The idea of the tortured creative person is largely a myth. Most of his respondents were very happy with their lives and their creative output.“The real story of creativity is more difficult and strange than many overly optimistic accounts have claimed. For one thing, as I will try to show, an idea or product that deserves the label ‘creative’ arises from the synergy of many sources and not only from the mind of a single person… And a genuinely creative accomplishment is almost never the result of a sudden insight, a light-bulb flashing on in the dark, but comes after years of hard work.”
“Creativity is a central source of meaning in our lives for several reasons… First, most of the things that are interesting, important, and human are the results of creativity. We share 98 percent of our genetic makeup with chimpanzees… Without creativity, it would be difficult indeed to distinguish humans from apes.”
In a nutshell
Real creativity can only emerge once we have mastered the medium or domain in which we work.
In a similar vein
Edward de Bono Lateral Thinking (p 38)
Martin Seligman Authentic Happiness (p 254)
Before turning his mind to creativity, psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (pronounced Chick-sent-me-hi) wrote a celebrated book called Flow. Its insight was that it is a mistake to pursue happiness itself. Rather, we should recognize when we are genuinely happy—what we are doing when we feel powerful and “true”—and do more of those things. Flow activities we do for the sheer enjoyment or intellectual satisfaction, rather than to gain some extrinsic reward. You might want to win a game of chess, for instance, but you play it because it engages your mind totally. You might want to become a good dancer, but it is the learning and dancing that are the main reward.
Csikszentmihalyi took these ideas and applied them to the question of how some people become genuinely creative. He was not interested in what he calls the “small c” creativity involved in making a cake or choosing curtains or the imaginative talk of a child, but the kind that changes a whole “domain” or area of human endeavor. Truly creative people have a capacity to change the fundamental way we see, understand, appreciate, or do things, whether it is by inventing a new machine or writing a set of songs, and Csikszentmihalyi wanted to know what made them different.
Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention is the culmination of 30 years of work into creativity. There is a small industry of how-to-be-more-creative books and seminars, and many are glib, but this is one of the few serious treatments that understands the complexity of the creative person and process.
At the beginning of Creativity, Csikszentmihalyi provides information on what he claims was the first systematic study of living creative people, involving interviews with 91 people considered to have had an outstanding impact on their domain, whether that was the arts, business, law, government, medicine, or science (the scientists encompassed 14 Nobel Prize winners). The names included Mortimer J. Adler, philosopher; John Bardeen, physicist; Kenneth Boulding, economist; Margaret Butler, mathematician; Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, astrophysicist; Barry Commoner, biologist; Natalie Davis, historian; Gyorgy Faludy, poet; Nadine Gordimer, writer; Stephen Jay Gould, paleontologist; Hazel Henderson, economist; Ellen Lanyon, artist; Ernst Mayr, zoologist; Brenda Milner, psychologist; Ilya Prigogine, chemist; John Reed, banker; Jonas Salk, biologist; Ravi Shankar, musician; Benjamin Spock, pediatrician; and Eva Zeisel, ceramic designer.
It is worth getting Creativity just to read about these people, some of whom are outright famous and others who are known mainly within their own field. Nearly all the subjects were over 60, allowing Csikszentmihalyi a better chance to survey fully developed careers and elicit insights into the secrets of mature creative success.
Csikszentmihalyi suggests that the common idea of a creative individual coming up with great insights, discoveries, works, or inventions in isolation is wrong. Creativity results from a complex interaction between a person and their environment or culture, and also depends on timing.
For instance, if the great Renaissance artists like Ghiberti or Michelangelo had been born only 50 years before they were, the culture of artistic patronage would not have been in place to fund or shape their great achievements. Consider also individual astronomers: Their discoveries could not have happened unless centuries of technological development of the telescope and evolving knowledge of the universe had come before them.
Csikszentmihalyi’s point is that we should devote as much attention to the development of a domain as we do to the people working within it, as only this can properly explain how advances are made. Individuals are only “a link in a chain, a phase in a process,” he notes. Did Einstein really “invent” the theory of relativity? Did Edison “invent” electricity? This is like saying that the spark is responsible for the fire, when of course fire involves many elements.
The products of creativity also need to have a receptive audience to evaluate them. A creation vanishes if it is not recognized. “Memes” are the cultural equivalent of genes, things such as language, customs, laws, songs, theories, and values. If they’re strong they survive, otherwise they are lost. Creative people seek to create memes that can have an impact on their cultures. The greater the creator, the longer lasting and deeper the impact of the memes.
