“As a result of it I have felt more things, more deeply; had more experiences, more intensely…”

Psychologist Kay Redfield Jamison has written a number of books, including a memoir, about bipolar disorder. She reportedly first planned her own suicide at 17, and attempted to carry it out at 28.

Can such a profoundly challenging mental health issue like depression actually have some benefit for the many creative people who suffer from it?

Dr. Jamison responded to a question about experiencing bipolar, if she had a choice: “If lithium were not available to me, or didn’t work for me, the answer would be a simple no… and it would be an answer laced with terror.

“But lithium does work for me…Strangely enough, I think I would choose to have it. It’s complicated.

There are many ideas in the Creative Mind posts – not to mention all over the Internet – for how to develop creativity.

It can be helpful to make use of some of the most basic concepts.

“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” Leonardo da Vinci

From post: Thinking Like Leonardo Da Vinci.

Gail McMeekin, L.I.C.S.W., M.S.W. is author of a number of books, including The 12 Secrets of Highly Successful Women: A Portable Life Coach for Creative Women, and Boost Your Creativity, Productivity and Profits in 21 Steps.

In her article “Creative Catalysts,” she lists 25 ideas that are often very simple, but can be powerful strategies to help us be more creative.

How does the intensity, complexity and “border-crossing” of creative people encourage being more creative?

Creative people often have personalities and inner experiences that are intense and beyond ordinary in multiple ways. [Read Part 1.]

Creativity author and teacher Ken Robinson thinks “To realize our true creative potential—in our organizations, in our schools and in our communities—we need to think differently about ourselves and to act differently towards each other. We must learn to be creative.”

[From post: Reclaiming Our Creativity – Part 2.]

One part of learning to be more creative is to encourage shifting between convergent and divergent thinking.

In a recent Creativity Post article, science writer Sam McNerney provides a stimulating and encouraging overview of a “renaissance in creativity in both the lab and the pages of popular books and magazines.”

He says that “Cognitive flexibility, the ability to switch between thinking about two concepts or consider multiple perspectives simultaneously” is a “popular topic in the neuroscience world.”

Darya Zabelina, a creativity researcher at Northwestern University told him “a lot of people are studying cognitive flexibility from a lot of different perspectives.”

It may be advice often given to writers, but is the idea to “write what you know” always understood, and valuable for creating good work?

In his post “Write what you know” – the most misunderstood piece of good advice, ever., Jason Gots comments that writer Nathan Englander “says that ‘write what you know’ is one of the best and most misunderstood pieces of advice, ever.

“It paralyzes aspiring authors into thinking that authenticity in fiction means thinly veiled autobiography. If you’re a drunken, brawling adventurer, like Hemingway, no problem.

“But Englander, who grew up in the Orthodox Jewish community of West Hempstead, New York, says he spent a lot of his childhood watching TV, playing videogames, and dreaming about being a writer. Was he required to write about the Atari 2600?”

A number of stimulating, even provocative, books in psychology can provide insights into developing creative thinking.

Here are a few examples.

In her NY Times article The Power of Concentration, Maria Konnikova reports on a University of Washington study on the effects of meditation training on multitasking.

She summarizes: “Researchers asked a group of human resources professionals to engage in the type of simultaneous planning they did habitually.

“Each participant was placed in a one-person office, with a laptop and a phone, and asked to complete several typical tasks: schedule meetings for multiple attendees, locate free conference rooms, write a memo that proposed a creative agenda item and the like.”

These four P’s of Product, People, Process and environmental Press have been used as frameworks by many creativity researchers and writers.

In a helpful overview article, Sandeep Gautam provides explanations of these concepts, and references to various creativity experts. Here are a few excerpts.

First, to start with the illustration: “Blind monks examining an elephant”, an ukiyo-e print by Hanabusa Itchō (1652–1724).

The story that inspired this artwork is basically that “a group of blind men (or men in the dark) touch an elephant to learn what it is like. Each one feels a different part, but only one part, such as the side or the tusk. They then compare notes and learn that they are in complete disagreement.” [Wikipedia]

Gautam concludes his article:

“In the end, it is important to realize that creativity is all things to all people, but still needs desperately, and would benefit from immensely, an integrative research paradigm; otherwise like the proverbial blind men and the elephant, we may end up getting narrow and useless conceptions of creativity and ignore the big elephant in the room.”

Continue reading… »

My new Developing Creativity Magazine includes articles on creativity research, psychology and personal growth topics, in an interactive format: You can click to “turn” the pages, play videos inside the magazine, zoom viewing size – and more.

For this first issue, I have included articles from The Creative Mind archives for October, 2012, so you may have already read them – but you might enjoy the new digital magazine format. Plus, the contents are viewable on an iPhone, iPad and other mobile devices.

Contents of issue 1.1:

• Creativity Expiration Date?
• Creative Passion or Just Doing What You Really Want
• Creative Thinking: Imagine You Are Seven Again
• Lena Dunham (“Girls”) on Creating
• Facing Our Demons
• Henry Miller on Rules of Creativity
• Are Gifted Underachievers More Creative?
• Junot Diaz on Creative Thinking

Read Developing Creativity Magazine Issue 1.1

~ ~ ~

Both naturalistic and out of the ordinary sensory experiences have inspired artistic creation since our cave painting days.

In the Introduction to his book on the topic, neurologist Oliver Sacks notes that in the early sixteenth century, the term hallucination meant simply “a wandering mind.”

He explains that “in general, hallucinations are quite unlike dreams. Hallucinations often seem to have the creativity of imagination, dreams, or fantasy — or the vivid detail and externality of perception.

“But hallucination is none of these, though it may share some neurophysiological mechanisms with them.”

He says his favorite definition is that given by early psychologist William James: “An hallucination is a strictly sensational form of consciousness, as good and true a sensation as if there were a real object there. The object happens to be not there, that is all.”

“I’m a maniacal perfectionist. And if I weren’t, I wouldn’t have this company. It’s the best rap!”

Martha Stewart added, “I have proven that being a perfectionist can be profitable and admirable when creating content across the board: in television, books, newspapers, radio, videos… All that content is impeccable.” [Oprah.com]

Filmmaking and other arts often demand an obsessive attention to detail, and even rely on a certain level or quality of perfectionism in the pursuit of excellence, but perfectionism can also be limiting and destructive.

Actor Michelle Pfeiffer was quoted in an interview: “I’m a perfectionist, so I can drive myself mad — and other people, too. At the same time, I think that’s one of the reasons I’m successful. Because I really care about what I do. I really want it to be right, and I don’t quit until I have to.”