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1. Introduction

The problem of creativity has become so relevant today that it is rightfully considered the “problem of the century”. Creativity is not a new subject of study. The issue of creativity has a long and controversial history, and has given rise to many discussions. It attracted the attention of thinkers of all eras of the development of world culture. The history of its study has more than two thousand years. Creativity has always interested thinkers of all epochs and has evoked the desire to create a "theory of creativity".
Freud considered creative activity the result of sublimation (shift) of sexual desire to another sphere of activity: sexual fantasy is objectified in a creative product in a socially acceptable form.
A. Adler considered creativity as a way to compensate for the insufficiency complex (wrong translation - inferiority). K. Jung paid the greatest attention to the phenomenon of creativity, seeing in it the manifestation of the archetypes of the collective unconscious.
Humanistic psychologists (G. Allport and A. Maslow) believed that the initial source of creativity is the motivation for personal growth, which is not subject to the homeostatic principle of pleasure; According to Maslow, this is the need for self-actualization, the full and free realization of one's abilities and life opportunities.
At the turn of the 19th - 20th centuries, as a special field of research, the "science of creativity" began to take shape; "Theory of Creativity" or "Psychology of Creativity".
The situation of the scientific and technological revolution in the second half of the 20th century created conditions that opened up a new stage in the development of research on creativity.
The relevance of studying the psychology of creativity and scientific creativity, in particular, arose in connection with the need to optimize and intensify the principles of organizing scientific activity and managing it.
The purpose of the work: To analyze the creative abilities of a person: their limits and conditions from a philosophical point of view.
The formulated goal involves the solution of the following tasks:
1) Consider whether creativity is inherited or can be shaped
2) Define what is ability and talent
3) How creative thinking differs from “ordinary” thinking
4) Determine the characteristics of creative personalities
5) Consider the components of creativity
6) Definition of technique and its connection with creative activity

2. The concept of creativity

Creativity is defined as a human activity that creates new material and spiritual values ​​that have novelty and social significance, that is, as a result of creativity, something new is created that did not exist before.
The concept of "creativity" can also be given a broader definition.
Philosophers define creativity as a necessary condition for the development of matter, the formation of its new forms, along with the emergence of which the forms of creativity themselves change.
Creativity is the process of creating a subjectively new, based on the ability to generate original ideas and use non-standard methods of activity.
The products of creativity are not only material products - buildings, machines, etc., but also new thoughts, ideas, solutions that may not immediately find a material embodiment. In other words, creativity is the creation of something new in different plans and scales.
When characterizing the essence of creativity, it is important to take into account a variety of factors, features inherent in the process of creation.
Creativity has technical, economic (reducing costs, increasing profitability), social (ensuring working conditions), psychological and pedagogical signs - the development in the creative process of mental, moral qualities, aesthetic feelings, intellectual abilities of a person, the acquisition of knowledge, etc.
From the point of view of psychology and pedagogy, the very process of creative work, the study of the process of preparation for creativity, the identification of forms, methods and means of developing creativity are especially valuable.
Creativity is purposeful, persistent, hard work. It requires mental activity, intellectual abilities, strong-willed, emotional traits and high performance.
Creativity is characterized as the highest form of personality activity, requiring long-term training, erudition and intellectual abilities. Creativity is the basis of human life, the source of all material and spiritual benefits.

3. Philosophical approach to creativity and ability

Abilities are individual personality traits that are subjective conditions for the successful implementation of a certain type of activity. Abilities are not limited to the individual's knowledge, skills and abilities. They are found in the speed, depth and strength of mastering the methods and techniques of some activity and are internal mental regulators that determine the possibility of acquiring them. In the study of ability, 3 main problems are distinguished: the origin and nature of ability, types and diagnosis of individual types of ability, patterns of development and formation of ability.
In philosophy, abilities for a long period were interpreted as properties of the soul, special powers that are inherited and inherent in the individual. Echoes of such ideas have taken root in everyday speech, and there are relapses of their revival in the scientific literature based on the achievements of genetics. The inconsistency of understanding ability as innate was criticized by the English. philosopher J. Locke and French materialists, who put forward the thesis about the complete dependence of the individual's ability on the external conditions of his life. The mechanistic nature of such a representation was overcome in the philosophy of Marxism, where the problem of ability is posed on the basis of understanding a person as a set of social relations, a dialectical approach to interpreting the relationship between internal and external.
Anatomical and physiological features are inborn, acting as prerequisites for the possible development of abilities, while the abilities themselves are formed in the processes of carrying out various activities, in a complex system of interactions of an individual with other people.
The ability, manifested in the implementation of some specific activity, has a complex structure, consisting of various components. This is connected with the widespread phenomenon of compensation: in the case of relative weakness or even the absence of some components, the ability to carry out some activity is achieved by the development of other components. This also explains the observed difference in the combinations of personal and physiological characteristics of individuals who have shown a high level of development of the ability to any one specific activity.
Of great practical importance, in particular for vocational guidance, is the diagnosis of existing abilities (the possibilities of their formation) in professional selection and in sports. It is carried out with the help of tests that also make it possible to give quantitative assessments of ability.
The qualitative level of ability development is expressed by the concept of talent and genius. Their distinction is usually made according to the nature of the resulting products of activity. Talent is such a set of abilities that allows you to get a product of activity that is distinguished by novelty, high perfection and social significance. Genius is the highest stage in the development of talent, which makes it possible to make fundamental changes in one or another area of ​​creativity.
A large place in psychological and pedagogical research is occupied by the problem of the formation of the ability to specific types of activity. They show the possibility of developing the ability through the creation of a personal attitude to mastering the subject of activity.
Creativity is an activity that generates something qualitatively new, which has never been before. Activity can act as creativity in any field: scientific, industrial, technical, artistic, political, etc. - where something new is created, discovered, invented. Creativity can be considered in two aspects: psychological and philosophical. The psychology of creativity explores the process, the psychological "mechanism" of the flow of the act of creativity as a subjective act of an individual. Philosophy considers the question of the essence of creativity, which was raised differently in different historical eras.
So, in ancient philosophy, creativity is associated with the sphere of finite, transient and changeable being (“being”), and not with being infinite and eternal; the contemplation of this eternal being is placed above all activity, including creative activity. In the understanding of artistic creativity, which initially did not stand out from the general complex of creative activity (crafts, etc.), in the future, especially starting with Plato, the doctrine of Eros develops as a kind of aspiration (“obsession”) of a person to achieve the highest (“ clever") contemplation of the world, the moment of which is creativity.
Views on creativity in medieval philosophy are associated with the understanding of God as a person who freely creates the world. Creativity appears, thus, as an act of will that calls being out of non-being. Augustine also emphasizes the importance of the will in the human personality. Human creativity appears to him, first of all, as the creativity of history: it is history that is the sphere in which finite human beings take part in the implementation of the divine plan for the world. Since it is not so much the mind as the will and volitional act of faith that connect a person with God, a personal act, an individual decision, as a form of participation in the creation of the world by God, acquires significance; this creates the prerequisites for understanding creativity as unique and unrepeatable. At the same time, the sphere of creativity turns out to be predominantly the area of ​​historical, moral and religious deeds; artistic and scientific creativity, on the contrary, acts as something secondary.
The Renaissance is permeated with the pathos of the boundless creative possibilities of man. Creativity is now recognized, first of all, as artistic creativity, the essence of which is seen in creative contemplation. There is a cult of genius as a carrier of creativity, an interest in the very act of creativity and in the personality of the artist, a reflection on the creative process that is characteristic of the new time. The tendency to consider history as a product of purely human creativity is becoming more and more pronounced. The Italian philosopher G. Vico, for example, is interested in man as the creator of language, customs, customs, art and philosophy, that is, in essence, as the creator of history.
The philosophy of English empiricism tends to interpret creativity as a successful - but largely random - combination of already existing elements (the theory of knowledge of F. Bacon and especially T. Hobbes, J. Locke and D. Hume); Creativity appears as something akin to invention. Completed concept of creativity in the 18th century. created by I. Kant, who specially analyzes creative activity in the doctrine of the productive ability of the imagination. The latter turns out to be a connecting link between the diversity of sensory impressions and the unity of the concepts of the understanding due to the fact that it possesses both the visibility of an impression and the synthesizing power of a concept. "Transcendental" imagination thus appears as the general basis of contemplation and activity, so that creativity lies at the very basis of cognition.
In the idealistic philosophy of the late 19th and 20th centuries. Creativity is considered primarily in its contrast to mechanical-technical activity. At the same time, if the philosophy of life opposes the creative natural principle to technical rationalism, then existentialism emphasizes the spiritual and personal nature of creativity.
The English scientist G. Wallace (1924) divided the creative process into 4 phases: preparation, maturation (ideas), insight, and verification. Since the main links of the process (maturation and insight) are not amenable to conscious-volitional control, this served as an argument in favor of concepts that assigned a decisive role in creativity to subconscious and irrational factors. However, experimental psychology has shown that the unconscious and conscious, intuitive and rational in the process of creativity complement each other. Being absorbed by his object, the individual is least of all capable of self-observation, retaining only an indefinite feeling of the general direction of the movement of thought: moments of conjecture, discovery, sudden decision are experienced in the form of especially vivid states of consciousness, which were originally mainly described in psychology (“aha-experience” , awareness of the desired decision - from K. Buhler, "insight", the act of instant comprehension of a new structure - from V. Köhler, etc.). However, the study of productive thinking revealed that conjecture, "insight", an unexpected new solution arise under experimental conditions with an appropriate organization of the creative process (M. Wertheimer, B. M. Teplov, A. N. Leontiev). Using the example of D. I. Mendeleev’s discovery of the periodic law, B. M. Kedrov showed that the analysis of products and “by-products” (unpublished materials) of creativity makes it possible to identify milestones on the path of scientific discovery, regardless of how they were perceived by the scientist himself. At the same time, the personal mechanisms of creativity can be revealed only in the context of their conditionality in a specific socio-historical situation.

4. Origins of creative talent

Genotype or environment? Among the numerous English clubs there is one quite unusual: it brings together people who believe that the Earth is flat. True, the orbital flight of Yuri Gagarin shook many adherents of this, to put it mildly, outdated hypothesis. Still, there are several hundred eccentrics who do not want to come to terms with the sphericity of the planet. It is unlikely that a discussion with them would be fruitful.
In our country, as if there are no supporters of the concept of a flat Earth; in any case, their voices are not heard. But there are hunters to defend the position, according to which genius, and talent, and abilities are all only the result of education, and the innate inclinations of all people are exactly the same. It is probably as useless to argue with them as it is with members of the Flat Earth Club.
There was once a fierce debate about the origin of talent - whether it is a gift of nature, genetically determined, or a gift of circumstances. Then they found a compromise formula: both the genotype and the environment play a role. But in such a formulation, the problem is solved only qualitatively. It is necessary to find out what exactly is inherited and what is instilled by education. Discussions on the topic of innate and acquired talent turn into empty talk if the parties do not try to concretize their statements, that is, to separate innate qualities from what is introduced in the course of individual development.

