THE CONDITIONS FOR CREATIVITY: ENVIRONMENTAL STIMULATION
The world is too much with us: late and soon,
Getting and Spending we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid
boon.... ....
.....Great God, I'd rather be
A pagan, suckled by a creed outworn
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses which would make me less
forlorn
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea,
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.
William Wordsworth
CREATIVE DEVELOPMENT
The creative development of the individual is even more difficult than the dilemma envisioned by Wordsworth, for he must abstract the best in both the world and nature without becoming stultified by the aspects of either. Biological development, which has secured the individual's creativity up to maturity, is no longer available. For further development, continual environmental stimulation is necessary. Perhaps a better way of putting this idea is to say that the forces which act on an individual to produce creativity (such as development and edu-
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cation) are largely outside the individual's control before his majority, but afterward they depend almost exclusively upon himself. Because the unifying process of developmental function has not been fully understood, this important principle has been slighted. In particular, it has not been realized that the more complex developmental processes reached by a few through their intense reactions to enriched environmental stimulation offer a promise of future development for the many.
Two developmental principles have been indicated heretofore as in operation:
(1) Functions which emerge spasmodically or periodically at earlier
stages may be performed more regularly or continuously at higher stages.
(2) An accomplishment held tenuously only in conditions of peak experience
or great mental health will in later development persevere and be present
under conditions of more stress.
(3) Performance reached first by a few superior individuals in a culture
will later be reached by more, and, eventually, by the representative members
of the culture.
(4) What first appears as a phenomenon gradually becomes a norm.
This is certainly the time for some thoughtful reader to ask why it is necessary to talk about superior individuals at all if one is discussing a developmental problem. This question deserves a careful answer.
(1) By superior individual we mean an individual of superior intelligence which would place him in the top two stanines or the upper I I percent. (It is indeed possible that the future will go to an operational definition of giftedness which is that a "gifted" child is one that has the potentiality to become creative. If this is true, the definition of giftedness on the IQ scale will need to be dropped to about 120, or top 10 to 11 percent.) The basis of experience indicates that these individuals are more likely to become self-actualized than others. Maslow (1954, pp. 202-03), in his famous study, picked no historical figures who were not in this category; indeed, it would be difficult to describe a self-actualized cretin. Let the reader pick his own candidate for self-actualization and then discover if he is not of this level of intelligence.
(2) Such individuals appear to have a longer mental growth span than others. They appear to continue growing in mental age even into their seniority (whereas others decline) according to the Terman study (1954) followup, which found mental age still increasing at age 50.
(3) Superior individuals seem to have a "higher ceiling," permitting them access into higher developmental stages which ordinary people seldom attain. This is like "overdrive" on an expensive car.
(4) Superior individuals accomplish cognitive tasks more quickly and hence go through stages more thoroughly. They, therefore, develop more fully during their life span than do others.
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(5) The mental capacities of the superior individual help him with cognitive tasks, just as improved mental health helps him with affective tasks; both are needed to meet the dual nature of developmental stages.
(6) Superior individuals first reach new levels of performance and exhibit them only spasmodically or tenuously. Later in evolutionary progress, such attainment will be reached by more individuals and eventually by representative individuals in a culture. It is to the development of the superior individual, therefore, that we must look for a clue to the future developmental potential of the species.
The development of creativity requires abilities identified in the structure of intellect model and a high degree of mental health. Assuming that these two aspects are present in the individual, let us now turn our attention to the problem of adequate environmental stimulation of the individual during different developmental stages. This stimulation will be considered in relation to four educational influences: parental, public school, the university and environmental stimulation of the adult. Much has been written recently about the importance of very early stimulation in the child's development (Hunt, 1961). Instead of repeating this emphasis, we shall proceed with practical suggestions for parents, teachers and counselors, university personnel, and the adult who wishes to preserve and enhance his creativity.
PARENTAL STIMULATION OF CREATIVITY
Developing a Fostering Attitude
Parents can help gifted children to become creative by developing "a fostering attitude." A father who is interested in baseball develops a fostering attitude about baseball for his eight-year-old son by talking to him about baseball, buying him a bat, glove and ball, by playing catch with him, and by showing interest when the son joins a little league. This combination of expectancy and encouragement builds the background of early success experience and the confidence and eagerness which puts the boy in the mood to want to play baseball and to become increasingly successful at that sport. We need to do the same type of thing with regard to helping bright children become creative. We do not start in by setting up an unfavorable evaluation which derides any early manifestations of creativity. Creative performance is not going to occur in a child unless he feels secure enough to try new things. Some ways of providing a fostering attitude are shown in the following:
(1) Do not belittle the child's first efforts; be sympathetic to his first abortive attempts to create. Upgrade rather than belittle the child's self-concept of his ability to create while remaining relatively realistic about valuing products of his creative effort.
(2) Provide a warm and safe psychological base from which to explore and to which to return when the child may become frightened by his own discoveries. The mother who allows her child some risk in a new situation, but stays near
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so that he can return quickly when he is upset, is an example. Psychological safety is necessary before we can take the risk creativity implies.
(3) Become accepting of new ideas yourself. Respect children's curiosity and questioning and their ideas. Seek to answer their questions. If ideas or questions are too wild, try to get the child to rephrase them in somewhat sharper or more realistic terms. Instead of saying: "That's silly or impossible," say, "It would be easier to answer that question if you took this fact into consideration."
(4) Provide stimulating experiences of cultural, social or motor nature to feed new and challenging facts to the child's attention. This can be accomplished, of course, by taking children on trips, outings and excursions. When children have digested the data and are ready to process them, be receptive of their ideas.
(5) Help children name and classify things. Give them a sense of order and meaning, but do not tell them the whole answer by suggesting where this and that fact may go to form part of the jigsaw puzzle. In helping children value their ideas, attach meaning, worth and value to as many ideas and life experiences as possible.
(6) Sensory awareness of children may be heightened by helping them to appreciate and enjoy sensory perceptions and experiences without the guilt of feeling that they are somehow "sissy." Parents can point out to children the beauty of simple things, the joy of observing nature closely (such as a spider's web in the sunlight), the delight in crafts (such as weaving) or the pleasure in the mastery of a discipline (such as horseback riding). Children need guides in strange territory so that the strangeness will change to beauty; thus we should help children to half close their eyes to visualize a landscape in its softness, help them to dwell on the beauty and symmetry of a snowflake through a magnifying glass or look at the perfection in a small flower in the desert.
(7) Remember the really critical question for children to become creative rather than guilt-immobilized is: "Am I in control of my environment through the support of my beloved, or is my environment in control of me?" Hence mothers should seek to reward and support the creative efforts of their young sons and fathers, of their young daughters. Such support gives the child a feeling that the strange fantasy-type world lie seems to move in is denuded of its terrors, witches and goblins and is a place to experience a creative fantasy rather than to suffer a magic nightmare.
(8) It is easy to think of what adults can do to stamp out creative behavior. Think of some of these behaviors and then try to act oppositely.
(9) Respect individual differences. Do not merely tolerate them. We are glad people are different. We do not just put up with the fact. We are flexible enough to accept children as worthwhile whatever talents they may have.
