative achievement; or that not all mentally ill people necessarily become eminent creative achievers.His main premise of the book that there is no link between creativity and madness has been proven false and it is clear that he was probably the one who was biased against any association between creativity and madness to begin with.

Then again psychiatrists, which are in the same profession as Rothenberg, often note that there is some truth in every delusion.Which I suppose means that even though "new findings and old stereotypes" has disproven Rothenberg's "delusion" (or false belief) of their not being any link between creativity and madness, his "delusional theory" should not be thought of as not being true at all.As he does make some (although mostly obvious) points about the subject in his book.

A Psychiatrist Looks at Creativity
Rothenberg looks at creativity from the perspective of a scientist.He examines psychological ideas- Freudian, depression, bi-polar, schizophrenia; linguistic trends- use of alliteration, metaphors, rhymes;personality characteristics- motivated, determined, and able to organizeone's ideas; and relates them all to his search for answers to why some cancreate such wonderful works of art. He dispells myths aboutcreativity being some mystical birth-right that only the chosen fewpossess, and implies the conclusion that creativity is more the product ofan aware mind and feeling human being than tormented genius.Good book,quick read. ... Read more

Book Description
Who is creative and why? And what does it mean to be creative? Is acreative individual a master-of-all trades or a master of one? In otherwords, is creativity a generalized attribute or is it a domain-specificattribute? In Creativity: The Psychology of Creative Potential andRealization, authors ponder these questions and discuss the attributesthat lead people to be creative in various fields such as the arts andletters, the sciences, and business. The emphasis of this volume is on the theoretical issue of whether the attributes that lead to creativity in one domain are the same as those that lead to creativity in another domain.Researchers and students alike will find these discussions delightfullyintriguing. The study of creativity is burgeoning and multidisciplinary,in that it involves approaches of social, personality, cognitive,clinical, biological, differential, developmental, and educationalpsychology. The book will be of interest a wide range of psychologist,researchers and students. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Listen to Michalko
I use Michalko's book in a college-level course on Innovation & Creativity, and if he says this is a great text, go for it.

Money?
My God, I write books on creative thinking, for example, "Thinkertoys: A Handbook of Creative Thinking Techniques," and this book by Sternberg is definitely a five star book which is excellent and informative. Why it is priced this high is beyond me. I mean let's get real and price it to the market and not to what some academic idiot thinks its worth. No book is worth this kind of money. Anyway, it's excellent. Check it out at the library and spend the money on something else, like take your loved one out to dinner. ... Read more

Book Description
Artists, writers, scientists, managers, psychologists, educators, or anyone who creates. Are you looking for inspiration, words, a way to express yourself? Would you like to destroy the myth that creativity is a mysterious gift for only a chosen few? Would you like to know exactly what to do and sooner rather than later? Would you like to find yourself by losing yourself in your art form rather than be derailed by distractions to your real purpose in life? If so this is the book for you.

This is a textbook. It was written for any student who might sign up for the course entitled Psychology of Creativity. However, anyone who wanted to study it on their own could also find the book useful. It is for artists, leaders, managers, musicians and writers. It will describe the creative process for artist as well as writers or people from other disciplines. It allows the reader to find similarities and differences depending upon the creative process that each individual is exploring. It may de-mystify rituals of inspiration. Hemingway drank. Picasso used women in the same way that Hemingway used alcohol; he consumed them. This book may eliminate the mythology that you must have a gift in order to create. It never hurts to be gifted, but techniques do not have to be mysterious. Changing the world is an inside job.

