The motivation underlying our development of a "handbook" of creativity was different from what usually is described by editors of other such volumes. Our sense that a handbook was needed sprang not from a deluge of highly erudite studies calling out for organization, nor did it stem from a belief that the field had become so fully articulated that such a book was necessary to provide summation and reference. Instead, this handbook was conceptualized as an attempt to provide structure and organization for a field of study that, from our perspective, had come to be a large-scale example of a "degenerating" research program (see Brown, Chapter 1). The handbook grew out of a series of discussions that spanned several years. At the heart of most of our interactions was a profound unhappiness with the state of research on creativity. Our consensus was that the number of "good" works published on creativity each year was small and growing smaller. Further, we could not point to a journal, text, or professional organization that was providing leadership for the field in shaping a scientifically sound framework for the development of research programs in creativity. At the same time, we were casting about for a means of honoring a dear friend, E. Paul Torrance. Our decision was that we might best be able to honor Paul and influence research on creativity by developing a handbook designed to challenge traditional perspectives while offering research agendas based on contemporary psychological views.
A great introduction to and overview of the academic field
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 23 years ago
Creativity is perhaps one of the most profound, important and still mysterious domains of study open to us. From 1908, when Poincare wrote his landmark essay on creativity and psychology of thought in mathematical invention, through 1950 when Guilford brought this neglected topic back into the mainstream of psychological study, through to today where we have a plethora of views regarding creativity and the creative process, it remains a fascinating study.This book is an excellent introduction to and reference work to creativity and the creative process as viewed by professionals in the field of psychology. As such, it is immensely useful to anyone wanting to or needing to orient themselves in this field, but it also suffers from the limitations inherent in the methodology and focus of the field itself. These problems revolve around the need to make psychology a respectable 'science' and raise methodological difficulties with evidence from testimonies of creative people and from our own personal experience - two of the most important sources of knowledge for creativity - and with the need to reformulate insights as testable hypotheses. These problems while generally present in psychology as a discipline are exascerbated in the study of creativity, due primarily to the elusive and potentially mysterious phase of the psychological creative process when 'illumination' or insight occurs, and the difficulty or perhaps impossibility of studying it any way other than internal observation or through reports of others' observations of their creative experience.The book is fair and even handed in its approach, raising many of these difficulties in the discussion and reporting fairly on a wide range of different views in the historical and modern context as well as giving an excellent outline of the field.This book is an excellent book with which to orient oneself in a professional psychological understanding of creativity. However, if you are mainly interested in practically developing and applying creativity and the creative process, popular authors such as Robert Fritz ('Path of Least Resistance') or the wide range of authors who report on the personal experience and views of outstanding creators (eg 'The Creative Process' by Brewster Ghiselin) may be more inspirational, applicable, useful and satisfying.
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