The International Handbook of Creativity - Book Report/Review Example

It may be the underlying foundation of all that we have accomplished as a species, as a culture or as an individual, but not much is truly understoodabout the concept of creativity. We use it all the time in our business and our personal lives and it helps to spur us on to new ideas, new developments and new applications. As a result, we tend to believe that everyone feels the same way about creativity that we do. However, it is unlikely we are able to provide a clear conception of what we feel creativity is or agree upon the true nature of its value to us personally or as a society. These are the concepts that are explored in Kaufman and Sternberg’s book The International Handbook of Creativity. In their study, the authors have drawn some generalizations about how the world understands the concept of creativity. However, they point out that these generalizations are very few. They include the ideas that “creativity involves thinking that is aimed at producing ideas or products that are relatively novel and that are, in some respect, compelling … is neither wholly domain specific nor wholly domain general … can be measured … can be developed … [and] is not as highly rewarded in practice as it is supposed to be in theory” (Kaufman & Sternberg, 2006: 2). As they gathered together the writings of various experts studying different cultural concepts of creativity from within the cultural construct, the authors conclude that beyond these broad generalities lies a tremendous scope for differences of emphasis, importance and direction. The creative process itself is often divided by those studying it in the Russian tradition into four general stages. These include gathering sufficient information to recognize that a problem or issue exists, reflecting upon this information to such an extent that the ideas can be expressed clearly and coherently, selecting an idea or group of ideas from those generated and then producing possible solutions to these concepts. Kaufman outlines these stages as deliberate, logical search; intuitive search and intuitive solution; verbalization of the intuitive solution; and formalization of the verbalized solution. Because the Russian concepts are based to some degree on the same theorists (Guilford, 1950 and Torrance, 1962) that have influenced the West, these concepts can be found in English-speaking cultures as well, more handily referred to as preparation, incubation, illumination and verification. The first two of these processes occur in the mind of the creator, almost completely without outside assistance while the second two often include interaction with others as the creator works to communicate and refine his (or her) ideas sufficiently enough to communicate both the idea as well as the solution. In most studies, the initial phase of creativity is thought to be characterized by the creator’s interest in solving a problem, placing the driving motive squarely on the shoulders of the individual in independent action through his (or her) interest in the topic (Liontiev, 1998) or acknowledging the environmental influences necessary in the presentation of a problem and the existent experience the creator must draw upon to solve it (Stepanossova & Grigorenko, 2006: 236) depending on the specific approach taken. As this individual becomes more and more obsessed with the issue at hand, he or she begins to gather as much available information about the topic as possible, often allowing themselves to freely associate ideas from a number of sources. “During the initial, intuitive phase, each thought activates, and potentially retrieves information from, a large region containing many memory locations” (Gabora, 2002). This is different from the second stage in that the thinking taking place is done primarily in the conscious range as the individual seeks to find answers to any gaps in the information they’ve received and to find ways of connecting previously unrelated information. In the second phase of creation, the creator allows the information that has been gathered to freely associate in the subconscious mind, hence the term incubation to refer to this stage. Scientifically speaking, these studies recognize that these two stages employ associative thought as connections are made that are more correlative than causally related. Creative ideas are thought to simply “reveal unsuspected kinships between other facts well known but wrongly believed to be strangers to one another” (Poincare, 1915: 115). The third and fourth stages of the process can involve the input of other people as the creator discovers a possible solution to the problem and works to find a means of both proving and communicating this solution. “In the third stage, illumination, a possible solution surfaces to consciousness in a vague and unpolished form. Subjective and theoretical accounts of this phase of the creative process speak of discovering a previously unknown ‘bisociation’, or underlying order” (Gabora, 2002). As these ideas begin to surface, the creator may share them with others to get an idea of how they are coming together or to help eliminate unconnected ideas, refining the possible solutions or making new connections not previously explored. As this process progresses, it enters the verification stage, during which the creator works to ensure the ideas are appropriately communicated as well as begins working to prove that these ideas could actually present a solution. These last two stages employ analytic thinking to come up with a solution and be able to place it within a communicable code of language. In this mode, it is possible for the creator to determine the differences between cause and effect. In addition, no solution is acceptable unless it can be effectively communicated, which often takes another creative turn, as well as fully tested and proven. Whatever knowledge generated in this way must also fit within the already determined knowledge of the time or demonstrate the necessity for divergence. This highly structured concept of the creative process and the formulaic approaches taken to its study in Russia demonstrates the tendencies of the Russians to treat creativity with a scientific approach even though studies tend to differentiate according to whether the experimenter feels creativity is predominantly individually or environmentally driven. The scientific, systematic approach to creativity taken by the Russians is markedly different from the approach adopted by the Latin American and Caribbean