‘On Creativity’ Edited By Sudhir Kakar Günter Blamberger | Review

Innovation has been the sole reason of our progress, as a society and as an individual, and while one may fall in awe or disdain of new creations, this book attempts to decipher the psyche behind the creativity. It presents to us its ideas in the form of brilliant essays and illuminates us on the concept of creativity.

It tries to unravel the mysteries associated with creativity- how the creative process actually functions and the many motives that go behind the creation itself. A group of experts try to unravel this enigma through their various cross-cultural and interdisciplinary perspectives, while a few others “demonstrate the successes and limits of the psychoanalytical and psychological approaches to understanding creativity while also discussing cognitive biology as the seemingly most prominent approach to solving the puzzle of the creative mind.”

on-creativity

Many myths on creativity are touched upon, and the timescales of multiple cultural creativities are studies, including Indian, Western and Chinese creativity. It notes how due to less cultural exposure, Indians are comparatively less creative than their Western counterparts. Freud’s creativity enjoys a good footage in the book and is comprehensively detailed.

Several traits and characteristics of highly creative people are listed too – how they’re driven by anger, how nobody believes in them, how they’ve experienced a lot in their lives (things like poverty, spirituality), and how they’ve often managed to make their own path irrespective of what came their way. There’s even a journey charted of a creative writer who went on to become a creative researcher, and this is a good read, where the various ways are explained with one can explore and study the field of creativity.

The book just stitches a few threads of the creativity fabric, and the essays included are some pursuits of creativity and not a conclusion on the topic. Creativity is timeless, and this book addresses that fact pretty well.

This is an excellent thesis for someone looking to study more on the creative process or the psychology that leads to creativity. A good read.

You may buy the book from Flipkart here: 

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *