كيف يكون المبدعون ١_a .. كتاب الإبداع وتربية

Chapter VII

How to be innovators

Is the common image of the creative person - and especially the artist - that of him as a long-haired, degenerate, deranged, half-mad bohemian true? Writers and psychologists have been interested in portraying the creative person and investigating his qualities. The following is what Arthur Koestler, the famous writer, said about geniuses:

Most of the geniuses responsible for the changes in the history of thought seem to share some traits, including a skepticism that can amount to iconoclasm, their attitudes to traditional ideas, accepted dogmas, and everything considered final. On the other hand, they are open-minded to the point of naivety, with regard to new ideas and concepts that seem promising with regard to touching their path. This combination results in the decisive sufficiency in perceiving the familiar thing, the ordinary situation, the simple problem, and the domestic facts group under a new surprising light or in a new context.

They see the branch not as a part of a tree, but as a weapon or a possible tool, and they do not link the fall of the apple from the tree with its ripeness, but between it and the movement of the moon. The discoverer realizes patterns of similar functional relationships, as no one else sees that except him or before him, so that the poet sees the image of a camel in a running cloud (Kostler 1959). They want to get supporters or denials of this view, and they are doing the necessary research for that.

Creative people

He put a lot of effort into trying to explain the personal qualities and backgrounds that make a person creative. For this purpose, a combination of individual methods, i.e. the study of individuals, and collective methods, i.e. the study of groups, was used. Let us begin by reviewing what was discovered regarding adults. One of the first studies was conducted by Roe in 1952. I interviewed biologists, twenty-two physicists, and twenty-two social scientists (psychologists and ethologists) and then subjected them to long interviews that included their life histories and family background. And their professional and responsive interests and ways of thinking, etc. They were also applied to intelligence tests and personality tests (Rorschach and TAT). An attempt to explore their internal concerns and attitudes towards themselves and the world, or at least explore the construction of their personalities.

And while each scientist had his own distinctive individuality, and while differences emerged between those belonging to each profession, common patterns were discovered, which prompted Rowe to try to paint his picture of the average distinguished scientist, saying:

He is the first child of a middle-class family, the son of a professional man, and he tends to be a sickly child, or a child who lost one of his parents at an early age. He has a very high IQ and he started reading a lot at an early age. He tended to feel lonely and that he was different from others, and he was shy and isolated from his classmates. His interest in girls was moderate, and he did not start going out with them until at the university level, and he got married late (at the age of twenty-seven). He has two sons and finds peace in family life. His marriage is more stable and stable than the average. He did not decide which profession he would pursue until the first or second year of his university studies. Most of the time he was prompted to report by independent research that he had done himself, and after he discovered the pleasure he gets from this kind of work, it is entirely his chosen profession. If he had another job: he wanted to be a farmer, but he could not live on agriculture. He is off to work in his lab, most of the time seven days a week. He says that his work is his life and he has few aspects of recreation such as fishing, sailing, walking and other individual activities. Cinema makes him bored. He avoids social activities and political activities, and religion does not play a role in his life or thinking. Scientific research satisfies his inner needs and character more than anything else (Rowe 1952).

Then, some of the differences between the teams of scientists shed a distinctive light on the internal motives that pushed each one of them to his chosen field (the non-university project referred to by the researcher above). Biologists and physicists showed a great deal of freedom from their parents and did not feel sin as a result. While the social scientists with attitudes dependent on their parents on the one hand and on the other hand were revolutionary and showed interest in the interpersonal relationship in general. The social scientists were the most offensive, while the biologists were the least offensive.

One of the factors for these scholars, and it is a factor that left the most important traces for Rowe, was their independence, the independence of their souls. I found signs of this in their saying that they preferred a teacher who left them free to themselves, in their attitude towards religion and their personal relationships, and in their pleasure in a profession in which they left their own attitudes and estimates. We will see later some of these factors reappear in other research.

The most comprehensive and convincing research on the personality of men and women with creative achievements we got from (Bar Klee), from the research conducted in the Personal Destiny Foundation and researching it, those researches that he conducted. (McKinnon, Barron, and Gough). These scholars have been asking the great and less great of them to: come to the institution to spend the weekend, where they can live there for two or three days with the scholars who carry out the process of fate. McKinnon had previously done such work in the US War Department during World War II, where he was choosing men to carry out dangerous missions. And secrecy.

The basic research in the institution was carried out on creative architects and their likes of writers and mathematicians, and the first preliminary task was to secure the selection of the truly creative and talented by comparing it with those who are less than him of the same profession. In each field, the experts (five professors of architecture, for example) were asked to name the most famous creative people in their field. And those whom he called experts more than others, he was asked to come to (Berkeley) to spend the weekend and take tests on them. Although some of the invitees did not cooperate fully, forty of the architects, for example, cooperated well with those in charge of the research. As for the less creative people, he made sure that they were in the same number and from similar geographical areas and the same age. The scholars in charge of the research were keen that the innovators be truly creative in their fields, and in comparison with the rest of the sons of Islam. As for the representatives of the different groups, including writers, engineers, and others, they were not invited to reside in Berkeley, but it was sufficient for their answers to the interrogations and tests by mail, and perhaps this is something that reduces symmetry and comprehensiveness in the study.

Each meeting included five to ten distinguished people in each profession, in addition to a group of psychologists and psychiatrists.