(10) Encourage rather than belittle. Wait Disney once did a short movie about a little bug that wanted to change into another kind of a little bug because his lady love was of the latter species. The bug, aided by a fairy godmother, got halfway through the transformation and then got stuck; whereupon a third little
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bug, rather a nasty type, sang a little song which went something like: "You re nothing but a nothing; you're not a thing at all." So often parents and Other adults, by their actions as well as words, say to a child: "You're nothing but a nothing; you're not a thing at all," and, in consequence, the child sees himself as someone who cannot and does not perform.
(11) We need to help children in these discontinuities of self-concept. The child who sees himself as unable to perform must learn to see himself as a capable performer. Your child who is now afraid of the water will later see himself as willing to bathe with parental presence, later to bathe with parental supervision on the shore and still later to swim on his own. Growing up consists of these constant changes, and parents can help children make these transitions. Early independency training aids the child in thinking that he can do the new thing so that he sees himself as competent in the new test. As a result, he develops a realistic self-concept which sees life as a reasonable adventure with new challenges within his grasp and an environment over which he exerts at least partial control.
(12) Creating is a tender time. Children cannot create when they are constantly fearful or worried, or under undue stress or anxiety. Such children may learn cognitive memory-type production well, but at the expense of a complete "wipeout" of their creative abilities. To be creative, one must be in reasonable mental health, although there are a few notable examples to the contrary. An artist with enormous creative talent may, like Van Gogh, continue creative in spite of mental anguish, but most of us with lesser talents need confidence and good mental health to enable creativity to surface.
Facilitating the Child's Creativity through Mental Health
(1) Help the child to value. A child needs to be valued and to have his ideas valued before he can value others or their ideas. Valuing is a stage in affective learning; previous stages of which are receiving the child and responding to the child. Children need to build their own value system, not take over ours. The values a creative child builds may be divergent ones; he may not wish to emulate his teacher or parent, and this may annoy us. The wise parent concentrates on helping his child to some value system, not necessarily the parent's.
(2) The child's basic needs in the Maslow hierarchy must be met before he is ready for the task of cognitive self- actualization. If body needs, safety, love, social-ego needs are paramount in a child, he is unready to risk ego capital on creative efforts. The child engrossed in what others think about him, whose place with them is insecure enough to be of concern to him, cannot be creative.
(3) The child also has to become more comfortable with ambiguity. He must learn to separate it from anxiety. In life there is often more than one answer to a question, and if the question is not well put, there may be no answers at all. The child has to live with this kind of intellectual tension without becoming affectively anxious about it and without aborting the creative ideas which produce it.
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(4) Adult management of socially disapproved behavior also affects the child's concept of himself as a valuable and potentially creative person. Separating the action from the child helps one to be disvalued while the other is not.
(5) Differentiation of experience is a positive mental health toot which promotes creativity because it clarifies our representation of the world. Parents need to help the young child distinguish between lying and fanciful tales, the older child to discriminate between ends and means, and adolescents to tell the difference between emotions and body feelings.
(6) In their long march to cultural achievement, creative children pass through many discontinuities with which guidance is concerned. (An example is the change from the small elementary school with one teacher to the large junior high school with its departmentalized classrooms.) Children need enough inner strength at such discontinuity points to see themselves as able to perform in the new setting. If it is expected that children will write, paint, experiment and create in the home, the child is more likely to see his school work as an extension of something which is natural and normal and not a tremendous and new type of task.
(7) We need to give early rewards for creative behavior. We should make sure that every child's efforts, no matter how poorly executed, bring him enough satisfaction to encourage him to try again. Parents can help by praise rather than criticism. If a child ends up about half right, but with a serious misconception bothering him, we can help by saying, "Well, you made a good try, but I think we can add something else to that," rather than by slapping him down with "That's wrong." We support the process rather than judge the product.
(8) Creativity is nurtured by easy access to the preconscious; hence, the making of impermissible impulses permissible. To effect this social transformation of the libido, children need help in learning how far to dip into themselves to come up with free-floating ideas, and they need sympathy, not disapproval, in early and crude attempts to make these ideas socially acceptable.
(9) Children need help in managing the disappointment and doubt which arise when they have to act alone in some creative endeavor which other people do not understand or to which others may react with derision and ridicule. At such a time the child needs to learn to reward his ego internally in place of the applause he failed to get for initial creative effort, otherwise he may simply turn off the creative thrust entirely. 'Me childish idea of wanting to be first always and perfect always has to be sacrificed to the more realistic concept of a respectable batting average. The creative child may have ten wild ideas while another child has one; sometimes only one of the ten will pay off. If the child is going to be negatively valued for the nine, we will fare poorly. Parents, therefore, must be willing to lot children express some of these ideas, and then later help them with some evaluation techniques so that the child realizes that a reasonable pay-off of one good idea for every ten is enough to allow him to be a different, but a helpful, member of society. Ego strength on the part of the child is needed here, but we cannot get creative results with children unless we can help them to grasp this important lesson.
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(10) If parents permit children this reasonable risk-taking behavior, life becomes an adventure in which children can with reasonable effort with reasonable risk, in a world more or less reasonably organized, bring about a result over which they have some control. Again we return to this question: "Am I in control of my environment, or is my environment in control of me?" We want to instill in children the willingness to risk a little where the expectation is large in spite of an occasional failure. This leads to a realistic self-concept with willingness again to risk at a slightly higher level of aspiration. The opposite of this "reasonable risk taking" is that we see in juvenile delinquency, the willingness to risk approval, security, even survival in the face of a blank chance or a long shot with almost certain failure. The creative child thus becomes a "reasonable adventurer" by recognizing that risk taking where one bets on one's abilities in a cognitive way may be a desirable and useful strategy. This is especially true when risk taking becomes a deliberate and realistic choice in which the risk is small compared with the expectation, and not a matter of chance. Children also need help in perfecting risk-taking strategies by identifying finer degrees or categories rather than being satisfied with rougher degrees. (It is harder to diagnose these complex situations, but such intuitive leaps may have heavy cognitive pay-offs.)
Facilitating the Child's Creativity through Social Relationships
Sometimes being creative causes difficulties in the way one relates to other people. Others deride or do not appreciate one's creative efforts, or they give the credit to someone else. Children may need help in "marketing" their creative ideas. Some ways in which parents can help children in this regard are as follows:
(1) Creative children can be supported in maintaining their creative uniqueness by protecting it from public disapproval. The child needs to know that it is all right to be different from other children, that his parents can respect differences in each other and in his siblings. Parents who illustrate the way to cope with socially caused tensions help their children who have similar problems with which to cope.
(2) Peer sanctions against being creative and "different" are often very hard for children to cope with. As a result, they may "turn off" their creativity rather than to run the risk of losing friends. Parents need to talk with children at times like these, and perhaps intervene, by helping them find new peers who can or will appreciate their differences as valuable.
(3) Whenever a child is proving creative about being naughty or devious, it is usually because he has not enough responsibility and needs more. We may need to help children discriminate between constructive rather than destructive nonconformity. The difference is situational in the first instance but compulsive in the second. Nonconformity in the first instance is a response to unreasonable unintelligent adult demands; in the second case, it may become a compulsive, destructive reaction to any demands at all.
