CREATIVITY: Process and Personality

IN EXAMINING VARIOUS DEFINITIONS of the creative process, one is struck by certain assumptions that are common to most and by a basic disagreement which divides these definitions into two groups.1

The common assumptions are that products which are novel for a person or a culture and are considered valuable are "creative". The process that produces them is termed the "creative process" and is viewed as a distinct cognitive process, often involving distinct perceptual processes. A typical definition might be, then: "Creativity is that process which results in a novel work that is accepted as tenable or useful or satisfying by a group at some point in time” (Stein, 1963, p. 218).

Here, however, the agreement ends. The next step in some definitions is the proposition that creativity is a unique cognitive process, fundamentally different from all other forms of cognition, although it possesses certain similarities. Others propose instead that creativity is a special form of the cognitive process known as problem-solving, which, although it has certain distinct characteristics, is not essentially different from all other forms of "non-creative" problem-solving.

The first question that one must answer in order to proceed is whether these two positions are indeed, as they seem at first glance, irreconcilable. In order to resolve this we must discover if, in fact, they are describing the same process in the first place.