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COMMENT: Psychology and creativity —Humair Hashmi

‘The creative mind lets the present whole — the Gestalt — dominate the parts, avoids piecemeal thinking and looks for structural, rather than piecemeal truth — facing the problem freely, with confidence and courage’

The word aesthetics derives from the Greek aesthesis, meaning perception of the external world through the sense organs. It refers to having good taste and an appreciation of beauty. Aesthetics has a close link with creativity.

Several thousand years ago man drew pictures in the caves around the area now part of southern France and used colours. About two thousand five hundred years before Christ the Egyptians decorated their pyramids — the burial places of the pharaohs. The pictures of fish, animals, trees, water reservoirs and men painted in these places still fascinate us. Slightly later, the Mesopotamian artists celebrated the battles of their kings by drawing victory scenes on the walls of their houses and palaces. The Chinese had perfected the art of woodcarving and were using carved wood for printing about a thousand years before Christ. The printing processes they used to prepare silk cloth still fascinate us today. Their particular genre has been depiction of water, mountains and “silence”. The Chinese silk prints travelled all over the world adding beauty and pleasure to man’s otherwise barren existence. Around the fifth century BC the Greeks excelled in pottery and in the art of painting utensils.

In the writings of Plato and Aristotle, the notions of aesthetics and creativity are associated with inspiration and ecstasy. Such creative states were thought to stem from contact with gods and were supposed to be meant for creative men only. Plato’s concept of mimesis, imitation of nature, is used to explicate the relation between creativity and reality. Aesthetics and creativity, to Plato, must represent the desirable ideals. To Aristotle, however, creativity represented the first step towards knowledge of nature. Creativity as mimesis remained dominant for quite a while amongst the ancient Greeks.

The Roman civilisation learnt a great deal from the Greeks, particularly about the beauty of the human figure. When the remains of the Roman city of Pompii were excavated after it was razed to the ground by an earthquake and buried in molten lava, the walls and the ceilings of most of the houses were found to be decorated with beautiful scenes of nature and human figures. The Romans who had learnt their art from the Greeks, added a great deal to its aesthetics so that it came to have its own distinct flavour and character.

About the third century BC the Buddhist King Ashoka had carved stone columns erected at various places across his kingdom. How those were carved, transported and erected is another fascinating episode. Their symmetry and artistic beauty still captivates the beholder. The paintings and carvings near the village of Ajanta, outside the city of Aurangabad still dazzle the onlookers. These paintings and carvings are estimated to have been done in about 200 BC. The temples built by the Chandela dynasty about a thousand years ago at Khajuraho still amaze man with their beauty and aesthetic sensuality.

Jews and Muslims shunned painting the human figure on account of their aversion to idolatry. In the seventh and the eighth century AD the Muslim artists excelled in painting the flora and fauna. They also perfected the art of calligraphy. The monuments, mosques and tombs built by the Muslim artists and artisan stand witness to their creativity.

After the industrial revolution, society was governed less by religion and more by technical and practical considerations. The various spheres of life that had been integrated in the feudal society came now to be governed predominantly by science and the need for division of labour. Specialisation represented the zeitgeist. Man’s creativity thus focused on the emotional life, its investigation, depiction, and control. It was felt that people’s aesthetic feelings, tastes, interests, attractions etc exert a strong influence on their psyche and their behaviour. Creativity and aesthetics were seen to foster love, and the ability to appreciate beauty. It was further recognised that creativity was linked to one’s intellectual, moral, and behavioural values. It came therefore to be seen as a determinant of one’s attitude and behaviour — a realm of psychology.

Psychologists began to seriously explore creativity in the early 20th century. More recently it has become the focus of much research and investigation. Two threads of exploration have been of special interest to the modern psychologist, the creative process and the creative person.

Early interest and investigation into the creative process can be traced back to the so-called Gestalt school of psychology. Three German researchers’ names — Wertheimer, Koffka, and Kohler — are usually associated with it. It was Kohler who, during the World War I, wrote the famous book, The Mentality of Apes, that contained his concept of “insight” — something he saw as the basic ingredient in the process of creativity. At that time, he called it “insightful thinking”. Such thinking to him did not consist of separate responses to separate stimuli, but an integrated response by a person to the situation faced at any given time. It meant seeing beyond the surface of things and forming a novel response; something that Kohler also called the “Aha experience”. The experience of Archimedes which led him to run naked in the streets shouting “Eureka, Eureka”, and the experience of Newton contemplating the falling of an apple to the ground are two examples of insightful thinking quoted by Kohler.

Wertheimer interviewed Einstein to discover what creative steps led him to formulate his theory of relativity. He found that for years, Einstein tried to clarify the problem by attempting to modify the Maxwell equations. He did not succeed, Wertheimer argued, because past experiments can sometimes lead to a superficial view of the present situation. To live in a fog of the past is for many people a hindrance. “The creative mind”, Wertheimer argues, “lets the present whole — the Gestalt — dominate the parts, avoids piecemeal thinking and looks for structural rather than piecemeal truth, facing the problem freely with confidence and courage”.

Humair Hashmi is a professionally certified psychotherapist who teaches at Imperial College Lahore. This is the first article in a two-part series

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