“The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated.” Psychologist William James

Our needs for attention and appreciation may be basic, and grounded in survival as a child, but for some people, those needs are especially potent.

In a recent article, Ben Kingsley commented about being a performer as a child, like so many other gifted actors, and some hurtful responses from his parents.

“I had always been the song-and-dance man of the family,” he says. “I remember my father referring to me as ‘our little Danny Kaye’ when I was about seven. That was the only remotely positive comment I remember from them. They never praised me or acknowledged a gram of talent in me.

They may be identified with one form of creativity – such as writing or acting, one of the visual arts, or performing music – but so many people work in multiple ways, in more than one area of creative expression. And they may not even think it is extraordinary to be so multifaceted.

In his post Creatives With Multiple Talents (on his blog The Artist’s Road), writer and instructor Patrick Ross mentions meeting two students in a Masters in Writing program who are about to graduate.

“They told me about a talent show their class held at their last on-campus residency. One of them said he had performed on the violin. The other told me he has acting experience but didn’t want to do a one-man show, so he performed magic tricks. I said it was interesting that all of these writing students had another talent they could perform.

“The violin player looked at me as if I had just expressed bafflement that an orange was the color orange. ‘All creative people have multiple talents, don’t they?’

Psychologist Ted Zeff, among others, notes the personality trait of high sensitivity can be particularly challenging for men, especially in this culture.

But many boys and men find that creative expression is enhanced by the many positive qualities of the trait.

Writer and entrepreneur Peter Messerschmidt [aka 'Denmarkguy'], who – like myself – identifies as being highly sensitive, writes in one of his informative articles on the topic of highly sensitive men (HSM) and how much they “accept” or make use of this aspect of their personality.

He notes, “One group– typically the largest– display all the characteristics of high sensitivity, but forcefully deny and reject the possibility that they are ‘sensitive.’

How does being a mother affect a creative woman, especially someone engaged in a career in the arts?

“The motherhood thing – I think of it like a marathon, except a marathon is over in a day. It’s an endurance test and it’s something you absolutely can’t stop for a second.

“Part of what makes it really cool and interesting is almost anything [besides motherhood] you commit to, you can take a breather.”

Caren McCaleb “is an award winning documentary editor and filmmaker. Her work has shown on PBS, A&E, and at numerous film festivals including Sundance, AFIFest, and the Palm Springs International Festival of Short Films.” [From her site: www.carenmccaleb.com]

The image is from a new documentary Lost in Living – “the story of four extraordinary women who share their personal triumphs and struggles as mothers and as artists and who uniquely define for themselves what it means to be a woman in our modern world.” [From statement by Director Mary Trunk.]

“If there is one word that makes creative people different from others, it is the word complexity. Instead of being an individual, they are a multitude.”

That is a quote by creativity researcher and author Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who describes a number of pairs of “paradoxical” traits exhibited by creative people, such as both convergent and divergent thinking; extroverted and introverted; humble and proud.

See my post The Complexity of the Creative Personality and my SlideShare presentation below.

In his book Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention he makes some interesting comments about evaluating artists using projective tests like the Rorschach (ink blot) or the Thematic Apperception Test.

Author Susan Cain declares: “Without introverts, the world would be devoid of: the theory of gravity; the theory of relativity; W. B. Yeats’s “The Second Coming”; Chopin’s nocturnes; Proust’s In Search of Lost Time; Peter Pan…”

She quotes science journalist Winifred Gallagher: “The glory of the disposition that stops to consider stimuli rather than rushing to engage with them is its long association with intellectual and artistic achievement.

“Neither E = mc2 nor Paradise Lost was dashed off by a party animal.”

Creative people often have personalities and inner experiences that are intense and beyond ordinary in multiple ways.

“I’ve been accused of being ‘too much’ all my life. Too loud, too fast, too smart, too multi-talented, too audacious.”

Writing and creativity coach Cynthia Morris goes on to write, “I’ve never been able to live according to that external standard of ‘just right’…It’s the job of the artist and writer to reflect what they see and feel. This expression of their art and talents must be larger than life.”

From her article Creative People Shouldn’t ‘Tone It Down’ – where I also used this photo of Sarah Bernhardt (1844 – 1923), a French stage and film actress, who has been referred to as “the most famous actress the world has ever known.” [Wikipedia]

In a post on her Creative Synthesis blog, Lisa Rivero refers to the creative research and writing of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who “studied the lives of over 90 eminent creative producers and thinkers to learn what they had in common.”

One way to think about the related ideas of self esteem, self regard and self concept is in terms of how we compare ourselves to others, which can suffocate our creativity.

If you are an actor, for example (or even wanting to be one), and compare yourself with Meryl Streep or Colin Firth, do you feel energized or deflated – inspired or discouraged?

Psychologist Elaine Aron notes that “low self-esteem is about power and influence, the result of rank. Like other social animals, we constantly rank ourselves among others – competing and comparing.”

“If there’s specific resistance to women making movies, I just choose to ignore that as an obstacle.” // “A filmmaker is a filmmaker.”

Kathryn Bigelow won the first Academy Award ever presented to a female director, for her outstanding Best Picture winner, “The Hurt Locker.”

Gendered Awards

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences presents awards in many gender neutral categories like Director and Screenwriter, but also separates Actor and Actress categories.

Other awards programs include The Man Booker Prize for Fiction (without reference to gender), and the Orange Prize for Fiction, for “excellence, originality and accessibility in women’s writing from throughout the world.”

In her Huffington Post entry, Vivian Norris de Montaigu relates the story of fifteen years ago inviting Bigelow to joining the board of a Women in Cinema Film Festival (which later became part of the larger Seattle International film festival).

“Ms. Bigelow turned us down, politely, asserting the fact that she was a filmmaker, period. Not a female filmmaker, but a filmmaker full stop.

The late Jane Russell famously starred in “The Outlaw” in 1943. In 2006, at 84, she was singing Cole Porter songs in a review she helped create called “The Swinging Forties.”

Other examples of mature creators include these:

At 96 Martha Graham premiered her choreographed work The Maple Leaf Rag.

Sidney Sheldon wrote his last novel at about age 87.

Edward Albee won a Tony award for a new play in 2002, at age 75.

At 97, architect Oscar Niemeyer was developing one of his most ambitious projects.

On the other end of the age range, the photo shows Zoe Yin (left) and Victoria Yin, age 11 and 14, who have shown their work at expos, galleries, and art shows internationally, and “selling paintings for tens of thousands of dollars,” according to a new Creativity Post article: At What Age Will Your Creativity Peak?