Creative writing 5

Creativity_and_Cultural_Production_Issues_for_Medi..._----_3_Bio-Psychological_Perspectives.pdf

Home >English homework help >Article writing homework help >Creative writing 5

3 Bio-Psychological Perspectives

Individual-based notions of creativity are buried deep within the Western Greco-Roman Judeo-Christian intellectual tradition. They are exemplified in the myths associated with ideas of genius (Sawyer 2006, pp. 18–27), and it can be seen, for example, that these myths informed early work on creativity by figures such as Lombroso and Freud. The central narratives implicitly held in these intellectual traditions draw in some instances on notions of the muse and a belief in god-like powers and have led to an idea of creativity that is metaphysical and at times mystical in basis. They have become associated with a self-expressive, freely thinking individual genius, a conception that has led in some quarters to the idea of the quasi-neurotic compelled through various states of creative agony to starve in their artist’s garret.

Embedded in the research, however, are significant counter propo- sitions to what have become known as inspirationist and Romantic positions (Boden 2004, p. 14). This research has come from a number of fields. It includes work from sociology (e.g. Zolberg 1990, Stillinger 1991, Wolff 1993, Howe 1999, Alexander 2003) some of which has been con- cerned primarily with art practice (Becker 1982) and cultural production (Bourdieu 1977, 1990, 1993, 1996). The field of literary criticism (Pope 2005) and the poststructuralist notions of Barthes (1977) and Foucault (1979), as well as the media studies arm of communication and cultural studies (Petrie 1991, Negus & Pickering 2004), have also been active in understanding notions of creativity. However, psychology, as a broad discipline focused on understanding the workings of individual psy- ches, has produced a significantly large body of work in this area (Runco & Pritzker 1999, Sternberg 1999, Bergquist 2006, Sawyer 2006), and it serves our discussion well to briefly outline some of it here.

Firstly, before we proceed, it needs to be briefly stated here that there have been a number of speculative and commercially successful training

McIntyre, P.. Creativity and Cultural Production : Issues for Media Practice, Palgrave Macmillan Limited, 2011. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/michstate-ebooks/detail.action?docID=815882. Created from michstate-ebooks on 2018-08-01 07:29:26.

C op

yr ig

ht ©

2 01

1. P

al gr

av e

M ac

m ill

an L

im ite

d. A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

28 Theories about Creativity and Cultural Production

methods, many of which have come out of the advertising world, applied to the notion of creativity, but for many of them ‘there is almost no solid experimental evidence that any of these methods work’ (Sawyer 2006, p. 300). The ideas of lateral thinking (de Bono 1971, 1992), brain- storming and creative problem solving (e.g. Osborn 1953) and other assertions (von Oech 1983, 1986) have been, as Robert Sternberg asserts, subject to minimal empirical scrutiny (1999, pp. 5–6). However, the psy- chodynamic school operating inside the discipline of psychology, seen in works by Freud (1959), Vernon (1970), Rothenberg (1979) and others (see Sternberg 1999), has explored tensions between conscious and more primitive unconscious drives. This school of thought no longer believes, however, that creative people are more likely to be mentally abnormal. For example, Rothenberg (1979) claimed that the creative process is ‘not only not primitive but [is] consistently more advanced and adap- tive than ordinary waking thought’ (Sawyer 2006, p. 52). Meanwhile, Skinner and the behaviourists, while they saw creativity as a cogni- tive behaviour pattern unconscious to the individual (Bergquist 2006), only studied those behaviours they could literally see. They left alone what was occurring inside the brain. The increasingly positivist turn in psychology also produced a series of psychometric approaches which attempted to measure aspects of creativity. Torrance (1974), building on Guildford’s (1950) stimulus, produced a number of these tests for cre- ativity, underscoring the fact that the research focus had shifted towards measuring a set of supposedly objective features of creativity. The one thing, apart from considerations of what became known as convergent and divergent thinking, that was measured more than anything else was intelligence, as this was thought to be the basis of creativity. As discussed earlier, there were problems associated with this approach. Personal- ity was also studied deeply in order to find a distinguishing set of characteristics that would enable creative individuals to be accurately pin-pointed. Researchers have so far failed to discover these personality traits; traits that could:

