Creativity (57 page)

The functions of idle time.
That incubation helps to make a connection between a highly salient but repressed experience and its expression in a form acceptable by the superego was developed by Freud in his essays on Leonardo da Vinci’s childhood and Michelangelo’s sculpture of Moses (Freud 1947, 1955). These essays spawned a large literature (e.g., Kris 1952; Rothenberg 1979). The classic treatment of creativity by Arthur Koestler (1964) is also heavily influenced by this perspective.

In a similar vein, the more creative scientists interviewed by Eiduson and Root-Bernstein differed from the less creative ones in that they reported more often that their ideas arose while dreaming, or while working on a different but related problem (Root-Bernstein, Bernstein, and Garnier 1995). It is difficult to know, however, to what extent such reports are shaped by received notions about how the creative process “should” unfold; a difficulty that obviously applies to my study as well.

The alternative explanation of why idle time is necessary is based
on a model of mental processing that stresses random associations of ideas that may take a great deal of time to result in useful combinations (e.g., Campbell 1960, 1974; Johnson-Laird 1988; Simonton 1988)—somewhat akin to the millions of monkeys typing at random needed to produce a Shakespearean masterpiece by chance—or it involves connections that while unconscious are still based on logical associations (e.g., Dreistadt 1969; Barsalou 1982).

Serial and parallel processing
of information. For a basic introduction to this topic, see Rumelhart et al. (1986).

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Programmed for creativity.
That people prefer to describe what they enjoy doing most with the phrase “designing or discovering something new” was a result of the first study of optimal experience I conducted (Csikszentmihalyi 1975). The dual motivational system, programmed for survival on the one hand and for evolution on the other, is discussed in Csikszentmihalyi (1985, 1993).

Entropy.
Here I am using the term in its more usual meaning, as the inability of a system to do work. It is different from
psychic entropy
, which is the state of consciousness characterized by inner disorder, negative emotions, or simply the inability to engage in purposeful action. Its opposite is
psychic negentropy
, or flow, which describes an ordered state of consciousness, positive emotions, and the ability to engage in intentional action (see Csikszentmihalyi 1978, 1982).

The flow experience.
The description of the common experiential state reported by people who enjoyed various activities such as rock climbing, chess, dancing, and so on was first provided in Csikszentmihalyi (1975). A wide range of subsequent studies on flow conducted by researchers in many different cultures was reported in Csikszentmihalyi and Csikszentmihalyi (1988). See also Csikszentmihalyi (1993), Csikszentmihalyi and Rathunde (1993), Massimini and Inghilleri(1986, 1993), and Inghilleri (1995). George Klein (1990) collected a number of enlightening essays from artists and sc
ientists describing the flow they experienced in their creative work.

Separating bad ideas from good ones.
Sir Peter Medawar, the British virologist who was such a keen reporter of the creative process in his field, held that the central skill involved in creativity was to grasp which were the soluble problems (Medawar 1967). Several respondents in our study mentioned the same thing, sometimes referring back to Medawar’s idea, thereby demonstrating how difficult it is to separate a direct experience from a received opinion.

The barrier of entropy.
Professor Frank Lambert, a chemist, has
suggested to me that the difficulty in entering flow bears an interesting resemblance to the activation energy that certain metastable physical systems require in order to mantain a higher internal energy state. For instance, iron tends to corrode into iron oxide, or rust, when exposed to air or water, thereby losing some of its internal energy. But it will maintain its higher-energy, metastable condition if external energy is added prior to its degrading; for example, if the iron is painted or turned into steel (Lambert 1995). The phenomenological parallel is that without psychic
energy expended in learning to control consciousness, the mind tends to fall into random, low-energy states. While one must make an effort to focus attention to enter the flow state, as soon as one is in it, external distractions are much less likely to disrupt concentration, and even great expenditures of physical and mental energy are experienced as if they were effortless. It remains to be seen whether there is more to the similarity between these two entirely different processes than superficial appearance.

