The roots of creativity

The various factors which seem to be important in the creative child with extraordinary potential include: A good biologic endowment, often with high intelligence and a correlation between special sensory sensitivities and other physical requirements to implement the special interest. There is also sometimes the capacity to utilize or else compensate for deficit. The fostering of interests by a parent or interested adult. Specific kinds of ongoing encouragement. Sometimes there is self-selection of interest by the child. The child must feel valued and loved. The family background and relationship of parents centers on the child. The time, place, and institutions foster the development of interest and value of the work and the child's belief in its value. The child is allowed freedom of development, without undue inhibition or restriction. Creative people have shown uneven development--the child is not "age-specific" generally. Gifted children have been observed to tolerate isolation and even loneliness well--these are often necessary conditions for developing skills. For some creative people, early object losses seem to be frequent. The creative child is curious and a keen observer. The creative child has an uncanny ability to make connections--to perceive similarities in the apparently dissimilar. The creative child is not hampered by conventional thought. The creative child has a capacity for love and devotion--or at least a positive orientation; a spiritness or passion; and a spirituality or unworldliness. It has been said that the poetic truths in a work of art are only half understood by its creator. Generally conveyed subliminally, these truths are revealed in different ways to different audiences at different times. Such is the view of William Livingstone (1987), and considering the childhood antecedents of creative work helps to understand why this is so.