Response to Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s “Where Is Creativity?”

This is my response to the article “Where is Creativity” by Hungarian psychologist, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.

Arani Halder

1^st December, 2016

Integrative Seminar 1: Avatar

Eric Dean Wilson

Reflection on Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s “Where Is Creativity?”

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, a Hungarian psychologist, states several interesting points about the term “creativity”. He states that, “we cannot simply accept a person’s own account as the criterion for its existence.”¹ This implies that what one thinks to be creative may not actually be creative and may be influenced or inspired by some other work. I feel that, since it is so subjective, we cannot simply take a single account for its credibility. Therefore, creativity has to be a sort of collaboration or interaction between a person and his/her environment and its response to the piece of work produced. Often even though the work produced may not be accepted by the society, it can lead to further research and developments.

Another important factor while creating things is to be open to criticism. As stated by Csikszentmihalyi, “the definition (of creativity) must encompass more than just the individual.”² Creativity is not just creating something original, it also has to gain a social acceptance or confirmation. Creativity cannot be confined to the personal beliefs of an individual, and has to be validated by appropriate experts. Since creativity is such a broad term, it is not possible to define it only one way. For example, just having accomplishments in one’s life does not mean one is creative but at the same time, just being creative doesn’t mean that one will leave his/her mark in the world. I also found it interesting that it is often easier to measure creativity in trivial fields (like a computer game), as compared to more insightful topics (like human psychology). However, in both cases it is important that the creator follows the rules of that field. And this can only be possible if one is well acquainted and exposed to the domain of that field. This is because the outcome of the work produced heavily depends on the response of the domain to it.

An interesting thing that the author states is the, “Nobody’s place in the whole canon is secure, that it’s constantly changing.”³ This builds on the ever changing and subjective nature of creativity. A piece of work that maybe relevant at one point of time, maybe not be so a few years earlier or later. For example, Vincent Van Gogh’s art was only appreciated after his death, only when the experts thought that it was important in the domain of art.⁴ In this case the measurement of creativity came so much from not the individual but the domains. Therefore, it is very important to have some people who are suitable to judge what is creative and what is not. Because of a scarcity of attention,⁵ everyone’s ideas cannot be taken into consideration, and often times we are forced to accept the judgment of others. An idea may not even be considered creative, unless determined so by a reliable expert.

Good “creativity” is not just a good idea. It is a combination of years of research and several ideas. In order to come up with something, one must have so many ideas that it is easy to filter out the insightful and meaningful ideas. For example, a musician must have immense knowledge about music which is only possible if he/she has heard, remembered and repeated songs several times.⁶ Creativity is a matter of training the brain. By having great knowledge about a field, we learn to develop on those ideas to create new things. Hence all creative ideas stem out from existing ideas.