5. Talent and pedigree

In the 19th century, studies gained popularity that were supposed to confirm the heritability of talent and show how giftedness and genius are inherited.
Leo Tolstoy's great-grandmother Olga Golovina (married Trubetskaya) and A.S. Pushkin's great-grandmother Evdokia Golovina (Pushkina) were sisters.
Due to the fact that church birth registration books were carefully kept in Western Europe in the middle of the century, it was possible to establish that the five largest representatives of German culture - the poets Schiller and Hilderlin, the philosophers Schelling and Hegel, and the physicist Max Planck - are related: Johann Vanth, who lived in the 15th century, was their common ancestor. As recently established by German and Austrian researchers, Simon Michel, a resident of Vienna, who died in 1719, was the great-grandfather of Karl Marx and Heinrich Heine.
Many bourgeois scholars have drawn the conclusion from this that some families have inherited gifts and therefore achieve outstanding success, while others do not and even under equal conditions of development cannot do anything outstanding.
But counter examples can also be given. The son of the brilliant mathematician David Hilbert was outwardly extremely similar to his father, and he sadly remarked: everything he has is from me, and mathematical abilities from his wife. However, given that inheritance can also be recessive, counterexamples in and of themselves do not negate the possibility of inheriting talent. The weakness of this kind of archival research lies elsewhere.
A person has two parents, and four grandparents, and generally 2 ancestors, where n is the number of generations. If we accept that the change of generations occurs after 25 years, then 40 generations have changed in 10 centuries. Consequently, each of our contemporaries had at that time 2, or about a thousand billion ancestors. But a thousand years ago there were only a few hundred million people on Earth. It turns out that all people are related to each other, because all the time there has been and is a mixture of genes. Hence, the presence of outstanding relatives among outstanding people, noted by English biologists, is understandable. Other people were simply not interested, and it is more difficult to trace their pedigree. But if you follow it, it turns out that every person has great and talented relatives. Interesting data was cited by the Pskov journalist M.V. Rusakov in the book “Descendants of A.S. Pushkin. He collected information about all the direct descendants of the poet up to the present day. His great-great-grandchildren live on all continents. Thanks to mixed marriages, the direct descendants of the great Russian poet now belong to different nations and peoples: among them are Americans, British, Armenians, Belgians, Georgians, Jews, Moroccans, Germans, French (Mountbatten, West, Liu, von Rintelen, Svanidze, Morillo and etc.) All of them are the offspring of the boyar family of the Pushkins and at the same time the descendants of the Arap Ibragim.
If you study the genealogical tree of other people - talented and untalented - just as conscientiously and scrupulously, you get the same picture; but this does not take into account the very numerous illegitimate offspring. Therefore, the concept of "pure race" is absurd. And Galton's calculations, outwardly seemingly convincing, do not have probative force, because they are methodologically flawed. He did not conduct control calculations, i.e. I didn’t count how many outstanding relatives ordinary untalented people belonging to the same classes and estates have, i.e. having equal opportunities to develop and realize their talents.
Mixing of genes occurs only with the "geographical accessibility" of human habitats. If certain groups of people are geographically isolated, then there is no genetic exchange between them. This applies, in particular, to people who lived on different continents before the era of great geographical discoveries. As Darwin showed, if representatives of the same species are spatially separated (as in the Galapagos Islands), then there is a gradual divergence of characters until the appearance of varieties, and later on, new species.
Marriages between people of different races produce full-fledged offspring, and therefore there is no doubt that all people form a single biological species. Quite plausible is the theory of an ancient pra-continent, subsequently split, or a single ancestral home of people. (Previously, Southeast Asia was considered such an ancestral home, and now Africa).
But since the territorial division occurred a very long time ago, races with different skin colors and other stably inherited traits were formed. The suggestion that the makings of mental abilities may not be the same, although essentially absurd, but some people find it tempting. Indeed, on Earth there are both developed states and tribes at the Neolithic level; one is tempted to attribute this to a difference in mental endowment.
However, in reality, peoples formed on different continents, in different conditions and at different levels of culture, have the same abilities.

6. Components of creativity

Creativity is an amalgamation of many qualities. And the question of the components of human creativity is still open, although at the moment there are several hypotheses concerning this problem. Many psychologists associate the ability to creative activity, primarily with the peculiarities of thinking. In particular, the well-known American psychologist Guilford, who dealt with the problems of human intelligence, found that creative individuals are characterized by the so-called divergent thinking. People with this type of thinking, when solving a problem, do not concentrate all their efforts on finding the only correct solution, but begin to look for solutions in all possible directions in order to consider as many options as possible. Such people tend to form new combinations of elements that most people know and use only in a certain way, or form links between two elements that at first glance have nothing in common. The divergent way of thinking underlies creative thinking, which is characterized by the following main features:
1. Speed ​​- the ability to express the maximum number of ideas (in this case, it is not their quality that matters, but their quantity).
2. Flexibility - the ability to express a wide variety of ideas.
3. Originality - the ability to generate new non-standard ideas (this can manifest itself in answers, decisions that do not coincide with generally accepted ones).
4. Completeness - the ability to improve your "product" or give it a finished look.
Well-known domestic researchers of the problem of creativity A.N. Luk, based on the biographies of prominent scientists, inventors, artists and musicians, highlights the following creative abilities:
1. The ability to see the problem where others do not see it.
2. The ability to collapse mental operations, replacing several concepts with one and using symbols that are more and more capacious in terms of information.
3. The ability to apply the skills acquired in solving one problem to solving another.
4. The ability to perceive reality as a whole, without splitting it into parts.
5. The ability to easily associate distant concepts.
6. The ability of memory to give out the right information at the right moment.
7. Flexibility of thinking.
8. The ability to choose one of the alternatives for solving a problem before it is tested.
9. The ability to incorporate newly perceived information into existing knowledge systems.
10. The ability to see things as they are, to distinguish what is observed from what is brought in by interpretation.
11. Ease of generating ideas.
12. Creative imagination.
13. The ability to refine the details, to improve the original idea.
Candidates of Psychological Sciences V.T. Kudryavtsev and V. Sinelnikov, based on a wide historical and cultural material (the history of philosophy, social sciences, art, individual areas of practice), identified the following universal creative abilities that have developed in the process of human history.
1. Imagination realism - a figurative grasp of some essential, general trend or pattern of development of an integral object, before a person has a clear idea about it and can enter it into a system of strict logical categories.
2. The ability to see the whole before the parts.
3. Supra-situational - transformative nature of creative solutions - the ability to solve a problem not just choose from alternatives imposed from the outside, but independently create an alternative.
4. Experimentation - the ability to consciously and purposefully create conditions in which objects most clearly reveal their essence hidden in ordinary situations, as well as the ability to trace and analyze the features of the "behavior" of objects in these conditions.
Scientists and teachers involved in the development of programs and methods of creative education based on TRIZ (theory of inventive problem solving) and ARIZ (algorithm for solving inventive problems) believe that one of the components of a person’s creative potential is the following abilities:
1. The ability to take risks.
2. Divergent thinking.
3. Flexibility in thought and action.
4. Speed ​​of thinking.
5. The ability to express original ideas and invent new ones.
6. Rich imagination.
7. Perception of the ambiguity of things and phenomena.
8. High aesthetic values.
9. Developed intuition.
Analyzing the points of view presented above on the issue of the components of creative abilities, we can conclude that despite the difference in approaches to their definition, researchers unanimously single out creative imagination and the quality of creative thinking as essential components of creative abilities.
Based on this, it is possible to determine the main directions in the development of children's creative abilities:

1. Development of the imagination.
2. Development of the qualities of thinking that form creativity.

7. Thinking and creativity

The potential of the human brain is an area almost unexplored. Only by individual ups and downs, flashes of creative genius can we guess what a person is capable of. Until now, most people are using their brains in a barbaric, low-efficiency manner. And science faces the problem: what should be the conditions of the external environment so that everyone can develop their creative (abilities) inclinations and turn them into creative achievements? Perhaps the so-called great creators are simply people who use their brain reserves normally.
Creative activity is considered as the interaction of two thought processes: divergent (development of a larger number of possible solutions) and convergent (choosing the optimal solution from a number of possible ones). Preference is given to the first.
There are four indicators of mental activity:
1. Fluency.
2. Flexibility.
3. Originality.
4. Degree of detail.
Thinking can be divided into three types:
- thinking based on the results of concepts, acting as a logical process (judgments, conclusions) that ends with the development of cereal models - this is logical thinking;
- intuitive thinking, woven into practical activities, based on unconscious side perceptions, representations of skills;
-discursive thinking, acting as a unity of intuitive and logical thinking.
Psychologically scientific discovery, creativity has two essential features: one of which is an intuitive moment, the other is the formalization of the intuitive effect obtained, that is, otherwise, creativity is an intuitive moment, but its effect is realized and formed by means of discursive thinking.
In the case when there are ready-made logical programs for solving a specific problem in a person's experience, the solution proceeds mainly at the logical level and is not accompanied by shifts in emotional indicators. At the initial stages of solving creative problems, a person also strives to apply already known logical schemes to them, but the unsolvability of such problems in a known way turns them into a creative solution, now possible only with the help of intuition. In the course of activity aimed at solving the problem, an intuitive model of the situation is formed, leading in successful cases, which are closely related to the occurrence of by-products of actions and their emotional assessments, to an intuitive solution.
The following patterns of intuitive decision models can be distinguished:
1. An intuitive solution is possible only if the key to it is already contained in unconscious experience.
2. Such an experience is ineffective if it was formed in the actions preceding attempts to solve a creative problem.
3. It becomes effective, it is formed against the background of the target search position.
4. Its effectiveness increases when the directed methods of solving the problem are exhausted, but the search dominant does not go out.
5. The influence of the unconscious part of the action is the more effective, the smaller the content power in itself is its conscious part.
6. The complication of the situation in which unconscious experience is acquired prevents its subsequent use.
7. A similar complication of the task itself also has a negative effect.
8. The success of the solution is related to the degree of automation of the methods of action, during which the necessary unconscious experience is formed - the less automated this method, the greater the chances of success.
9. The more general category the final solution of a creative problem can be attributed to, the more likely it is to find such a solution.

