Creativity in adolescence

Abstract

Findings from an empirical research project on creativity, including controlled experimental assessment, indicate that the development of creative capacity occurs primarily during the adolescent period. Defined as the production of entities that are both new and valuable, creativity necessarily involves two specific types of cognition designated as the janusian and homospatial processes. Although there are precursors to the development of creativity during earlier childhood, both the motivation and the capacity to create appear first in the adolescent period. Important motivational factors derive from adolescent conflicts and developmental tasks such as the impetus to solve and consolidate issues relating to identity, the return of oedipal conflicts, and the pressures toward autonomy and independence. Engaging in creative types of fields and outlets helps generally to establish coherent identity during adolescence and beyond; the beginnings of a specific creative identity in adolescence are a necessary foundation for creative motivation and ability to create throughout life. The return of the oedipal conflict at the onset of puberty motivates the dual compliance and competition of the creatively disposed adolescent with his or her same-sex parent. The pressures toward autonomy and independence provide the motivational and affective substrate for the development of the homospatial and janusian processes. The homospatial process arises from the vacillating and concomitant experiences of autonomy (or separation) and connectedness. In the creatively disposed adolescent, one who activates and uses cognition to express and explore affect, the creative aspect of those experiences begins to be manifested in the concomitant cognitive separation and connection involved in superimposition of mental images. The janusian process arises from the experiences of rebellious oppositionality and intense emotional ambivalence. The creative cognitive aspect of these experiences is manifested in conscious conceptualization and use of simultaneous antitheses and oppositions. The use of simultaneous opposition in the janusian process at any age necessarily involves the capacity to grasp and manipulate abstract relations. Evidence for the first development of this capacity in adolescence comes from the research on formal operations reasoning and on understanding of the null class. Regarding the onset near that age period of capacity to use and comprehend the relational nature of opposition, supporting evidence derives from experimental data on the syntagmatic-paradigmatic shift. With regard to the homospatial process, which is largely responsible for the creation of effective metaphors, both the late appearance of class inclusion behavior and the inability of younger children to comprehend and use relational metaphors preclude a preadolescent onset of this creative capacity.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)