Political pathology and societal creativity

Abstract

Complementing the hypothesized intimate relation between creativity and psycho‐pathology at the individual level are conjectures concerning the relation between creativity and pathology at the sociocultural level. This article reviews the empirical literature on the subject, with special focus on how societal creativity is affected by international war, external threat, political instability, and civil disturbances. Such events and circumstances are shown to affect both the quantity of creative activity and the form that any creativity takes. Although some of these effects are short‐term and transient, other influences operate after some delay and tend to be more lasting. There follows a discussion of what these results imply about how creativity at the individual level is shaped by the social context in which creative development and thought take place.