communities. Tellingly, the authors of “Creativity in Latin America” indicate that no formal studies into the concepts of creativity in the Caribbean could be found to contribute to their chapter. This is in spite of a rich cultural heritage filled with evidence of widespread use and appreciation of creativity. This may be the result of other cultural factors within this region, such as a general difficulty in disseminating information among the various Latin American nations, particularly information relating to scientific or social sciences sectors (Rosas, Boetto & Jordan, 1999). As a result of this limitation, information must often be gleaned from the creative works produced by these other nations rather than by the scientific studies that may or may not have been conducted as a means of understanding the motivations and processes behind them. Already there is a strong element of disorganization, loose thinking and freedom of thought inherent in the Latin American world that is much more strictly regimented in the Russian context. This idea is only made more complicit when taking into consideration the tremendous levels of diversity, cross-breeding and influxes of external culture have taken place throughout the various regions that comprise these areas of the world. However, to say that there have been no scientific studies into the concept of creativity in all the time that the Latin American region has been populated would be a gross error in fact. According to Ardila (1982), research into the process of creativity has been conducted in these regions for at least a century. However, this research has been sporadic, divergent and unable to draw upon the expertise of previous studies due to several factors including lack of appropriate infrastructure to develop these fields and to conduct research, political instability making organized research nearly impossible and the sharing of information difficult and the need to devote attention to more pressing and immediate human needs rather than esoteric understanding of the inner mysteries of abstract concepts such as creativity (DaCosta, 1995). However, there is evidence that creativity research has been conducted more extensively within the various regions themselves and tends to focus on addressing practical problems faced by that region (Salazar, 1995). The primary goal seems to be to encourage greater creativity in teaching students to use creativity as a means of solving problems they encounter in life (Mena, 2000). While these types of studies might be criticized for their strong focus on practical application and emphasis on production of measurable outcomes, it is important to remember the condition of many of these countries as they struggle with issues of poverty, political unrest and the real limitations of being ‘developing’ nations (Preiss & Strasser, 2006). Studies are generally only funded for as long as they remain a priority of the current governmental agency and as long as they can show measurable benefit to the region. By comparing these two very different approaches to the question of creativity, it can be determined that the subject is by no means easily understood, assessed or uniformly measured. In both societies, the Russian and the Latin American, it is seen that creativity is considered to have a point, a purpose and that it can be measured in some way to illustrate what that purpose is. However, it is also clear that the two groups have a tendency to approach the idea of creativity in widely divergent ways. While the Russians struggled to bring their conclusions into line with a prevailing political ideology and a highly constrained conception, the people of the Latin American and Caribbean regions are both too diverse and too unstable to fully take advantage of the collecting of information and coordination of long-term research. The fact that Russia has also been a region in political transition highlights the degree to which these differences in approaches are more the result of cultural diversity rather than political unrest. However, the difficulties faced by researchers in the Latin American countries equally argue the case that political unrest can have a profound effect on research strategies, objectives, outcomes and even successful completion of the work. Both regions are shown to consider creativity as a means to a compelling result, both seem to understand that there is a combination of internal and external forces at work in the development of creativity in an individual, both demand that creativity be measurable in some way and both seem to find, in the end, that creativity can be developed in keeping with Kaufman and Sternberg’s findings. Yet the approaches taken by Russia and those taken by Latin America are so different in the way that they express and explore these ideas that they almost can’t be considered related under a single banner with any degree of specificity. Thus, the only conclusion that can be reached is that creativity is a much more complicated process than we have yet to realize. References Ardila, R. (1982). “Psychology in Latin America Today.” Annual Review of Psychology. Vol. 33: 103-122. Da Costa, L.N. (1995). “Future of Science in Latin America.” Science. Vol. 267: 827-828. Gabora, Liane. (2002). “Cognitive Mechanisms Underlying the Creative Process.” Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Creativity and Cognition. T. Hewett & T. Kavanagh (Eds.). Loughborough University: 126-133. Guilford, J.P. (1960). “Creativity.” American Psychologist. Vol. 5: 444-454. Kaufman, James C. & Sternberg, Robert J. (2006). The International Handbook of Creativity. New York: Cambridge University Press. Liontiev, A.N. (1998). “Teach a Fantasy …” (Creativity and Developing Education). Voprosy Psikhologii. Vol. 5: 82-85. Mena, I. (2000). “Learning for Creating.” Psykhe. Vol. 9: 143-153. Poincare, H. (1913). “The Foundations of Science.” Science Press. Lancaster PA, 1913. Preiss, David D. & Strasser, Katherine. (2006). “Creativity in Latin America.” International Handbook of Creativity. New York: Cambridge University Press: 39-67. Rosas, R.; C. Boetto & V. Jordan. (1999). Introduction to the Psychology of Intelligence. Santiago: Ediciones Universidad Catolica de Chile. Salazar, J.M. (1995). “Factors Influencing the Development of Psychology in Latin America.” International Journal of Psychology. Vol. 30: 707-716. Stepanossova, Olga & Elena L. Grigorenko. (2006). “Creativity in Soviet-Russian Psychology.” The International Handbook of Creativity. New York: Cambridge University Press: 235-269. Read More