Albert Rothenberg, a psychiatrist, and Carl R. Hausman, a philosopher, have prepared a truly comprehensive interdisciplinary book of readings on creativity. This group of selections from the works of writers in psychiatry, philosophy, psychology, psychoanalysis, and education brings together, for the first time, major theoretical works, outstanding empirical findings, and discussions of the definition and nature of creativity.
The organization of The Creativity Question is unique: it illustrates the various approaches and basic assumptions underlying studies of creativity throughout the course of history up to the present time. The main body of selections appears under the categories of descriptions, attempts at explanation, and alternate approaches. As specific orientations to creativity can be traced to particular initiating thinkers and investigators, there is a special chapter on seminal accounts containing selections from the works of Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Galton, and Freud. Another chapter includes recent illustrations of special types of exploratory trends: creativity of women, brain research, synectics, extrasensory perception, behaviorism, and creativity computer programming. This organization highlights the tension between strictly scientific accounts and alternative approaches offering new ways of understanding. The editors have provided for the books as a whole and for each chapter explanation and discussion of the basic issues raised by the various approaches to creativity.
Preface xi
Introduction: The Creativity Question 3
1. Seminal Accounts
Introduction 27
Inspiration / Plato 31
Creation as Making / Aristotle 33
Genius Gives the Rules / Immanuel Kant 37
Genius As Inherited / Francis Galton 42
Creative Writers and Daydreaming / Sigmund Freud 48
2. Descriptive Accounts
Introduction 55
Creation as Craft / Edgar Allan Poe 57
Fancy and Imagination / Samuel Taylor Coleridge 61
The Role of Hunches in Scientific Thought / Walter Bradford Cannon 63
Stages in the Creative Process / Graham Wallas 69
Creative Thought in Artists / Catherine Patrick 73
Genius and Insanity / Cesare Lombroso 79
Creativity in Self-Actualizing People / Abraham H. Maslow 86
3. Explanations 1: Forms and Scope
Introduction 93
The Teleology of the Creative Act / Brand Blanshard 97
Creative Intuition in Art and Poetry / Jacques Maritain 104
Biosociation in Creation / Arthur Koestler 108
Life and Creation / Otto Rank 114
On the Relation of Analytic Psychology to Poetic Art / Carl G. Jung 120
Unconscious Processes in the Artist / Harry B. Lee 127
On Preconscious Mental Processes / Ernst Kris 135
Creation and Neurosis / Lawrence S.Kubie 143
Unconscious Scanning and Dedifferentiation in Artistic Perception / Anton Ehrenzweig 149
Perceptual Modes and Creation / Ernest G. Schachtel 153
Concern for Discovery in the Creative Process / Jacob W. Getzels and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi 161
Psychology Approaches to Creativity in Science / Anne Roe 165
Architects, Personality Types, and Creativity / Donald W. MacKinnon 175
The Psychology of Creativity / Frank Barron 189
Creativity and Intelligence in Children / Michael A. Wallach and Nathan Kogan 208
Education and Creativity / E. Paul Torrance 217
The Associative Basis of the Creative Process / Sarnoff A. Mednick 227
4. Explanations 2: Special Trends
Introduction 238
Women and Creativity / Ravenna Helson 242
Metaphor and Invention / William J. J. Gordon 250
Creativity and the Bisected Brain / Joseph E. Bogen and Glenda M. Bogen 256
Extrasensory Perception and Creativity / Stanley Krippner and Gardner Murphy 262
A Behavioral Model of Creation / B. F. Skinner 267
A Computer Model Approach to Creativity / Herbert F. Crovitz 273
5. Alternative Approaches
Introduction 280
A Rejection of Determinism / Charles Sanders Peirce 282
Emergent Novelty / C. Lloyd Morgan 288
Creation as Unpredictable / Henri Bergson 291
Toward a Theory of Creativity / Carl R. Rogers 296
On the Creation of Art / Monroe C. Beardsley 305
The Process of Janusian Thinking in Creativity / Albert Rothenberg 311
Intuition and Expression in Art / Benedetto Croce 327
Consciousness and Attention in Art / R. G. Collingwood 334
Creativity and Rationalism / Carl R. Hausman 343
Selected Bibliography 352