(4) A child's mind has been compared to a "twin fountain of creativity and destructiveness." The more we open the creative fountain, the more we tend
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to close the destructive one. The child who is denied constructive outlets may turn to becoming creatively devious in getting his way.
(5) We should not shirk from making the complicated explanation when it is called for or portraying nature as complex rather than simple. We can also help children refine questioning, and suggest modifications of the search approach when there seems to be no answer to a particular line of questioning. Very often a child's questions reveal misconceptions or inaccurate facts. The four-year-old who asks his mother "Why aren't these rockets likely to shoot down God?" needs help in rethinking and rephrasing his concept.
(6) Not all learning needs to be evaluated. A good athletic coach has practice most of the time and only evaluates during scrimmage or games. Some adults, however, act as if a child is always in a game for keeps. Creative response is stultified or blocked when evaluation occurs too quickly or too often. We need to make clear to children that there will be times when they are not being evaluated. Effective students learn that they are not making mistakes when they are practicing. They may be discovering different or invalid answers, but they are narrowing down the remaining possibilities.
(7) A child's curiosity and questioning should always be respected. Sometimes children will question peers or adults and will be turned off as a result of ignorance or embarrassment. Parents can help restore the child's curiosity which has received social disapproval by trying to answer the question as honestly and fully as possible.
(8) Creative children are self-starters with lots of energy, a high degree of independence and a great deal of initiative. These characteristics can be hindered by too much supervision; however, when a child starts on something, we should encourage him to go through with it. On the other hand, if a child persists, or eagerly reaches for new alternatives, it is best to let him go and give him his "head." Parents sometimes ask: "Shall I let him read; he's only three?" Why not? Other mothers will query: "Shall I let him take all those adult books out of the library?" Why shouldn't he? Have you ever been hurt by a book you wanted to read? Interest should never be denied or learning withheld from children.
(9) Parents can take a leaf of the book from developments in the educational world with regard to values and social behavior. In the past, these areas became involved with religious or moral codes. But the concept of values, interests and attitudes can be dealt with by the parent or teacher in terms of the Krathwohl and Bloom (1965) "affective domain of educational objectives." The process of receiving, responding and valuing is a significant part of learning to feet our social responsibilities about things, events and persons. We can help children in this dimension by receiving information tolerantly, showing attention when new information comes to us (even if it is "rock and roll" music), valuing it, then helping to set the value into its proper perspective. For example, parents can help youngsters evaluate and put in proper place good television programs over poor ones, good comic books over poor ones, and so on. This concept of setting taste and values for youngsters is as easy as that, and these examples are a good place in which to start.
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The writer can remember coming to agreement with his adolescent daughter some years ago that at least one of the ways she could tell a "B" movie from an "A" movie was that, in a "B" movie, she would know what was going to happen next. This is a very simple kind of awareness, but it is one of the entering wedges in helping a child look at something and say "is this good?" instead of just taking it in as raw experience.
(10) New and challenging facts must be talked over, processed and digested to become concepts out of which children can form some meaningful view of the world. Finding related meanings in life is the real process of discovering values and is necessary for a productive and satisfying life. Creative children may develop a different set from our own, but if we can help the child digest the experience, we essentially mediate it; and the value emerging, while the child's and not ours, is still something we have helped to develop.
The child needs to discover through home discussion that people, even loved ones, perceive the same situation differently, that there is often more than one answer to a question or more than one method of procedure. Children are fortunate who live in a home where differences and new ideas are accepted and not just tolerated. Such children soon find out that it is all right to differ with people, that you can still respect and love them, whether they are your playmates, parents or other adults. In fact, they discover the goodness of individual differences.
TEACHER AND COUNSELOR STIMULATION
How can the professional educator help the child become more creative? As education has become more aware of and interested in creativity, it has become more obvious that the development and maintenance of creativity is not purely an outgrowth of curriculum experiences but of teacher-student and c ounselor-stu dent inter relationships and attitudes. The guidance staff is responsible for not only encouraging and ensuring the orientation of learning to creativity, but for a classroom and school climate which will foster it. Studies of the personality of the creative child (Torrance, 1962, 1964) clarify many aspects which can be promoted by the teaching and by the guidance staff.
(1) The creative child is often physically and socially mature for his age, intelligently aware of his environment and his own needs and abilities, fully functioning and responsible. In this respect, he is opposite of the personality of the delinquent or to the student hampered by a resistant or maladaptive attitude. Dr. Paul Torrance, upon being asked by the writer "What makes a child creative?" replied: "Anything that makes him more alive." A zest for life and exuberance of mental and physical health is often evident in bright creative children. Whatever guidance programs can do to help every child to better mental health and maturity "I aid whatever creativity he may possess.
All children have some elements of creativity as a result of their mental health. Guidance personnel has the responsibility that the school climate, personalization of relationships, and elements of curriculum preserve, maintain and
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foster this mental health for all. The children may not become notably creative, but they will become more productive and less vulnerable to mental illness. Conversely, the identification of children with special potential for creativity is also a most important guidance function.
In this advocacy of more complete guidance services, we do not imply that the guidance program can produce creativity, but only that it will tend to bring out or make manifest latent creativity of children. Most educational stimulation for children merely preserves and develops their creative performance rather than producing it. Children are naturally creative and only require the right atmosphere to manifest it.
(2) Creative thinking takes place only when more essential need systems have been satisfied. A child's physiological and biological needs come before the onset of intellectual and personal self-actualization. Body needs, safety, love and self-esteem must be satisfied before the child can risk ego-capital on creative ventures. Counselors need to help their children manage their social and personal anxieties enough to be creative.
(3) The process of creative performance is similar to "mining ore "from the preconscious. Many children are reluctant to mine this lode because of the frightening or unpleasant things which may be discovered. These scary, uncanny memories and experiences are part of the Sullivanian "not me" (1952), disassociated frightening fragments which are part of the preconscious. In the mansion of our intellect we all have a room, attic or closet we never show to others which consists of assorted junk piled up from bygone days. like a toymaker's attic, it is often filled with severed heads, limbs and torsos of the dolls we somehow failed to put together. The problem the child has is to avoid panic when he goes into the attic, develop the confidence to bring back the latent ideas from their preconscious resting places, develop the patience to examine the idea carefully and finally to keep the mind tranquil enough so that this whole process of inner exploration can take place. The ore comes out in unpolished form, and the dolls come down with their heads on backwards, and the child may easily reject an idea which, with more attention and polishing, would show real worth. Acceptance and understanding without premature evaluation encourage the experience and continuation of creativity. The child can best effect suspension of evaluation himself when in the presence of a supportive, nondirective person, such as the counselor.
(4) Adults can promote the process by which children channel their creative thrust and aggressiveness into constructive and not destructive channels. Creative children are going to be nonconformists. We can help them to become constructive rather than destructive nonconformists. The difference is often subtle and imperceptible to adult eyes. But, whereas the constructive nonconfor- mist is situational and selective in his attack of society and its ills (as Thoreau was over the Mexican War), the nonconstructive nonconformist is compulsive and nondiscriminating in attacking everybody and everything (as in "trashing" buildings). Creative children are ambivalent toward creativity destructiveness and may create and destroy practically in the same breath. We need to help them separate these functions so that in the positive or creative systole, they
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channel their energy into constructive action and in the negative diastole, into harmless dissipation of energy (such as thrashing around and making splashes in a swimming pool). In the beginning, like all children, creative children do not distinguish much between being creative and being destructive. If the creative actions are not more rewarded than the destructive ones, it will be difficult later to untangle the child's ambivalence in this area.
