Category Archives: Creativity

Genius or Psychotic? A Look at the Strong Positive Correlation Between Creativity and Psychoses

February 24, 2007 By in Creativity, Genius Leave a comment

From Personality Research that attempts to establish a connection between creative thinking and psychoses. Most of the article just defines the terms of the discussion. I think one term discussed in the article is especially useful.

Latent Inhibition (LI) is defined as “the capacity to screen from conscious awareness stimuli previously experienced as irrelevant” (Carson, Peterson, & Higgins, 2003, p. 499).

In other words, a person with a high LI level ignores things they don’t see as relevant, but a person with a low LI level is constantly reevaluating relevancy. Now, they continue, having a low IQ and a low LI level leads to just a small  increase in creative thinking. But, an intelligent person with a low LI level is many times more creative. So, creativity and low LI are seen as two definite factors in human creativity.

They also discuss another study where “fantasy proneness” was matched against diagnosis for mental illness and a definite relationship was found. Here are a few numbers:

…It was found that most (70%) fantasizers, while displaying some signs of psychoses, were able to maintain a normal life.

However, 5 out of the 13 people tested scored more than 2 standard deviations above the mean for schizotypy or hypothetical psychosis proneness, and an amazing 20-35% of all the subjects with fantasy proneness exhibited “significant signs of maladjustment, psychopathology, or deviant ideation. And perhaps a smaller proportion of fantasizers can be aptly characterized as schizotypal or borderline personalities” (Lynn & Rhue, 1988, p. 42). It can be derived from this that at least some degree of overlap exists between healthy creative tendencies and pathological ideational processes.

So, there is according to Jonathan Byrd, a measurable connection.

It seems to me that part of what they should be looking at is not a low LI, but the ability to control LI. Are there ways to make the brain shake loose and start evaluating objects it has previously judged as irrelevant? Are there ways to stop it when it gets out of control?

I’m also interested in the correlation of low LI and fear of failure with psychoses. Creativity seems to be stifled in those that fear the judgment of others, could fear of being judged as crazy actually stifle psychoses?

And, since psychiatric evaluations are completely subjective, do we need to look at changing the definitions? After all, this article could just be proving that most of society finds creative people irritating and wants them drugged and locked away.

In any case, I will be post some exercises in the next few days that will lower you level of LI. Attempt them at your own risk.

Where do you get your ideas? Part two – Philip K Dick

February 20, 2007 By in Creativity, Quotes, Writing Leave a comment

PhilipDick

From Selected Stories of Philip K Dick:

The majority of these stories were written when my life was simpler and made sense. I could tell the difference between the real world and the world I wrote about. The stories in this collection are attempts at reception–at listening to voices from another place, very far off, sounds quite faint but important. They only come late at night, when the background din and gabble of our world have faded out. Then, faintly, I hear voices from another star. Of course, I don’t usually tell people this when they ask, ‘Say, where do you get your ideas?’ I just say I don’t know. It’s safer.

Where do you get your ideas? Part One – Neil Gaiman

February 19, 2007 By in Creativity, Quotes, Writing Leave a comment

How do creative people answer the question, “Where do you get your ideas?”

From Neil Gaiman’s site, click on this link for the full, wonderful essay:

‘I make them up,’ I tell them. ‘Out of my head.’

People don’t like this answer. I don’t know why not. They look unhappy, as if I’m trying to slip a fast one past them. As if there’s a huge secret, and, for reasons of my own, I’m not telling them how it’s done.

And of course I’m not. Firstly, I don’t know myself where the ideas really come from, what makes them come, or whether one day they’ll stop. Secondly, I doubt anyone who asks really wants a three hour lecture on the creative process. And thirdly, the ideas aren’t that important. Really they aren’t. Everyone’s got an idea for a book, a movie, a story, a TV series.

