Abstract
The title of this volume, Genius and the mind, suggests that one should look for the explanation to the mysteries of genius inside the human cranium. My goal in this chapter will be to argue that while the mind has quite a lot to do with genius and creativity, it is not the place where these phenomena can be found. The location of genius is not in any particular individual’s mind, but in a virtual space, or system, where an individual interacts with a cultural domain and with a social field. It is only in the relation of these three separate entities that creativity, or the work of genius, manifests itself. In popular usage, ‘genius’ is sometimes used as a noun that stands by itself, yet in reality it appears always with a modifier: musical genius, mathematical genius, scientific genius, and so forth. Genius cannot show itself except when garbed in a concrete symbolic form.
Copyright statement article “Creativity and Genius: A Systems Perspective” By Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi:
Reproduced with permission from M. Csikszentmihalyi, chapter 3. “Creativity and Genius: A Systems Perspective”, from “Genius and the Mind”, Andrew Steptoe (Ed.), pp. 39–66. By permission of © 1998, Oxford University Press www.oup.com”.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Baer, J. (1993). Creativity and divergent thinking. Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Barron, F. (1969). Creative person and creative process. New York: Holt Rinehart and Winston.
Barron, F. (1988). Putting creativity to work. In R. J. Sternberg (Ed.), The nature of creativity (pp. 76–98). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Campbell, D. T. (1976). Evolutionary epistemology. In D. A. Schlipp (Ed.), The library of living philosophers: Karl Popper (pp. 413–463). La Salle: Open Court.
Coren, S. (1992). The left-handed syndrome: the causes and consequences of left-handedness. New York: The Free Press.
Cox, C. (1926). The early mental traits’ of three hundred geniuses. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1988a). Motivation and creativity: toward a synthesis of structural and energistic approaches to cognition. New Ideas Psychology, 6, 159–176.
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1988b). Society, culture, person: a systems view of creativity. In: R.J. Sternberg The nature of creativity, pp. 325–39. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1988c). Solving a problem is not finding a new one: a reply to Simon. New Ideas Psychology, 6, 183–186.
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990). The domain of creativity. In M. A. Runco & R. S. Albert (Eds.), Theories of creativity (pp. 190–212). Newbury Park: Sage Publications.
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1993). The evolving self: a psychology for the third millennium. New York: HarperCollins.
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1996). Creativity: flow and the psychology of discovery and invention. New York: HarperCollins.
Csikszentmihalyi, M., & Getzels, J. W. (1973). The personality of young artists: an empirical and theoretical exploration. British Journal of Psychology, 64, 91–104.
Csikszentmihalyi, M., & Getzels, J. W. (1988). Creativity and problem finding. In F. G. Farley & R. W. Neperole (Eds.), The foundations of aesthetics, art, and art education (pp. 91–106). New York: Praeger.
Csikszentmihalyi, M., & Sawyer, K. (1995). Shifting the focus from individual to organizational creativity. In C. M. Ford & D. A. Gioia (Eds.), Creative action in organizations (pp. 167–172). Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications.
Csikszentmihalyi, M., Getzels, J.W., & Kahn, S.P. (1984). Talent and achievement: a longitudinal study of artists. A report to the Spencer Foundation. Chicago: The University of Chicago.
Csikszentmihalyi, M., Rathunde, K., & Whalen, S. (1993). Talented teenagers: the roots of success and failure. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Darwin, F. (1914). The Galton lecture. London: The Eugenic Society.
Dawkins, R. (1976). The selfish gene. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Einstein, A., & Infeld, L. (1938). The evolution of physics. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Feldman, D. (1986). Nature’s gambit: child prodigies and the development of human potential. New York: Basic Books.
Feldman, D., Csikszentmihalyi, M., & Gardner, H. (1994). Changing the world: a framework for the study of creativity. Westport: Praeger.
Gardner, H. (1983). Frames of mind: the theory of multiple intelligences. New York: Basic Books.
Gardner, H. (1993). Creating minds. New York: Basic Books.
Gardner, H., Komhaber, M. L., & Wake, W. K. (1996). Intelligence: multiple perspectives. Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace.
Getzels, J. W., & Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1976). The creative vision: a longitudinal study of problem finding in art. New York: Wiley.
Gruber, H. (1988). The evolving systems approach to creative work. Creativity Research Journal, 1, 27–51.
