The currents analyzed are not the only ones that have contributed to the topic, but there are several that remain to be discussed. The categorization made of the schools is not totally rigid: there are authors who, according to this classification, are mentioned in more than one current, depending on the topic treated within each of them. Therefore, we talk about various prisms about the Theory of Creativity. Keep reading this PsicologíaOnline article if you are interested in knowing more about Creativity.
Associationist theory
Human beings find in association a way to increase their knowledge of the world. Regarding the characteristics of production, studies have been carried out that reveal that remote associations appear in the creative product, associations made from original and free ideas. According to this current, creative people differ from non-creative people in two fundamental elements: the hierarchy of associations and their strength. The process of free association, in order to manifest itself, requires that an adequate climate be created to carry it out, so that it is a “way” of creativity. In the mid-sixties, two researchers: Mednick (1962) and Malzman (1960) They made valuable contributions to associationist psychology by delving into the study of creativity. Mednick defines creativity as “associations oriented toward new combinations,” and this will be more creative the further apart the associated elements are.”
Individual differences for creative associations, they rest on the individual’s ability to produce “remote associations” or those that have little in common with each other.
According to this current The number of associations that are made determines the degree of creativity of the personand the more remote the associations, the richer the product.
For your part Malzman et al (1960) They set as their goal “the study of the factors that promote originality and associative disposition.” They recognized the value of the stimuli received in family and social environments, as well as the negative influence that they can exert. From this position, numerous creative games have been created that will contribute to the development of creative potential. One of the types of activities is “name pairs”: the more distant the members of “the pairs” are, the more they promote the development of creativity and the more original the product will be.
Gestalt and existentialist theory
Gestalt Theory
There is a strong analogy between the creative thinking process and the perceptual process: understanding means capturing connections between perceived stimuli, generating casual or formal relationships. According to this current, the process is more creative and the product more innovative the more marked the change in order and the diversity of connections appear. Wertheimer He directly applied the contributions of Gestalt Psychology to the creative thinking process. He believes that a problem corresponds to an open figure, and produces a tension in the thinker that immediately drives him to reestablish balance, that is, towards the “closed figure.” He also uses the word creative as a synonym for productive, and considers that confronting a problem is assimilated with a representation scheme similar to an open figure. So, this means productively transforming the initial approach to the problem: starting a search through a kind of common thread, through which each perception is not isolated, but is directly linked or knotted with the next. You have to learn to look at a problem in a different way; banish the routine with which it is done and give it a twist when perceiving.
Existentialist Theory
For this theory, the discovery of problems is as important as finding solutions and this original discovery of the problem is what distinguishes creators from those who are not. Individuals in these instances must be in a position to be able to submit to the problem with all that it implies, without losing the freedom to allow themselves to be dominated by the ideas that “float” in the encounter. It is important to remember that in this moment of “encounter” personal balance is broken, as in any problem, it drives you to search for a solution that will restore balance. The encounter of the individual with his own world, with the environment and with the world of the other makes creativity possible.
May, speaks of an “encounter” between subject and environment, as a trigger for the creative act. The object must be “seen” and “absorbed” by the subject. The differences lie in how you see the object and how you react to it. There are beings who go through life with greater or lesser indifference towards others (person or object); For some, indifference is total. On the level of a social environment, May says that: “all conflict presupposes limits and the fight against limits is the genuine source of creative products.” The instances of Conflict Mediation in which the mediator must deploy all his creativity to achieve an agreement between the contenders, allude to these sayings.
The concept of “meeting” is shared by Sclachtel (1959) which maintains that the creative individual is one who is open to the environment. This behavior must be understood as a link between the individual and the physical and social environment. The creative person is the one who is alert and acts as a sentinel regarding the environment; This attitude brings greater receptivity and a broader willingness to encounter, beyond the way in which this communication is established on the social level, nor with its quality. For this reason, the concept that creativity is recognized as the need to communicate with the environment is reaffirmed.
There is a “existential struggle” between two impulses that occur in man: that of remaining open to the environment and that of remaining in his close world, in the family. Creativity means the triumph of an open, captivating, sentinel being over the intimate perspective, incorporated into the usual, closed.
Psychodynamic theories
Transfer Theory.
Guilford (1952, 1967) As an explanatory support for his theory, he developed a model of the structure of the intellect that constitutes the essential pillar to understand his proposal: the cube of intelligence. His theory, called transmission or transfer, is an essentially intellectual proposal that maintains that the creative individual is motivated by the intellectual impulse to study problems and find solutions to them. Guilford’s model, based on combinatorial analysis, consists of three dimensions, since all intelligent behavior should be characterized by an operation, a content and a product. The three dimensions appear constituted, therefore, by the contents of thought, its operations and its products.
On one axis are the mental contents, in which understanding is exercised. On another axis are mental operations. Knowing updates the knowledge that is registered in memory; Divergent thinking is what makes a large number of new ideas and openness possible, and convergent thinking makes reasoning focus on one idea. Finally, the evaluation provides information about the best idea or the one that is closest to the truth. And on the other axis the products of thought are presented. For Guilford, creativity is an element of learning and learning is capturing new information. Creativity, consequently, belongs to the general aspects of learning and as such can be acquired and transferred, therefore, to other fields or tasks.
Psychoanalytic Theory
The basis of it is the Freudian concept of sublimation. Sublimation is the process postulated by Freud (1908) to explain certain human activities that are apparently unrelated to sexuality but that find energy in the force of the sexual drive. Freud described as sublimation activity, mainly intellectual research and artistic activity. It is said that “the drive is sublimated to the extent that it is derived to a new, non-sexual purpose, and points to socially valued objectives.”
This process of displacement of libido is considered the starting point of any creative activity. The ability to creatively sublimate, which Freud initially attributed exclusively to the artist, was later transferred to the contemplator of art.
Regarding where the creative process takes effect, Freud states that it develops in the unconscious; That’s where the creative solutions lie.
Theory of multiple intelligences
Says Howard Gardner (1988), that the creative individual is a person who regularly solves problems, produces products or defines new questions in a field, in a way that is at first considered new, but that eventually becomes accepted in a specific cultural context.
Gardner considers creativity as a multidisciplinary phenomenon, which does not lend itself to being approached from a discipline as has been done until now. This statement is based on the fact that creativity is a polysemic and multifunctional phenomenon, although Gardner recognizes that due to his own training it seems inevitable that in his study of creativity, he places the greatest emphasis on personal factors and makes use of biological, epistemological and sociological to make a comprehensive approach. The Gardnerian system has three central elements whose “nodes” are:
- Individual: The aforementioned author differentiates the world of the gifted child – but still untrained – and the sphere of the adult being, already self-confident. He places importance on sensitivity to the ways in which the creator makes use of the young child’s worldview.
- Job: It alludes to the fields or disciplines in which each creator works; the symbolic systems that he habitually uses, revises, or invents new ones.
- The other people: Consider also the relationship between the individual and other people in his or her world. Although some creators are believed to work in isolation, the presence of other people is always essential; He studies the family and teachers, in the training period, as well as those who have supported or competed in moments of creative advancement.
in his book “Creative minds” Gardner (1995) addresses, as a social scientist, the life and work of seven “modern creative masters.” Each of the chosen ones represents one of the types of intelligence presented by him. Gardner states that creative solutions to problems occur more frequently if individuals engage in an activity for pure pleasure than when they do so for rewards or external demands. Knowing that one will be judged as creative limits creative possibilities.
Variables that intervene in creativity
Creativity is a personal ability of the individual, for this reason, not all human beings have it equally developed. The existence of intervening variables in the process…