distinguish creative people from ordinary people, to develop a test that could identify exceptional talent early in life, and to design edu- cational techniques that could improve a student’s creativity. Part of the reason for this failure was that they were too willing to accept our creativity myths; personality psychologists weren’t aware that their own conceptions of creativity were socially and historically unique (Raina, 1993; Stein, 1987). (Sawyer 2006, p. 55)

C op

yr ig

ht ©

2 01

1. P

al gr

av e

M ac

m ill

an L

im ite

d. A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

Bio-Psychological Perspectives 29

The problematics of these ideas led, in part, to the development of focused approaches to the study of creativity which sought an expla- nation by grappling with the cognitive processes thought to underpin creativity (Ward et al. 1997). As Keith Sawyer describes, cognitive psy- chologists began to examine ‘the representational structures of the mind, their interconnections, and the mental processes that are shared by individuals’ (2006, p. 57). Examples may be seen in the work of Finke (1989), Sternberg & Davidson (1995) and Howard Gardner (1993) as well as the models developed by Johnston Laird (Boden 1994) and many oth- ers. Robert Weisberg (1993), for one, proposed that ordinary cognitive processes, those that are applicable in everyday situations rather than unusual or unique ones, could be the most appropriate solution.

Alongside this work from the cognitive school, social-personality approaches also developed. This school of thought asserted that person- ality variables (e.g. Maslow 1968), motivation (e.g. Amabile 1983) and the sociocultural environment were also important sources of creativity and could no longer be neglected. We shall return to their ideas shortly. However, the more recent work in neuropsychology, focused squarely on the brain, appears to insist on a monist version of the alleged brain/mind duality, with some in this school explaining aspects of cre- ativity in terms of the relationships between neurochemical processes and certain cognitive states (see Ashby et al. 1999, Marr 2006).

The relatively new field of neuroscience has begun exploring empir- ically the connection between the biological mechanism of the brain and the activities of the creative mind. In an abstract to their article ‘The Creative Brain/The Creative Mind’, Newberg and D’Aquili claimed that:

In the past few decades, neuroscience research has greatly expanded our understanding of how the human brain functions. In particular, we have begun to explore the basis of emotions, intelligence, and creativity. These brain functions also have been applied to various aspects of behavior, thought, and experience. We have also begun to develop an understanding of how the brain and mind work dur- ing aesthetic and religious experiences. Studies on these topics have included neuropsychological tests, physiological measures, and brain imaging. These different techniques have enabled us to open up a window into the brain. It is by understanding the functioning of the creative brain that we begin to understand the concept of the creative mind. It is through the use of emotions and other higher cognitive functions that the brain and mind can create ideas, music, literature,

C op

yr ig

ht ©

2 01

1. P

al gr

av e

M ac

m ill

an L

im ite

d. A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

30 Theories about Creativity and Cultural Production

and ultimately our entire repertoire of behaviors. How these differ- ent creative abilities are derived can also be traced to various parts of the brain and how they function. Modern neuroscience allows us to begin to understand the creative aspect of the brain and mind and perhaps can take us one step further toward understanding the most profound types of aesthetic and religious experiences. (Newberg & D’Aquili 2000, p. 53)

Added to these claims, in a keynote address entitled ‘Creating Cre- ative Brains’ given to the CCI conference on creativity, Susan Greenfield (2008) remarked that creativity will be the commodity of the twenty- first century. She went on to predict that there were some questions neuroscience could answer, such as what happens in the brain when a person is creative, and suggested that this discipline could help to answer the question ‘what is the creative mind set?’ She then set about giving an abbreviated description of neuroscience as a discipline outlin- ing the nested layers of research that move in from consciousness and eventually arriving at the genetic composition of the brain.

