Metapsychology of the Creative Process by Jason W. Brown

Author:Jason W. Brown
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Genius, creativity, psychology, neuroscience, process philosophy, clinical psychology, unconscious cognition, microgenetic theory, cognitive psychology, thought, imagery, philosophical psychology, animal behaviour, novelty, sensibility, evolution, concrescence, emergence, change, love, creation, introspection, dreaming, simultaneity, time, self, subjectivity, habit, the sublime
ISBN: 9781845409388
Publisher: Andrews UK Limited 2017
Published: 2017-05-08T00:00:00+00:00

To an intermittent and varying degree, creativity samples the novelty that is the universal nature of change. Creativity is generally conceived as a feature of human mind. It is not only persons of exceptional talent who are creative; all or most people exhibit some creativity, whether in speech, improvised behavior or deviation from habit. Most higher mammals, even birds, some would say insects as well, find innovative solutions to unexpected problems. If we consider the human mind/brain state, the sampling accentuates the process of novelty as a spatiotemporal locus in mind; it transforms the concealed uniformity to an event. Novelty is uniform and constant, but in the mind/brain state, attributes at different phases can take on greater or lesser emphasis. Heightened novelty is creativity; lessened novelty, or a lack of emphasis on novel change, is habit. Like time, change proceeds irrespective of what is changing. Creativity settles at a phase of novel change and, according to the phase, exploits the process in creative thought. Gifted individuals tap into and elaborate features of novelty that, because they are unconscious and uniform, have limited availability to ordinary mind.

Creativity accesses novelty midway in the transition from core mind and experiential memory to conscious perception. The critical role of memory in (creative) thought is subsumed in imagery. Deviation to creative thought is coincident with self and imagery. A phase prior to what evolves to the visual and verbal imagination, or a phase that transits one of imagery en route to perceptual immediacy, is active in animal and human cognition in mediating a coping or adaptive strategy, but does not have creative potential. At a later phase of conscious perception, novelty is external and attributed to the causal progression of the world. To dwell at an intermediate phase of ideation - unconscious imagery and introspection - allows a category of thought to partition inwardly, organically and in a coherent manner. Recurrence to an intermediate phase nurtures the growth of the idea. The ability to tap this phase spontaneously or unconsciously over time, in passive release or intense concentration, is the gift of the creator.

In some artists, the inherent tendency to unconscious and organic growth is not enough left alone; rather, life is to be dedicated to facilitating a state of creativity. The mystical poet Hölderlin wrote of the need for risk, to walk the rim of an abyss, i.e. the depth of unconscious mind. The creator samples early layers in thought but returns, while some, like Hölderlin, fall in and cannot be rescued. The common association of artistic creativity with psychopathology, drugs or alcohol may represent an effort to enhance novelty, or the focus on sub-surface cognition may accompany or induce psychopathology. There is a greater ease of access to sub-surface phases that are figuratively “blocked” to conventional thought. It may be that a certain genetic predisposition - perhaps one that predisposes to psychopathology - is not for a specific talent or skill but for a facilitation or reduced impedance to a withdrawal to pre-terminal phases.

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