creativity, constitution, and childhood

Creativity, Constitution, and ChildhoodAuthor(s): John E. GedoSource: Psychological Inquiry, Vol. 4, No. 3 (1993), pp. 193-196Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1448964 .

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COMMENTARIES

Creativity, Constitution, and Childhood

John E. Gedo Chicago

Toward the end of his complex presentation, Eysenck recalls Cronbach's (1957) statement that "'the two disciplines of scientific psychology'-namely, ... the experimental and the correlational" (one focused on the field of generalized behavior, the other on individual differences)-can succeed only by cooperating with each other. Having devoted most of my professional life to idiographic observations of a few individuals, I am hardly qualified to assess the heterogeneous experimental data collected by Eysenck to justify his hypotheses; at the same time, my exposure to a psychoanalytic (and psychiatric) clientele weighted to the side of creative persons should permit me to measure Eysenck's generalizations against the particulars I have encountered in my consulting room.

I am happy to state, at the outset, that the successful creators described by Eysenck match in almost every way the ones I have had the opportunity to observe. Because my patients were, ipso facto, disturbed people, I have also had a chance to study how it is possible for such psychopathology to develop in tandem with the strengths and psychological assets that Eysenck (as well as others on whose work he relies) attributes to them. It is striking that, although Eysenck calls for "historiometric" study of the emergence of the various attributes "in the development of genius," he nowhere refers to the relevant psychoanalytic literature of the past generation-reports such as those of Greenacre (1971), Rothenberg (1990), or my own (J. Gedo, 1983, in press; see also J. Gedo & M. Gedo, 1992). In fact, the sole reference to the work of psychoanalysts is to Kris's (1952) book.

At any rate, Eysenck rightly stresses that creativity (in contrast to the underlying potential he calls originality) is a function of personality traits. He points out that major creative accomplishments are very rare; the larger a particular creative domain in terms of numbers, the smaller the proportion of truly successful practition- ers is likely to be. His contentions are fully supported by the therapeutic experience of psychoanalysts: Effec- tive treatment should alter the personality of talented individuals in the direction of enabling them to do more successful creative work (see J. Gedo, 1983, chap. 3). In other words, childhood experience has a decisive role to play in determining whether originality and talent will actually be used for creative ends. Although Eysenck supports the hypothesis that creativity might be a personality characteristic rather than a cognitive one, he does not discuss such relevant factors in per-

sonality development as identifications with idealized parents or mentors, the capacity to invest passionately in a specific field of activity as a result of transcending egocentricity, acquisition by means of appropriate nur- turing of the ability to delay gratification and to develop courage, and so forth.

Eysenck is well aware that, beyond cognitive factors, creative people

are deeply involved in what they are doing and are not afraid of themselves, their experiences, or their world; they accept challenges readily and eagerly. They can live with doubt and uncertainty, even enjoying risks and seeking out instabilities in the world. They are willing to commit themselves to causes and are able to become wrapped up in them.... They are willing and able to create-to commit themselves to paper, to be criticized, to express themselves-and they take chances both willing and eagerly.

He even makes explicit that creative achievement is a function of motivational factors, but he does not discuss these variables in detail.

In the graphic model of his theory (Figure 5), Eysenck postulates the establishment of creativity as a trait (a style of cognition) before the time such motivational variables are brought into play. Perhaps, however, he did not intend the model to be read in this chronological sense and might agree with my view that originality in its turn develops, in part, on the basis of experiential factors. In clinical work, one may observe that creative persons have an actual preference for novelty-in contrast to ordinary people, who tend to shy away from it. (One consequence of this difference is that the creative person is best able to assimilate the information provided by a psychoanalysis. Most of the analysands I have worked with who have achieved creative success profited from their treatment relatively quickly and persuasively.) At any rate, a preference for the unfamiliar seems to develop as a consequence of early childhood training that challenges the infant to tolerate increasing rates of stimulation but that does not exceed his or her capacities in a manner that would traumatize the child and necessitate the avoidance of novelty.

