Processus de la Créativité

Abstract

Creativity is seen as inherent in the developmental potential of the individual and of society as well. This "yen for becoming" is felt at all ages, and is in fact recognized as associated with the realization of the profoundest aspirations of man. Its origin is detected in early childhood. It is deeply rooted in the associative trend of thought and action, a trend which tends to perpetuate itself in the direction of unending abundance and novelty.

The process assumes passage from awareness to memory, and even to the subconscious. The thought of the moment dips into the past, awakens memories, even those seemingly forgotten, reactivates all that is pertinent for the creation of new structures. It is believed that this tendency is essentially dynamic, endowed with energy which drives toward endless realizations. Nothing dies in the subconscious, as Freud pointed out. Each past experience is apt to return into consciousness and engage in a double process of homogenization and heterogenization, of convergent and divergent currents. Here the combinations, or commutations and permutations, are indefinite, an array which defies any computer.

Creativity calls into play all energized experiences, present and stored, cognitive and affective, perceptual and conceptual, sensory and motoric, verbal and non-verbal, taxonomic and functional, real and symbolic; it constantly provokes new patterns. The richer the content of experience, the greater the possibility of innovation.

The creative construction starts with the activation of readily available knowledge, the elements of which trigger related material in the memory and the subconscious. The movement is derived from active associations that continue to connect the units, and is oriented toward specific goals, leading to eventual syntheses, which may be expressed in either action or discourse. Here we face an unfurling, which coincides with interpretation, the unlocking of the new meaning built from the past upon the first meaning. This event, really never-ending, is a basic condition of life; it stimulates the spirit in a posture of perpetual emergence.