She affirmed that neuroscience’s concerns were focused, at the outside level of this nested process, on consciousness. Remembering that the mind is a personalisation of the brain, this concern with consciousness has led, typically, to a concentration in research on dysfunction. This can be seen in studies of depression and schizophrenia which are them- selves umbrella terms that include a range of impairments rather than just one. The next layer of enquiry for neuroscience then focuses on functions of the brain such as memory or vision that may be impaired by these larger sets of dysfunctions. Underpinning these functions is a further set of sub-functions including the mechanism that allows the perception of, for example, colour, form and movement. As an instance of this, it has been found that there are 30 brain regions that process how humans understand colour. And, of course, the next layer down of research looks specifically at these brain regions and what they do. What the study of these brain regions reveals is that the whole is more than the sum of its parts. Brain regions are themselves composed of networks and circuits that allow neuronal connections to operate. The concern at this level of enquiry is, predominantly, with the operation of the synapse. Synapses are part of the gap that neurotransmitters oper- ate within, providing the ground for electrical signals to operate across these connections. Neuroscience then concerns itself with the compo- nent parts of the synapse and peels these away until the discipline is focused on the study of genetic make-up. It should be seen from this

C op

yr ig

ht ©

2 01

1. P

al gr

av e

M ac

m ill

an L

im ite

d. A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

Bio-Psychological Perspectives 31

brief description that neuroscience is a nested process with each area of concern nested one inside the other from consciousness right on down to genetics. The critical observation is that, as Greenfield was at pains to point out, this process worked very much in the opposite direction as well. That is, the environment was just as important in shaping synaptic activity as synaptic activity was in shaping the environment. More on these nested connections shortly.

Meanwhile, keeping in mind all of this activity occurring in the research, I would like to focus for a brief period on the underlying set of concepts that inform many of these research approaches. It should allow us to fully appreciate what is being dealt with here. In order to under- stand the connection between the biological brain and the creative mind, many researchers have been attempting to isolate a biologically related mechanism in the brain that explains the workings of the mind and thus creativity. These ideas are premised on conceiving of the mind as being related directly to the biological mechanism of the brain. This ‘monist’ position on the mind/body problem asserts that ‘all mental events are identical to physical events, and that the only laws that gov- ern the relations between events are physical, not psychological, laws’ (Eliasmith n.d.. However, as Chris Eliasmith suggests:

If a convincing rejection of dualism can be formulated, the classic mind-body problem will be solved by its becoming a non-problem and the materialist approach of modern science will be vindicated. If, conversely, dualism can be convincingly maintained, it is by no means obvious that empirical evidence will suffice for a thorough understanding of the mind – in other words, understanding the brain may not be enough for understanding the mind. (Eliasmith n.d.)

Nonetheless, the sort of analysis which centres one’s ability to be cre- ative within the biological attributes of the brain is, as Eliasmith points out, the most common one (e.g. Tokoro & Mogi 2007). Sitting along- side Plato, Aristotle, Kant and Freud, Sir Francis Galton is recognised as the producer of one of the seminal works in this area of the study of creativity. Galton’s claim to be in the distinguished company listed immediately above lies with the proposition that he was one of the first to assert that there is a ‘general biological factor in genius and, by implication, in creativity’ (Rothenberg & Hausman 1976, p. 12). He lay part of the groundwork for further work based on explaining creativity through natural mechanisms, and as such many biologically and psy- chologically centred accounts of creativity owe their basis to Galton’s

C op

yr ig

ht ©

2 01

1. P

al gr

av e

M ac

m ill

an L

im ite

d. A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

32 Theories about Creativity and Cultural Production

ideas. Writing in 1869, he proposed that genius and talent are inherited and that:

men [sic] who are gifted with high abilities . . . easily rise through all the obstacles caused by the inferiority of social rank [and] men who are largely aided by social advantages, are unable to achieve eminence, unless they are endowed with high natural gifts. (Galton 1950, p. 38)

