A Profile of the Creative Mind

Abstract

Paul Petrich is Principal, Hanover High School, Hanover, New Hampshire, and Lecturer in Education, Dartmouth College. THE University of California has just completed a sixyear study of the creative person. Hundreds of skilled creative people were interviewed and studied as to their developmental and productive years. The individuals selected-writers, research scientists, mathematicians, and architects-were regarded by leaders in their respective fields as being highly creative.According to the general conclusions reached, the creative person is intelligent, though not necessarily at the upper reaches of human intelligence. He is independent, curious, skeptical, emotionally committed to his work, energetic, aesthetically sensitive, introverted, nonconformist, occasionally egotistical, almost always actuated by a sense of destiny. His interests, whatever his field, often parallel those of artists, psychologists, writers, physicists, and musicians. He is not greatly interested in details but is deeply concerned for implications and meanings.Creative people demonstrate early in life that they have special talents in specific fields, but sometimes they arrive at their most creative periods late in life, perhaps because they have so many skills and aptitudes that it is hard for them to choose the one that remains the most challenging. The truly creative person remains fairly narrow in his field-he most certainly is not the well-rounded individual one is led to expect to be solely creative. The truly creative person tends to be aesthetic and theoretical, and economic ideals interest him least of all. He also has decided tendencies to show a preference for complexity and even for disorder. Getzels and Jackson, two psychologists at the University of Chicago, have also made extensive studies of creative persons.