Intrinsic motivation.
The importance of intrinsic rewards has been realized relatively recently by psychologists, who until the 1960s considered only the satisfaction of genetically programmed needs to be rewarding. Currently among the leading researchers in this area are Amabile (1990) and Deci and Ryan (1985). See also Csikszentmihalyi and Rathunde (1993).

The more flow, the more happiness.
See, for instance, Csikszentmihalyi and Nakamura (1989), Csikszentmihalyi and Wong (1991), Wells (1988), Adlai-Gail (1994), and Moneta and Csikszentmihalyi(1995). But if a person experiences flow in activities that are destructive or lack complexity, or if one becomes addicted to a single flow activity at the expense of a balanced life, flow might have negative consequences; see Csikszentmihalyi and Larson (1978) and Csikszentmihalyi (1985b).

Children grow up believing.
In a current research of young people’s transition from school to work, we find that of a national cross-section of more than four thousand teenagers 15 percent would like to become professional athletes (the number one choice), 4 percent would like to become musicians, and 6 percent actors. In other words, if we consider professional athletes as being primarily entertainers, at least one out of four adolescents aspires to a career in entertainment (Bidwell, Csikszentmihalyi, Hedges, and Schneider 1995).

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Being in the right place.
For some of the effects of the physical environment on psychological functioning, see Gallagher (1993).

Bellagio.
The history of this Italian town in Lombardy and its many creative visitors is in Gilardoni (1988).

The macroenvironment.
One approach to the relationship between social structural variables and creativity is the series of historiometric analyses by Simonton (e.g., 1975, 1984). Another is the qualitative analysis of the relationship between artistic creativity and sociocultural factors in contemporary America by Freeman (1993).

Pekka.
Juhani Kirjonen, a colleague from the University of Jyväskyläin Finland, told me about Pekka, whom I didn’t have the good fortune to meet personally.

Joe M.
was one of the subjects of my earliest studies of flow conducted twenty-five years ago (see Csikszentmihalyi 1975).

Symbolic ecology in the home.
The study of more than one hundred households and the objects in them that were special to their owners is described in Csikszentmihalyi and Rochberg-Halton(1981).

The car as a “thinking machine.”
This and other conclusions about the place of cars in our symbolic ecology are based on a study I conducted for Nissan U.S.A. in 1991.

Career change every ten years.
In his analysis of the biographies of great geniuses, Howard Gardner (1993) concluded that major breakthroughs in their work occurred once every ten years. Presumably these two observations—career change and timing of new masterpieces—reflect the same cycle of creative work.

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Childhood and creativity.
Of the many studies concerned with the early experiences of creative individuals—most of which, by necessity, use biographical accounts of long-dead individuals and hence are often of dubious authenticity—one might mention Freud’s reconstruction of Leonardo’s infancy and childhood (Freud 1947); and the summary of the biographical evidence on the childhoods of three hundred eminent persons by Goertzel and Goertzel (1962). Some of the analyses of the sibling position of creative individuals are by Zajonc (1976), Albert (1983), and Albert and Runco (1989).

Giotto’s childhood.
The biographical note on Giotto is from Semenzato (1964, p. 7).

Interest.
As mentioned earlier, until recently psychologists were not very interested in the topic of interest. This has changed, however; see, for instance, Renninger, Hidi, and Krapp (1992) and Schiefele (1991). We still know next to nothing about individual differences in interest, that is, whether some children are more interested than others in gen
eral, or why some become interested in one topic and others in another topic.

The influence of parents.
See, for example, Harrington, Block, and Block (1992) and Csikszentmihalyi and Csikszentmihalyi (1993). Despite the fact that recent scholarship in family studies has abandoned the notion that the parents’ effects on children are primary in favor of a systemic perspective that sees the family interaction as having the most important effect (Grotevant 1991), I still believe that parents influence children more than the other way around, and largely independently of any interaction effects.

