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Article Excerpt
Abstract
The phenomenology of the creative process has been a neglected area of creativity research. The current study investigated the phenomenology of artistic creativity through semi-structured interviews with 11 artists. The findings consisted of 19 interlinked constituents, with 3 dynamics operating within these constituents: an intuition-analysis dynamic, a union-division dynamic, and a freedom-constraint dynamic. The findings are discussed in relation to the issues of creativity and spirituality, intuition and analysis, the creative synthesis, affective components, and flow. The findings display considerable overlap with previous research into the phenomenology of the artistic creative process, yet place particular emphasis on the shift in sense of self associated with creative experience and the energising effect of a synthesis of disparate elements.
Keywords
creativity, phenomenology, art, flow, qualitative research
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Creativity research has proceeded along a number of different routes, including personality, cognitive, contextual, psychometric, psychoanalytic, and pragmatic approaches (Mayer, 1999). These approaches have tended to focus on correlates of creativity (such as personality traits or psychopathology), characteristics of creative thought (the cognitive approach), developmental pathways to creativity (often through a case study methodology), or contexts of creativity (looking at social, environmental, or historical variables). There seem to have been two dominant assumptions guiding these approaches: firstly, that identifying the conditions of creativity (in the form of personal, cognitive, developmental, or social factors) will automatically provide an understanding of creativity itself; and secondly, that creativity is valuable and that the identification of characteristics and conditions of creativity will enable the enhancement of creative ability.
However, while these research approaches provide rich and varied perspectives on the concept of creativity, psychological research has substantially neglected the phenomenology of creativity, or the manner in which creativity is subjectively experienced. Despite a recent increase in a phenomenological emphasis in creativity research, it has not yet established itself as an approach in its own right, as illustrated by its absence from a number of summaries of creativity research (e.g., Runco, 1997; Sternberg, 1999). It should be noted that the term 'phenomenological' is being used here in its most inclusive sense, referring to studies that focus on the subjectively experienced dimension of the creative process. This is distinct from the stricter use of the term as referring to phenomenological psychology, which was developed as an application of the principles of Continental philosophical phenomenology to the discipline of psychology (e.g., see Giorgi, 1975, 1985a, 1985b, 1995; Valle & Halling, 1989). The current research locates itself within this stricter framework of phenomenological psychology and might therefore be regarded as one branch of research into the subjectively experienced dimension of creativity.
There are a number of reasons why it is of value to focus on phenomenological aspects of creativity. A steady flow of critics have highlighted the point that the discipline of psychology has built itself on the model of the natural sciences, which has resulted in a bias towards research questions and forms of inquiry based on criteria of correspondence and prediction (e.g., Giorgi, 1975; Smith, Harre & Van Langenhove, 1995; Rychlak, 1988). A number of attempts have been made to apply a 'corrective' to this bias by conceptualising psychology as a human science. This has been accompanied by the development of new forms of empirical research, often of a qualitative variety. The momentum behind these attempts to reconceptualise psychological research has even led to its being described as a 'new paradigm' for psychology (see Smith, 1995). This paradigm is marked by an emphasis on description, understanding, and meaning. Phenomenological psychology, with its concern with experience and 'lived meaning', is one instance of this paradigm--it is concerned with the 'whatness' rather than the 'why' of psychological phenomena.
Creativity research has been preoccupied with questions of correspondence, prediction, and explanation and has neglected the 'shape' of the phenomenon of creativity itself. In this sense, it has passed over first principles--a rigorous investigation and understanding of the experience of creativity. The phenomenological perspective poses such questions as: how is creativity experienced? What are the essential features of this experience? What role does this experience of creativity play in an individual's being-in-the-world (the 'lived meaning')? If we accept that psychology needs to concern itself with questions of understanding, description, and meaning, in addition to questions of explanation and prediction, then the phenomenological approach to creativity research is inherently important. Sass (2000-2001a) remarks:
... (I)n the absence of such studies, there is a sense in which we literally do not know what we are talking about (or looking at, or counting up in our research studies) when we speak of creativity, creative psychological processes, or certain types of psychopathology. (p. 42)
It is of course unrealistic, as well as undesirable, to strictly differentiate description from questions of correspondence, explanation, and prediction. (1) Rather, these forms of inquiry can fertilise each other: a thorough understanding of how a phenomenon is experienced naturally leads to hypotheses regarding its relationship with other phenomena, the psychological function it might serve, and so on, just as studies of the relationship between operationalised variables may offer glimpses of the nature of the experience of a phenomenon underlying one of these variables. In this vein, phenomenological inquiry may contribute to other, more established approaches in creativity research.
