Exploring Creativity: Theories and Concepts

Posted on Nov 23, 2024 in Arts and Humanities

Theories of Creativity (10)

Each school of philosophy or psychological theory has addressed creativity:

Consider fantasy a hostile force.
Descartes: Rational thinking contrasts with imagination, which can be misleading and instill faith in impossibilities.
Ideal: Fantasy is a creative force.

Focus: The unconscious explains creativity.
Freud believed a relationship exists between instinctual (primary) and conscious (secondary) processes. Creativity depends on both.
Creative Traits: Self-confidence, hard work, flexibility, tolerance of ambiguity.
Freud, influenced by Leonardo da Vinci, identified three characteristics of creative people: Fixation, Repression, and Sublimation.

Seeks harmony of the whole. The mind tends to order elements, restore balance, and find closure.
Purpose: Achieve “the harmony of the whole.”
The creative process is a consistent mental line, not just a sum of operations.
A creative solution arises from understanding and resolving the problem.
Creativity defines and shapes new ideas or visions.
The basic unit of study is the structure. Education is fundamental for new solutions, flexibility, and new perspectives, enhancing creativity.

Combines different theories explaining the association between stimuli and responses.
Active mechanical explanation of the subject.
Productive thinking is synonymous with creative thinking.
The further apart the elements of the new creation, the greater the creativity.

Interpreted through specific, external, visible, and quantifiable responses.
Coincides with association.
Techniques for stimulating creative thinking focus on the principle of learning through conditioning.

Cybernetic interpretation of creativity.
Creativity is “placing the order,” introducing structure and shape to information.
Often discussed in relation to computer achievements. A message only emerges if there is “noise.”
Summarized in 5 areas: Information should be free and novel. Choice optimizes the flow of alternatives. Informational control, structural integration, and the origin and personalism of action and its outcome.

Based on human experience. Maslow and Rogers are key figures.
Rejects behaviorism. Creativity is an individual’s reaction, displayed in any situation, focusing on personal growth.
Maslow: Individuals strive for growth and self-realization, the primary source of creativity. He distinguishes three types of creativity: Primary, Secondary, and Integrated.
Rogers: Differs from Maslow. Summary: Humanistic theory emphasizes eliminating obstacles to individual expression, enhancing the self.

Focuses on intelligent actions. Piaget is a key proponent.
Addresses the concept of schemas built on individual experiences.
Does not distinguish creative intelligence; creativity arises from schemas and structures with varied physical and mental actions.
Observation, induction, metaphor, and expression are fundamental.

Derives its name from the individual’s interaction with external stimuli.
“We are creative not so much by developing generic or innate potential, but by the way we understand our conduct from the media.”
Media influences and contributes to our realization while we also alter and influence our environment.

Koestler: Integrates different studies seeking common elements in the creative process, calling it “bisociation.”
A creative person thinks on multiple planes of experience simultaneously.
The creative attitude is not tied to innovation. Creative person traits: Earliness, curiosity, imagination.

Early twentieth century.
Uses Spearman’s Theory of factors and fundamental analysis to investigate personality dimensions.
Creativity is an ability explaining certain behaviors, reducing multiple factors to key results.
Creativity is neither a general nor a specific factor but a primary factor with varying weight.
Authors: Zimmerman and Guilford. This current also leads to a characteristic of creativity.