Missing fathers.
The essay from which the quotation is taken is in Klein (1992).

Jean-Paul Sartre’s
aphorism about a father’s gift to his son is in
Les Mots
and is quoted in Klein (1992, p. 162).

The Mirror of Retrospection.
Many of the surveys conducted by Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann (e.g., 1985) show that adults who are satisfied with their present condition report having had more idyllic childhoods. The successful young artist who revised his past was first described in the volume by Getzels and Csikszentmihalyi (1976), when his childhood was still unproblematic.

The influence of a teacher.
The importance of single individuals—parents, teachers, peers, mentors, spouses, students—in helping along the career of creative individuals is examined in Mockros (1995) and Mockros and Csikszentmihalyi (1995).

Eugene Wigner’s
recollections of his high school math teacher are found in his autobiography (Wigner 1992). The influence of teachers in the Lutheran high school in Budapest has also been described by Hersh and John-Steiner (1993).

For the conflicts peculiar to
talented teenagers,
see Csikszentmihalyi, Rathunde, and Whalen (1993).

Artists uninterested in academic subjects.
A thorough description of the values held by artists in general and as they relate to academics can be found in Getzels and Csikszentmihalyi (1976).

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Recent studies.
I am referring here in particular to the survey studies of sexual behavior completed by colleagues at the University of Chicago (Laumann et al. 1994).

Erik Erikson.
Erikson’s classic description of his eight psychosocial stages of development is in Erikson (1950).

Wigner.
The quote is from Wigner (1992, p. 254)

“Life theme.”
The concept of life themes, or the cognitive represen
tations we develop of our goals and of the narrative of our lives, was first developed in Csikszentmihalyi and Beattie (1979). See also Csikszentmihalyi (1990, pp. 230-40).

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Creativity peaks in the third decade of life.
The early studies of age changes in creativity were by Lehman (1953) and Dennis (1966). See also Simonton (1990c) and the brief summary in Rybash, Roodin, and Hoyer (1995).

Quantity and quality.
What older individuals accomplish is not determined only—or even primarily—by the limitations of biological aging, but also by the personal attitudes and social opportunities concerning old age. There is accumulating evidence that longevity, health, physical performance, and social achievements in old age can be greatly improved by adopting appropriate values and behaviors; see, for instance, the conclusions of Dr. Walter Bortz (1991).

The distinction between fluid and crystallized intelligence
was introduced by Horn (1970). Some of the most careful invest
igations of changes in mental performance with age were done by K. Warner Schaie and his associates (e.g., Schaie 1990, 1994). See also Labouvie-Vief (1985).

Risk taking in later life.
It has been suggested that riskier problems in science are more typically addressed either by established scientists who can afford to do so, or by those not established at all who have very little to lose (Zuckerman and Lederberg 1986; Zuckerman and Cole 1994), a propensity that fits Sternberg and Lubart’s (1991) economic investment theory of creativity.

Integrity.
The quotation is from Erikson (1968, p. 140). The psychiatrist George Vaillant has recently suggested that an important developmental stage between generativity and integrity is the one he calls “Keeper of the meaning,” a task that confronts a person after midlife and that involves selecting and passing on to the next generation the wisdom one has learned (Vaillant 1993). This stage is one that the people in this book seem well prepared to meet.

Anthropic principle.
For an introduction to the concept see Barrow and Tipler (1986) and Gribbin and Rees (1989).

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Why are we interested in literature?
I heartily agree with Umberto Eco on this matter: “…it is easy to see why fiction fascinates us. It offers us the opportunity to employ limitlessly our faculties for perceiving the world and reconstructing the past…it is through fiction that
we adults train our ability to structure our past and present experience” (Eco 1994, p. 131). In their cross-cultural interviews, the team of investigators led by Fausto Massimini found that reading was one of the most often mentioned sources of flow worldwide—often the main source (e.g., Massimini, Csikszentmihalyi, and Delle Fave 1988).