(5) Counselors and other adults need to provide support for children to participate in creative experiences. Creative experiences are peak experiences, and they require a focusing and constricting of attention so that a new perspective emerges. Psychological courage to give of oneself, to withstand a sense of awe or strangeness, to conserve curiosity in the face of scary novelty is required. Just as oxygen may be required by the extended perspiring athlete as well as by the expiring invalid, so generous amounts of counseling may be necessary at the time of creativity as well as at the removal of psychopathology. A young girt going out on a date needs to be groomed to establish her self-confidence in meeting this exciting but strange new boy. We have discovered in our summer workshop for children that they also need "grooming" by the counselor before class to "set" them for creative endeavor. This often consists of support, admiration and confidence expressed by the counselor in the child.
(6) Many times the creative child will find himself alone, neglected or unrewarded as a result of his creative response. His peers and adult acquaintances will not appreciate or even notice some of his creative actions and at other times they will strongly oppose them. Many creative children have their ideas turned down without examination because their manner or approach provokes opposition; the same idea may later be advocated by a more popular or respected group member, and it will be readily adopted or rewarded. When this happens, creative children may become embittered and wish to withdraw from the group, or they will "reform" and conform for the sake of external approval. The counselor, in talking to the child at this point, can indicate that such steps deny the child's creative gifts. The child must learn to reward his own efforts and to market his different ideas. Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography contains a famous and helpful recital of his early difficulties in this regard and the ways he found to overcome them, The counselor may not always be able to improve the external situation, but be can aid the child in understanding the internal one; namely, his own feelings and appreciation for his own efforts.
(7) Guidance for the creative child involves not only the solving of problems but a positive counseling promoting mental health. Significant for all students, guidance is vital for creative ones. In our summer institute for promoting creativity in gifted children, we found that gifted children willingly sought and absorbed the counselors' efforts of a one to twenty-five counselor-client ratio, which is twelve times the concentration of guidance services often recommended. To deal with more complex problems, to bring into focus a variety of abilities in longer process sequences (for more constructive endeavors with less possibility of external reward), the creative youth needs more mental health than the average. He needs it to handle without disabling stress and to tolerate the
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prolonged problems, which he must solve alone, and the solutions, which
only he can find. like a diver whose oxygen supply enables him to stay
longer under water, he must be better equipped for the strange conditions
under which he must labor. We enhance the creativity of those who are highly
able cognitively by helping them to become highly sound emotionally.
Establishing the Creativity Cycle and Managing Its Depressed Phase
The process of creativity is a cycle very much like that of a heat pump. The latter (in the cooling mode) focuses a supply of cold air into the interior of the refrigerator and dissipates the hot exhaust air into the room. There is a similar cycle in creative action; first, a positive wave of creative production followed by a down phase of essentially negative emotions, often depression. The phenomenon of "post partum" depression as a biological effect is well known, but it also occurs in creative process, where there is less knowledge concerning its etiology. Depression after childbirth is not rare among women, and a similar, although less severe, depression after coitus is common in men. This effect is not always present, especially in those of robust health. An analogy seems to exist in persons who are mentally rather than physically creative, such as artists, writers, musicians, actors, composers. It also seems to occur after creative but more mundane events such as hosting a party, helping a client in psychotherapy, making a speech, etc. It is also found in adolescent students after some of their more exciting incidents.
At such a time there is the feeling that the best has gone out of one. The term "spent," which also applies to the physical situation, is apposite. One feels "used up"; muscle tone is flaccid and stack; one doubts anything else can be attempted; there may even be a death wish, or a desire to punish oneself. What can the counselor do to help the creative youth in this depressed phase of the creativity cycle? A number of suggestions may be appropriate:
(1) An understanding of the previous rationale may itself help the youth who comes to see this as a part of the normal, not a pathological, process. An important characteristic of cyclic or periodic processes is certain change, and frequently the availability of help is itself therapeutic.
(2) It is important to realize that descents from peak experiences (and creativity is a peak experience) are apt to be disappointing. The frustration at the loss of pleasure is frequently associated with the appearance of certain types of brain waves as the individual vainly tries to maintain the pleasurable level. Change or disturbance of an anticipated level of positive reinforcement is always distasteful. Moodiness reflects the interim method the ego uses to accommodate to this loss of pleasure without an outburst of hostility.
(3) The creative youth needs assurance that creativity is not limited or completely spent, once used. On the contrary, like a well which soon refills when water is dipped from it, creativity, like most other powers, improves when full functioning and actualized.
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(4) The creative youth should be informed that, while a pause and rest after creative effort is natural and normal, it need not be a source of depression. The negative cycle can be dissipated in harmless ways or in recreation. As part of the natural rhythm, it can be as refreshing as sleep after physical love.
(5) The creative youth should be aware that some depression may be felt when the creative product is not immediately appreciated by others. The youth may have expected extrinsic rewards from society, not realizing the joys of intrinsic reward. It is in action not accolade where we come to terms with our identity in full functioning.
(6) Creative youth needs personal evaluation and love after its exertions. Those close to creative youth should give it this support during and following the time of creation. Otherwise the ego is thrown back on self-reward and may become a prey to depression on the down cycle. Therapeutic aids to creative persons during and after creative performance act like vitamins for a prospective mother to prevent the "post partum" depression which may follow. The amplitude of the mood swingings which have exalted the creative individual into the heights may in turn plunge him into despair; this "dark valley" is a very real locale for many of us. Often there has been implanted in the psyche during the initiative period the idea that one must pay for outbursts of joy and energy with remorse and guilt immobilization. But creative persons need not develop these patterns any more than mothers need suffer "post partum" depression. The remedy for both is a matter of good mental and physical health plus understanding of the situation and getting rid of one's psychological hang-ups. Some youth, who might otherwise become creative, stifle or deflect its creative thrust because of the resulting guilt; others feel too inhibited to use their full initiative in a joyful venturing forth. In any case, the world as well as the individual is the loser.
Children are especially helped to preserve creativity by nonauthoritarian attitudes on the part of educators who avoid early and negative evaluations of the child's efforts. The child must first be the recipient of, so that he may later become the producer of, constructive rather than pejorative evaluations if he is to persist in creativity. Creative fantasy becomes bonded to reality in this manner. Teachers have a powerful impact upon the child's opportunities for success and the extent to which he can win prestige from peers. The teacher selects the type of evaluation the child faces and provides the climate which encourages or discourages intellectual risk taking. Teachers may subtly discourage children's search for creativity by limiting opportunities and activities which stimulate divergent thinking by emphasis on tight control and teacher prestige. As a result, the child may fear to make any intuitive response that threatens the teacher in any way or causes the child to lose irretrievable status. The teacher also discourages creativity when only the child's convergent thinking is recognized, or rewarded, when memory processes are emphasized, when anxiety is aggravated, when the text, rather than the children's thoughts and ideas, becomes the only authority.
