The creative personality

We need to be wary of making sweeping statements about the personality of creative individuals, as there is no one creative personality. Csikszenthihalyi broadly defines the creative mind as “complex, knowing the extremes of experience, with equal intensity. He gives ten examples of how this works in creative individuals:

• Energy / Rest – Creative individuals spend enormous amounts of time in their chosen endeavours, and approach it with a sense of great energy and enthusiasm. However they also seem to take long periods of rest and sleep a lot. The important thing is that their energy is under their control
• Clever / Naive – creative people tend to be cleverer than the general population, but also very naive
• Playfulness / Discipline – Creative people tend to be very playful and sometimes appear immature, they are also incredibly disciplined and dogged in their beliefs
• Imaginative / Realist – creative people have strong imaginations but are also rooted very firmly to the knowledge and history of their domain
• Extrovert / Introvert – creative people tend to be both introverted and extroverted, the solitariness one needs to master a domain is more than compensated for by their gregariousness with others, their need to talk through ideas and general sociability
• Humility / Pride – their long study of the domain gives them a respect or reverence for their work, however they are rarely troubled by doubt and usually aware of their own achievements.
• Traditional / Rebellious – again the reverence for the domain makes creative people respectful of the traditions, however to do something new in the domain they must rebel against these traditions
• Passionate / Objective – creative people are obviously motivated by passion for what they do, while also understanding the weaknesses of their own work.
• Suffering / Enjoyment – the creative persons do suffer and tend to be sensitive about their work, while also deriving a great deal of personal happiness and joy.

Individual Creativity

Finally then what makes an individual creative, hopefully by now you will be aware that creativity does not reside within an individual, it is not necessarily a trait some people have and others don’t but a complex interaction of environment and individual. There are however certain characteristics creative people share.

• Creative people have internalised the system, they can reproduce the domain within their minds, and understand the fundamental knowledge which makes the domain unique.
• Creative people understand the field, they know what critics like, what knowledge is considered relevant and useful within the domain.
In his book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell estimates the time it takes creative people to absorb their domain as about 10 years.
• Enjoyment in the domain, creative people love being in the domain and are intrinsically motivated to work within that domain.

Alongside these personal characteristics, creative people have other advantages, for example:

• A genetic predisposition to a particular domain, those with perfect pitch will be better musicians, those with excellent eyesight good artists etc
• An early interest in the domain can be useful, the mathematician who loves numbers, the scientist who is absorbed in the physical world.
• Curiosity and love of the domain, hopefully needs no more explanation
• Access to a domain, which is mostly down to luck, being born in an affluent family, growing up with a computer in the home etc
• Access to a field, there are probably many great ideas, art, sculpture which were never heard or commissioned because the individuals were reclusive or did not have access to the decision makers in their domain.