This may particularly be the case for the personality, affective and motivational approaches in creativity research. The implications of a phenomenological analysis for these approaches are present in such questions as: Do the ways in which creativity is experienced contribute to our understanding of why people with particular personality characteristics are attracted to creative work? Do affective components of the experience of the creative process shed light on some of the contradictory findings in the creativity-affect studies (see Kaufmann, 2003)? How do experiential aspects of the creative process relate to the motivational factors driving creative activity? Searching for such points of intersection between approaches is particularly called for in creativity research, which has been likened to the Hindu fable of the blind men and the elephant:
We touch different parts of the same beast and derive distorted pictures of the whole from what we know: "The elephant is like a snake,' says the one who only holds its tail; 'The elephant is like a wall,' says the one who touches its flanks. (Wehner, Csikszentmihalyi & Magyari-Beck, p. 270)
A related aspect of the rationale for the current research emerges from recent comments that there has been a 'splintering' of endeavours in the field of creativity research, with a lack of dialogue between the approaches (Mayer, 1999; Mumford, 2003; Russ, 1993). These commentaries maintain that there is a need for models that draw on diverse research approaches in order to stimulate new perspectives and theoretical conceptualisations, and which 'piece together' an overall picture of creativity. It is unlikely that a satisfactory comprehensive model of creativity can be developed without a thorough exploration of the phenomenology of the concept. This is not only due to the possibility of phenomenological analysis shedding further light on existing research findings, but also to the foundational nature of phenomenological understanding (see Giorgi, 1997).
Despite the general neglect of the phenomenology of creativity, a small body of phenomenological studies has accumulated (Giorgi, 1984; Melrose, 1989; Reinders, 1992; O Cluanain, 1979, 1981, 1987; Bindeman, 1998; Conrad, 1990; Nardone, 1996). However, although identifying themselves as 'phenomenological', a number of these studies adopt a 'loose' understanding of the phenomenological approach, often resulting in qualitative work that Kvale (1994) describes as a "boring empiricist collection of interview quotes, rather than a well-told convincing story" (p. 171; see Nelson (2005) for a full review). Therefore, there is a need for further rigorous phenomenological research into creativity.
A study by Reinders (1992) will briefly be reviewed, as this is one of the more rigorous phenomenological studies and one that faithfully adopts the attitude and methods of phenomenological psychology. Reinders (1992) investigated the phenomenology of artistic creativity through open-ended interviews with three internationally-recognised artists from the diverse fields of choreography, painting, and musical composition. The participants were asked to describe their experience of the creation of a recent or current artwork, particularly the way in which they perceived and solved problems.
The study's findings were as follows. The artist assumes an artistic perspective towards certain aspects of his 'life-world'. (2) This gives rise to a sense of lack, which engages his artistic desire to produce an artwork that will fulfill or 'speak to' this felt lack. The artist has a vague, intuitive sense of the artistic object and the direction in which he should project his artistic pursuit in order to fulfill the sense of lack. Within this tension between desire based on a felt lack and an intuited artistic object, the artist engages in a process of exploration--he engages in repeated trials and variations in order to come closer to the intuited artistic object. This exploratory process also clarifies the artist's implicit guiding idea. The artist actively manipulates his artistic material as a means of exploring its expressive possibilities with regards to his global intuition of the artistic object he wishes to create. The exploratory search is informed by what Reinders (1992) terms the 'demands of the artistic object'. In this exploratory process the artist 'recognises' artistic constellations or 'units' that bring the work closer to realising the intuited intentional object. The spontaneous discovery of fulfilling artistic structures is felt to be beyond the artist's control.