Knowledge of the creative process cannot substitute for creativity itself. Some people seem unable to start. Those people should remember that a journey of one thousand miles starts with a first step. It seems easy to get stuck. Writers get writer's block. Managers and executives sometimes plateau and as a result fail to continue to grow and prosper. Dr. Larry Liberty used to say that people are like plants. If you aren't growing, you are already dead. Sometimes challenges seem too overwhelming, seem too intimidating and free inspiration seems blocked. There always seem to be setbacks and frustrations. It helps to know that these are phases of the natural cycle of creative processes. Perseverance is one component of the creative process. Long-term goals can be achieved. Sometimes there are milestones to be celebrated or even recognized because they are telling people that they are on the right track. Some struggles can take a lifetime. Frank Lloyd Wright was 72 before his work began to be recognized. Colonel Sanders was nearly bankrupt at 65 and died a multimillionaire more than two decades later. It was a struggle that generated incredible pleasure and joy. A lot of the things happen in life: false starts, mistakes, sometimes life itself gets in the way. Many attempts people make are imperfect; yet each one of those imperfect attempts is an occasion for growth. As Thomas Edison put it, "I haven't failed; I've found 10,000 ways that don't work."

The creative process is like a religious quest or odyssey that takes a person down a spiritual trail. Prisig would say that the motorcycle that you are working on is yourself. Nietzsche would probably say that a creative act is the only way to eliminate despair and alienation. The Zen monk might say that you can find yourself by losing yourself in your art form. There is a meaningful, original, authentic self inside of you waiting to be discovered and expressed.

How talented are you? What do Einstein, Picasso, and Bill Gates have in common? What are inspiration, insight, and improvisation? Do we need to wait for the Muses to come or is there another way to develop our imagination? Readers can get answers to these and other questions in this book. Discover the genius inside of you. This book provides a historical review of a variety of approaches to creativity. The material covered emphasizes psychological components of the creative process, the application of creativity in the writing process, the visual arts as well as music, leadership, problem solving and science, the preconditions for creativity, and the general characteristics of creative people. Hundreds techniques for creativity stimulation are organized into 15 workshops. 540 pages, 60 color illustrations. ... Read more

Book Description
In this highly readable yet comprehensive book, parents and teachers will find many suggestions for enhancing a child's creativity.

"Understanding Creativity" offers advice on how to plan adventures, value work without "evaluation", set a creative tone, and incorporate creativity values into one's own family or classroom culture.

Readers will learn how to spot talent through a child's behaviors and how to encourage practice. Real-life examples of artists, musicians, dancers, entrepreneurs, architects, and authors are included. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Full of cliche anecdotal generalizations
In my opinion the author uses anecdotal information to support sweeping, and oten stunningly cliche, generalizations.Too poorly supported to be considered a scientific text, and two scattered to be a good overview of creativity, this book is largely a stew of factoids.If I had not read a few texts on creativity prior to this one, I would have had a hard time picking out the germain points in the book.A much better overview of creativity can be found in R. Keith Sawyer's 'Explaining Creativity.'

enhancing your own creativity
With extensive scholarship, Dr. Piirto relates a fascinating overview of approaches to creativity, from the mystical to the pragmatic, the psychodynamic and psychometric to the cognitive. She notes that psychologist Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi makes a distinction of "Big C" creativity (eminent people making significant contributions to a domain), and "little c" creativity "by which human beings lead their everyday lives."

She cites the work of social psychologist Dean Keith Simonton showing that "creativity is the work of a life... from birth to grave" and "a form of leadership... the creator is a persuader."

For anyone wanting to enhance their creative lives and talents, the book provides a wealth of concrete and practical ideas from experts, such as divergent thinking exercises of the Odyssey of the Mind program, and strategies used by Dr. Piirto in her own classes.

How parents and teachers can enhance creativity
Understanding Creativity is an examination of the psychological impulses that drive the quality in human beings broadly labeled as "creativity," which also covers how parents and teachers can enhance creativity, as well as the cognitive aspect of creative writers, scientists, musicians, and physical performers, as well as ways to assess and train creativity. Author Jane Piirto, a teacher of the College of Education and the Director of Talent Development Education in Ashland University, offers a wealth of research, theory, and a guideline around the Seven I's - Inspiration, Imagery, Imagination, Intuition, Insight, Incubation and Improvisation - to form the foundation of a solid creative process. Understanding Creativity needs to be carefully read by anyone charged with the responsibility of recognizing talent in children, setting a creative tone with children, and encouraging children to utilize their creativity in their personal lives.

