All rights reserved, including the right
of reproduction in whole or part in
any form. Copyright by K. Sohail
Cover by Karen Walker
Author's Address:
K. Sohail Penthouse No. 6 100 White Oaks Court Whitby,
Ont. Canada L1P
1B7 Apprehension I
am afraid That
the noise of the outside world Will
drown one day The
music inside.
Sohail
~ *
~ Contents
Page Part I - Creativity ..... ..................... 7
1. Creativity
- A Quest (Essay)
9 2. Creative Thinking (Essay)
13
3. Creative
Products (Essay)
21
4. Creative
People (Interviews)
Eastern Writers Living In The West ...
25 Part II - Creativity And Insanity .
................... 75
5. Creativity
And Insanity (Essay)
77
6. Virginia Woolf
And The Violent Moods Of
The Soul (Essay) ...
87
7. Van Gogh - An
Insane Genius (Essay)
97
8. Ezra Pound -
Traitor or Insane? (Essay) ..........
103
9. Frida Kahlo -
A Symbol of Creative
Transformation (Essay) .....
117
10. Diane Arbus - A Challenge
to Sexual Taboos
(Essay)
123 Suggested Reading ........ ................ 133 Creativity
... A Quest I often wonder whether life can be seen as a creative journey. Human
beings as mortal beings start their journey at birth, go through different
stages of growth and end the journey at death. Creative people whether they are
scientists, artists, philosophers or mystics have a yearning to become
immortal. They spend their lives discovering and experiencing eternal truths
and universal values - the truths and values that transcend their mortal
beings. Creativity is a human quest for immortality and eternity. Human beings
have the potential to become God-like by creating and playing. Henry Miller
once said, "Human beings work and learn
Gods create and play"
Creative people in their existential journey to become Gods challenge
every aspect of our lives and invite us to worlds that are far beyond what our
ordinary eyes can see, our average hearts can feel and our traditional minds
can imagine. They get us in touch with higher and deeper aspects of ourselves.
They give us gifts of new perspectives, new insights, new points of view, new
gestalts. They beautify our existence, enrich our lives and broaden our
horizons.
But when human beings try to become creators and Gods they have to pay a
big price. In that creative journey they can become extremely unhappy,
experience nervous breakdowns and commit suicide or be punished by their
families and communities by being ostracized, jailed or even executed. It is
fascinating to see how creativity is intimately related to destructiveness. When we study the biographies of creative people we become aware that their creative journeys go through different stages.
In the first stage creative people develop a realization of the
limitations of conventional modes of thinking and traditional lifestyles. They
gradually become disappointed and disillusioned in themselves and their
environments.
In the second stage they discard the old ways of thinking and living
which creates a crisis in their lives. Loss of old patterns produces a conflict
between creative people and the significant others in their life. Such a loss
and a conflict can easily lead to a breakdown in ideals, relationships and
philosophies.
In the third stage, creative people discover new ideas, new forms of
expression, new lifestyles and new philosophies. They turn the breakdowns into
breakthroughs.
Depending upon the talents, personalities and environments, the creative
people can become,
Scientists, who explore their world with telescopes and
microscopes and using their objective methods to discover the laws of nature.
Artists, who
explore the human condition aesthetically and produce poems, novels, songs,
paintings and other pieces of art to enrich our lives.
Mystics, who explore their own selves and come in touch not only with their
personal truths but, also embrace universal and eternal truths about human
nature. They discover those boundaries where humanity touches divinity and
human consciousness embraces cosmic consciousness.
Or
Leaders of social or political movements who help their communities to reject the oppressive
regimens, fight for their rights and liberties and adopt a lifestyle that
respects personal freedoms and social justice. Such leaders help communities in
their historical journey of human evolution.
Whether they be scientists, artists, mystics or social reformers they
are always swimming against the current. Creative people are frequently put
through tests and not infrequently those tests can cost them their sanity or
their lives.
~ *
~ Definitions
Creativity has been a difficult concept to define. When we look into
Webster's dictionary it says "a process of making or bringing into
being" but when we read different writers who have written extensively on
the subject we come across the following definitions.