Short description

The purpose of the work: To analyze the creative abilities of a person: their limits and conditions from a philosophical point of view.
The formulated goal involves the solution of the following tasks:
1) Consider whether creativity is inherited or can be shaped
2) Define what is ability and talent
3) How creative thinking differs from “ordinary” thinking
4) Determine the characteristics of creative personalities
5) Consider the components of creativity
6) Definition of technique and its connection with creative activity

INTRODUCTION 3 1. SPECIFICITY OF CREATIVITY AND CREATIVE ABILITIES 5 2. CONDITIONS FOR THE FORMATION OF CREATIVE PERSONALITY 7 3. LIMITS OF DEVELOPMENT OF CREATIVE PERSONALITY 10 CONCLUSION 14 LIST OF USED LITERATURE 16

Introduction

The relevance of studying the issues of the formation of creative competence in the 21st century is associated with the problems that have arisen in education and in society as a whole: the search for new ways of forming creative competence, determining one's place in society. Creative competence includes a system of knowledge, skills, abilities and personal qualities necessary for creativity. The creative component can be present in any type of activity (communicative, educational, organizational). An essential component of creativity is the knowledge and skills that underlie one's own creative and cognitive activity. The study of psychological and pedagogical literature shows that researchers turned to the issues of creative thinking relatively recently - at the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th century. At present, several dozens of scientific foreign and domestic concepts of creative thinking are known in the world, created in line with various theoretical and experimental directions. According to most researchers, creativity can be developed. Especially effective is the impact on its formation in sensitive periods. Preschool and primary school age are such (V.N. Druzhinin, E.L. Soldatova, etc.). D.B. Bogoyavlenskaya, on the basis of experimental data, concluded that the formation of creative abilities does not proceed linearly, but has two peaks in its development: the most striking burst of their manifestation is noted by grade 3 (age 10), and the second falls on adolescence. In the studies of I.Ya. Lerner and M.N. Skatkina draws attention to the relationship between the ability given from birth for creativity and the ability to realize it at different levels. The purposefulness of training makes it possible to form a high level of development of existing creative data. The purpose of this work is to study the specifics of human creative abilities. The set goal involves the solution of the following tasks: - to identify the specifics of creativity and creative abilities; - consider the conditions for the formation of a creative personality; - to determine the limits of the development of a creative personality.

Conclusion

All these circumstances are necessary for the transformation of a person as a biological being with innate inclinations into a social being, developing human abilities in himself. The surrounding people, having the necessary abilities and means of learning, ensure the continuous development of the necessary abilities in children. An important role here is played by complexity, that is, the simultaneous improvement of several mutually complementary abilities. The versatility and diversity of activities and communication, in which a person is simultaneously included, act as one of the conditions for the development of his abilities. In this regard, the following requirements should be imposed on developmental activities (communication): creative nature, the optimal level of difficulty for the performer, proper motivation and ensuring a positive emotional mood during performance. An essential factor determining the development of abilities is the stable special interests of the individual in a certain area of ​​social life, which are transformed into a propensity to professionally engage in the relevant activity. Special abilities are formed in the process of mastering professional activities. Cognitive interest stimulates the mastery of effective techniques and methods for its implementation, and the successes achieved, in turn, further increase motivation. In order to ensure the best fit of a person to a particular type of work activity, it is necessary to assess his professional inclinations, inclinations and abilities of a person. This is carried out in the process of vocational guidance and vocational selection, which makes it possible to identify the qualities necessary for a particular type of labor activity. Based on this assessment, professional suitability is revealed. The fact that a person is suitable for a given profession can only be said when his abilities are fully consistent with the nature of this work. LIST OF USED LITERATURE

Bibliography

Bogoyavlenskaya D.B. Paths to creativity. - M.: Knowledge, 1981.- 80 p. 2. Bodalev A.A., Rudkevich L.A., How do they become great or outstanding?, M., "Publishing house of the Institute of Psychotherapy", 2003 -288 p. 3. Leontiev, A.N. Lectures on General Psychology. - M.: Meaning, 2007. – 340 s. 4. Lerner I.Ya. Didactic foundations of teaching methods. - M.: Pedagogy, 1981. - 78 p. 5. Likhachev B.T. Pedagogy: Course of lectures. - 4th ed., revised. and additional - M.: Yurayt - Publishing House, 2003. - 607 p. 6. Miloradova, N.G. Psychology and pedagogy. M.: Gardariki, 2007. - 335s. 7. Radugin A.A. Psychology and Pedagogy. - M, Center, 2002. M .: Center, 2002. - 256 p. 8. Skatkin M.N. Problems of modern didactics. - M.: Pedagogy, 1984.- 208 p.

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INTRODUCTION

Creativity is understood as the activity of creating new and original products of public importance.

The essence of creativity is the prediction of the result, the correct setting of the experiment, in the creation by the effort of thought of a working hypothesis close to reality, in what Sklodowska called the feeling of nature.

The relevance of the topic is due to the fact that many researchers reduce the problem of human abilities to the problem of a creative person: there are no special creative abilities, but there is a person with a certain motivation and traits. Indeed, if intellectual giftedness does not directly affect the creative success of a person, if in the course of the development of creativity the formation of a certain motivation and personality traits precedes creative manifestations, then we can conclude that there is a special type of personality - a “Creative Person”.

Creativity is going beyond the limits of the given (Pasternak's "over the barriers"). This is only a negative definition of creativity, but the first thing that catches your eye is the similarity between the behavior of a creative person and a person with mental disorders. The behavior of both deviates from the stereotypical, generally accepted.

People do a lot of things every day: small and large, simple and complex. And every case is a task, sometimes more, sometimes less difficult.

When solving problems, an act of creativity occurs, a new path is found or something new is created. This is where the special qualities of the mind are required, such as observation, the ability to compare and analyze, find connections and dependencies - all that in the aggregate constitutes creative abilities.

The acceleration of scientific and technological progress will depend on the quantity and quality of creatively developed minds, on their ability to ensure the rapid development of science, technology and production, on what is now called an increase in the intellectual potential of the people.

The purpose of this course work is to consider aspects of the development of creative abilities.

Based on the goal, the following tasks can be set:

Characterize creativity as a mental process;

Consider the essence of a creative person and her life path;

To study the development of creative abilities;

Review the basic concepts of creativity.

1. ESSENCE AND SIGNIFICANCE OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF CREATIVE ABILITIES

1.1 Creativity as a mental process

Most philosophers and psychologists distinguish between two main types of behavior: adaptive (associated with the resources available to a person) and creative, defined as “creative destruction”. In the creative process, a person creates a new reality that can be comprehended and used by other people.

Attitudes towards creativity in different eras changed dramatically. In ancient Rome, only the material and the work of the binder were valued in the book, and the author had no rights - neither plagiarism nor forgery was prosecuted. In the Middle Ages and much later, the creator was equated with a craftsman, and if he dared to show creative independence, then it was not encouraged in any way. The creator had to make a living in a different way: Molière was a court upholsterer, and the great Lomonosov was also valued for utilitarian products - court odes and the creation of festive fireworks.

And only in the XIX century. artists, writers, scientists and other representatives of the creative professions were able to live by selling their creative product. As A. S. Pushkin wrote, “inspiration is not for sale, but you can sell a manuscript.” At the same time, the manuscript was valued only as a matrix for replication, for the production of a mass product.

In the XX century. the real value of any creative product was also determined not by its contribution to the treasury of world culture, but by the extent to which it can serve as material for replication (in reproductions, television films, radio broadcasts, etc.). Therefore, there are differences in income, unpleasant for intellectuals, on the one hand, representatives of the performing arts (ballet, musical performance, etc.), as well as businessmen of mass culture, and, on the other hand, creators.

Society, however, at all times divided two spheres of human activity: otium and oficium (negotium), respectively, activity at leisure and socially regulated activity. Moreover, the social significance of these areas has changed over time. In ancient Athens, bios theoretikos - theoretical life - was considered more "prestigious" and acceptable to a free citizen than bios praktikos - practical life.

Interest in creativity, the personality of the creator in the XX century. is connected, perhaps, with the global crisis, the manifestation of the total alienation of man from the world, the feeling that by purposeful activity people do not solve the problem of man's place in the world, but further delay its solution.

The most common are the "divine" and "demonic" versions of the attribution of the cause of creativity. Moreover, artists and writers accepted these versions depending on their worldview. If Byron believed that a “demon” inhabits a person, then Michelangelo believed that God leads his hand: “A good picture approaches God and merges with him.”

The consequence of this is the tendency observed in many authors to disown authorship. Since it was not I who wrote, but God, the devil, the spirit, the "inner voice", the creator is aware of himself as an instrument of an extraneous force.

It is noteworthy that the version of the impersonal source of the creative act passes through spaces, epochs and cultures. And in our time, it is being revived in the thoughts of the great Joseph Brodsky: “The poet, I repeat, is the means of the existence of language. The writer of a poem, however, does not write it because he counts on posthumous fame, although he often hopes that the poem will outlive him, albeit not for long. The writer of a poem writes it because the language tells him or simply dictates the next line.

Starting a poem, the poet, as a rule, does not know how it will end, and sometimes he is very surprised at what happened, because it often turns out better than he expected, often the thought goes further than he expected. This is the moment when the future of the language interferes with the present... A person who writes a poem writes it primarily because versification is a colossal accelerator of consciousness, thinking, world outlook. Having experienced this acceleration once, a person is no longer able to refuse to repeat this experience, he falls into dependence on this process, as he falls into dependence on drugs and alcohol. A person who is in such a dependence on language, I believe, is called a poet.

In this state, there is no feeling of personal initiative and no personal merit is felt when creating a creative product, an alien spirit seems to be instilled in a person, or he is inspired by thoughts, images, feelings from the outside. This experience leads to an unexpected effect: the creator begins to treat his creations with indifference or, moreover, with disgust. There is a so-called post-creative saturation. The author is alienated from his work. When expedient activities are performed, including labor activities, there is an opposite effect, namely, the “invested activity effect”. The more effort a person has spent to achieve the goal, the production of a product, the more emotional significance this product acquires for him.

Since the activity of the unconscious in the creative process is associated with a special state of consciousness, the creative act is sometimes performed in a dream, in a state of intoxication and under anesthesia. In order to reproduce this state by external means, many resorted to artificial stimulation. When R. Rolland wrote Cola Breugnon, he drank wine; Schiller kept his feet in cold water; Byron took laudanum; Rousseau stood in the sun with his head uncovered; Milton and Pushkin liked to write while lying on a sofa or couch. Coffee lovers were Balzac, Bach, Schiller; drug addicts - Edgar Poe, John Lennon and Jim Morrison.

