Creativity as per the Master of Flow

This is a review of the book Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the psychologist famous for labeling 'flow', the state of mind best suited for productivity, and thus for giving us some of our lives' most rewarding moments. Creativity is a subject that fascinates me, and on which I have written before.

The book is based on the interviews of 91 highly creative people, including 14 Nobel laureates. [Some of the people who refused to be interviewed are quoted; management guru Peter Drucker's reply was to the tune of 'there is no such thing as creativity, but there is productivity, which consists of throwing into the waste basket requests for such interviews' (this is not a literal quote)]. The interview questions are listed in Appendix B.

The Elements of Creativity:

According to the book, three things need to exist for creativity to occur.

i) A domain: This is a system of symbolic rules. General examples of domains are poetry, science, politics; more specific examples are algebraic geometry, basketball and impressionist painting. Creative people typically spend a lot of time mastering the rules of their domain(s) of interest.

The demand for creativity within a domain can be set by customers and patrons (e.g. the Borgias during the Renaissance). Domains that exist at the interface of two social/musical/intellectual cultures (e.g. biotech and public policy) are especially fertile, as they suggest novelty more easily.

If the systemic rules can be enunciated clearly (e.g. in mathematics or physics) then young people can jump in and be creative (and hence we say that mathematical talent peaks early). If the rules are vague and complex (politics, philosophy) then it takes a while to make contributions and be recognized.

ii) A creator: This is a person who innovates in a domain (Michael Jordan in basketball). Creative people can also innovate new domains (Galileo initiated, in some sense, experimental physics; Freud started psychoanalysis).

Creative works, says the book, are cultural innovations (memes) analogous to mutations in genes.

iii) A field: This consists of experts who certify the innovation. Their certification dictates which memes will persist; only a few (compared to the many that are put forward) do (there are about a million booktitles published in the US each year - how many stay in our collective memory?).

Experts can cause reputations to wax and wane with time: examples are J. S Bach the musician (rescued from obscurity by Mendelssohn) and John Donne the poet (resurrected by T. S. Eliot), etc.

Creative Types

Creative people, the author finds, do not do something just to earn a living. They think of their work as a higher calling, as a way of systematizing their experience, of extending available knowledge or power, and of having an effect on humankind that is not curtailed by their personal death. Regardless of its explicit purpose, they intrinsically love their work for itself: i.e. the work becomes autotelic.

After an extensive discussion the book observes that creative people seem to combine a number of opposite qualities: convergent (solving well-defined problems) with divergent (playing around with ideas) thinking; playfulness with responsibility; introversion (producing and processing ideas) with extroversion (talking shop with colleagues/subjects); aggression with sensitivity; periods of extreme business with intervals of total idleness; naivete with penetrating wisdom, etc.

Conclusion

The book then goes through the common features in the lifecycle of the creators interviewed, discussing their nurture, peak performance years, and creative old age. Then it suggests what we should focus on in order to live creative lives, should we wish to.

I found the book to be a detailed but lucid and penetrating analysis of the phenomenon of creativity, flush with specific illuminating examples, and ringing with quotes in the original voices of the interviewees.

A recommended read for anyone interested in creativity, a phenomenon which is crucial to the advance of our species.