Guilford, J. P. (1967). The nature of human intelligence. NewYork: McGraw-Hill.
Harrington, D. M. (1990). The ecology of human creativity: a psychological perspective. In M. A. Runco & R. S. Albert (Eds.), Theories of creativity (pp. 143–169). Newbury Park: Sage Publications.
Hauser, A. (1951). The social history of art. New York: Vintage Books.
Jablow, H. D., & Lieb, J. (1988). The key to genius: manic-depression and the creative life. Buffalo: Prometheus Books.
Jacobson, A. C. (1912). Literary genius and manic depressive insanity. Medical Record, 82, 937–939.
Jamison, K. R. (1989). Mood disorders and patterns of creativity in British writers and artists. Psychiatry, 52, 125–134.
Kasof, J. (1995). Explaining creativity: the attributional perspective. Creativity Research Journal, 8, 311–366.
Kris, E. (1952). Psychoanalytic explorations in art. New York: International Universities Press.
Kuhn, T. S. (1962). The structure of scientific revolutions. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Lombroso, C. (1891). The man of genius. London: Walter Scott.
Martindale, C. (1989). Personality, situation, and creativity. In R. R. J. Glover & C. R. Reynolds (Eds.), Handbook of creativity (pp. 211–232). NewYork: Plenum.
Maslow, A. H. (1963). The creative attitude. The Structuralist, 3, 4–10.
Mayr, E. (1982). The growth of biological thought. Cambridge: Belknap Press.
Milgram, R. M. (1990). Creativity: an idea whose time has come and gone? In M. A. Runco & R. S. Albert (Eds.), Theories of creativity (pp. 215–233). Newbury Park: Sage Publications.
Mitchell, A. R. (1972). Schizophrenia: the meaning of madness. New York: Taplinger.
Paul, D. (1993). Left-handed helpline. Manchester: Dextral Books.
Piaget, J. (1965). The moral judgment of the child. New York: The Free Press.
Piechowski, M. J. (1991). Emotional development and emotional giftedness. In N. Colangelo & G. A. Davis (Eds.), Handbook of gifted education (pp. 285–306). Boston: Allyn and Bacon.
Richards, R. (1990). Everyday creativity, eminent creativity, and health. Creativity Research Journal, 3, 300–326.
Runco, M. A. (1991). Divergent thinking. Norwood: Ablex.
Runco, M. A. (Ed.). (1995). Problem finding. Norwood: Ablex.
Russ, S. W. (1993). Affect and creativity. Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Simon, H.A. (1985). Psychology of scientific discovery. Keynote presentation at the 93rd annual meeting of the American Psychological Association, Los Angeles, CA.
Simon, H. A. (1988). Creativity and motivation: a response to Csikszentmihalyi. New Ideas Psychology, 6, 177–181.
Simonton, D. K. (1988). Scientific genius. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Simonton, D. K. (1990). Political pathology and societal creativity. Creativity Research Journal, 3, 85–99.
Simonton, D. K. (1991). Personality correlates of exceptional personal influence. Creativity Research Journal, 4, 67–68.
Simonton, D. K. (1994). Greatness: who makes history and why. New York: Guilford.
Stein, M. I. (1953). Creativity and culture. Journal of Psychology, 36, 311–322.
Stein, M. I. (1963). A transactional approach to creativity. In C. W. Taylor & F. Barron (Eds.), Scientific creativity (pp. 217–227). New York: Wiley.
Sternberg, R. J., & Lubart, T. I. (1995). Defying the crowd: cultivating creativity in a culture of conformity. New York: The Free Press.
Torrance, E. P. (1988). The nature of creativity as manifest in its testing. In R. J. Sternberg (Ed.), The nature of creativity (pp. 43–75). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Wehner, L., Csikszentmihalyi, M., & Magyari-Beck, I. (1991). Current approaches used in studying creativity: an exploratory investigation. Creativity Research Journal, 4, 261–271.
Acknowledgement
The research reported herein was supported by a grant from the Spencer Foundation.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2014 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2014). Creativity and Genius: A Systems Perspective. In: The Systems Model of Creativity. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9085-7_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9085-7_8
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-94-017-9084-0
Online ISBN: 978-94-017-9085-7
eBook Packages: Behavioral ScienceBehavioral Science and Psychology (R0)