CREATIVITY

the ability to make or otherwise bring into existence something new, whether a new solution to a problem, a new method or device, or a new artistic object or form. Psychological experiments in the fields of motivation and learning have disclosed the power of novelty as an inducement to action. There appears to be an essential and continuing tension in higher organisms between the establishment and maintenance of environmental constancies and the interruption of achieved equilibria in the interest of new possibilities of experience. Psychological studies of highly creative people have observed this tension in terms of such dualities as intellect and intuition, the conscious and the unconscious, mental health and mental disorder, the conventional and the unconventional, and complexity and simplicity.