His ideas were an attempt to extend Charles Darwin’s theory of evolu- tion ‘to the transmission of human faculties’ (Rothenberg & Hausman 1976, p. 42). Galton collected, collated and analysed a significant amount of data on eminent men in England and their families and histories. With the information from this study of over three hundred families, he set out to show ‘that a man’s [sic] natural abilities are derived by inheritance, under exactly the same limitations as are the form and physical features of the whole organic world’ (1950, p. 1). One problem facing Galton was that he selected eminent people that were commer- cially successful, seeing this as a hallmark of genetic inheritance, while neglecting to see the role financial inheritance, a socially constructed advantage, would have on his results. As Colin Martindale asserts ‘recent studies of the heritability of creative test performance have yielded contradictory results . . . contrary to Galton, there is no evidence that creativity runs in families’ (1999, p. 148).

Martindale (1999) also states that a group of researchers, these include Waller, Bouchard, Lykken, Tellegen and Blacker, have put forward a mechanism that appears to account for the contradictory positions relating to biological inheritance of creativity. These researchers argue that creativity is characterised by what has been termed emergenesis. This term refers to what they call higher-order traits, such as creativ- ity, emerging only if a number of other traits, such as perseverance or intelligence, or as others suggest, the right social and cultural environ- ment, are in place. According to this proposition, ‘emergenic traits can be highly heritable, but do not run in families, because family members are unlikely to have all of the required traits’ (Martindale 1999, p. 148). And yet, despite the evident problems with Galton’s work, the notion that there is some deeper connection between biology and creativity has not diminished in popularity.

Joseph and Glenda Bogen, working in the late 1960s, looked well beyond Galton’s work on evolutionary patterns and, as a precursor to the work developing in neuroscience, focused their attention specifically on the structure of the brain. Bogen and Bogen were also deeply

C op

yr ig

ht ©

2 01

1. P

al gr

av e

M ac

m ill

an L

im ite

d. A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

Bio-Psychological Perspectives 33

concerned with the biological factors underlying the thoughts that man- ifested themselves in the mind. They considered that there were two divisions in the mind. One they called a ‘propositional mind’ and the other they termed an ‘appositional mind’. The first was responsible for logical and linguistic function and the second concerned with non- rational and visio-spatial functions. Creativity, in Bogen and Bogen’s view, ‘results from the coordinated function of these two types of mind’ (Rothenberg & Hausman 1976, p. 13). They then put forward the proposition that ‘creativity depends on the connecting brain fiber struc- ture called the corpus callosum and on co-ordination of the distinct functions of the two hemispheres’ (ibid.). Importantly, they also rein- forced the necessity for both hemispheres to be operative in the creative process. They argued, for example, that:

. . . interhemispheric collaboration need not be restricted to verbal- visuo-spatial interaction; if the right hemisphere has a special capac- ity for tonal, timbre and other aspects of music, interhemispheric communication could clearly contribute to musical creativity. Indeed, we can easily entertain the notion that artistic creativity in general benefits from interhemispheric collaboration. (Bogen & Bogen in Rothenberg & Hausman 1976, p. 258)

Despite these caveats on the Bogens’ part and the complexity involved in what they were attempting to explain, many took the idea that there was specialised activity in the left and right hemispheres of the brain as the complete story and neglected what the Bogens had to say on interhemispheric collaboration.