Clearly, Eysenck cannot be faulted for choosing to concentrate on those determinants of creativity that have a constitutional basis and leaving aside both environmental factors (e.g., culture or education) and those aspects of personality that develop in transaction with

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the child's milieu. Eysenck's synopsis of the relevant variables (Figure 2) shows that he is well aware of the role of both sets of determinants. He even shows his alertness to the likelihood that a child with creative potentials may present difficulties for educators; sur- prisingly, he does not mention that the same attributes may provoke similar difficulties with the child's parents. In my clinical experience, such complications in raising specially endowed children account for the in- creased incidence of psychopathology (especially problems in the area of self-esteem) in persons with high creative potentials (see J. Gedo, 1983, chap. 6). I suspect that, in Western societies, more persons who possess the trait of originality "fall by the wayside" (as Eysenck puts it) because their parents fear and/or de- spise early manifestations of this endowment than for any other reason. For instance, a talented youngster (particularly a girl) may fail to obtain the education required to employ that gift creatively because her family has taught her to be ashamed of any creative ambitions.

The most original aspect of Eysenck's theoretical proposal is the hypothesis that the cognitive attributes that add up to originality-attributes that go beyond high intelligence as such, although they are mostly found in those with IQs above 120-are correlated with a set of personality traits he calls P (Psychodcism). Apparently, these can reliably be measured by means of various test instruments. Eysenck puts proper stress on the fact that the presence of many of these personality attributes in psychotics does not establish any connection between psychosis and creativity. (In my experience, persons who have undergone a psychotic episode are only able to resume creative activities when the process of recovery is well on its way; see J. Gedo, in press, chap. 8.)

Because close relatives of psychotic persons have in some studies been found to be more creative than the average, Eysenck assumes that the trait P found in creative persons as well as psychotic persons is an expression of the same genotype. Although this hypothesis may well prove to be valid, it remains to be dem- onstrated that P is always caused by the same factors and that these are exclusively genetic. As I stated at greater length elsewhere (J. Gedo, 1991, chap. 2), I believe that phenotypic behaviors are almost always co-determined by genotype and the environmental variables that have acted on it. These transactions unfold in amazingly subtle ways, so that it is not safe to presume that P is simply an expression of a specific constitutional disposition: It is equally possible that genotypes A x environment B can produce P to the same degree as genotype B x environment A or genotype Q x environment Y. It is probable that environment C will never produce P-no matter what the genotype. Per-

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haps genotype C can always produce P-no matter what the environment.

To put this more concretely in terms of Eysenck's thesis, the genotype underlying the disorders of thinking involved in psychosis and the one leading to originality in the creative person may sometimes be identical, but, in other instances, they may be different. And the personality traits Eysenck collects under the rubric of psychoticism may also have multiple causes. In other words, the elegant set of hypotheses presented in Eysenck's "suggestions for a theory" may turn out to be overly simple.

To illustrate my point, I should like to take liberties analogous to those for which Eysenck apologizes in his introductory comments to attempt to outline a hypo- thetical causal sequence for the production of P that does not involve any reliance on constitutional variables. I want to restate my conviction that any reaction of an organism to changes in its milieu is ultimately attributable to its genotype but that such explanations often skip over more proximate causes with greater explanatory value. For example, the death of most inhabitants of Hiroshima in 1945 should not be attrib- uted either to their genetic makeup-despite their having been there as a result of their Japanese racial heritage-or to a consequence of human vulnerability to trauma; it is more cogent to regard the explosion of an atomic bomb as the causal factor.

The task I have set for myself is quite difficult because P is not observable in naturalistic settings; it is a construct based on a profile of test results. I trust Eysenck is not fully committed to his suggestion, en passant, that P has some connection to Bleuler's (1978) notion of the "schizoid personality"; in my clinical experience, schizoid individuals are less likely to be creative or even "original" than the average person. I do not doubt that schizoid personalities tend to have a cognitive style of broad horizons that also characterizes creative persons, but the disjunction between stylistic similarity and behavioral outcome suggests that the tests have been measuring qualities of cognition that confound two (or more!) subtypes. It is not sufficient to have unusual associations; for creative success, originality must be combined with sound judgment. (Eysenck acknowledges as much when he discusses the importance of assessing "relevance" in the process of creative work-a function he proposes to call heuristic.)

In Figure 3, Eysenck articulates P in descriptive terms that lend themselves to translation into clinical concepts. Aggressive, tough-minded, impersonal, un- empathic, cold, egocentric people belong to a personality type one might label that of the successful narcissist. If we are not accustomed to thinking of such persons as antisocial or creative, that is merely a mea-



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sure of clinicians' lamentable inattention to those particular issues; I am comfortable with Eysenck's inclu- sion of these qualities within the P personality type. In the psychoanalytic literature, it was Kohut (1971) who initially described narcissistic character formation that cannot be regarded as pathological. When narcissistic issues spill over into the realm of psychopathology, Kohut used the designation narcissistic personality disorder.