There is a tendency for the conventional teacher to teach the simpler skills of cognition and memory to the detriment of stimulating the more complex aspects of the structure of intellect. Since the divergent thinking slab is well
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up this complexity scale, as are transformations and implications in the products classification, stereotyped teaching to somewhat anxious children tends to wash out the more creative aspects of the curriculum while preserving the rote learnings. Such a classroom may appear letter perfect on a cognitive memory test and yet have all creative potential of the children smothered by the teaching method employed.
ENVIRONMENTAL STIMULATION OF YOUTH IN UNIVERSITIES
When a person of the required degree of mental ability and mental health is stimulated by the environment, creative production results. 'Ibis outcome may be shown in theorem form:
Creativity = (mental health) (natural ability) (stimulation).
As the process of development escalates from biological drives to social relationships, creativity, which begins almost naturally for the child, must now be more heavily reinforced by environmental stimulation. The developmental process, which almost automatically reinforced creativity at the start, is no longer sufficient and must be assisted by educational stimulation which now becomes essential and crucial for further escalation.
An important function of higher education is to ameliorate the incipient authoritarianism of youth revealed by the dependence on group norms or "other directedness" so characteristic of the identity period. This ethocentrism is effectively negated by the development of personal autonomy during the intimacy period, thus preventing the kind of nightmare graphically described by Erich Fromm in Escape from Freedom. Without this kind of stimulation to think for himself, the young person succumbs to group domination and direction in contrast to the inner directedness of the intelligent democrat. The focus of higher education in this country, then, should be oriented toward helping youth meet the last of Havighurst's developmental tasks - intellectual -moral adjustment.
The function of the university, therefore, is not so much to intellectualize youth as to socialize them and to make them humane enough to be participant electors in a true democracy. In such countries as Latin America and Greece, where higher education has failed this task, one finds an upper class with fascistic tendencies and lack of concern for those less fortunate in their society. The result is to prevent the development of what William Graham Sumner once called the two fundamental attributes of a democracy: concern for the governed by the governors and an open road to the top for talent no matter where it may be found. The closing of the "open society" results in some form of totalitarianism, and the danger to our society is only too clear. This is why the universities are such present foci of political action. The key aspect of university stimulation is autonomy because it inhibits dependence on authority and allows for the preservation of the creative function.
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is not the place to make full recommendations regarding desirable changes in university governance, but a few representative innovations are presented:
(1) Creativity should itself become the focus of a university course in which students are given instruction in the development and use of their creative powers. Material, well adapted for this purpose, is the Osborn Parries method of creative problem solving, now being used on a trial basis in four lower division courses at the State University College at Buffalo.
(2) Since positive mental health contributes to creativity, the university counseling services should reach those students needing individual or group guidance. The role of group guidance in the maintenance of positive mental health, rather than its use in psychotherapy, should be further explored.
(3) The unacknowledged and often unrecognized "press" of a particular university toward implicit objectives, which are not part of its catalog statement, needs careful investigation. These presses are sustained by an unofficial system of rewards and punishments and may involve conformity, nonconformity, fraternity life, big time athletics, or what have you. Often this press is at variance with Student needs or mental health principles. Work done by Heist at Berkeley and Katz (1969) at Stanford clearly indicates that in actuality this divergence is considerable and is a significant cause of student apathy and unrest.
(4) The university should recognize its responsibility for socialization rather than just intellectualization of students and for the development of autonomy rather than conformity. Unfortunately, the major emphasis is sometimes the opposite. The nature of such university change has been documented by Chickering (1969) who concluded that "Development occurs through cycles of differentiation and integration."
(5) The routine administrative procedures necessary in a large university create apathy and boredom. Students justly feel that they have been dehumanized and that their personalities are replaced by an IBM number. These practices tend to prevent the person-to-person relationships between faculty and students which are so necessary for creative learning. The Knapp and Goodrich studies of the 1950s showed clearly that small, midwestern-type colleges were far more productive of future scientists than large, prestigious universities. Contacts with faculty in small classes were at a maximum in these institutions, and the personal element appeared to be the salient factor involved. Hopefully, some way can be devised whereby human contact may be maintained through the creation of small colleges within larger universities.
(6) The quality of academic instruction at most universities is deplorably low. More innovative methods than the lecture-recitation can certainly be found. Faculties have been notoriously lax concerning innovation and renewal in curriculum and teaching methods. It has been assumed that every Ph.D., indeed, every graduate student, knows how to teach. More effort by the faculty to reform curriculum and teaching methods, fueled by a relaxation on the press for promotion through research only, plus bonuses paid to outstanding teachers would have a
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helpful effect. Above all, the process of education at the university level should be that of discovery, not subjection to rote memory processes.
(7) There are perhaps too many students attending American universities for the wrong reasons. Some may be there for the prestige, social life, athletics or contacts the university provides. Because it is probably not feasible to bar or remove them, it may be more appropriate to provide honors classes involving creative methods for those who are able and who want to pursue the larger aspects of a liberal or professional education.
(8) University administrators, trustees and alumni as well as the surrounding community have tended to regard a university as a source of good athletes and sports entertainment. A school primarily involved in big-time football cannot pay sufficient attention to the real functions of an institution of higher education. This recommendation requires change on the part of the alumni and the community served by the university.
(9) If an authoritarian church group should attempt to intimidate the professors at a modern university by forbidding them to teach evolution, for example, there would be a dreadful outcry that academic freedom was being imperiled. Yet academic freedom is equally imperiled when any other group, either inside or outside the university, attempts to dictate what shall or what shall not be taught and in what manner. All attempt to politicize or in any other way put pressure on university professors should be resisted at all costs, no matter how worthy the cause may seem at the time.
(10) Universities cannot promote creativity unless they can prosper rather than merely survive. In a period of rising prices, when the public and patrons of a university withhold its receipts or tax monies, these persons are effectively contributing toward stifling creativity and innovation within its walls. In the long run, the public and the alumni will get the kind of university for which they are willing to pay. Creativity is one of the first casualties of a strained budget.
(11) It is time that universities paid attention to the commentary and social criticism offered by Reich (1970) in The Greening of America. The development of Consciousness 111, which is inner directed and an integral part of the existential Eigenwelt should be aided and not opposed by the press of the institution. This type of social conscience, which stands for individuality in the face of inroads on freedom by the corporate state, has a pedigree as far back as Thoreau and Jefferson. Changes are bound to come, and it is much better if they are mediated by universities in an atmosphere of reason and understanding than if they are provoked into violent upheaval by rigid and encrusted institutions. In stating that our young people are capable of developing into a new level of consciousness, Reich seems to have reached a sociological statement of a thesis which we have attempted to develop from a psychological viewpoint. The central, unifying factor is creative, and innovative functioning and a new level of consciousness. These processes are certainly in the mainstream of educational effort and, hence, part of the responsibility of the university to promote and foster.
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ADULT STIMULATION, ESPECIALLY TRAVEL
The tendency to regress into conservative and authoritarian views is not confined to adolescence. It is unfortunately a phenomenon found at every instance of stasis in human life. Thus older people, fearful and unaccustomed to change, easily drift to the Right for, as the late humorist Thurber is supposed to have remarked, "It takes a bright man to distinguish his own dissolution from that of the human race." Some individuals continue at the university or other intellectual pursuits; for most others, travel, particularly foreign travel, is their best mode of education.
