The Creative Personality

This is an old article and I'm sure you've all seen this somewhere before, either posted on this board or elsewhere but since there are a lot of creative people here I thought it was worth posting again.

http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/199607/the-creative-persona...

It touches on the duality (which is sort of the backbone of the article), internal unrest and thought processes.Still pretty interesting despite it's age. It doesn't just encompass artists but the artist in all of us. But it's done objectively.

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Permalink Reply by LesYpersound on July 28, 2010 at 1:48pm

They contain contradictory extremes; instead of being an "individual," each of them is a "multitude."

and you know me when it comes to words and stuff... i think there's a big difference between duality (e.g. either/or...rigidity) and dialectics (e.g. yin/yang...flow). :)
this article sounds like b.s. for the most part but like astrology it's fun, but i'm not about to take it too seriously.

The traits of the creative personality:

1. Creative people have a great deal of physical energy, but they're also often quiet and at rest. Energy is internally generated. The important thing is that they control their energy; it's not ruled by the calendar, the dock, an external schedule. LOL... and the bit about having a generous helping of libido, but can tend towards "a certain spartan celibacy".

2. Creative people tend to be smart yet naive at the same time. a general core of intelligence is present in folks who make creative contributions--has very little to do w/ IQ. "Another way of expressing this dialectic is the contrasting poles of wisdom and childishness." ... "people who bring about an acceptable novelty in a domain seem able to use well two opposite ways of thinking: the convergent and the divergent. [Convergent is measured via IQ] ... Divergent thinking is not much use without the ability to tell a good idea from a bad one, and this selectivity involves convergent thinking."

3. Ability to be playful and not-so-rigid, but also w/ a strong work ethic when needed.

4. "Creative people alternate between imagination and fantasy, and a rooted sense of reality." so being creative doesn't mean just having a rich inner life but a firm grasp on the world around oneself.

5. Creative people tend to be both extroverted and introverted.

6. Creative folk tend to be both proud and humble. "they're usually so focused on future projects and current challenges that past accomplishments, no matter how outstanding, are no longer very interesting to them"

7. "Creative people, to an extent, escape rigid gender role stereotyping. When tests of masculinity/femininity are given to young people, over and over one finds that creative and talented girls are more dominant and tough than other girls, and creative boys are more sensitive and less aggressive than their male peers." psychological androgyny that hasn't a thing to do w/ sexuality.

8. "Creative people are both rebellious and conservative. It is impossible to be creative without having first internalized an area of culture. So it's difficult to see how a person can be creative without being both traditional and conservative and at the same time rebellious and iconoclastic. Being only traditional leaves an area unchanged; constantly taking chances without regard to what has been valued in the past rarely leads to novelty that is accepted as an improvement."
Yeah... because being creative is about building things up and not simply always deconstructing or destroying and being self-centered/less-useful.

9. "Most creative people are very passionate about their work, yet they can be extremely objective about it as well. "

10. "Creative people's openness and sensitivity often exposes them to suffering and pain, yet also to a great deal of enjoyment."

really fun to think about. :B
......................................................................and i'm bored again. :X

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Permalink Reply by Madamoiselle De Sade on July 29, 2010 at 5:34am

I don't think that's what the writer was trying to say. Ying-yang would imply that both aspects exist at the same time, flowing into each other indefinitely. No time frames were given but every example in the article and that I've seen in real life is one or the other, often at an extreme for a period of time.

It's not a textbook "this is how you tell if someone is creative or not" but commentary on how most people operate on either/or, all or none and how not operating that way (some folks say that changing your mind is a great skill seldom used by most people out of stubbornness caused by an identity conflict) can be construed as "crazy" and make you seem abnormal. This is not limited to "real" artists who get their minds blown and construct masterpieces of social commentary but any person who behaves in a not so "normal" way.

You didn't see anything interesting in the tiny "general intelligence" vs high IQ/ivy league book smarts (or literal, college educated textbook smarts)? I've seen that conflict brought up many times.

I'm going to go find a dictionary, now.

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Permalink Reply by LesYpersound on July 29, 2010 at 2:57pm

all of the points are framed like this basically--
creative people (whose ideas are accepted) are X and -X at the same time, but are self-aware, and it takes something that creative people have to be able to negotiate what aspects to use at what time. imo, that reads as more dialectics than rigid duality.
but yeah, perhaps it's a bi-polar kind of deal where they flip one extreme on and immediately flip to the other w/ no grey areas? i didn't read it that way for most of the points though (esp the being smart whilst being naive point)... i think the author is definitely suggesting that there is a strong element of awareness and intentional choosing of when and how to be, but that these aspects can definitely be blended... and the effective creative person knows how to negotiate when to reveal or use those aspects and in what specific combination at work or in life or even in love.

when i think of formal duality and especially if ppl hint towards "bi-polarity" (or being ON v. OFF) i tend to think, maybe wrongly, that volition goes out the window and it's over-simplified. whereas with dialects there's a constant... "dialogue"/flow/grey areas.

and i didn't say it wasn't interesting or fun to think about, i just said i'm not about to take the page all that seriously.