Spontaneity, suddenness, independence of the creative act from external causes - its second main feature. The need for creativity arises even when it is undesirable. At the same time, the author's activity eliminates any possibility of logical thought and the ability to perceive the environment. Many authors take their images for reality. The creative act is accompanied by excitement and nervous tension. Only processing, giving a finished socially acceptable form to the products of creativity, discarding the superfluous and detailing is left to the share of the mind. Bogoyavlenskaya D.B. Intellectual activity as a problem of creativity. - Rosto.in-on-Don, 2003..

So, the spontaneity of the creative act, the passivity of the will and the altered state of consciousness at the moment of inspiration, the activity of the unconscious, speak of a special relationship between consciousness and the unconscious. Consciousness (conscious subject) is passive and only perceives the creative product. The unconscious (unconscious creative subject) actively generates a creative product and presents it to consciousness.

In domestic psychology, the most holistic concept of creativity as a mental process was proposed by Ya.A. Ponomarev (1988). He developed a structural-level model of the central link in the psychological mechanism of creativity. Studying the mental development of children and the solution of problems by adults, Ponomarev came to the conclusion that the results of the experiments give the right to schematically depict the central link of psychological intelligence in the form of two spheres penetrating one into the other. The outer boundaries of these spheres can be represented as abstract limits (asymptotes) of thinking. From below, intuitive thinking will be such a limit (beyond it, the sphere of strictly intuitive thinking of animals extends). From above - logical (behind it the sphere of strictly logical thinking of computers extends).

The basis for success in solving creative problems is the ability to act "in the mind", determined by a high level of development of the internal plan of action. This ability is perhaps the structural equivalent of the concept of "general ability" or "general intelligence."

Two personal qualities are associated with creativity, namely, the intensity of search motivation and sensitivity to side formations that arise during the thought process.

Ponomarev considers the creative act as included in the context of intellectual activity according to the following scheme: at the initial stage of posing the problem, consciousness is active, then, at the solution stage, the unconscious is active, and consciousness is again involved in selecting and verifying the correctness of the solution (at the third stage). Naturally, if thinking is initially logical, i.e. expedient, then a creative product can appear only as a by-product. But this version of the process is only one of the possible ones.

In general, there are at least three main approaches to the problem of creativity in psychology. They can be formulated as follows:

1. As such, there are no creative abilities. Intellectual giftedness acts as a necessary but not sufficient condition for the creative activity of an individual. The main role in the determination of creative behavior is played by motivation, values, personality traits (A. Tannenbaum, A. Olokh, D.B. Bogoyavlenskaya, A. Maslow, etc.). Among the main features of a creative personality, these researchers include cognitive giftedness, sensitivity to problems, independence in uncertain and difficult situations.

The concept of D.B. Bogoyavlenskaya (1971, 1983), who introduces the concept of "creative activity of the individual", believing that this activity is a certain mental structure inherent in the creative type of personality. Creativity, from the point of view of Bogoyavlenskaya, is a situationally unstimulated activity, manifested in the desire to go beyond the limits of a given problem. A creative personality type is inherent in all innovators, regardless of the type of activity: test pilots, artists, musicians, inventors.

2. Creativity (creativity) is an independent factor, independent of intelligence (J. Gilford, K. Taylor, G. Gruber, Ya.A. Ponomarev). In a softer version, this theory says that there is a slight correlation between the level of intelligence and the level of creativity. The most developed concept is E.P. Torrance: if IQ is below 115-120, intelligence and creativity form a single factor, with IQ above 120, creativity becomes an independent value, i.e. there are no creative individuals with low intelligence, but there are intellectuals with low creativity.

3. A high level of intelligence implies a high level of creativity and vice versa. There is no creative process as a specific form of mental activity. This point of view was shared and shared by almost all experts in the field of intelligence.

1.2 Creative personality and her life path

Many of the researchers reduce the problem of human abilities to the problem of a creative person: there are no special creative abilities, but there is a person with a certain motivation and traits. Indeed, if intellectual giftedness does not directly affect the creative success of a person, if in the course of the development of creativity the formation of a certain motivation and personality traits precedes creative manifestations, then we can conclude that there is a special type of personality - a “Creative Person”.

Creativity is going beyond tradition and stereotypes. This is only a negative definition of creativity, but the first thing that catches your eye is the similarity between the behavior of a creative person and a person with mental disorders. The behavior of both deviates from the stereotypical, generally accepted Bogoyavlenskaya D.B. Intellectual activity as a problem of creativity.

There are two opposite points of view: talent is the maximum degree of health, talent is a disease.

Traditionally, the latter point of view is associated with the name of Cesare Lombroso. True, Lombroso himself never claimed that there was a direct relationship between genius and madness, although he selected empirical examples in favor of this hypothesis: great thinkers.

Lombroso characterizes geniuses as lonely, cold people, indifferent to family and social responsibilities. Among them are many drug addicts and drunkards: Musset, Kleist, Socrates, Seneca, Handel, Poe. The 20th century added many names to this list, from Faulkner and Yesenin to Hendricks and Morrison.

Genius people are always painfully sensitive. They experience sharp ups and downs in activity. They are hypersensitive to social rewards and punishments, etc. Lombroso cites interesting data: in the population of Ash-Kenazi Jews living in Italy, there are more mentally ill people than Italians, but more talented people (Lombroso himself was an Italian Jew). The conclusion to which he comes is as follows: genius and madness can be combined in one person.

The list of geniuses suffering from mental disorders is endless. Petrarch, Moliere, Flaubert, Dostoevsky suffered from epilepsy, not to mention Alexander the Great, Napoleon and Julius Caesar. Rousseau, Chateaubriand had melancholy. Psychopaths (according to Kretschmer) were George Sand, Michelangelo, Byron, Goethe and others. Byron, Goncharov and many others had hallucinations. The number of drunkards, drug addicts and suicides among the creative elite is incalculable.

The hypothesis of "genius and madness" is being revived in our days. D. Carlson believes that a genius is a carrier of a recessive gene for schizophrenia. In the homozygous state, the gene manifests itself in the disease. For example, the son of the brilliant Einstein suffered from schizophrenia. This list includes Descartes, Pascal, Newton, Faraday, Darwin, Plato, Emerson, Nietzsche, Spencer, James and others.

If we proceed from the above interpretation of creativity as a process, then a genius is a person who creates on the basis of unconscious activity, who is able to experience the widest range of states due to the fact that the unconscious creative subject is out of control of the rational principle and self-regulation.

Representatives of depth psychology and psychoanalysis (here their positions converge) see the main difference between a creative personality and a specific motivation. Let us dwell only briefly on the positions of a number of authors, since these views are set forth in numerous sources.

3. Freud considered creative activity the result of sublimation (shift) of sexual desire to another sphere of activity: sexual fantasy is objectified in a creative product in a socially acceptable form.

A. Adler considered creativity as a way to compensate for the "inferiority complex". K. Jung paid the greatest attention to the phenomenon of creativity, seeing in it the manifestation of the archetypes of the collective unconscious.

A number of researchers believe that achievement motivation is necessary for creativity, others believe that it blocks the creative process. However, most authors are still convinced that the presence of any motivation and personal enthusiasm is the main sign of a creative person. To this are often added features such as independence and conviction. Independence, focus on personal values, and not on external assessments, perhaps, can be considered the main personal quality of a creative person.

Creative people have the following personality traits:

1) independence - personal standards are more important than group standards; non-conformity of assessments and judgments;

2) openness of mind - readiness to believe one's own and other people's fantasies, receptivity to the new and unusual;

3) high tolerance for uncertain and insoluble situations, constructive activity in these situations;

4) developed aesthetic sense, striving for beauty Gruzenberg SO. Psychology of creativity. - Minsk, 2005.

Often in this series they mention the features of the "I-concept", which is characterized by confidence in one's abilities and strength of character, and mixed traits of femininity and masculinity in behavior (they are noted not only by psychoanalysts, but also by geneticists).

The most controversial data on mental emotional balance. Although humanistic psychologists "loudly" claim that creative people are characterized by emotional and social maturity, high adaptability, balance, optimism, etc., but most of the experimental results contradict this.

Research has shown that gifted children, whose real achievements are below their capabilities, experience serious problems in the personal and emotional sphere, as well as in the sphere of interpersonal relationships. The same applies to children with IQs above 180.

Similar conclusions about high anxiety and poor adaptation of creative people to the social environment are given in a number of other studies. Such a specialist as F. Barron argues that in order to be creative, one must be a little neurotic; consequently, emotional disturbances that distort the "normal" vision of the world create the prerequisites for a new approach to reality. However, it is possible that cause and effect are confused here, and neurotic symptoms are a by-product of creative activity.

The productivity of scientific creativity has become the subject of research not so long ago. According to many authors, the beginning of the scientometric approach to the problem of the age dynamics of creativity is associated with the works of G. Lehman.

In the monograph "Age and Achievements" (1953), he published the results of an analysis of hundreds of biographies not only of politicians, writers, poets and artists, but also of mathematicians, chemists, philosophers and other scientists.

The dynamics of the achievements of representatives of the exact and natural sciences is as follows: 1) rise from 20 to 30 years; 2) peak productivity at 30-35 years; 3) decline by 45 years (50% of initial productivity); 4) by the age of 60, the loss of creative abilities. A qualitative decline in productivity precedes a quantitative decline. And the more valuable the contribution of a creative person, the higher the likelihood that the creative peak came at a young age. Lehman's conclusions about the significance of the individual's contribution to culture were based on counting the number of lines devoted to them in encyclopedias and dictionaries. Later, E. Cleg analyzed the reference dictionary "Americans in Science" and came to the conclusion that the decline in creative productivity of the most outstanding scientists begins to be observed not earlier than 60 years.

Many authors believe that there are two types of creative productivity during life: the first occurs at 25-40 years of age (depending on the field of activity), and the second occurs at the end of the fourth decade of life with a subsequent decline after 65 years.

The most outstanding figures of science and art do not observe the typical decline in creative activity before death, which has been established in many studies.

Creative productivity is shown to a very old age by people who have retained free-thinking, independence of views, that is, the qualities inherent in youth. In addition, creative individuals remain highly critical of their work. The structure of their abilities optimally combines the ability to be creative with reflective intelligence.

Thus, the features of the interaction of consciousness and the unconscious, and in our terms - the subject of conscious activity and the unconscious creative subject, determine the typology of creative personalities and the features of their life path.

1.3 Development of creativity

In developmental psychology, three approaches fight and complement each other: 1) genetic, which assigns the main role in determining the mental properties of heredity; 2) environmental, whose representatives consider external conditions to be the decisive factor in the development of mental abilities; 3) genotype-environmental interaction, whose supporters distinguish different types of adaptation of an individual to the environment, depending on hereditary traits.

Numerous historical examples: the families of mathematicians Bernoulli, Bach composers, Russian writers and thinkers - at first glance convincingly testify to the predominant influence of heredity on the formation of a creative personality.