Every published writer has had it – the people who come up to you and tell you that they’ve Got An Idea. And boy, is it a Doozy. It’s such a Doozy that they want to Cut You In On It. The proposal is always the same – they’ll tell you the Idea (the hard bit), you write it down and turn it into a novel (the easy bit), the two of you can split the money fifty-fifty.

I’m reasonably gracious with these people. I tell them, truly, that I have far too many ideas for things as it is, and far too little time. And I wish them the best of luck.

The Ideas aren’t the hard bit. They’re a small component of the whole. Creating believable people who do more or less what you tell them to is much harder. And hardest by far is the process of simply sitting down and putting one word after another to construct whatever it is you’re trying to build: making it interesting, making it new.

Fantastic essay on how to be creative…

February 19, 2007 By in Creativity, Weblogs Leave a comment

From Hugh MacLeod’s How to be Creative. Topics covered include:

1. Ignore everybody.

The more original your idea is, the less good advice other people will be able to give you. When I first started with the biz card format, people thought I was nuts. Why wasn’t I trying to do something more easy for markets to digest i.e. cutey-pie greeting cards or whatever?

3. Put the hours in.

Doing anything worthwhile takes forever. 90% of what separates successful people and failed people is time, effort and stamina.

11. Don’t try to stand out from the crowd; avoid crowds altogether.

Your plan for getting your work out there has to be as original as the actual work, perhaps even more so. The work has to create a totally new market. There’s no point trying to do the same thing as 250,000 other young hopefuls, waiting for a miracle. All existing business models are wrong. Find a new one.

Creativity In TImes Of Struggle – David Mamet

February 18, 2007 By in Creativity, Quotes 1 Comment

David Mamet in Three Uses of the Knife:

"I remember being told in school that art flourished during times of abundance, which allowed the culture, and the individual, to rise about the claims of subsistence and gave them, in effect, a surplus with which to create.

It seems to me, however, that the opposite is true. In the life of the individual and in the life of the community or the culture, art flourishes in times of struggle, and, in times of surplus, disappears."

Agree? Disagree? Is art a product of difficult times?

Quentin Tarantino’s Writing Advice

February 18, 2007 By in Creativity, Film, Writing Tags: Leave a comment

From Ain’t It Cool News:

‘Remember when you were nine years old and that favorite TV show of yours and all your friends just began to not be as good as it once was? How it used to be this thing you worshipped, but now the formula has gone a tad tepid and like 3 of your friends are over for a sleepover and you’re all hopped up on too much sugar talking about what the coolest episode ever would be? You’re vibrating from the energy of just unleashed possibilities and your Mom is telling you to get to sleep, but that Nine Year Old creative force is just shaking… running a thousand words a minute, spilling everything you ever dreamt of to your buddies and it feels like the greatest thing any of you have ever heard? Well that’s where you have to write from. You have to write with that energy and that fire. It is all about that magic 9 year old unleashed.’

David Lynch – “The Deep Fish Are the Best Fish”

February 18, 2007 By in Creativity Leave a comment

I’ve been reading Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness and Creativity.

Here are a few observations on his creative process.

1. He compares creativity to fishing. You cast your line into the water and you get what you catch, not necessarily what you want. The surface fish are more common and easier to catch, the deep fish are the ones you want.

2. If you come up with an idea that you intuitively know fits, don’t work to justify using it. Just let it sit. If it doesn’t seem like it works, trust that it does. The deep fish might not seem to fit, but it just connects on a deeper and less obvious level.

3. If you get an idea that doesn’t fit the project you’re working on, set it aside and get to it later. Don’t throw things away.

4. Use mistakes or surprises that happen during the creative process as part of what you’re doing. Don’t smooth them over and ignore them. Remember, a pattern is just a mistake that gets repeated.

5. All the torment and trouble that you don’t want in your life, you want in your art. Keep the two separate.

6. Contrary to popular belief, things are beauitful as they decompose. If not on the whole, at least the visible textures.