Creative breakthroughs never just come out of the blue. They are almost always the result of years of hard work and close attention to something. Many creative discoveries are lucky, particularly those of the scientific type, but usually the “luck” comes after years of detailed work in the area in which the discovery is made. Csikszentmihalyi tells of the astronomer Vera Rubin, who discovered that stars in some galaxies do not all rotate in the same direction—some go clockwise, and others anticlockwise. She would not have made the discovery if she had not had access to a new type of clearer spectral analysis, and this access came from her already being known for her substantial contributions to the field. Rubin was not out to make a big discovery; rather, it was the result of close observation of stars and a love of her work. Her goal was to record data, but it was her dedication that yielded the surprise findings. Truly creative people work for work’s own sake, and if they make a public discovery or become famous that is a bonus. What drives them, more than rewards, is the desire to find or create order where there was none before.
A popular image of the creative person is their defiance of all norms, dogma, and customs. This gives the wrong impression, however, as everyone who creates genuine change has first needed to master their domain, which means soaking up and mastering its skills and knowledge. It is only later, having mastered their domain, that people can truly make a creative mark, as incorporation of the “rules” of the domain allows those rules to be bent or broken to create something new. In short, to do new things, you first have to have done the old things well.
Csikszentmihalyi’s other insights include:
The idea of the tortured creative person is largely a myth. Most of his respondents were very happy with their lives and their creative output.
Successful creative people tend to have two things in abundance: curiosity and drive. They are absolutely fascinated by their subject, and while others may be more brilliant, their sheer desire for accomplishment is the decisive factor.
Creative people take their intuition seriously, looking for patterns where others see confusion, and are able to make connections between discrete areas of knowledge.
Creative people are often seen as arrogant, but this is usually because they want to devote most of their attention to their exciting work.
Though creative people can be creative anywhere, they gravitate to centers where their interests can be satisfied more easily, where they can meet like-minded people, and where their work can be appreciated.
Beautiful or inspiring environments are better at helping people to be more creative thinkers than giving them a seminar on “creativity.”
School does not seem to have had a great effect on many famous creative people, and even in college they were often not stars. Many people later considered geniuses were not particularly remarkable as children; what they always had more than others was curiosity.
Many creative achievers were either orphaned or had little contact with their father. On the other hand, they frequently had a very involved, loving mother who expected a lot from them.
Most fell into one of two family categories: They were poor or disadvantaged, but their parents nevertheless pushed them to educational or career attainment; or they grew up in families of intellectuals, researchers, professionals, writers, musicians, and so on. Only 10 percent were middle class. The lesson: To be a powerfully creative adult, it is best to be brought up in a family that values intellectual endeavor, not one that celebrates middle-class comfort.
The creative are both humble and proud, with a selfless devotion to their domain and what might be achieved, yet also confidence that they have much to contribute and will make their mark.
It is a myth that there is one “creative personality.” Something all creative people seem to share is complexity—they “tend to bring the entire range of human possibilities within themselves.”
Csikszentmihalyi says that it would be too easy to see creative people as a privileged elite. Rather, their lives are a message that we should all be able to find work that is fulfilling and that we love. As he notes, most of the people in the study did not come from privileged backgrounds, but had to struggle to do what they wanted in the face of economic or family pressures. Some of the respondents felt that their greatest achievement, in fact, was having created their own lives or careers without recourse to social expectation.
Why should we really care about creativity? Csikszentmihalyi’s work on the flow experience found that it occurs most readily when people are engaged in “designing or discovering something new.” We are happiest when we are being creative because we lose our sense of self and get the feeling that we are part of something greater. We are actually programmed to get satisfaction and pleasure from discovery and creativity, he says, because its results lead to our survival as a species. New ideas are needed more than ever if the planet is going to survive, and the best ones are likely to come from genuinely creative people.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi was born in 1934 in Fiume on the Adriatic, and his father was the Hungarian consul of what was then an Italian city. The family name means “Saint Michael from the province of Csik,” Csik being originally a Hungarian province.
Csikszentmihalyi spent his adolescence in Rome, helping to run the family restaurant while receiving a classical education. After graduating he worked as a photographer and travel agent. He enrolled at the University of Chicago in 1958, where he received a BA and PhD. Though he was more interested in the ideas of Carl Jung, he was required to study behaviorist psychology, and only later during his years as a professor at Chicago was he able to develop his theories on flow, creativity, and the self.
Since 1999 Csikszentmihalyi has been a professor at Claremont Graduate University in California, where his Quality of Life Research Center explores aspects of positive psychology.
Other books include Beyond Boredom and Anxiety (1975), The Evolving Self: A Psychology for the Third Millennium (1993), and Finding Flow: The Psychology of Engagement with Everyday Life (1997).