Critics of the genetic approach object to a straightforward interpretation of these examples. Two more alternative explanations are possible: firstly, the creative environment created by older family members and their example influence the development of the creative abilities of children and grandchildren (environmental approach). Secondly, the presence of the same abilities in children and parents is reinforced by a spontaneously developing creative environment that is adequate to the genotype (the genotype-environment interaction hypothesis).

In a review by Nichols, who summarized the results of 211 twin studies, the results of diagnosing divergent thinking in 10 studies are presented. The average value of correlations between MZ twins is 0.61, and between DZ twins - 0.50. Consequently, the contribution of heredity to the determination of individual differences in the level of development of divergent thinking is very small. Russian psychologists E.L. Grigorenko and B.I. Kochubey in 1989 conducted a study of MZ and DZ twins (students of 9-10 grades of secondary school). The main conclusion reached by the authors is that individual differences in creativity and indicators of the process of testing hypotheses are determined by environmental factors. A high level of creativity was found in children with a wide range of communication and a democratic style of relationship with their mother Gruzenberg S.O. Psychology of creativity. - Minsk, 2005.

Thus, psychological studies do not support the hypothesis of the heritability of individual differences in creativity (more precisely, the level of development of divergent thinking).

An attempt to implement a different approach to identifying hereditary determinants of creativity was made in the works of researchers belonging to the Russian school of differential psychophysiology. Representatives of this trend argue that the basis of general abilities are the properties of the nervous system (inclinations), which also determine the characteristics of temperament.

Plasticity is considered to be a hypothetical property of the human nervous system, which could determine creativity in the course of individual development. Plasticity is usually measured in terms of variability in EEG parameters and evoked potentials. The classic conditioned-reflex method for diagnosing plasticity was the alteration of a skill from positive to negative or vice versa.

The opposite pole of plasticity is rigidity, which manifests itself in a small variability in the indicators of the electrophysiological activity of the central nervous system, difficulty in switching, inadequacy of the transfer of old modes of action to new conditions, stereotyped thinking, etc.

One of the attempts to identify the heritability of plasticity was made in the dissertation research by S. D. Biryukov. It was possible to identify the heritability of "field dependence-field independence" (the success of the test of built-in figures) and individual differences in the performance of the "Forward and reverse writing" test. The environmental component of the total phenotypic variance for these measurements was close to zero. In addition, the method of factor analysis was able to identify two independent factors that characterize plasticity: "adaptive" and "afferent".

The first one is related to the general regulation of behavior (characteristics of attention and motor skills), and the second one is related to the parameters of perception.

According to Biryukov, the ontogeny of plasticity is completed by the end of puberty, while there are no gender differences in either the “adaptive” plasticity factor or the “afferent” plasticity factor.

The phenotypic variability of these indicators is very high, but the question of the relationship between plasticity and creativity remains open. Since psychological research has not yet revealed the heritability of individual differences in creativity, let's pay attention to environmental factors that can have a positive or negative impact on the development of creative abilities. Until now, researchers have assigned a decisive role to the microenvironment in which a child is formed, and, first of all, to the influence of family relationships. Most researchers identify the following parameters when analyzing family relations: 1) harmony - inharmony of relations between parents, as well as between parents and children; 2) creative - non-creative personality of the parent as a role model and the subject of identification; 3) community of intellectual interests of family members or its absence; 4) expectations of parents in relation to the child: the expectation of achievement or independence.

If the regulation of behavior is cultivated in the family, the same requirements are imposed on all children, there are harmonious relations between family members, then this leads to a low level of children's creativity.

It seems that a wider range of acceptable behavioral manifestations (including emotional ones), less unambiguous requirements do not contribute to the early formation of rigid social stereotypes and favor the development of creativity. Thus, a creative person looks like a psychologically unstable person. The requirement to achieve success through obedience is not conducive to the development of independence and, as a result, creativity.

K. Berry conducted a comparative study of the features of family education of Nobel Prize winners in science and literature. Almost all of the laureates came from families of intellectuals or businessmen; there were practically no people from the lower strata of society. Most of them were born in large cities (capitals or metropolitan areas). Among US-born Nobel laureates, only one came from the Midwestern states, but from New York - 60. Most often, Nobel Prize winners came from Jewish families, less often from Protestant families, and even less often from Catholic families.

Parents of Nobel laureates who were scientists were also most often involved in science or worked in the field of education. People from the families of scientists and teachers rarely received Nobel Prizes for literature or the fight for peace.

The situation in the families of laureate scientists was more stable than in the families of laureate writers. Most scientists emphasized in interviews that they had a happy childhood and an early scientific career that proceeded without significant disruptions. True, it cannot be said whether a calm family environment contributes to the development of talent or the formation of personal qualities that favor a career. Suffice it to recall the impoverished and joyless childhood of Kepler and Faraday. It is known that little Newton was abandoned by his mother and he was raised by his grandmother.

Tragic events in the lives of the families of Nobel Prize winners in literature are a typical phenomenon. Thirty percent of literary laureates lost one of their parents in childhood or their families went bankrupt.

Experts in the field of post-traumatic stress, experienced by some people after being exposed to a situation that goes beyond ordinary life (natural or technical disaster, clinical death, participation in hostilities, etc.), argue that the latter have an uncontrollable desire to speak out, to talk about their unusual experiences, accompanied by a feeling of incomprehensibility. Perhaps the trauma associated with the loss of loved ones in childhood is the non-healing wound that forces the writer through his personal drama to reveal the drama of human existence in the word.

D. Simonton, and then a number of other researchers, hypothesized that an environment conducive to the development of creativity should reinforce the creative behavior of children and provide models for imitating creative behavior. From his point of view, socially and politically unstable environment is the most favorable for the development of creativity.

Among the many facts that confirm the crucial role of family-parent relationships, there are the following:

1. As a rule, the eldest or only son in the family has a great chance to show creative abilities.

2. Less likely to show creativity in children who identify themselves with their parents (father). On the contrary, if a child identifies himself with the “ideal hero”, then he has more chances to become creative. This fact is explained by the fact that in most children the parents are "average", uncreative people, identification with them leads to the formation of uncreative behavior in children.

3. More often creative children appear in families where the father is much older than the mother.

4. Early death of parents leads to the absence of a pattern of behavior with behavioral restrictions in childhood. This event is typical for the life of both major politicians, prominent scientists, as well as criminals and the mentally ill.

5. For the development of creativity, increased attention to the abilities of the child is favorable, the situation when his talent becomes the organizing principle in the family Gruzenberg S.O. Psychology of creativity. - Minsk, 2005.

So, a family environment, where, on the one hand, there is attention to the child, and on the other hand, where various, inconsistent requirements are made to him, where there is little external control over behavior, where there are creative family members and non-stereotypical behavior is encouraged, leads to the development creativity in a child.

The hypothesis that imitation is the main mechanism for the formation of creativity implies that for the development of a child's creative abilities it is necessary that among people close to the child there is a creative person with whom the child would identify himself. The process of identification depends on relations in the family: not the parents, but the “ideal hero”, who has creative features to a greater extent than the parents, can act as a model for the child.

For the development of creativity, an unregulated environment with democratic relations and a child's imitation of a creative personality is necessary.

The development of creativity, perhaps, follows the following mechanism: on the basis of general giftedness, under the influence of the microenvironment and imitation, a system of motives and personal properties (nonconformism, independence, self-actualization motivation) is formed, and general giftedness is transformed into actual creativity (synthesis of giftedness and a certain personality structure).

If we summarize the few studies on the sensitive period of creativity development, then it is most likely that this period falls on the age of 3-5 years. By the age of 3, the child has a need to act like an adult, to “come up with an adult”. Children develop a “need for compensation” and develop mechanisms for disinterested imitation of the activities of an adult. Attempts to imitate the labor actions of an adult begin to be observed from the end of the second to the fourth year of life. Most likely, it is at this time that the child is most sensitive to the development of creative abilities through imitation.

Intelligence as the ability to solve actual problems in the mind without behavioral trials is not unique to humans, but no species has created anything resembling human culture. The elements of human culture - music, books, norms of behavior, technological means, buildings, etc. - are inventions that are replicated and distributed in time and space.

Creativity as a way of social behavior was invented by mankind to implement ideas - the fruits of human active imagination. An alternative to creativity is adaptive behavior and mental degradation or destruction as an externalization of a person’s mental activity to destroy one’s own thoughts, plans, images, etc.

One of the arguments in favor of presenting creativity as a social invention is the data of psychogenetics and developmental psychology.

The development of children's creativity is accompanied by an increase in the frequency of neurosis-like reactions, non-adaptive behavior, anxiety, mental imbalance and emotivity, which directly indicates the close relationship of these mental states with the creative process.

It has been established that persons with high and ultra-high intelligence are the least satisfied with life. This phenomenon is observed both in Western countries and in Russia.

Fewer individuals meet the requirements of cultural adaptation put forward by modern production

Creativity is more and more specialized, and creators, like birds sitting on distant branches of the same tree of human culture, are far from the earth and can hardly hear and understand each other. The majority is forced to take their discoveries on faith and use the fruits of their mind in everyday life, not realizing that someone once invented a capillary fountain pen, a zipper, and a video player.

This form of creativity is available to almost everyone and everyone: both children with lesions of the musculoskeletal system, and the mentally ill, and people tired of monotonous or extremely complex professional activities. The mass nature of "amateur" creativity, its beneficial effect on a person's mental health testifies in favor of the hypothesis of "functional redundancy as a species-specific feature of a person."

If the hypothesis is correct, then it explains such important characteristics of the behavior of creative people as the tendency to show “above-situational activity” (D.B. Bogoyavlenskaya) or the tendency to excess activity (V.A. Petrovsky).

2. CONCEPTS OF CREATIVITY

creativity creativity intelligence

2.1 The concept of reducing creativity to intelligence

Eysenck (1995), relying on significant correlations between IQ and Guilford tests for divergent thinking, suggested that creativity is a component of general mental endowment.

A comparison was made of the age indicators of acquiring knowledge and skills from famous people with similar data from a sample of ordinary children. It turned out that the IQ of celebrities is significantly higher than the average (158.9). From this, Termen concluded that geniuses are those people who, according to testing data, can be classified as highly gifted even in early childhood.

Of greatest interest are the results of the California Longitude, which Terman organized in 1921. Terman and Cox selected 1,528 boys and girls aged 8 to 12 from students in 95 high schools in California with an IQ of 135 points, which amounted to 1% of the entire sample. The level of intelligence was determined by the Stanford-Binet test. The control sample was formed from students of the same schools. It turned out that intellectually gifted children are ahead of their peers in the level of development by an average of two school classes.