In addition, Roger Sperry (1974) also pointed out in the early 1970s that there appears to be two types of thinking: one being verbal and the other non-verbal, separately represented in the left and right hemi- spheres. In a series of noted experiments, he and his students were able to split the brain into two and argued from the results he achieved, which won him a Nobel Prize, that ‘both the left and the right hemi- sphere may be conscious simultaneously in different, even in mutually conflicting, mental experiences that run along in parallel’ (Sperry 1974, p. 11). He went on to suggest that the differences in hemispheres could be seen in the characteristics of each. The right hemisphere, according to Sperry, seems to be:

holistic and unitary rather than analytic and fragmentary, and orien- tational more than focal, and to involve concrete perceptual insight rather than abstract, symbolic, sequential reasoning. However, it yet

C op

yr ig

ht ©

2 01

1. P

al gr

av e

M ac

m ill

an L

im ite

d. A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

34 Theories about Creativity and Cultural Production

remains for someone to translate in a meaningful [i.e., physiological] way the essential right-left characteristics. (1974, p. 11)

The general understanding of this approach, taken to be true by the study’s popularisation, is that certain behavioural patterns may emerge dependent on which side of the brain is physically dominant. This idea gave rise to the notion of lateral dominance, a concept generally taken out of context and used to both extend the ideas beyond what the actual research work indicated and profit from its unintentional misapplication. Two examples will suffice.

Betty Edwards, in a famous book entitled Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain: A Course in Enhancing Creativity and Artistic Confidence (1979), suggested ways that people could enhance their creativity by focusing on what was seen to be the imaginative, synthesising, artistic, holistic and conceptual side of the brain. This was presumed to be the right hemisphere. The left side of the brain was thought to be involved in analytical, mathematical, technical and problem-solving activity. Apart from the problems of associating creativity solely with artistic activ- ity and an underlying perception that it had little to do with analysis and problem solving, a view that has more to do with Romanticism than science, the more general understanding of this approach is that certain behavioural patterns will emerge dependent on which side of the brain is physically dominant. Ned Herrmann, as another example amongst many others, asserted that ‘the evidence of human dominance shows that wherever there are two of anything in the body, one is naturally dominant over the other. Therefore like we are right or left handed, we are also naturally “footed”, “eyed”, “kidneyed”, etc. We can also be thought of as “brained” ’ (Herrmann 1998). The simplistic cor- relation appended to these ideas was to then list which side of the brain controlled or produced specific characteristics and behaviours. For example, music was thought to be specifically a right brain activ- ity, neglecting of course to note the technical, analytical and synthetic abilities which are necessary for music to become part of anyone’s activities. This over-reliance on the basic duality of left or right brain functioning led many to ‘extrapolate wildly from fairly restricted data until every human polarity is ascribed to hemispheric difference’ (Truax 1984, p. 52).

Despite the popular adoption of left brain/right brain curriculums, there appears to be little in the current research to support them (Hellige 2001, Boden 2004, O’Boyle & Singh 2004). Under a short section entitled ‘Myths of “right” and “left” brain, and “divergent” and

C op

yr ig

ht ©

2 01

1. P

al gr

av e

M ac

m ill

an L

im ite

d. A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

Bio-Psychological Perspectives 35

“convergent” thinking’ in his book Creativity: Theory, History, Practice (2005), Rob Pope asserts:

It is still common in casual conversation about creativity to talk of two supposedly distinct capacities corresponding to the brain’s two hemispheres: ‘right brain’ as the creative and imaginative side; and ‘left brain’ as the critical and analytical side. This often gets mixed up with equally casual, and similarly binary, appeals to two supposedly distinct styles of thinking and, by extension, thinker: ‘divergent’ (cre- atively open) and ‘convergent’ (critically focused). Such terms may be handy as a crude and largely symbolic shorthand; but they derive from early behavioural and substantially superseded studies of learn- ing styles in 1960s and 1970s (see Vernon 1970: 371–84 and compare Sternberg 1999: 48–9, 145–9). Certainly they bear little resemblance to the complexly integrated workings of the brain as described in the foregoing pages. Nowadays, cognitive psychologists would tend to talk of brain activity in terms of multilevel, parallel and recursive pro- cessing. And the kinds of electronic and chemical ‘mapping’ referred to above are increasingly showing that the brain has complex networks of complementary activity all over, as well as localised response to stim- ulus in a specific area (see Dennett 1991, Calvin 1997, Damasio 2000, Boden 2004, Geake and Dodson 2004 and Greenfield 2004). (Pope 2005, p. 115)