Carl Rogers wrote "... there must be something observable, some
product of creation. Though my fantasies may be extremely novel, they cannot
usefully be defined as creative unless they eventuate in some observable
product ... unless they are symbolized in words, or written in a poem or
translated into a work of art or fashioned into an invention." (Ref. 2)
Greenacre wrote, "I use the term creativity ... to mean, the
capacity for or activity of making something new, original or inventive, no
matter in what field. It is not merely the making of a product, even a good
product, but of one which has the characteristic of originality." (Ref. 3)
Rollo May broadened the horizons of creativity by saying,
"Creativity is a yearning for immortality ... creativity is not merely the
innocent spontaneity of our youth and childhood, it must also be married to the
passion of the adult human being, which is a passion to live beyond one's
death." (Ref. 11) Theories
Experts in many fields have put forward a number of different theories
highlighting various aspects and dimensions of the creative process. Some of
these theories are descriptive while others are dynamic. Four
Stages
One of the most popular theories was presented by Joseph Wallace in 1926
who believed that the creative process consisted of four stages:
"Preparation
Incubation
Illumination
Verification" (Ref. 1)
Catherine Patrick in her book What
is Creative Thinking discusses those stages in detail. She states that
during the "Preparation" stage the thinker aims to acquire more
information about the problem than he already possesses. During
"Incubation" there is recurrence of the chief idea which is finally
adopted as the solution to a problem or the subject of art in the stage of
Illumination. The stage of "Illumination" consists of "a sudden
intuition or a clear insight or a feeling ... something between a
"hunch" and a "solution" and at other times the result of
"sustained effort". (Ref. 4) This stage has also been known as the
Eureka experience: in literature
when the thinker says to himself, "This is IT", "I have
discovered", "This is what I wanted to express". The final stage
is "Verification" in which the essential idea or outline which
appeared in the illumination stage is revised or verified; if verification is
not possible, then the outline is revisited, so that "Revision" can
occur simultaneously with the stage of "Verification". Catherine Patrick said, "The four stages may overlap, as Incubation may appear during Preparation and Revision may begin during the Illumination stage." (Ref. 4)
A number of other theorists who belong to the psychanalytical school of
thinking looked at the creative process from a totally different perspective. Primary,
Secondary, Tertiary Process Thinking
Freud tried to explain creativity from his own way of thinking. He
compared literary work to fantasies and daydreaming which are related to
fulfilment of wishes and primary process thinking. He also "saw a great
similarity between neurosis and creativity; they both originate in conflicts
which spring from more fundamental biological drives. In other words, they are
attempts to solve conflicts that originate in the powerful human
instincts." (Ref. 1) Freud seemed to be preoccupied with biological drives, instincts and primary process thinking. Other psychologists and psychiatrists believe that in creativity the primary process thinking, joins with secondary process thinking which deals with reality and forms a synthesis. Arieti named this Tertiary process thinking while Pinchas Noy compared it with insight and wrote "when these new intercategorical schemata are produced in a creative mind and result in the highest art forms, it is always because the self centred and the reality oriented categories have been integrated into one new entity. Thus by integrating abstract concepts and concrete images, objective information and subjective states of experiencing ideas and emotions, wishes and reality considerations, the artist succeeds in achieving the ultimate aim of any creative art: to weave into a single tapestry the warp and weft of self and reality ... neither creativity nor insight can ever be achieved by either the self-centred primary process or the reality-oriented secondary process alone, but only by a kind of cognitive based on a synthesis of the operational modes of both processes." (Ref. 6)
Kris conceptualized the creative process within his own frame of
orientation; on one hand he considered that the use of primary process in
creativity was "a regression in the service of ego": and on the other
hand he felt that some part of creativity may be the function of the
conflict-free area of ego, the autonomous ego. He believed that "creative
imagination may lead to concrete achievements, some of them art, others devoted
mainly and solely to problem solving; to inventiveness in science or simply to
the enrichment of an individual's existence." (Ref. 1) Personal
and Collective Unconscious
Jung wrote about creativity when he focused on the aesthetic process. He
believed that the creative process had two modes, the psychological and the
visionary. The psychological mode was related to human experience and his
consciousness while the visionary mode dealt with the deeper part of human
personality, the timeless depth, the "collective unconscious". He
also talked about the archetypes which he considered "an invariable
nucleus of meaning." (Ref. 18)
Phyllis Greenacre also made significant contributions towards
understanding the creative process and the personality of the artist. She
suggested that the ego of the future artist is capable of dissociating itself
from real objects and thus developing a "love affair with the world".