Over the past 20 years, psychoanalysts have elabo- rated a set of very plausible hypotheses about the etiology of such narcissistic character formation-and deformation. (For my views of this literature, see J. Gedo, 1988, 1991.) Although there is no consensus about many details, there does seem to be general agreement that the crucial determinant of such devel- opments is the configuration of the earliest object relations. (Incidentally, it is on this configuration that the participants' genotypes exert their influences.) In my judgment (see J. Gedo, 1983, especially chaps. 2,6, 10), it is very likely that children with unusual constitutional endowments are more difficult to raise in relative har- mony than are infants who come closer to the expect- able. In other words, the more potential a newbom has for future creativity, the more likely it is that its early object relations will be problematic and lead to a tilt toward P.

To sum up the foregoing thesis, I propose that the genesis of P is the caretakers' difficulty in dealing optimally with the special needs of an unusually endowed infant. Another way to put this is that P may come about whether the infant is difficult due to constitutional deficits ("psychoticism") or advantages ('creative potentials"). Yet, the genotype never plays a direct role in deciding the outcome: As is well known, even in monozygotic twins, the concordance rate for schizophrenia is a mere 16%! For practical purposes, childhood experience determines personal destiny.

Yet it would be unconscionable to overlook the evidence suggesting that what is unusual about the potentially creative and the potentially psychotic may be largely the same-a hypothesis based on the claim that close relatives of psychotics are likely to achieve creatively. From my vantage point, it is more urgent to test this hypothesis through rigorous investigation. Thus far, the evidence cited for it is far from conclusive: For one thing, Eysenck relies on Heston's (1966) study, which did not find that such relatives had high creative accomplishments but only talents. Moreover, the data from Iceland (Karlsson, 1968, 1970) are suspect because standards of creativity in provincial settings are not comparable to those of the metropolis. Thus, Eysenck's thesis is buttressed by the slender pillar of a single report (McNeil, 1971) that clearly needs to be replicated.

Needless to say, I am skeptical about such a report because it contradicts my own clinical impressions: In a series of 62 consecutive cases I accepted for psychoanalysis, there were 3 persons who had major creative accomplishments to their credit; none of their relatives were psychotic. Sixteen additional patients were "creative" to some meaningful extent; in this group, there were 10 with psychotic relatives. However, this rate of just over 50% (10 of 19) was equally true of those of my analysands I cannot call creative: 24 of 43 had psychotic relatives. (Incidentally, of the 12 patients whose analyses I was unable to conclude satisfactorily, 8 had such relatives.) Admittedly, both my diagnoses of psychosis and those of creativity are impressionistic, but they spur me to ask for further evidence about Eysenck's hypothesis.

I trust that the doubts I have expressed about Eysenck's theory, doubts based on immersion in a clinical tradition he has strongly opposed, are true to the scientific spirit that animates Eysenck's own work. The hypothetic-deductive method he espouses requires questions to be raised; it strives to disprove hypotheses and is never satisfied with evidence that merely tends to confirm them. Eysenck has presented his conjectures with a proper degree of self-doubt; I offer my dissenting impressions with similar tentativeness. Ultimately, none of use remembers from one day to the next what we mean when we say creative or psychotic, as Heraclitus is reported to have predicted....

Note

John E. Gedo, 680 North Lake Shore Drive, Chicago, IL 60611.

References

Bleuler, M. (1978). The schizophrenic disorders. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Cronbach, L. J. (1957). The two disciplines of scientific psychology. American Psychologist, 12, 671-684.

Gedo, J. (1983). Portraits of the artist: Psychoanalysis of creativity and its vicissitudes. Hillsdale, NJ: The Analytic Press.

Gedo, J. (1988). The mind in disorder. Hillsdale, NJ: The Analytic Press.

Gedo, J. (1991). The biology of clinical encounters. Hillsdale, NJ: The Analytic Press.

Gedo, J. (in press). The creativepersonality: Talent and opportunity. New York: Columbia University Press.

Gedo, J., & Gedo, M. (1992). Perspectives on creativity: The bio- graphical method Norwood, NJ: Ablex.

Greenacre, P. (1971). Emotional growth (Vol. 2). New York: Inter- national Universities Press.