With this in mind, neuropsychologists Michael O’Boyle and Harnam Singh claim that, as suggested by Joseph Hellige (1993), ‘having learned so much about hemispheric differences (and independence), it is now time to “put the brain back together again” (p. 206)’ (2004, p. 371). One result of their studies into mathematically gifted (MG) adolescents was to contend that ‘notably, the MG showed no reliable left-right differ- ences when processing global or local information on unilateral trials’ (O’Boyle & Singh 2004, p. 376). These results are not surprising in the light of recent comments from Joseph Hellige (1993, 2001), a leading researcher in this area. He argues that the differences and divisions we ascribe to the brain are more often than not metaphorical rather than real. Hellige tends to qualify when presented with questions about focusing certain definitive properties on individual hemispheres:

My thinking is that in most domains the two hemispheres make complementary contributions. Let me give you a couple of examples: Even in language when we say the left hemisphere is dominant for

C op

yr ig

ht ©

2 01

1. P

al gr

av e

M ac

m ill

an L

im ite

d. A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

36 Theories about Creativity and Cultural Production

language we usually mean the ability to produce overt speech, the ability to understand individual words, the ability to handle gram- mar and so forth. But there are other aspects of language such as inferring the meaning or inferring the emotion based on the tone of voice which allows us to determine whether the speaker is angry or happy or sad. Those things are often overlooked as part of lan- guage but they constitute a very important part of what allows us to communicate. And there’s good evidence that the right hemisphere not only contributes to those aspects of language but may, in some instances, even be more important than the left hemisphere. (Hellige in Mitchell 2004)

Despite these indications of the complexities involved in ascribing par- ticular attributes of the mind to specific aspects of the brain, the search for the connection between the brain and creativity appears to have cre- ated just as many doubts about these ideas as it has provided answers to the complex research questions involved.

As a further example, in following the basic premise that the brain is the organ devoted to the activities of the mind, it appears to fol- low that if we alter the activity of the brain we can alter the way the mind works. The corollary for creative individuals is that they may be able to view the world differently by biologically manipulating the centres of sense perception. As David Suzuki indicates in his audiovi- sual summary of the science involved, ‘neurotransmitters modify and shape human behaviour. A few in particular even help scientists under- stand the biological basis of sadness and joy, love and violence and the way we see the world through a particular human spectrum’ (Suzuki 1994). One of these, serotonin, has been labelled the brain’s workhorse, managing mood, appetite and, importantly for this study, memory and learning, both of which have been connected to creativity. Serotonin acts as both an inhibitor and enhancer depending on which part of the brain it is active in. The foremost areas that it deals with are the frontal lobes and the thalamus. The frontal lobes, as Suzuki explains, are the ‘smart’ parts of the brain where decision making and planning takes place. The thalamus has the task of controlling the sensory information that is distributed to various areas of the brain, including of course the frontal lobes. Serotonin acts on the thalamus influencing the sensory information that reaches the decision-making areas in the brain.

It appears that many societies and cultures over a long period of time have undertaken, albeit without this precise information, to trigger this biological activity so as to alter the perceptions of the world around

