The concept of creativity throughout history

The creativity It is a human psychological phenomenon that has favorably served the evolution of our species, as well as the intelligence. In fact, for a long time, they have become confused.

At the moment, it is argued that creativity and intelligence have a close relationship, but that they are two different dimensions of our psychic world; Highly creative people are not necessarily smarter, nor are those with high IQs more creative.

Part of the confusion about what creativity is is due to the fact that, for centuries, creativity has been covered with a mystical-religious halo. For this reason, practically until the 20th century, its study has not been approached scientifically.

Even so, since ancient times, it has fascinated us and we have endeavored to try to explain its essence through philosophy and, more recently, applying the scientific method, especially from the Psychology.

Creativity in Antiquity

Hellenic philosophers tried to explain creativity through divinity. They understood that creativity was a kind of supernatural inspiration, a whim of the gods. The creative person was considered an empty container that a divine being filled with the necessary inspiration to create products or ideas.

For example, Plato He maintained that the poet was a sacred being, possessed by the gods, who could only create what his muses dictated (Plato, 1871). From this perspective, creativity was a gift accessible to a select few, which represents an aristocratic vision of it that will last until the Renaissance.

Creativity in the Middle Ages

The Middle Ages, considered an obscurantist period for the development and understanding of the human being, arouses little interest for the study of creativity. It is not considered a time of creative splendor, so there was not much effort in trying to understand the mechanism of creation.

In this period, man was completely subject to the interpretation of biblical scriptures and all his creative production was oriented to pay tribute to God. A curious fact of this time is the fact that many creators gave up signing their works, which evidenced the denial of their own identity.

Creativity in the Modern Age

In this stage, the divine conception of creativity is fading to give way to the idea of ​​the hereditary trait. Simultaneously, a humanistic conception emerges, from which man is no longer a being abandoned to his destiny or to divine designs, but a co-author of his own becoming.

During the Renaissance, the taste for aesthetics and art was resumed, the author recovered the authorship of his works and some other Hellenic values. It is a period in which the classic is reborn. Artistic production grows dramatically and, consequently, the interest in studying the mind of the creative individual also grows.

The debate on creativity, at this time, focuses on the duality "nature versus nurture" (biology or nurture), although without much empirical support. One of the earliest treatises on human ingenuity belongs to Juan Huarte de San Juan, Spanish doctor who in 1575 published his work "Examination of ingenuities for the sciences", precursor of Differential Psychology and Professional Orientation. At the beginning of the 18th century, thanks to figures such as Copernicus, Galileo, Hobbes, Locke and Newton, confidence in science grows as faith grows in the human ability to solve problems through mental effort. Humanism is consolidated.

The first relevant investigation of modernity on the creative process takes place in 1767 by the hand of William Duff, who will analyze the qualities of the original genius, differentiating it from talent. Duff argues that talent is not accompanied by innovation, while original genius is. The views of this author are very similar to recent scientific contributions, in fact, it was the first to point towards the biopsychosocial nature of the creative act, demystifying it and taking two centuries to Biopsychosocial Theory of Creativity (Dacey and Lennon, 1998).

On the contrary, during this same time, and fueling the debate, Kant understood creativity as something innate, a gift of nature, which cannot be trained and which constitutes an intellectual trait of the individual.

Creativity in postmodernity

The first empirical approaches to the study of creativity did not occur until the second half of the 19th century., by openly rejecting the divine conception of creativity. Also influenced by the fact that at that time Psychology began its split from Philosophy, to become in an experimental science, thus increasing the positivist effort in the study of behavior human.

During the 19th century the conception of hereditary trait prevailed. Creativity was a characteristic trait of men and it took a long time to assume that creative women could exist. This idea was reinforced by Medicine, with different findings on the heritability of physical traits. An exciting debate between Lamarck and Darwin on genetic inheritance captured scientific attention for much of the century. The former argued that learned traits could be passed on between consecutive generations, while Darwin (1859) showed that genetic changes are not so immediate, neither the result of practice or learning, but rather they occur through random mutations during the phylogeny of the species, for which long periods of time are required.

Postmodernity in the study of creativity could be located in the works of Galton (1869) on individual differences, highly influenced by Darwinian evolution and by the current associationist. Galton focused on the study of the hereditary trait, ignoring psychosocial variables. Two influential contributions stand out from him for further research: the idea of ​​free association and how it operates between the conscious and the unconscious, which later Sigmund Freud will develop from his psychoanalytic point of view, and the application of statistical techniques to the study of individual differences, which make him a bridge author between the speculative study and the empirical study of creativity.

The consolidation phase of Psychology

Despite Galton's interesting work, nineteenth and early twentieth century psychology was interested in simpler psychological processes, following the trajectory marked out by the Behaviorism, which rejected mentalism or the study of unobservable processes.

