The
Creative Expression
Edited
and arranged by: Stanley Rosner Ph.D and Lawrence
Edwin Abt, Ph.D.
Publisher:
North River Press, Inc. Croton-on-Hudson, N.Y., 1976
Overview
Twenty-one
well-known men and women from five broad professional
fields examine and discuss the nature of their
creativity, and the forces in their lives, which helped
them, develop it.
Interviews
Engineering
Technology |
Leo
Esaki |
Dennis
Gabor |
Peter
Goldmark |
John
R. Whinnery |
|
The
Arts |
Don
Elliott |
Arthur
Getz |
Brooks
Jones |
Ranan
Lurie |
|
Criticism |
Martin
Bookspan |
Judith
Crist |
Stanley
Kauffmann |
Anna
Kisselgoff |
Max
Kozloff |
John
Simon |
|
The
Media |
Richard
Marek |
Harry
Reasoner |
Lucy
Jarvis |
|
Business |
Ernest
Dichter |
James
K. Feibleman |
Richard
H. Rich |
Robert
Walker |
Preface
However
variegated it may be, is creativity a unitary process
– that is, when it is present, does it function in
similar ways in different fields and among widely
different creative persons? The answer to this
question is difficult to come by, as readers of our The
Creative Experience will recall. Others,
remembering our Essays in Creativity, will call to mind
what theorist of different persuasions have had to say
about this matter.
The
purpose of the present work is to investigate the issue
further – to probe the matter in the experiences of an
additional group of creative persons who are applying
their talents in areas different from those addressed in
our first book.
For
the most part, The Creative Expression examines creative
experiences in persons working in fields that are more
directly known to Americans – fields like engineering
and technology, the arts, criticism, the communications
media, and business – and that therefore touch our
lives with greater frequency and persistence.
Among persons in such creative endeavors do we deal with
the same creative urges, the same persistent problems,
the same unknown outcomes?
The
reader of The Creative Expression will have made this
determination for himself. For our part, we
are deeply grateful to the twenty-one persons who have
been kind enough to share themselves and their time to
further our inquiry, to permit us to round out a look at
the larger arena of creative effort represented by the
additional fields in which creativity expresses itself.
We
are persuaded that, although the protean nature of the
creative process, the creative experience, and the
creative product still eludes us, we have made a forward
movement toward a better understanding of it.
Abridged
Summary
The
Creative Expression represents an attempt to compare the
pure artist and scientist in their creative endeavors
with the engineer, the physicist working for industry,
the art or drama critic, the businessman, and the
applied artist and musician-composer. The Creative
Experience dealt with creativity in the first group, and
the present interviews deal with the latter group.
We ask, “What are some of the similarities and
differences between these groups? Is the creative
process the same, regardless of orientation towards pure
research and pure art or in the applied areas?”
We recognize the limitations of these interviews.
They do not represent research in the strict sense
of the term, which would necessitate exhaustive inquire,
with large samples, under controlled conditions.
Rather, we are looking for qualitative differences and
similarities that may serve heuristic purposes. We
hope that we may be able to isolate some factors that
will stimulate further research. |