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The Motivational Sources of Creativity as Viewed from the Paradigm of Positive Psychology

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The Systems Model of Creativity

Abstract

Appearing at the dawn of a new paradigm, this volume affords a chance to reflect about the goals of the emerging psychology of strengths, its promise, and its limits. With Seligman, Csikszentmihalyi elsewhere has discussed psychology’s long neglect of positive functioning and identified some of the key problems that a positive psychology ought to address in the coming years (Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi 2000). In the present chapter, we draw on work on optimal experience and development, in particular work on creativity, to illustrate the promise of a strengths approach.

Reproduced with permission of Copyright © 2002 by the American Psychological Association.

Reference: “The Motivational Sources of Creativity as Viewed from the Paradigm of Positive Psychology” by Jeanne Nakamura and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in L.G. Aspinwall and U.M. Staudinger (Eds.) A Psychology of Human Strengths. Washington, DC: American Psychology Association, pages 257−280.

The Creativity in Later Life study was generously supported by the Spencer Foundation.

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Nakamura, J., Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2014). The Motivational Sources of Creativity as Viewed from the Paradigm of Positive Psychology. In: The Systems Model of Creativity. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9085-7_12

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