In this connection she talks about the "collective audience" and
"collective alternates". She wrote "in an effort to clarify this
in my mind I have adopted the phrase collective alternatives to describe this
range of extended experience which may surround or become attached to the main
focus of object relationships: ... the true artist may be more faithful with
deeper inner integrity in his relation to his collective audience than he is
with his personal connections." (Ref. 1)
Adler tried to explain creativity with "his compensatory theory of
creativity ... that human beings produce art, science and other aspects of
culture to compensate for their own inadequacies." (Ref. 11)
These descriptions clearly describe how the creative process makes a
bond between the inner and the outer worlds of the artist and the writer. Four
Characteristics
Different research scholars who studied the creative process seriously
and methodically presented four characteristics of creative thinking: 1. Divergent
Thinking 2. Synectic
Thinking 3. Janusian
Thinking 4.
Homospatial Thinking
Divergent thinking was described by J. P. Guilford in 1950 who compared
it to convergent thinking used in our day to day problem solving activities. In
convergent thinking the person chooses one option when he is given a number of
choices. When someone is asked, “What is common to oranges, apples, bananas
and mangoes?", by using convergent thinking he answers, "They are all
fruits." On the other hand when someone is asked, "How many things
can you make with a circle?" The person has to use divergent thinking to
answer, "Face, clock, wheel, ball and orange." (Ref. 12)
Educational psychologists notice that when children enter school their
capacity for divergent thinking is quite high. But by the time they graduate as
teenagers they have learned logical, rational, problem solving convergent
thinking to pass their exams and in the process have lost their capacity for
divergent thinking. Most psychology tests while assessing intelligence focus
mainly on convergent thinking. Some psychologists who have a keen interest in
creativity are devising tests to assess divergent thinking.
W.J. Gordon in 1961 expressed his view that creative thinking uses
synectics (a Greek word meaning joining together of diverse elements) which is
composed of two basic operations, "Making the strange familiar" and
"Making the familiar strange." Gordon believed that creative people
can see similarities between dissimilar things and also have a fresh look at
old things. They can look at the same thing, person, problem or system in many
different ways, and have fresh insights. (Ref. 12)
Albert Rothenberg described Janusian Cognition and Homospatial Process
as significant elements of the creative process. In the Janusian process
"multiple opposites or antitheses" are conceived simultaneously and
in Homospatial process two or more discrete entities are conceived as occupying
the same space. Such processes reflect the originality and vivid imagination of
creative minds and lead to new identities. Such thinking involves abstraction
and gives birth to metaphors used frequently in poetry. (Ref. 16) Writers use
the language in such a way that the same words can give multiple meanings.
Sartre once said in his interview, "What distinguishes literature from
scientific communication, for example, is that literature is ambiguous. The
artist of language arranges words in such a way that, depending on how he
emphasizes them or gives weight to them, they will have one meaning, and
another, and yet another, each time at different levels." (Ref. 17) Hierarchy
of Creative Process
Irving Taylor in 1959 suggested a hierarchy of creative process
depending upon the aesthetic and societal value of the product. He named the
stages Expressive, Productive, Inventive, Innovative and Emergentive.
Expressive creations are the spontaneous drawings of children. Productive
creations are the works of art in which artists have mastered the technique and
the craft. In Inventive, Innovative and Emergentive the scientists, artists and
mystics come up with such profound insights or forms that they change the way
human beings see themselves and the world around them. (Ref. 12) The wisdom of
Confucius, Buddha and Socrates, scientific discoveries of Newton and Einstein
and art works of Picasso and Van Gogh can be seen as examples of those profound
creations.
~ *
~
Chagal, a famous neuroscientist used to call the
artistic products `the children of the soul' for which artists have to
experience labour pains the same way mothers do to deliver babies. Human babies
are easy to recognize and assess whether they are alive and healthy and strong
but to evaluate the artistic qualities and meaningfulness of creative products
is very difficult. Over the centuries different philosophers, artists and
critics have expressed their views about the qualities and value of creative
products.
