Creativity From Potential to Realization

“The purpose of this book is to help readers understand what it means to be creative. Thus, the principal questions it answers are, “Who is creative–and why?” and “What is creativity?” The authors discuss the attributes that lead people to be creative in fields such as the arts and letters, the sciences, and business. The particular emphasis of the book is on the theoretical issue of whether the attributes (internal or external) that lead to creativity in one domain are the same as those that lead to creativity in another domain. Our interest is in whether the creative scientist or artist is someone who would have been creative had he or she pursued any field. In other words, is creativity a generalized attribute, as is implied by psychometric tests of creativity, or is it a domain-specific attribute, as implied by some studies of the role of knowledge in creative and other forms of expertise? The potential audience for our book is broad because the volume addresses a topic that is of potential relevance to any psychologist and to people outside the field. Practitioners need to be creative in their psychotherapy. Scientists need to be creative in designing theories and research. Educators need to be creative in their ways of teaching. There are few psychologists who do not need to be creative in their work, regardless of specialization. Moreover, the psychological study of creativity is multidisciplinary, involving approaches of social, personality, cognitive, clinical, biological, differential, developmental, educational, and other forms of psychology”–Preface. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2005 APA, all rights reserved).