Foreign travel has several results. First it jars the individual out of his encrusted customs. He must perforce adapt or adjust to new habits and routines of washing, eating, sleeping, speaking and other aspects of daily living. He finds that a different language does not translate exactly, so that there are subtle meanings which cannot be conveyed adequately in his own idiom. He realizes with a start that people of different cultures react differently to those events whose psychological responses are controlled by the limbic region of the brain-those conditions which arouse fear, fight, flight or the more tender passions. One of the most remarkable things for the traveler to notice is the very different perceptions of danger held by different cultures. Poisonous snakes, wild animals, smog, the common cold, police violence, racial strife, pollution, illness, overhead high-tension wires, unprotected culverts, unguarded railway crossings and highway hazards are all situations which are considered especially dangerous in some cultures and completely commonplace in others.
Travel is stimulating in shaking up ideas and perceptions precisely because different cultures perceive differently those situations which involve emotions (particularly those of danger), risk, hostility, insults, sex, fear, dread, loathing and all the other aspects of the Sullivanian "bad me" and "not me." These affective differences are initially extremely attention getting because of their shock value. (What American "skinny dipping" for the first time in a Japanese bath has not had this cultural difference brought to his attention more forcefully, for example, than being reminded of the conceptual difference between the Romance Ianguage use of the conditional and our future indicative?) Cultural shocks are precisely that; hence their potential for new insight about ourselves.
The next stage is for the traveler to discover good things and processes in the other culture. Recovering from his culture shock, he begins to realize that there are logical and practical reasons for the way things are done in the strange environment, and some of these might be just as good or better than the way things are done at home.
This leads to a further stage where the traveler quietly begins to reexamine a number of habitual practices and customs which he had considered sacrosanct. For example, why is it that Americans pay such idolatrous respect to our flag, when other peoples do not have a similar attachment to theirs? Why is our society so "hipped" on guns, when they are banned or regarded as extremely dangerous in most other cultures? The writer will never forget the pained insight which came upon him when a gentle questioner from New Zealand asked rather plaintively: "With all that water in Southern California why don't you share some with Tijuana?"
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The realization that some ideas, customs and beliefs considered sacred, or as applying throughout space and time, are actually only valid or true within our frame of reference is an extremely liberating one for the traveler. It helps him for the first time to get outside his cultural ethos and, like a fish who jumps out of water, to find out more about the medium in which he has been immersed and which he took for granted. In other words, it helps us separate the signal from the static, the figure from the background.
Several results follow from this reorganization of concepts: First, there is a feeding in of alternative suggestions which increase the flexibilities of the traveler's thinking. No more is he at the mercy of his cultural constructs; he can now see around and behind them.
Secondly, new ways of doing things are powerful suggestors of verbal or other analogies, generalizations or applications which can be taken back to the old culture. Trading goods between different countries has always been a profitable business; trading ideas is even more profitable.
If environmental stimulation is essential to adult creativity, one may with propriety ask "What are the mechanisms by which the stimulation accomplishes the act?" While no doubt some aspects of creative response come from the unusualness of the environment, which depart from custom, it may be suggested that it may operate in the following straightforward manner:
A differential cultural stimulus suggests a parallelism of an old ratio
or relationship, much in the manner of a semantic verbal analog. Consider,
for example, the following table:
. | (S)
greater |
(P)
lesser |
nations | Spain | Portugal |
elements | sodium | potassium |
One has known about the relationship between sodium and potassium since high school days (the relationship is implicit; one does not have to verbalize it.) Then one travels on the Iberian Peninsula, and one connects Spain and Portugal in the same way. The common element is greater to lesser, or S to P, and this is where the creative link comes in. Travel has here suggested a generalization of an old ratio which transforms the matrix from elements to nations. This is, to be sure, a trivial example; but a great deal of scientific creativity suggests in similar bridging by means of a semantic verbal analog (or a proportion in mathematical terms) the gulf between two unique systems. The literary name for this is metaphor or simile, and it is also a favorite of poets.
We have seen before how play is particularly helpful in reorienting the ego to reality and also useful for the child in reducing pressures enough to allow him through daydreams or fantasy some relaxation of the compartmentalization between the ego and the preconscious.
There are two primary forms of adult play-sexual activity and travel. Sexual activity, while sometimes productive of inspiration, tends to be deficient in new stimulus percepts and to drain off energy. Travel, on the other hand, subjects adults to vastly increased amounts of new stimuli, much of it (if the trip is
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outside the native culture) of particularly novel and striking proportions. It also forces cognition or "shaking up" of previously fixed ideas and, hence, makes for creative response.
Of adult prerequisites to creativity, certainly environmental stimulation and an open life style are the most important. It may be desirable again to point out that these two components do not suddenly become vital; it is rather that they are gradually more emphasized as biological development is completed. The slowing down of developmental process in the physical sense needs to be accompanied by a speeding up of developmental process in the social sense if creative production is to be sustained. Of all the varieties of environmental stimulation, education is certainly the most important, with travel a close second.
Withdrawal and return. We have spoken of creativity-destructivity as a cycle which has to be stabilized. One can also look at the cycle as one of withdrawalreturn. Most of us are loath, once having tasted the pleasures of return, to again brave the hazards and deprivations of withdrawal. But to evoke creative response, we must complete the cycle on occasion and engage in a rather continuous application of it.
It is as if one gains creative power from the change in attitude in withdrawal and return much as an electric generator develops current flow from the changing attitude of the armature as it cuts across lines of magnetic force. For the armature to remain stationary and preserve the same attitude will not do; neither will it do if there is no magnetic field. The generation of electric power is thus an exact analog of the generation of creative ideas.
We, therefore, need on a periodic basis repeatedly to put ourselves into the complementary attitudes of withdrawal and return. For those of us unused to meditation or to artistic absorption, only travel and the gross interruption of our regular routine will suffice. For travel forces us out of our routines, makes us withdraw from the daily round and strips our lives of encrusted preconceptions. Travel is thus the withdrawal of the active man.
Transcendence of cultural background. The final development task of the superior adult is transcendence of his cultural background. In this process, the individual breaks out of his cultural milieu as he has previously broken out of his egocentric and familial matrices, moving into greater freedom each time. The cultural envelope, that last protective skin enveloping the individual and both protecting him and keeping him from experiencing and making sense out of reality, is no longer necessary for he is now mature enough to operate independently of his environment.
Unlocking of the chrysalis, formerly a necessary protection but now a fetter to flight and freedom, is always sensed by less developed individuals in the culture as a dangerous and threatening alteration. Thus Jesus was reviled for breaking the Sabbath, Gandhi ostracized for violating caste taboos with the untouchables and Roosevelt characterized as a "traitor to his class" when he urged legislation conferring benefits on the unemployed. Similar disapproval is imposed on others who unloosen conventional taboos. While necessary for those still bound to Bagehot's 11 cake of custom," such prohibitions become unnecessary for the fully actualized individual who is now able to operate without restrictions in the unobstructed world.
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Travel outside the cultural milieu is valuable in producing the environmental stimulation necessary to accomplish the transformation. "How are you going to keep them down on the farm, once they have seen Paris?" went the old refrain. Thus a J. P. Marquand hero who travels outside New England can never return to it again psychologically or feel the same allegiance to its customs and taboos, though he may dutifully make the geographical pilgrimage back to his homeland.