C op

yr ig

ht ©

2 01

1. P

al gr

av e

M ac

m ill

an L

im ite

d. A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

Bio-Psychological Perspectives 37

them. Religious rites, hallucinogens and sensory deprivation have been historically the principle methods of altering the brain activity to lit- erally change the mind’s view of the world around it. Many of the techniques used to do this are explored at length in the literature and myths of artists and metaphysicists in the twentieth century. For exam- ple, W. Somerset Maugham in The Razor’s Edge (1963) chronicles one man’s attempt to find the path to self-awareness and enlightenment by experimenting with a number of these techniques. Jack Kerouac’s short story ‘Alone on a Mountaintop’ (1972) gives an account, through the eyes of a participant, of the alterations to the mind that a change in sensory input can induce. The Sun Dance ritual of the North American Indians is a good example of the sensory deprivation practised as part of religious rituals to induce an altered perception of reality. The autobi- ography of Chief Buffalo Child Long Lance (1976) gives an eyewitness account of these rituals and an insight into the results, for this culture, of conducting them. The intake of particular hallucinogens for altering perception is also graphically described in Carlos Castaneda’s anthropo- logical narrative The Teachings of Don Juan: A Jacqui Way of Knowledge (1968). As the title suggests, these mind-altering substances were used as a tool in the quest for differing ways of seeing. However, it has been discovered that all of these activities in the long run result in the action of similar biological mechanisms. By controlling or altering the levels of serotonin, decision making, memory, learning and planning may all be influenced, sometimes dramatically. Since it has been argued that deci- sion making, memory, learning and planning are critical activities in the creative process, it is not surprising a deep belief in the idea that there is a biological connection between sensory deprivation and creativity itself is still current. But there are other factors to consider.

For example, low levels of the neurotransmitter, dopamine, in the frontal lobe of the brain may result in a poor working memory, but higher levels of dopamine are ‘thought to produce feelings of bliss. It’s sometimes referred to as the pleasure chemical’ (Suzuki 1994). Once again, bliss may be experienced as a result of sensory deprivation. The fasting associated with the more ascetic sides of Hindu religion in India, for example, often leads to states of bliss indicating the biolog- ical connection between this activity and levels of dopamine in their practitioners. More pertinently, for us the connection between bliss and creativity has been explored at length in the more recent work of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and has resulted in his conclusion that every creative act takes place within a state of what he terms ‘flow’ (Csikszentmihalyi & Csikszentmihalyi 1988). Csikszentmihalyi (1991) contends that ‘flow’

C op

yr ig

ht ©

2 01

1. P

al gr

av e

M ac

m ill

an L

im ite

d. A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

38 Theories about Creativity and Cultural Production

or more correctly ‘autotelic experience’, a concept that will be explored more fully later, operates as a prime motivator in most creative activ- ity. This state has been compared to Eastern ideas on creativity (Niu & Sternberg 2006) where the Taoist idea of achieving high creativity can be accessed through entering a ‘state where everything breaks through the shell of itself and fuses with every other thing’ (2006, pp. 31–2). Niu and Sternberg suggest that this state is seen as the most significant stage of creativity that people can pursue. As they suggest, this Eastern belief system holds to the idea that ‘once one has this great sympathy, he or she can be absolutely free to connect with the universe, and all he or she does is highly creative’ (2006, p. 32).

The Taoist idea of returning and losing oneself has had a great impact on Chinese literati and their creative activity throughout Chinese history, especially in the domains of poetry and painting. The great Chinese poets and artists who, through meditation and self-cultivation, penetrated to this great sympathy produced a large amount of truly great works. They are thought to owe a great debt to ancient Taoist theory and its methods (Chang, 1970). Interestingly, a modern psychologist, Csikzentmihalyi (1988, 1997), has proposed a similar theory about the creative process. He has said that when peo- ple are engaged in highly creative activity, they tend to be in a state of ‘flow,’ in which they are highly focused on their work without notic- ing events happening outside. Csikzentmihalyi has also mentioned that people can experience this ‘flow’ during the utilization of many Eastern styles of meditation. (Niu & Sternberg 2006, p. 32)

The examples given above of the ways humans have attempted to induce these states of creative bliss refer often to mystical or meta- physical experiences but, as indicated, they may well be grounded in more mundane truths and may not, despite the belief that they do, lead directly to creative activity.