When some philosophers saw artists sitting in their studios drawing
still objects and portraits of people, standing in front of their easels in a
park or on the side of a lake painting mountains or valleys or trees they felt
that artists were only imitating nature. Plato criticized artists for imitating
natural objects which he believed were themselves imitations of the objects
which existed in God's mind. There were artists who objected to this notion and
highlighted that artists draw what they see
with their inner eye using their imagination rather than what they see
with their naked eye. Michelangelo expressed his ideas of trying to paint and
sculpt an ideal form because he believed that beauty `carries the eye up to
those heights which I am preparing here to paint and sculpt.'
Visual arts may be accused of mere imitations but when we read a novel
or watch a play on the stage or see a movie on the screen we enter the domain
of representation. Artists try to represent certain aspects of social
realities. In creating novels and screenplays writers create a fictional
reality which might be based on but still is independent of social reality
and a sophisticated reader and viewer knows the difference. On one hand
the viewer feels sad that a character died on the stage but he also knows that
the same character will play the same role the next day on the same stage. By
creating fictional realities the artists not only use their own imagination but
also stimulate the imagination of their readers and viewers.
Genuine art touches us at an emotional level. Wordsworth wrote,
"all good poetry is a spontaneous flow of powerful emotions" and
Tolstoy considered "art is the contagion of feeling." Poets and
artists rather than sharing ideas and concepts like scientists focus on
feelings. They want to touch our hearts and souls rather than our brains. They
want their readers and viewers to develop an empathy with the characters and
their conflicts rather than just an intellectual understanding of the
situation. Genuine artists rather than stating their feelings directly try to
find indirect and subtle ways to express themselves whether through colours or
sounds or symbols or metaphors which they find more effective and creative way
to communicate with their audience.
Artistic products not only play a role of creative expression of the
artist but are also the bridges of communication. A sophisticated artist also
needs a sophisticated viewer and listener and reader. That is why in any
community the number of people who can enjoy listening to operas, seeing
abstract paintings and reading novels written on the technique of stream of
consciousness are few.
There is always an ongoing dialogue between the artists and the people.
Some artists aim for commercial success and popularity and want to become
bestsellers even if they have to sacrifice their morals and integrity while
others follow their inner voices. They follow their own hearts and only create
when they are inspired. Such artists are less affected by financial rewards,
public opinion or the views of the critics but then they have to give
sacrifices and struggle all their lives especially if they depend on their art
for their livelihood. Many artists suffered as their novels and movies were
banned because they challenged the moral, religious and ethical norms and
traditions of society or were disliked by the people in power. Writings of
James Joyce and Henry Miller were banned for about quarter of a century before
they could be sold publicly.
Genuine artists share their personal truths and hope that by touching
the hearts, minds and souls of their readers, viewers
and listeners they can collectively discover eternal and universal
truths. They believe that art helps us in becoming better human beings and
plays a role in the journey of human evolution. Artists believe that
stimulating one's imagination enriches our life aesthetically. Anne Shephard
ends her book Aesthetics by stating,
"Art engages both the emotions and the intellect and the study of art
requires a combination of imaginative flexibility and intellectual discipline.
If we develop our ability to respond to art we shall develop our potential as
human beings." (Ref. 20)
~ *
~ Introduction The
creative process and creative people have always been a source of fascination
for psychologists, sociologists and even historians. Arnold Toynbee, a famous
historian, once observed in his article, Is
America Neglecting Her Creative Minority?: "To give a fair chance to
potential creativity is a matter of life and death of any society. This is all
important because the outstanding creative ability of a small percentage of the
population is mankind's ultimate capital set .....". (Ref. 1)
Being a student of human psychology and literature I was also fascinated
with the creative process and its relationship with the creative person and his
environment; and being an immigrant myself, I had also been interested in the
process of immigration and its affect on different people. Over the years I
have come to know many immigrants who lead a very lonely and miserable
existence while I have also met many others who found the experience of
immigration a catalyst for their personal, professional and artistic growth. In
the last few years when meeting many immigrant writers, I wondered whether
their views and experiences might shed some light on the dynamic interaction
between immigration and creativity. |