The subjects selected by Theremin were distinguished by their early development (they began to walk, talk, read, write, etc. early). All intellectual children successfully completed school, 2/3 received a university education, and 200 people became doctors of science.

As for creative achievements, the results are not so unambiguous. Not a single early intellectual from Termen's sample showed himself as an exceptionally talented creator in the field of science, literature, art, etc. None of them made a significant contribution to the development of world culture.

The concept of creativity by J. Gilford and E.P. Torrance. The concept of creativity as a universal cognitive creativity gained popularity after the publication of the works of J. Guilford (Guilford J. P., 1967).

Guilford pointed out a fundamental difference between two types of mental operations: convergence and divergence. Convergent thinking (convergence) is actualized in the case when a person solving a problem needs to find the only correct solution based on a variety of conditions. In principle, there may be several specific solutions (the set of equation roots), but this set is always limited.

Divergent thinking is defined as "a type of thinking going in different directions" (J. Gilford). This type of thinking allows for varying ways of solving the problem, leads to unexpected conclusions and results.

Further advances in the field of research and testing of creativity are associated mainly with the work of psychologists at the University of Southern California, although their work does not cover the entire spectrum of creativity research.

Guilford identified four main dimensions of creativity:

1) originality - the ability to produce distant associations, unusual answers;

2) semantic flexibility - the ability to identify the main property of an object and offer a new way of using it;

3) figurative adaptive flexibility - the ability to change the form of the stimulus in such a way as to see in it new features and opportunities for use;

4) semantic spontaneous flexibility - the ability to produce a variety of ideas in an unregulated situation.

General intelligence is not included in the structure of creativity. Based on these theoretical premises, Guilford and his collaborators developed the Aptitude Research Program (ARP) tests that test predominantly divergent performance.

2.2 The concept of M. Vollach and N. Kogan

M. Vollah and N. Kogan believed that the transfer by Guilford, Torrance and their followers of test models of measuring intelligence to measuring creativity led to the fact that creativity tests simply diagnose IQ, like ordinary intelligence tests (adjusted for "noise" created by a specific experimental procedure). These authors speak out against hard time limits, the atmosphere of competition and the only criterion for the correctness of the answer, that is, they reject such a criterion of creativity as accuracy. In this position, they are closer to Guilford's original thought on the difference between divergent and convergent thinking than its author himself. According to Vollach and Kogan, as well as such authors as P. Vernoy and D. Hargreaves, for the manifestation of creativity, a relaxed, free environment is needed. It is desirable that research and testing of creative abilities be carried out in ordinary life situations, when the subject can have free access to additional information on the subject of the assignment.

Many studies have shown that achievement motivation, competitive motivation and the motivation of social approval block the self-actualization of the individual, hinder the manifestation of its creative capabilities.

Vollah and Kogan in their work changed the system for conducting tests of creativity. First, they gave subjects as much time as they needed to solve a problem or formulate an answer to a question. Testing was carried out during the game, while the competition between the participants was minimized, and the experimenter accepted any answer of the subject. If these conditions are met, then the correlation between creativity and test intelligence will be close to zero.

In studies conducted in the laboratory of the psychology of abilities of the Institute of Psychology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, A.N. Voronin on adult subjects obtained similar results: the intelligence factor and the creativity factor are independent.

The approach of Vollach and Kogan allowed us to take a different look at the problem of the relationship between creativity and intelligence. The mentioned researchers, testing the intelligence and creativity of students aged 11-12, identified four groups of children with different levels of intelligence and creativity. Children belonging to different groups differed in ways of adapting to external conditions and solving life problems.

Children with a high level of intelligence and high creativity were confident in their abilities and had an adequate level of self-esteem. They had inner freedom and at the same time high self-control. At the same time, they may seem like small children, and after a while, if the situation requires it, behave like an adult. Showing great interest in everything new and unusual, they are very proactive, but at the same time they successfully adapt to the requirements of their social environment, while maintaining personal independence of judgment and action.

Children with a high level of intelligence and a low level of creativity strive for school success, which should be expressed in the form of an excellent grade. They perceive failure extremely hard, it can be said that they are dominated not by hope for success, but by fear of failure. They avoid risk, do not like to express their thoughts publicly. They are reserved, secretive and distance themselves from their classmates. They have very few close friends. They do not like to be left to themselves and suffer without an adequate external assessment of their actions, learning outcomes or activities.

Children with a low level of intelligence, but a high level of creativity, often become "outcasts". They have difficulty adapting to school requirements, often attend clubs, have unusual hobbies, etc., where they can express their creativity in a free environment. They are very anxious, suffer from disbelief in themselves, an "inferiority complex". Often teachers characterize them as dull, inattentive, because they are reluctant to perform routine tasks and cannot concentrate.

Children with a low level of intelligence and creative abilities outwardly adapt well, keep in the "middle peasants" and are satisfied with their position. They have adequate self-esteem, the low level of their subject abilities is compensated by the development of social intelligence, sociability, and passivity in learning.

2.3 "Investment Theory" by R. Sternberg

One of the latest concepts of creativity is the so-called "investment theory", proposed by R. Sternberg and D. Lavert. These authors consider a creative person to be one who is willing and able to "buy ideas low and sell high." "Buying low" means pursuing unknown, unrecognized or unpopular ideas. The task is to correctly assess the potential for their development and possible demand. A creative person, despite the resistance of the environment, misunderstanding and rejection, insists on certain ideas and "sells them at a high price." After achieving market success, he moves on to another unpopular or new idea. The second problem is where these ideas come from.

Sternberg believes that a person may not realize his creative potential in two cases: 1) if he expresses ideas prematurely; 2) if he does not bring them up for discussion for too long and then they become obvious, "obsolete". It should be noted that in this case the author replaces the manifestation of creativity with its social acceptance and evaluation.

According to Sternberg, creative manifestations are determined by six main factors: 1) intelligence as an ability; 2) knowledge; 3) style of thinking; 4) individual traits; 5) motivation; 6) the external environment.

Intellectual ability is the main one. The following components of intelligence are especially important for creativity: 1) synthetic ability - a new vision of the problem, overcoming the boundaries of ordinary consciousness; 2) analytical ability - identifying ideas worthy of further development; 3) practical abilities - the ability to convince others of the value of an idea ("sale"). If an individual has too developed an analytical faculty to the detriment of the other two, then he is a brilliant critic, but not a creator. Synthetic ability, not supported by analytical practice, generates a lot of new ideas, but not substantiated by research and useless. Practical ability without the other two can lead to the sale of "poor" but brightly presented ideas to the public.

The influence of knowledge can be both positive and negative: a person must imagine what exactly he is going to do. It is impossible to go beyond the field of possibilities and show creativity if you do not know the boundaries of this field. At the same time, too well-established knowledge can limit the horizons of the researcher, deprive him of the opportunity to take a fresh look at the problem.

Creativity requires independence of thinking from stereotypes and external influence. A creative person independently poses problems and solves them autonomously.

Creativity implies, from Sternberg's point of view, the ability to take reasonable risks, the willingness to overcome obstacles, intrinsic motivation, tolerance for uncertainty, and the willingness to resist the opinions of others. The manifestation of creativity is impossible if there is no creative environment.

The individual components responsible for the creative process interact. And the cumulative effect of their interaction is irreducible to the influence of any one of them. Motivation can compensate for the lack of a creative environment, and intelligence, interacting with motivation, significantly increases the level of creativity.

Sternberg conducted additional research in order to reveal the role of analytical intellectual abilities in the structure of creativity. Verbal, spatial and mathematical intelligence was measured using the STAT test. The study involved 199 students who were divided into two groups - highly creative and low creative. They were taught the same psychological course in college in two different versions. One course was designed to stimulate creative thinking, the other was not. The result achieved by the students was evaluated depending on the initial level of creativity and the type of training.

Students who initially had a higher level of creativity more often generated their own ideas, organized experiments on their own, put forward various hypotheses in case of varying the conditions of the experiment and sampling, i.e., showed better results in terms of creative learning than those who also had high rates creativity, but studied in the ordinary conditions of Pern I. Ya. Rhythms of life and creativity. - L., 2001 ..

Therefore, an appropriate (creative) environment is necessary for the manifestation of creativity. This also follows from the results of previous studies.

CONCLUSION

In conclusion, the following conclusions can be drawn:

Attitudes towards creativity in different eras changed dramatically.

Psychologists owe their knowledge about the characteristics of a creative personality not so much to their own efforts as to the work of literary critics, historians of science and culture, and art historians, who in one way or another dealt with the problem of a creative personality, since there is no creation without a creator.

The main thing in creativity is not external activity, but internal activity - the act of creating an "ideal", an image of the world, where the problem of alienation of man and environment is resolved. External activity is only an explication of the products of an internal act. The features of the creative process as a mental (mental) act will be the subject of further presentation and analysis.

Inharmonious emotional relationships in the family contribute to the emotional estrangement of the child from, as a rule, uncreative parents, but they do not stimulate the development of creativity by themselves.

For the development of creativity, an unregulated environment with democratic relations and a child's imitation of a creative personality is necessary. The development of creativity, perhaps, follows the following mechanism: on the basis of general giftedness, under the influence of the microenvironment and imitation, a system of motives and personal properties (nonconformism, independence, self-actualization motivation) is formed, and general giftedness is transformed into actual creativity (synthesis of giftedness and a certain personality structure).

Highlighting the signs of a creative act, almost all researchers emphasized its unconsciousness, spontaneity, the impossibility of its control by the will and mind, as well as a change in the state of consciousness.

LIST OF USED LITERATURE

1. Aizepk G.Yu. Intellect: a new look// Questions of psychology. - No. 1.- 2006.

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"Science and Life" 1973, No. 1, pp. 76 - 80; No. 2, S. 79 - 83.

The problem of studying creativity for a long time was of only literary interest. It had neither fundamental postulates, nor a clearly defined subject of research, nor a methodology. Before our eyes, this topic is moving from the category of abstract, almost occult, into the category accessible for natural science analysis, receiving both scientific objectivity and research equipment. Moreover, the study of the psychology of creative activity acquires applied significance.

As recognized by leading overseas researchers, the launch of the Soviet satellite in October 1957 was the strongest impetus for the study of creativity.

When man found himself physically overburdened, he managed to free himself with the help of domesticated animals and then machines. But there is hardly an animal that will save a person from mental labor. There is, however, hope for "smart" computers. However, these machines are already working successfully, and the decisive role of talent remains.

Creativity research is carried out in three main directions. The first direction is the report of research scientists who have lived a fruitful life in science, enriched it with paramount discoveries and, in their declining years, seeking to tell about the nature of their work. This tradition goes back to Charles Darwin; G. Helmholtz, A. Poincare, V. Steklov continued it. W. Cannon, J. Hadamard, G. Selye. The testimony of the scientists themselves, despite the inevitable subjectivity, is very interesting: after all, this is information from the primary source.