Become more creative!
Dr. Jane Piirto has put together one of the best resources for anyone interested in creativity. The biographic examples of highly creative people are fascinating. I thoroughly enjoyed this comprehenvie text. ... Read more

Book Description
Dr. Linda Hamilton's ground breaking book, The Person Behind the Mask: A Guide to Performing Arts Psychology, takes the reader on a vivid journey of the performer's private world, where personal insecurity often wages an unsuccessful battle against the stresses of the profession-whether these are unrealistic weight requirements, debilitating injuries, or stage fright. Intended for performers, teachers, and health-care workers, this is a book that describes the psychological problems of the stage, with a focus on education and prevention. ... Read more

Book Description
This digital document is an article from Journal of Evolutionary Psychology, published by Institute for Evolutionary Psychology on August 1, 2004. The length of the article is 3720 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: The psychology of creativity and genius: reflections on Shakespeare and the Oxfordian challenge.
Author: Kevin Simpson
Publication: Journal of Evolutionary Psychology (Refereed)
Date: August 1, 2004
Publisher: Institute for Evolutionary Psychology
Volume: 25Issue: 3-4Page: 146(8)

Distributed by Thomson Gale ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A classic!
Joseph Rossman was a patent officer charged with assessing patent applications. Rossman surveyed over 700 highly innovative inventors (holding an average of 33 patents each) with regard to their creative process. This resulted in a substantial body of testimonial material regarding their creative process, on the basis of which Rossman developed his model of the creative process.

Research into the creative process ( a subset of psychology of creativity research) has a long history. It started over 100 years ago with comments from the scientists Helmholtz and Poincare about their work processes and reached a 'golden age' in the first half of the 20th century with a string of stage models due to Wallas, Rossman, and Hutchinson and an alternative approach ('productive thinking') from the gestalt psychologist Max Wertheimer. The models developed in this era have not been significantly questioned subsequently: instead, psychology since the 1950's has gone in a different direction, emphasising quanitative (psychometric) tests to measure creativity defined in operational terms rather than focusing on the creative process aspect of creativity. The Wallas stage model containing 'stages' of Preparation, Incubation, Illumination and Verification when working on a task or problem remains the most widely cited and accepted model for explaining illumination phenomena. Hutchinson's and Rossman's models remain significant contributions to the literature.

Rossman's book is a classic in creative process research. It is well written, contains a significant body of testimonial material, and remains current - it is not invalidated by later developments. ... Read more

Book Description
What is the nature of knowledge and moral commitment in a postmodern age of relativism? What drives the creativity and dedication of those who are leaders in their profession? How do professional lives reflect moral identity and development? In Creativity and Moral Vision in Psychology, author Lisa T. Hoshmand invites seven contemporary psychologists to offer personal accounts of their own moral and professional development. She examines the information from interviews and autobiographical sketches for collective insights and moral vision. The purpose is to develop and apply a conceptual framework that will link knowledge interests and creativity in professional life to identity development and existential choices. By focusing on the activities and practices of a group of professionals, the author illuminates the purposes and values that inform the life commitments of those in the profession.This insightful volume is divided into three parts: Part I provides the conceptual and methodological background for the project; Part II comprises the autobiographical sketches; Part III provides a summary and analysis of the narratives expounding on the larger intellectual context in which the project can be located. The author addresses the issues surrounding epistemic and moral commitment in the postmodern age, making an attempt at the critical deconstruction of the texts involved.By integrating ideas from diverse areas of scholarship, this book offers a new understanding of the relationships among identity, creativity, and moral development for professionals and scholars in psychology, counseling, and human services. ... Read more