CREATIVITY SPARKS^TM
December 2007

Creative Personality Traits
Enhance and Nurture
by Beth Barany

I believe we are all creative; we are born that way. What can we do to enhance and nurture our creativity, especially after an upbringing, schooling or a society that doesn't necessarily support our creativity or desire for more of it in our lives?

I was inspired to write this article from a chapter called "The Creative Personality" in Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.

Csikszentmihalyi, professor and former chairman of the Department of Psychology at the University of Chicago, studied creative individuals in science, the arts, sociology, and humanities, and admits that there is no one personality type more creative than another. Whether a recluse or gregarious, J. D. Salinger and James Michener, or Willa Cather or Elizabeth Berg, you can still be a best-selling writer.

There are however some traits that Csikszentmihalyi found in common across all the people he interviewed. They are: a genetic predisposition, access to the domain, access to the field, and a complex personality. By genetic predisposition, he means that to be a writer one must have a predisposition to language, an ear, and a sensitivity for it. By access to the domain, he means that a creative individual must have access to stories, books, writing, and the important writings of the past. In writing, access to the field means the teachers, agents, editors, and critics. With them, or with popular support our work spreads into the world, and has the potential to pass into the fabric of the domain.

However, the above characteristics are too general for us to gain anything in any immediate sense. We're already steeped in our art, working hard to gain access. And we have a predisposition. What else can we do to enhance our creativity? There is still a "complex personality." Csikszentmihalyi pulls out ten real characteristics that he says belong to the complex creativity personality. By this he means "they show tendencies of thought and action that in most people are segregated. They contain contradictory extremes--instead of being an 'individual,' each of them is a 'multitude.' Like the color white that includes all the hues of the spectrum, they tend to bring together the entire range of human possibilities with themselves."

Csikszentmihalyi illustrates this with ten pairs of antithetical traits that are often present and integrated in creative people. Everyone can strengthen the missing end of a polarity. To start, identify your obvious dominant trait. If you have a hard time with this, ask a good friend for help. When you've identified your central trait, try your hand at its opposite a little at a time.

"Complexity is the result of the fruitful interaction between ... two opposing tendencies."

To enhance and nurture your creative personality, aim for complexity and learn to integrate the seemingly antithetical traits below.

In the book publishing world, and with e-books, you need to let your readers know what you have to offer and invite them to sample your wares, in offering them a sample chapter, the table of contents, or sample section. In short, one of the many marketing techniques used to getting the word out about your book.

Ten Pairs of Traits of the Creative Personality

1. A great deal of physical energy and often at quiet and at rest
2. Smart and naive
3. Playfulness and irresponsibility, and discipline and responsibility
4. Imagination and fantasy and a rooted sense of reality
5. Extroversion and introversion
6. Humble and proud
7. Feminine and masculine qualities: psychological androgyny
8. Traditional and conservative and iconoclastic and rebellious
9. Passionate and attached, and objective and detached
10. Exposed to a great deal or pain and suffering and an experience of immense enjoyment

Have a creative life!

c. 2007 Beth Barany