The exploratory process is characterised by a number of seemingly paradoxical attitudes. Firstly, the artist adopts an attitude of 'purposive-playfulness', which refers to the active manipulation of his artistic materials in a highly playful, probing manner in order to realise his intentional object. The attitude of 'circumscribed indeterminacy' is also assumed. This refers to holding at bay the knowledge derived from previous artistic experiences and trusting that his artistic intuition and artistic perception will recognise emerging artistic configurations that speak to the intentional object. The artist is being both active and receptive: active in the sense that his actions are informed by his artistic intuition of the intentional object and receptive in the sense of remaining sensitive to the emerging artistic configurations. Another paradox at work is 'distant-engagement'--that is, an alternation between immersion in the manipulation of material and distancing oneself, looking at the emerging artistic structures from the perspective of the audience, in order to clarify the overall structure or gestalt of the object.
As the artistic structures for the intentional object continue to develop and become more complex, the sense of recognition becomes stronger. This is experienced as "a global bodily felt sense of meaning" (p. 67). A sense of completion is attained as the artist gradually forms the configuration of artistic tensions into "a balanced totality of artistic significance" (p.68). Again, the sense of completion is felt on a physical level. The completion also has a paradoxical element to it, because although the artist 'feels' the work to be completed, the meaning of the artistic object remains ambiguous and open to change. The temporality of the process is characterised by a non-linear but rhythmic progression. For example, phases of direct involvement with the artistic material may alternate with periods in which the artist's conscious attention is directed to some unrelated pursuit. An attitude of risk-taking characterises the overall process--in the bracketing of previous experiential knowledge, the maintenance of an open-ended attitude, and in the engagement in a process of exploration without knowing exactly what is being looked for. Central to Reinders' (1992) account of the experience of artistic creativity are concepts of desire, exploration, discovery, intuitive recognition, and paradox. The sense of lack, exploration and the dialogue between the artist and her material apparent in Reinders' findings concur with O Cluanain's (1979, 1981, 1987) series of non-empirical studies of the phenomenology of creating and appreciating art. Common themes that emerge from phenomenological studies include the artist responding to the 'demands' of the artwork; the sense of the artist not being in 'control' of the process; the prominent role of intuitive, emotional processes; the sense of discovery through interaction with the medium; and the interfering role of conscious, critical mental processes.
Creativity researchers have tended to assume that creativity is rooted in general skills or traits that transcend particular domains. However, a growing body of research suggests that creative performance is domain specific (e.g., Baer, 1991; 1993; 1998; Brown, 1989; Kaufman & Baer, 2005). The domains that have most commonly been discussed are the fields of the arts and the sciences and, within these domains, further distinctions have been made. The generality or specificity of creativity is a debate far from resolved. However, following Baer (1998), who argues that the assumption of domain specificity will yield more useful results than approaching creativity as a general phenomenon, the current investigation approaches the construct of creativity through an examination of artistic creativity.
The current study seeks to extend the rigorous study of the phenomenology of creativity. It builds on Reinders' (1992) work by investigating the phenomenology of creativity with a greater range of artists. The principal aim is to capture through phenomenological interviews how artists experience the creative process. Through analysis of their descriptions, the aim is to explicate the psychological predicates and meanings of the phenomenon as it is lived in its 'everydayness'. The research question guiding this aspect of the research is: How is the creative process experienced by artists? As discussed above, the approach is descriptive and exploratory, rather than hypothesis-testing.
Method
Participant Selection
Professional artists were used as participants. A total of 11 artists participated in the research interviews. A range of artists were represented in the sample, including 5 musicians, 2 writers, 2 visual artists, 1 writer/visual artist, and 1...
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