However, analyzing the conditions in which this or that idea was born, analyzing the specific situations in which the problem crystallized in the mind, the authors cannot say about the mechanisms of the creative process, they cannot judge its psychological structure.

The second direction is the method of model experiments. For example, a model of a creative solution can be a task in which, without lifting the pencil from the paper, four segments "pass" through nine points arranged in three rows, three points in a row. Even on such a primitive model, it is possible to obtain valuable information.

But there is an important drawback in model experiments. The subject is offered a formulated problem and warned that it has a solution. This in itself is a hint. Meanwhile, the creative process includes not only the solution of a problem, but also a special vigilance in search of problems, the gift to see the problem where everything is clear to others, the ability to formulate a task. This is a special "sensitivity", or susceptibility, to inconsistencies and gaps in the surrounding world, and above all to discrepancies between accepted theoretical explanations and reality.

The third way to study creativity is to study the characteristics of a creative personality, which uses psychological testing, a questionnaire method, and statistics. Here, of course, there can be no question of penetrating into the intimate mechanisms of the creative process. Researchers are only trying to find out those features of a person, according to which, even at school, and in any case at university, it would be possible to select future Lobachevskys, Rutherfords, Pavlovs and Einsteins.

Thus, several facets are distinguished in the problem of creativity: the process of creativity, creative personality, creative abilities, creative climate. A few more questions follow from this, for example: what are the conditions for the upbringing and realization of creative abilities? What stages of creativity are associated with a particular feature of a creative personality? What are the features of creativity motivation?

Creative skills

Creative abilities are inherent in any person, any normal child - you just need to be able to discover and develop them. There is a "continuum of talents", from big and bright to modest and unobtrusive. But the essence of the creative process is the same for everyone. The difference is only in the specific material of creativity, the scale of achievements and their social significance. To study the creative process, it is not necessary to study geniuses. Elements of creativity are manifested in solving everyday life problems, they can be observed in the usual school educational process.

Creativity is divided into three groups. One is related to motivation (interests and inclinations), the other is related to temperament (emotionality), and finally the third group is mental abilities. Let's take a look at some of these abilities.

Vigilance in search of problems

A person usually perceives in the stream of external stimuli only what fits into the "coordinate grid" of already existing knowledge and ideas, and unconsciously discards the rest of the information. Perception is influenced by habitual attitudes, assessments, feelings, as well as attitudes towards public views and opinions. The ability to see something that does not fit into the framework of previously learned is something more than just observation.

English authors designate this vigilance with the word "serendipity", which was coined by the 18th-century writer Horace Walpole. He has a story "Three Princes from Serendip" (Serendip is a locality in Ceylon). The princes had the ability to make unexpected discoveries while traveling, not at all striving for it, and to discover things that they did not specifically intend to look for. Walter Cannon used the term "serendipity", denoting by it the property not to pass by random phenomena, not to consider them an annoying hindrance, but to see in them the key to unraveling the mysteries of nature.

This "vigilance" is not associated with visual acuity or the properties of the retina, but with the peculiarities of thinking, because a person sees not only with the help of the eye, but mainly with the help of the brain.

Biographers of A. Einstein tell about one instructive conversation. When the young Wernher von Heisenberg shared with Einstein plans for a physical theory that would be based entirely on observed facts and not contain any conjectures, Einstein shook his head doubtfully:

Whether you can observe this phenomenon depends on which theory you use. The theory determines what exactly can be observed.

The easiest way is to declare Einstein's statement an idealistic mistake. However, it is much more interesting to approach Einstein's remark without an arrogant conviction of one's worldview superiority and to find a grain of truth under a paradoxical form.

On April 20, 1590, a man climbed the famous Leaning Tower of Pisa. It carried a heavy cannonball and a lead musket ball. The man dropped his burden from the tower; his disciples, who were standing below, and he himself, looking from above, made sure that the cores and the bullet touched the ground at the same time. The man's name is Galileo Galilei.

For about two thousand years, since the time of Aristotle, it was believed that the speed of falling is proportional to weight. A dry leaf torn off from a branch falls for a long time, and the poured fruit falls like a stone to the ground. Everyone saw it. But after all, more than once I had to see something else: two blocks that fell off a cliff reach the bottom of the gorge at the same time, despite the difference in size. However, no one noticed this, because looking and seeing are, as you know, not the same thing. It turns out that Einstein was right: what people observed was determined by the theory they used. And if Galileo discovered that the speed of falling nuclei does not depend on their weight, it is because he, before others, doubted the correctness of Aristotelian mechanics. Then the idea of ​​experience was born. The results of the experiment were not unexpected for him, but only confirmed the already established hypothesis about the independence of the acceleration of free fall from the mass of the falling body.

Anyone could climb onto the roof and drop a bullet and a cannonball, but no one thought of it for nineteen centuries. Galileo saw the problem where everything was clear to others, sanctified by the authority of Aristotle and a thousand-year tradition.

T. Kuhn, author of the book "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions", gives vivid examples of how theory affects the results of observations. During the first 50 years after the adoption of the Copernican system, astronomers discovered many celestial bodies, although the methods of observation remained the same. The new theory made it possible to notice what observers were blind to before.

And yet Einstein's judgment should not be absolutized. He noticed one of the features of cognition, which does not exhaust all the laws of the cognitive process. By the way, Heinrich Heine pointed out the same feature long before Einstein: "Every century, acquiring new ideas, acquires new eyes."

The way information is encoded by the nervous system

The brain of different people has an unequal ability to master and use different types of codes: visual-spatial, verbal, acoustic-figurative, alphabetic, digital, etc. The ability to manipulate this type of symbols can be developed, but not limitlessly. The congenital features of the brain and the conditions of development in the first years of life predetermine the predominant inclination to use certain codes of information. The task of developing creative abilities is not to develop the skills of manipulating mathematical symbols in a person prone to visual-spatial thinking. It is necessary to help a person "find himself", that is, to understand what symbols, what code of information is available and acceptable to him. Then his thinking will be as productive as possible and will give him the highest satisfaction.

The method of encoding information should be in harmony with the content and structure of the displayed events. Differential equations are the most adequate method for describing planetary motions. Tensor calculus describes well phenomena in elastic bodies, and it is more convenient to describe electrical circuits using functions of a complex variable. Apparently, in both art and literature, different codes serve to convey different content.

The brain wraps a thought in one or another specific code form. If visual-figurative representations are used, then one speaks of "visual imagination". The dominance of acoustic-figurative representations speaks of "musical fantasy". If a person is inclined to master reality in a verbal-figurative form, they speak of poetic fantasy, etc.

The fundamental laws of information processing are unchanged, but the coding method leaves its mark both on the form of the external expression of the results, and on the choice of the object, and, if you look more broadly, on the choice of the content area of ​​thinking.

A rare and happy coincidence of individual features of thinking with the structure of the problems facing a given science in a given period of time is, apparently, one of the necessary conditions for the manifestation of scientific genius.

Coagulation ability

In the process of thinking, a gradual transition from one link in the chain of reasoning to another is needed. Sometimes this leads to the fact that it is not possible to cover the whole picture with the mind's eye, the whole reasoning from the first to the last step. However, a person has the ability to collapse a long chain of reasoning and replace them with one generalizing operation.

Collapse is a manifestation of the ability to replace several concepts with one more abstract one, to use more and more informationally capacious symbols. This ability allows a person to continuously expand his intellectual range.

It was once feared that the avalanche-like growth of scientific information would eventually lead to a slowdown in the rate of development of science. Before starting to create, a person will have to master the necessary minimum of knowledge for a very long time. However, there is no slowdown - thanks to the ability to collapse, to use more abstract concepts and capacious symbols.

The relationship between current strength, resistance and voltage, which served as the subject of numerous works and reflections, was eventually reduced to the formula V = IR. There are only four characters (including the equal sign), but they contain a huge amount of information.

The same capacious in the informational sense is the concept of "Pavlovian conditioned reflex", in which many simpler concepts, facts and observations are synthesized.

An economical symbolic designation of concepts and relations between them is the most important factor in productive thinking. The importance of convenient material symbolization can be seen from the following example. In the Middle Ages, in order to learn arithmetic division, it was required to graduate from the university. Moreover, not every university could teach this wisdom. It was imperative to go to Italy: the mathematicians there were especially skillful in division. If we recall that Roman numerals were used in those days, it will become clear why the division of millions of numbers was available only to bearded men who devoted their whole lives to this occupation. With the introduction of Arabic numerals, everything changed. Now ten-year-old schoolchildren using the simplest set of rules (algorithm) can divide both millions and billions of numbers. The amount of semantic information has remained the same, but the correct organization and convenient symbolic designation allow processing quickly and economically.

It is quite possible that the most complex concepts of modern mathematics, which today are accessible only to a small detachment of specialists, will be included in the curriculum of the secondary school in the 21st century, provided that an adequate form of organization and symbolization of the material is found. Then the most complex concepts and relationships will be written in the form of simple and accessible formulas, just as Maxwell's equations fit in two short lines if they are written in vector form.

A clear and concise symbolic designation not only facilitates the assimilation of the material by students. An economical recording of already known facts, a concise form of presentation of an already developed theory is a necessary prerequisite for further progress, one of the essential stages in the progress of science.

Transfer Ability

The ability to apply the skill acquired in solving one life problem to the solution of another is very essential, that is, the ability to separate the specific aspect of the problem from the non-specific, transferred to other areas. This is essentially the ability to develop general strategies. Here are the words of the Polish mathematician Stefan Banach: “A mathematician is one who knows how to find analogies between statements; a better mathematician is one who establishes analogies of proofs; a stronger mathematician is one who notices analogies of theories; but one can also imagine someone who sees between analogies analogy".

The search for analogies is the transfer of skill and the development of a general strategy.

The ability to grip

This word denotes the ability to combine perceived stimuli, as well as quickly link new information with the person’s previous baggage, without which the perceived information does not turn into knowledge, does not become part of the intellect.

Lateral thinking

Widely distributed attention increases the chances of solving a problem. The French psychologist Surier wrote: "To create, you need to think about." By analogy with lateral vision, the doctor de Bono called lateral thinking this ability to see the path to a solution using "extraneous" information.

Integrity of perception

This term denotes the ability to perceive reality as a whole, without splitting it (as opposed to the perception of information in small, independent portions). This ability was pointed out by I. P. Pavlov, who singled out two main types of higher cortical activity - artistic and mental: “Life clearly indicates two categories of people: artists and thinkers. There is a sharp difference between them. Some are artists in all their kinds: writers, musicians, painters, etc., capture reality as a whole, completely, completely, living reality, without any fragmentation, without separation.Others - thinkers - precisely crush it and thus, as it were, kill it, making it some kind of temporary skeleton, and then only gradually, as it were, reassemble its parts, and try to revive them in such a way, which they still do not completely succeed in.