Colin Martindale, summarising the research into the bio-psychological bases to creativity, asserts that there are a number of agreed traits recorded during creative activity but ‘creative people do not exhibit all of these traits in general but only while engaged in creative activity’ (1999, p. 149). One of the possible conclusions that could be drawn from these accounts is that it is difficult to decide what is cause and what is effect. In other words, all of the biological markers of brain activity occur during the act of being creative and are thus measurable during this act. On the evidence this is not disputed. As Hennessey and

C op

yr ig

ht ©

2 01

1. P

al gr

av e

M ac

m ill

an L

im ite

d. A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

Bio-Psychological Perspectives 39

Amabile argue, ‘neuroimaging methods can provide information about neural activity during insight’ (2010, p. 574). However, is the evidence produced of brain activity the result of the subject being creative, or is the activity a precursor to being creative with these conditions needing to be in place before the activity occurs? None of these questions appear to have been resolved as yet. Hennessey and Amabile assert that those concerned with the neurological basis of creativity may have a lengthy wait before researchers in this area are prepared to reach consensus:

The possibilities are promising, but we are not anywhere near the point of being able to image the creative process as it unfolds in the human brain. Even cutting-edge instruments mask the order in which various brain areas become activated in the massive parallel processing that results in high-level creativity. (2010, p. 574)

Furthermore, as could be argued, a biological base for creativity may not completely and fully account for the exceptional production of creativity by extraordinary individuals since it does not account for the decisive connection value distinction plays in the creative process both historically and culturally. The biological precursors for creativity, explored above, may simply be just that – avenues for setting the right environment for acts of creativity to occur in.

It is at this point that I want to return to the nested aspects of neuroscience as suggested by Susan Greenfield (2008). Her claim is that neuroscience has a number of concerns that are intimately connected one within the other. The influence that consciousness has on brain functions such as perception, to brain regions, networks, circuits, neu- ronal connections, neurotransmitters and synapses, right on down to genetic material, is just as important as the connections that run the other way. In this case Greenfield argues that to say that a person’s genetic make-up determines their creativity would be entirely mislead- ing as there is evidence that there is a two-way interaction between the 100 billion or so neurones most people possess and the actions those people undertake in their operations in the world. She argues the neu- rones themselves adapt to and are changed by the individual’s personal experience. As interaction with the environment occurs for individu- als, the brain grows more connections. This dynamic interactive process allows greater growth of connections and this occurs in an exponential way. There is not simply a one-to-one link between genes and con- sciousness and thus creativity. From this information she argues that genes are a necessary but not sufficient condition for creativity to occur.

C op

yr ig

ht ©

2 01

1. P

al gr

av e

M ac

m ill

an L

im ite

d. A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

40 Theories about Creativity and Cultural Production

She suggests that in order to understand meaningful experience, of the type typically seen in creative activity, one needs to examine all of the things neuroscience is concerned with, but these alone are not enough to explain creativity. In short, there are additional things involved other than just a person’s neurological or biological activity.

This position is supported and extended somewhat by Antonio Damasio who, according to Rob Pope (2005, p. 114), emphatically opposes any suggestion that creativity can simply be read off inher- ited genes or be solely ascribed to the neural networks embedded in a creative individual’s brain. He insists that creativity emerges from the interaction that occurs between an individual and the environment. Damasio asserts:

The sort of brain activity that leads to creative behaviour involves three functional levels: a genome-specified level of brain circuitry, an activity-specified level of brain circuitry, and then something that results from the interactions of the brain with physical, social and cultural environments. That is why extremely reductionist views can- not capture all the issues we wish to understand when we discuss creativity (Damasio in Pfenniger and Shubik 2001: 59–60). (Quoted by Pope 2005, p. 114)

It can thus be argued that, by and of themselves, neurobiological fac- tors, or the behavioural traits ascribed to them, may not be able to, in and of themselves, induce specific cases of creativity. They will, at best, simply provide exceptional conditions for differing thought patterns, which is ultimately only one of the many necessary elements needed to be active in the creative process. Other important factors are those concerning the creative individual’s environment where the actions of creative individual are socially, culturally and historically located. It is the basis for these latter conceptions and the notion that creativity may be socially produced within specific cultural contexts that now deserves some consideration.

C op

yr ig

ht ©

2 01

1. P

al gr

av e

M ac

m ill

an L

im ite

d. A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed