We predominantly associate creativity with artistic creation, with creative activities such as painting, dancing, singing, drawing, making music, etc. However, creativity is much more than that.
What is creativity?
According to today’s definition, creativity is the ability to develop new contexts of meaning from existing things through playful thinking and free association. The term “creativity” is derived from the Latin verb “creare” (to create, to bring forth) and stands for the ability to create something new and original and to be creatively active. Being creative is most often associated with the visual and performing arts, which require a high degree of creativity. However, creativity is by no means limited to the fine arts. It is far more complex. From ancient times to the Middle Ages, creativity was considered a spiritual, God-given, power of creation. Today’s definition of creativity, however, encompasses more than innate artistic and human abilities. Rather, it sees it as the ability to develop new contexts of meaning from existing things through playful thinking and free association. Creative processes often occur in the subconscious, can suddenly be present just like that, and are often experienced as inner guidance.
Function and task
Creativity is a multi-layered process. If we want to be aware of what function creativity has, it is useful to look at the lives and abilities of creative people. What makes creative people? Is there a creative personality? Most creative people have about an ambivalent relationship to routine and fixed habits. For creative people, it is important to be able to indulge in daydreams. They are an important key to their creative activity and, contrary to popular belief, not a waste of time. Research by neuroscientists indicates that there are connections between daydreaming and creativity. Creative people have fine powers of observation and are open to new possibilities. They often work according to their own internal time standards. They often use solitude and loneliness to be constructive during these times. In life crises, creative people often grow beyond themselves or are confronted with their mental abysses and process them constructively. The most beautiful love songs, love stories and love poems often come from heartbreak or personal life crises. Creative people often do not have a fixed world view and maintain a certain curiosity about other people and life throughout their lives. Writers, for example, often observe their environment and process these observations in their books. Creative people let themselves be guided by their subconscious and have the courage to follow their inner passion and their inner voice. Famous personalities report about inspirations in their sleep. The famous novel “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” by Robert Louis Stevenson originated from a dream of the author in which one person had transformed into another. The musician Paul McCartney had the melody of “Yesterday” in his head just like that when he woke up. In general, however, there are no categories of creative and uncreative people. Everyone carries the capacity for creativity within them, and whether this emerges strongly depends in many cases on whether people are given the opportunity for creative development, whether they can have experiences that promote creativity. Creativity is also present in a wide variety of life situations and not, for example, only in artistic activities. The creation of new contexts and thus a kind of creative power characterize imagination, which is ultimately brought to life creatively in its implementation. This can be inventions, crafts, art, etc.
Diseases and ailments
However, the very sensitivity and openness of the senses that characterize creative people can also be their undoing. Life stories of famous personalities show how close genius and madness often lie together and how fluid the boundaries between creativity and mental illness can be. The composer Robert Schumann was often melancholic, tried to take his own life and spent a long time in a psychiatric ward. Vincent van Gogh is known to have cut off his ear during one of his delusions, from which he suffered repeatedly.It is not clear exactly what illness he suffered from, but he had to undergo psychiatric treatment several times. Ernest Hemingway had to struggle again and again in his life with his alcohol addiction, mental problems and depression. He committed suicide at the age of 61. Franz Kafka suffered from the monotony of modern working life, from anorexia and depersonalization. Various young and talented artists of the last decades died from excessive drug or alcohol use, as the fates of young artists such as Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Kurt Cobain, Michael Jackson and Amy Winehouse show. They were all creative and talented, but could not find sufficient support in their lives, sometimes suffering from severe mood swings, which they fought with drugs and alcohol. The boundaries between art and illness are often blurred, and creative people are particularly at risk of developing mental illnesses or disorders precisely because of their sensitivity and susceptibility. A recent Swedish study shows that creative people are more likely to suffer from mental illness or bipolar disorder. Writers are more at risk than dancers, photographers and researchers. In general, however, there is no overall link between creativity and mental illness.