Transcendence of the culture does not mean a disregard for all aspects of it but an ecumenicalism which attempts to bring what is best in the culture into a larger synthesis. The highest ethical aspects especially remain relevant and are, as it were, distilled and appear as an essence. Thus Jesus proclaims that the Sabbath is made for man and not man for the Sabbath, while Gandhi rewrote the Hindu scripture "christianizing" it. In every case the cultural background, having served as a matrix, is sloughed off, and the individual, now developed to complete freedom, even freedom from his cultural past, can now become fully functioning and integral as a human being in the world at large.
FOETALIZATION
In previous sections, the forces of environmental stimulation playing on the life span of the individual man which advance his creative powers have been scrutinized. We should not leave this chapter without a discussion of the manner in which evolution has accomplished a similar task for the human species.
Man represents a unique combination of an animal base and a consciousness which soars to the stars. Nature produced him by a process which Bolk (1926) called the "foetalization of the ape." This involved an enlargement of the immature phase of primate development and its more prominent emphasis in the life span which made possible new and increased opportunities for complex learning and experience. Foetalization in man, then, describes a stretching out of the docile learning period into a larger proportion of the whole life span. During this plastic dependency and apprenticeship, mammalian family life and play extended conditioning and more complex learnings into developmental changes which transformed the primate into a human being. (See figure 8.)
In all humans, this lengthened span of immaturity which reaches into the first three decades is devoted to learning and education, and hopefully to creative performance, before man becomes in senility more like an old ape-taciturn, solitary, hairy and immobile. Through foetalization, evolution provides opportunity for man to develop a creative mind before he degenerates into a reactive apish-like creature. Man, of course, does not become an ape, but without stimulation of his higher faculties, he, too, may experience premature senility (like the ape at an earlier age).
Human beings often feel that they are the final and perfect product of evolution, which has somehow ceased with the production of this masterpiece. There is no reason to believe, however, that the forces of evolution are no longer in operation. Evidence of this continuation may be seen in differences between superior and more average individuals in any society, for the life style of the
FIGURE VIII. FOETALIZATION IN GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT
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superior individual points the directional thrust of evolutionary progress for all mankind. Nature seems to have granted superior youth a little more time in the foetalization process and to have placed more emphasis on this period. In consequence, such fortunate individuals tend to have a youthful aspect, even in maturity.
Furthermore, bright young males go through a process of continued foetalization which makes them appear younger and less mature (viewed in relation to their own ultimate growth and attainments) than more average youth. The Kinsey and Pomeroy study (194 8) was one of the first to report this in regard to differential sexual practices, but such differences may well extend to other aspects of human behavior.
This book, as we have said in the preface, discusses developmental processes leading to creativity in males. (The reason for leaving out female development is ignorance on our part, not prejudice.) The developmental process in males is perforce a development toward maleness or psychological masculinity. Hence a counterprocess of foetalization which invokes delay or prolongation in maturing appears relatively like feminization. This is not a homosexual deviation, nor is it abnormal nor effeminate. It represents a slowing down of development (which is not arrest) but which gives added emphasis to a particular period, much as a conductor would slow down the tempo of an orchestra in a compelling musical passage. Foetalization partakes more of developmental latency than arrest because it refers to a longer period of growth in the life span and to more absorption in extended cognitive experiences, rather than the immediate tasks of adult sexuality, and, finally, because it is not a decalage or cultural lag but an evolutionary change.
The cultural and, hence, psychological stereotypes of masculinity and femininity (as measured on psychological tests) are only remotely related to biological sexual roles, being mainly reinforced from cultural values. In the past, these have been restrictive of the full human development of both men and women, assigning to each certain set tasks and prohibiting others (women may not aggress; men may not cry). The repressions of emotionality, spontaneity and esthetic responsiveness have been as crippling to the creative development of men as the restrictions on drive, mastery and zest in achievement have retarded the full development of women. Psychology is now recognizing that the human attributes of mental health and personality, particularly in superior adults, overlap the sex roles. A personality like Gandhi had an almost "feminine" mothering quality, while Eleanor Roosevelt had a certain masculine dash. But these selfactualized individuals did not achieve mastery of their productive potentialities at the expense of their true sexuality.1
Nature has also favored the superior youth by giving him more "peak"
to shoot at. In other words, because of the increased range of development
for him, he is longer in the process of getting there, and being longer
in process, he reaps the multiple benefits of that process. A third advantage
results from individual efforts made by persons themselves, while in process
of growth, to create new experiences and responses, preventing them from
a premature
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atrophy into an unself-actualized old age. These efforts are interactions with the environment and are not concerned (as are the previous) with hereditary or genotypic characteristics.
Perhaps it is desirable again to emphasize that foetalization is not feminization, but a process of slowing up of aging in superior males. It does not refer to effeminacy or to homosexuality. Superior male adults evidence a youthful quality which preserves their verbal ability, creative power and dynamic process. John F. Kennedy represents a good example of this process which gave him a youthful vitality when he was actually in middle age. He is also a good example of male heterosexuality.
It is possible that W. T. Sheldon came as near as anyone to identifying this quality when he talked about the "t- component" (1949, p. 21). He calls it "the component of thorobredness" or the "the physical quality of the animal," and he distinguishes it from gynandromorphy (or having a female type figure). This index of "tissue fineness" has a psychological correlate in the "occupational level" scale of the Strong Vocational Interest Blank. Males high in intelligence or the professions tend to show feminine interests (and females show the opposite). Indeed Walberg (1969), in a study entitled Physics, Femininity and Creativity, traces the interesting relationship between these variables.
Schneider (1950, p. 135) describes one of the creative dynamos of the
artist as a ... heightened bisexuality, as a psychic counterpart of the
third identi-
fication which we have tried to describe as stemming from the gifted
child's capacity for greater relationships in his identifying process.1
It is this greater ability to relate which appears to be the source of pioneering and originality in artistic and verbal creation.
Other examples of this "foetalization" effect which gives a facade of femininity and youthful appearance in great men would include Michelangelo, Da Vinci, Goethe, Shelley, Keats, Wordsworth, Thoreau, Whitman, F. D. Roosevelt and many others.
We should note that generally the issue is not sexuality but relationship to the father figure. A particularly strong stimulus to creativity comes when the youth feels it necessary and possible to go beyond his father's accomplishments and "make up for" the failure of his father to reach desired objectives.
Miller's Death of a Salesman is a powerful dramatic treatment of failure of a son to make this adjustment. Schneider (1950, p. 251), in analyzing the play, states that: "A society which destroys fatherhood makes criminals out of its sons." It is precisely the impulse to become nondestructive (and, therefore, creative) that leads the uncommon youth to try to redeem his father.
Stitesville (1967, p. 3551), in doctoral research reviewing life history
patterns of highly creative inventors, made the following summary:
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The pattern is: "By my clever solutions to other's problems I shall win applause." The applause is viewed as self-validation, approval and acceptance by the rest of humanity.... Inventor's fathers were often frustrated inventors or engineers. The sons appear to live a life in which they redeem the father. They do for him what he himself was unable to accomplish.