Heston, I. I. (196). Psychiatric disorders in foster home reared children of schizophrenic mothers. British Journal of Psychia- try, 112, 819-825.

Karlsson, J. I. (1968). Genealogic studies of schizophrenia. In D. Rosenthal & S. Kety (Eds.), The transmission of schizophrenia.

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Oxford, England: Pergamon. Karlsson, J. I. (1970). Genetic association of gifedness and creativity

with schizophrenia. Heredity, 66, 177-182. Kohut, H. (1971). The analysis of the self. New York: International

Universities Press. Kris, E (1952). Psychoanalytic explorations in art. New York:

Intermational University Press. McNeil, T. F. (1971). Rebirth and postbirth influence on the relation-

ship between creative ability and recorded mental illness. Jour- nal of Personality, 39, 391-406.

Rothenberg, A. (1990). Creativity and madness. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

The Assessment Piece of the Creativity Pie

Harrison G. Gough Institute of Personality and Social Research

University of California, Berkeley

Eysenck's target article is a treasure trove of obser. vations, speculations, hypotheses, and research propos. als on creativity, which is viewed as a flow of cognitivc and problem-solving processes and as a constellatior of psychological qualities found in persons who gener. ate creative products. In simplified form, Eysenck's position is that a certain level of intellectual ability is a necessary but not sufficient condition for the appear. ance of creative achievement, along with a creative disposition or talent for innovation. This creative tem- perament has much in common with "psychoticism' but is not the same as psychoticism; indeed, manifesi psychosis is a contraindicator of the likelihood of creative attainment. Among those characterized by the creative disposition, only a few will in fact produce creative work, depending on life circumstances, his- torical phenomena, cognitive abilities, and other personal qualities such as drive and persistence, Underlying the psychological syndrome may be a specific genetic etiology generating pleiotropic (multiple) effects.

For psychologists interested in assessment, there are obvious areas of interest in Eysenck's formulation. One of these involves cognitive styles and abilities. Eysenck suqgests key elements of speed in search mechanics, breadth of search, and accuracy in distinguishing what is relevant from what is not. The creative person thinks faster, examines more information, and is better at detecting essentials than are others, even very intelli- gent others. The psychotic or merely chaotic thinker may also consider a wide range of associations but will all too often err in differentiating between relevant and inconsequential cues.

How can these cognitive styles and abilities be measured in the individual? Standard intelligence tests will not suffice-for one reason because almost all are scored for correct responses rather than for ampliative implications (Stoddard, 1943) and for another reason because the heuristics by which the response is pro- duced are not considered in the scoring algorithms (a

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correct answer reached via a random or blind-search strategy receives just as much weight as one arrived at via strategies guided by consideration of relevance). There is also an intuitional element in creativity (the ability to reach a conclusion on the basis of minimal information) that is unweighted in standard measures.

Empirical research does seem to justify the position that intelligence as ordinarily assessed is not a crucial factor, with the proviso that some basic level of com- petence is requisite (Barron & Harrington, 1981). For instance, Wallach and Kogan (1965), in a study of 151 children by means of tests for creativity and intelligence, found appreciable correlations of their measures within each category-but a correlation of only .09 between categories.

MacKinnon and Hall (1973) obtained full-scale Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale IQs on 185 of the creative persons assessed at the Institute of Personality and Research (IPAR) in Berkeley in the 1950s and 1960s. Their sample included 88 of the 124 architects (MacKinnon, 1964), 27 of the 41 women mathematicians (Helson, 1971), 33 of the 57 male mathematicians (Helson & Crutchfield, 1970), and 37 of the 45 physical scientists (Gough & Woodworth, 1960). The architects were grouped into three classes on the basis of ratings by experts. Group 1 consisted of men internationally recognized for their creative work; Group 2 included men of similar age who worked or had worked with someone in Group 1; Group 3 consisted of a cross-sec- tion of members in the national professional association. Mean full-scale IQs for the three subsamples were 132, 130, and 128. The correlation of IQ with ratings for these 88 men was . 20 (p = .06). The 27 female mathematicians had a mean of 131 and a correlation of -.22 between IQ and creativity ratings; the 33 male mathematicians had a mean of 135 and a correlation of .12; and the 37 physical scientists had a mean of 133 and a correlation of .16. The IQs for all 185 subjects ranged from 107 to 151.



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