The behaviorist domain postponed the study of creativity until the second half of the twentieth century, with the exception of a couple of surviving lines of positivism, the Psychoanalysis Y the Gestalt.

The Gestalt vision of creativity

Gestalt contributed a phenomenological conception of creativity. He began his career in the second half of the 19th century, opposing Galton's associationism, although his influence was not noticed until well into the 20th century. The Gestaltists argued that creativity is not a simple association of ideas in a new and different way. Von Ehrenfels uses the term gestalt (mental pattern or form) for the first time in 1890 and bases his postulates on the concept of innate ideas, as thoughts that originate entirely in the mind and do not depend on the senses for exist.

Gestalts hold that creative thinking is the formation and alteration of gestalts, whose elements have complex relationships forming a structure with some stability, so they are not simple associations of elements. Explain creativity by focusing on the structure of the problem, affirming that the creator's mind has the ability to pass from some structures to more stable ones. Thus, the insight, or new spontaneous understanding of the problem (Ahá! or eureka!), occurs when a mental structure is suddenly transformed into a more stable one.

This means that creative solutions are often obtained by looking at an existing gestalt in a new way, that is, when we change the position from which we analyze the problem. According to the Gestalt, when we get a new point of view on the whole, instead of rearranging its elements, creativity emerges.

Creativity according to psychodynamics

Psychodynamics made the first major effort of the 20th century in the study of creativity. From Psychoanalysis, creativity is understood as the phenomenon that emerges from the tension between conscious reality and the unconscious impulses of the individual. Freud argues that writers and artists produce creative ideas to express their unconscious desires in a socially acceptable way., so that art is a compensatory phenomenon.

It contributes to demystify creativity, by maintaining that it is not the product of muses or gods, nor a supernatural gift, but that the experience of creative enlightenment is simply the step the unconscious to the conscious.

The contemporary study of creativity

During the second half of the 20th century, and following the tradition started by Guilford in 1950, creativity has been a important object of study of Differential Psychology and Cognitive Psychology, although not exclusively of they. From both traditions, the approach has been fundamentally empirical, using historiometry, ideographic studies, psychometrics or meta-analytic studies, among other tools methodological.

Currently, the approach is multidimensional. Aspects as diverse as personality, cognition, psychosocial influences, genetics or psychopathology are analyzed. To cite a few lines, as well as multidisciplinary, since there are many domains that are interested in it, beyond the Psychology. Such is the case of business studies, where creativity arouses great interest due to its relationship with innovation and competitiveness.

A) Yes, over the past decade, research on creativity has proliferated, and the offer of training and education programs have grown significantly. Such is the interest in understanding it that research extends beyond academia, and involves all kinds of institutions, including government ones. His study transcends individual analysis, even group or organizational, to address, for example, the creative societies or creative classes, with indices to measure them, such as: Euro-creativity index (Florida and Tinagli, 2004); Creative City Index (Hartley et al., 2012); The Global Creativity Index (The Martin Prosperity Institute, 2011) or the Index of creativity in Bilbao and Bizkaia (Landry, 2010).

From Classical Greece to the present day, and despite the great efforts that we continue to dedicate to analyze it, we have not even managed to reach a universal definition of creativity, so we are still far from understanding its essence. Perhaps, with new approaches and technologies applied to psychological study, such as the promising cognitive neuroscience, we can discover the keys to this complex and intriguing mental phenomenon and, finally, the 21st century becomes the historical witness of such milestone.

Bibliographic references:

• Dacey, J. S., & Lennon, K. H. (1998). Understanding creativity. The interplay of biological, psychological and social factors. (1st ed).. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
• Darwin, C. (1859). On the origin of the species by natural selection. Londom: Murray.
• De San Juan, J. H. (1575). Science Wits Exam (2003- Dig.). Madrid: Universal virtual library.
• Duff, W. (1767). Essay on Original Genius (Vol. 53). London, UK.
• Florida, R., & Tinagli, I. (2004). Europe in the creative age. UK: Software Industry Center & Demos.
• Freud, S. (1958). The relation of the poet to day-dreaming. In On creativity and the unconscious. Harper & Row Publishers.
• Galton, F. (1869). Hereditary genius: an inquiry into its laws and consequences (2000 ed).. London, UK: MacMillan and Co.
• Guilford, J. P. (1950). Creativity. The American Psychologist.
• Hartley, J., Potts, J., MacDonald, T., Erkunt, C., & Kufleitner, C. (2012). CCI-CCI Creative City Index 2012.
• Landry, C. (2010). Creativity In Bilbao & Bizkaia. Spain.