We know that the relationship between an abnormal (XYY) chromosome male and the average (XY) male is that the latter compared with the former is brighter, more docile, more social and less destructive. Can we not extrapolate that the relationship between the average male and the superior individual is at least a small continuance of the same process, so that the latter becomes brighter, more docile, more social and less destructive (more creative)?
Indeed, it is remarkable that in many creative men, one finds a conscious attempt to explore "feminine" interests and to gain the "balance" and "receptivity" which psychological femininity adds to the individual's powers. Interestingly enough, no less a person than Erikson studies this very facet in the heroic life of Gandhi (1969). Gandhi, as revealed by Erikson's psychoanalytic biography deliberately sought to "mother" his parents and early in life to assume nurturance of others. This in-depth analysis of a modern saint makes fascinating reading because of its uncovering of the developmental process and the conscious effort at feminization in Gandhi's life. (Our cultural values force us to regard this process as "feminization," but actually full paternity in the generativity stage involves nurturance, "succorance" and other gentle virtues toward one's children which are undervalued or underemphasized in our violence-prone culture so that we regard expression of them as somehow "feminine.")
Some aspects of Gandhi's childhood and parental relations, as revealed by Erikson, provide a picture of a bright, precocious and creative child who early assumed a protective relationship toward others. Especially significant to Erikson are Gandhi's relationships with his mother and father. The close mother-son bond, often seen in creative men, is found here, but the specific trend in Gandhi's life appears to have evolved out of his special attachment-ambivalence toward his father whom, Erikson suggests, Gandhi sought to "redeem."
Surely this process, for which we have used the somewhat inappropriate
words "foetalization" and "feminization" (because no better ones exist),
is far more a positive integration and summation of both sexual roles rather
than a regression toward effeminacy or homosexuality. It is seen in the
peculiar and concomitant relationships which such men have with their fathers-as
that of equal. It is as if they wish to become their own fathers or to
redeem the father. Thus Erikson says of Gandhi (1969, p. 102):
The child is the father of the man makes new, special and particular
sense for special men-, they indeed have (i.e.) become their own fathers,
and in a way their father's fathers while not yet adult.
Again he remarks of Gandhi's relations to his son (1969, p. 320):
Spelled out again in these letters in rare clarity is that father-son theme which can be found at critical times in the lives of all great innovators as an intrinsic part of their inner transformation.
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The value of a case study1 such as Gandhi's lies in its potential generalization to present a pattern of developmental process which can be used as a model. Gandhi's case affords us an unique opportunity to see the predispositions and special succorance qualities which affected his future greatness and resulted in the highest sense of social obligation in producing Gandhi's "Mahatmaship." The key issue is the presence of the necessary environmental factors required to continue the developmental escalation of such individuals. Fortuitous environmental stimulation at every phase and stage of development may be necessary to bring even the superior and mentally healthy individual to the far heights of full selfactualization of his unique powers. For the rest of us, such lack stunts our final development and limits our creative potential to the workaday world, to a householder's life and to an occasional esthetic experience.
Such a view shows that the study of creativity is conceived as a process which encourages the mental escalation of the adult development of the superior individual. Whereas the average adult ceases this escalation at about the time he ceases physical growth, the creative person retains the ability to reach these higher stages. Perhaps the adolescent developmental phase is extended over that of the average man in a way similar to the extended time of the average human over the average primate. Since the levels reached by extraordinary individuals are not the product of physical development, they are not "natural" in the usual sense. They must be cultivated by happy accidents or by broader opportunities of environmental stimulation, of which civilization itself is a fair example.
One might think of a child's balloon which rather naturally assumes a token shape when a moderate amount of air is introduced, but which can be made to swell up much more by increased pressure. The stages in this paranatural development characterized by complexity of value and transitions from egocentric to altruistic concerns are numerous. They require continuous or recurring crisis situations with strong emotional valence and demand the courage and free energy to face incessant challenge. One is reminded of the long and thorny path to sainthood, and, as is true of so many of the world's great souls, St. Francis, the Cure of Ars, Thoreau, and Gandhi, to mention only a few, that ultimate success is frequently preceded by failure.
We have attempted with only indifferent success in this section to discuss and open an issue obscured by both cultural and personal difficulties. The cultural difficulties are in part due to the fact that the language contains no words properly to express the issue. The Personal aspects are clouded by the fact that our culture puts pressure on males to be strong and masculine and any deviation from this norm is suspect and tends to induce guilt in the individual. The issue of foetalization and its differential application to the superior individual is, nevertheless, a very important one; and one may hope that these clumsy initial attempts may later be succeeded by more deft and informed analysis.
1From pages 102 and 320 of Erikson, E. G., Gandhi's Truth: On the Origin of Militant Nonviolence, Copyright, 1969, W. W. Norton Co. Used by permission.
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SUMMARY
The "wave of the future" is exemplified by the superior individual in his development. For by his own efforts for more environmental stimulation and the differential "foetalization" assigned to him, he experiences the evolutionary thrust in store for future generations of men. Pointing the march as scout and vanguard is lonely and sometimes dangerous. Throughout the ages, superior individuals confronted with the threat of loneliness and estrangement from their fellows have selected nature, art, meditation and social service as meaningful interests in their development. These roads are not traveled without trial and transformation, without self-doubt and testing. They offer continued escalation and larger satisfactions in life.
In his development, the uncommon man often faces lack of understanding by his fellows. Early efforts to find himself and to integrate his life are apt to be viewed as failures by more philistine age-mates, who accept nothing outside conventional patterns of marriage or business. Artists, poets, philosophers and religious leaders typically face difficulties in vocational crystalization and may spend a large part of their lives in what appears to be an aimless search. They withdraw from society at this time and are often considered failures or outcasts. Thus Jesus spent time in the wilderness; St. Francis had a long illness; the Cure of Ars was a conscientious objector and a fugitive; Whitman an itinerant; Mark Twain a rover; Thoreau a recluse; and hundreds more famous men shared this judgment as youths. Alienation from society, a necessary phase in the withdrawal and return cycle of creativity, produces an acute sense of aloneness in creative people.
Do developmental stages apply to all mankind or only to Western culture? Developmental stage theory applies most completely to those persons and cultures which are most advanced, and least to those least advanced. Those most advanced go more thoroughly through each stage and yet progress through more stages; those least advanced go more superficially through each stage and yet progress through fewer stages. One would not expect a cretin or an Australian bushman to have marked developmental stages in his life. One would expect just the opposite from Gandhi or Lincoln. The crisis at each stage appears more intense for the able person. Many average boys, for example, scarcely show oedipal anxiety during the initiative stage, while gifted boys often evidence a marked crisis followed by oedipal resolution.
This chapter has discussed what man may do for others and for himself by seeking environmental stimulation to maintain his development to selfactualization. It has also discussed what the thrust of evolution has done for the species through the extended process of "foetalization" for superior man. We are concerned here with what man may do, not with what he may fail to do. The onward course of evolutionary progress is signaled by the differential character of developmental tasks performed by outstanding individuals. Was not Jesus himself called an exemplar? That most of us may never reach the final stage of egointegrity does not mean that self-actualization is unimportant or insignificant for the human race. For it is this lodestone that points the direction of man's progress. As Paul Klee so well says: "I do not wish to represent man as he is, but only as he might be."