Mothering and Creativity

Theorizing of Creativity

Early accounts in various published documents (e.g., novellas, poems, Aristotle's Politics) often claimed creativity was akin to “freedom” and credited it to external forces (e.g., the gods or muses). By the early 20th century, Sigmund Freud established creativity as the ability to express unconscious wishes in a publicly acceptable fashion. However, the theorizing of creativity lay dormant until the middle of the 20th century. In the 1950s, researchers began to debate creativity as occurring in two phases: some form of unmodulated or unusual thought followed by a kind of elaboration and realization. By the 1980s, researchers proposed the actualization of [Page 833]creative work was brought about by a confluence of factors including personal motivation, knowledge of and skills in a field, and a simultaneous ability and willingness to interfere with learned response. These factors were consistently accompanied by the ability to concentrate effort, the availability of uninterrupted time, and the possession of an abundance of energy to accomplish the work.

Common Creativity and Rare Creativity

Late-20th-century research on creativity occurred in parallel with the second wave of feminism, and tended to deconstruct the conception of “born genius,” and specifically considered the influence of a person's cultural, economic, and social obligations and environments. Currently, there is disagreement among researches about what supports the emergence or act of creativity. Most researchers stress the presence of both motivation and potential (the personal drive to produce things or ideas, and the hegemonic probability they will be realized), but there is debate about whether the creative act needs to be assessed in relation to the individual's own experience or a society's expectations.

Further, researchers cite two distinct arenas of investigation. Common creativity acknowledges creative acts that solve local, daily problems (e.g., using limited resources in novel ways to extend the reach of a company, determining what to make for a family meal out of what is already in the refrigerator, visioning and sustaining a garden that is both attractive and functional). Rare creativity refers to creative results that are recognized and valued across broad swaths of a culture, sometimes internationally, and are singled out as exemplary, beyond a typical person's reach; thus, it deems the maker an “inspired genius.”

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