The "thinker" as a type of higher cortical activity is by no means the ideal of a scientist. Of course, science needs meticulous collectors and registrars of facts, analysts and archivists of knowledge. But in the process of creative work, it is necessary to be able to break away from the logical consideration of facts in order to try to fit them into wider contexts. Without this, it is impossible to look at the problem with a fresh eye, to see the new in the long-familiar.

Memory readiness

Recently, there has been a tendency to speak disparagingly of memory, opposing it to thinking abilities. At the same time, examples of the creative achievements of people with poor memory are given. But the words "bad memory" are too vague. Memory includes the ability to remember, recognize, reproduce immediately, reproduce with a delay. When a person is looking for a solution to a problem, he can only rely on the information that he currently perceives and on the information that he can retrieve from memory. The advantage in the decision will be received not by the one whose erudition is richer, but by the one who quickly extracts the necessary information from memory. In such cases, one speaks of intelligence, but one of its components is the readiness of the memory to "give out" the necessary information at the right moment. This is one of the conditions for productive thinking.

Convergence of concepts

The next component of mental giftedness is the ease of associating and the remoteness of the associated concepts, the semantic distance between them. This ability is clearly manifested, for example, in the synthesis of witticisms.

Flexibility of thinking

By flexible thinking we mean the ability to abandon a compromised hypothesis in time. The word "on time" must be emphasized here. If you persist too long looking for a solution based on a tempting but false idea, then time will be lost. And too early rejection of the hypothesis can lead to the fact that the opportunity for a solution will be missed.

Spontaneous Flexibility

Spontaneous flexibility is the ability to quickly and easily switch from one class of phenomena to another, far in content. The absence of this ability is called inertia, stagnation or rigidity of thought.

Ease of generating ideas

Another component of creative giftedness is the ease of generating ideas. Moreover, it is not necessary that every idea be correct: “It can be considered an axiom that the number of ideas turns into quality. Logic and mathematics confirm that the more ideas a person generates, the more likely there will be good ideas among them. And the best ideas do not come to mind immediately" (A. Osborne).

Ability to evaluate actions

Extremely important is the ability to evaluate, to choose one of the many alternatives before it is tested. Evaluation actions are carried out not only upon completion of the work, but also many times in the course of it and serve as milestones on the path of creativity. That evaluative actions and abilities are to a certain extent independent of other types of abilities seems to have been first noticed by chess masters. Among the evaluation criteria, one should also mention the aesthetic criteria of elegance, grace, and simplicity.

fluency

Ease of formulation is necessary to put a new idea into words. It can also be expressed by another code (formula, graph), but the verbal-speech code is the most universal.

Ability to follow through

Here we have in mind not just composure and a strong-willed attitude to complete what has been started, but precisely the ability to refine the details, to "finish", to improve the original idea.

The listed types of creative abilities essentially do not differ from ordinary, mental ones. The concepts of "thinking" and "creativity" are often opposed. But such a position leads the experimental psychologist to a gross methodological error, forcing him to admit that for "creative personalities" there must be some separate psychological laws. In fact, the elementary faculties of the human mind are the same for everyone. They are only expressed differently - stronger or weaker, differently combined with each other and with other personality traits, which creates a unique creative style. There are almost no people in whom all the abilities listed above are strongly expressed. But the scientific team can be selected people who complement each other. The ancient Greek poet Archilochus from Paros, who is credited with the invention of the iambic, wrote in a well-known fable that "a fox knows many things, but a hedgehog knows one, but a big one." The scientific group, if it is not formed at random, should unite "foxes" and "hedgehogs", that is, people who are widely educated, but in some way not deep enough, and those who have delved into the subtleties of one topic, but are deprived of "panoramic thinking".

In this regard, the problem of psychological compatibility and leadership arises. Creative impotence or high efficiency of individual groups is often due to an unsuccessful or happy combination of different types of abilities. "Calculating" the contribution of each member of the group is very difficult, and hardly worth doing. In the most disadvantageous position are scientists who are endowed with the ability to evaluate and criticize, but do not give out their own ideas or do not know how to implement them. However, the role of such participants for the group is sometimes irreplaceable, although it is not striking, does not materialize into something tangible. This sometimes causes dramatic clashes.

The division of mental operations into divergent and convergent ones proposed by J. Guilford has become widespread. Convergent thinking is aimed at obtaining results that are uniquely determined by whether the memory will reproduce previously memorized information. Convergent thinking remains within the framework of formal logic and does not make those fantastic leaps that are needed to get something new. In the process of convergent thinking, a person does not realize all his mental capabilities.

Divergent thinking is associated with a departure from the usual, from the expected, it has sudden associative transitions, logical breaks, inexplicable, it would seem, switching thoughts.

Six types of abilities - vigilance in search of problems, fluency of speech, ease of generating ideas, flexibility, remoteness and originality of associations - give a divergent type of thinking that moves away from the known, from the familiar, from the expected. Divergent thinking is associated with generating a large number of unexpected alternatives.

There is a relationship between the level of development of divergent thinking and the characteristics of education. In the old days, creativity was left to chance, believing that everything is "from God" and that "talent will always find its way." The centuries-old experience of mankind does not confirm such views. Undoubtedly, hereditary factors put a limit to the creative achievements of a given person. But for the realization of innate inclinations, favorable conditions are needed.

creative climate

There was once a fierce debate about the origin of talent - whether it is a gift of nature, genetically determined, or a gift of circumstances. Then they found a compromise formula: both the genotype and the environment play a role. But in such a formulation, the problem is solved only qualitatively. It is necessary to find out what exactly is inherited and what is instilled by upbringing. The work of A. R. Luria, made back in the 1930s, is very interesting here. Studying identical twins, Luria showed that twins in preschool age give very similar results in the study of their memory. In other words, at this stage, memory is due to innate properties.

But a completely different picture is drawn if the same experiments are carried out on schoolchildren who memorize and acquire knowledge with the help of special techniques and means. Therefore, genetic conditioning here is reduced almost to nothing. If in the early years of life the development of higher mental abilities is mainly influenced by the conditions of home education, then subsequently the dominant role passes to the accepted system of education, that is, to secondary and higher education. Finally, creative potential is under the undoubted, albeit indirect, influence of the environment in a broader sense: it depends on the attitude towards innovation and tradition inherent in a given social system, on views on the role of authority and dogma.

The Hardy-Weinberg law on the genetic stability of populations is also applicable to the creative inclinations of people. The number of talents per million inhabitants should be constant. Why did entire constellations of talented musicians create in one era, artists in another, and physicists in a third? Obviously, the social prestige of the profession is of great importance, which, in turn, expresses the needs of society and the role that society attaches to this activity.

Where does confidence in calling come from? There are, of course, people (and there are usually few of them) with a distinct penchant for music, mathematics, and languages. There are much more simply capable people who would be equally successful in biology, medicine, and physics. This is where the social prestige of the profession comes into play, the respect accorded to it by public opinion and the press. And to a young person - consciously and subconsciously - it begins to seem that semiconductors, lasers or space rockets are what he was born for.

If society valued another profession as highly as the profession of a physicist, then a significant part of those who today are still striving for physics departments would rush to other educational institutions. And I would be sure that there is her calling.

In the last century, when Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch made their famous discoveries, the prestige of the biological sciences was very high. These sciences attracted the most gifted young people. It is possible that today's development of genetics and biochemistry will once again attract many capable people to biology departments, and they will sincerely believe that they were born to study biology.

Apparently, vocation is a concept more social than biological, and it is formed from the innate inclinations of the psyche, the conditions of education and the needs of society.

The influence of the social climate manifests itself in different ways. For a long time great importance was attached to a good scientific school. It is no coincidence that such luminaries as Virchow, Wundt, Helmholtz and Dubois-Reymond began their scientific career under the guidance of Johannes Müller. From the laboratory of E. Rutherford came a galaxy of Nobel laureates. Many of the largest Russian physicists are students of Academician A.F. Ioffe. It is unlikely that these patriarchs of science selected the most capable students. Rather, they were able to induce, awaken independence and talent in students. Grateful students are trying to restore the methods by which the awakening of talents was achieved. "Sensitivity to everything new", "genius intuition", "intolerance to epigonism", "encouragement of originality" - the meaning of expressions of this type remains undisclosed. What qualities the founders of brilliant scientific schools possess is not yet clear, and the problem of creating a creative climate remains one of the most urgent.

For example, the style of work in M. Delbrück's group, which studied bacteriophage and nucleic acids, was very peculiar. Delbrück did not encourage striving for high rigor and precision, believing that "moderate carelessness" increases the chances of obtaining interesting results. The motto of the group was: "Publish fewer articles, but every article must be of the highest quality." The leader of the group preferred theoretical thought to experiment and required colleagues to devote one or two days a week to reflections not directly related to experimental work. All employees were required to be uncompromising and ruthless at seminars and in general when evaluating ideas put forward. Frequent trips to the bosom of nature (not only on Sundays, but also on working days) contributed to the discussion of problems in the most relaxed atmosphere. Judging by the results, this style of work proved to be very effective.

Alex Osborne in the late 30s proposed "brainstorming" (brainstorming) as a group problem-solving method that activates creative thought.

Stimulation of creative activity is achieved through the observance of four rules.

1. The critic is excluded - you can express any thought without fear that it will be recognized as bad.

2. Free and even unbridled association is encouraged: the wilder the idea, the better.J

3. The number of proposed ideas should be as large as possible.

4. The expressed ideas are allowed to be combined in any way, as well as to propose modifications, that is, to "improve" the ideas put forward by other members of the group.

Initial enthusiasm for "brainstorming" has given way to cooling. Now they are trying to establish which tasks are best solved in this way, from which people to select groups, what are the optimal sizes of groups.

Determining the optimal group sizes is important because quantity does not always translate into quality. Two floor polishers can scrub floors twice as fast as one. But if a poet created his work in some time, this does not mean that two poets would have written it twice as fast. Scientists are more similar in this sense to poets than to polishers.

Brainstorming is more effective when combined with the synectic method of making the unfamiliar familiar and the familiar alien.

To turn the unfamiliar into the familiar is simply to study the problem and get used to it. After that, you need to do the reverse procedure - to make the familiar alien. This is achieved through four types of operations.

1. Personal assimilation - identification of oneself with some element of a problem situation, for example, with a moving part of a mechanism, a machine part.

2. Direct analogy or search for similar processes in other areas of knowledge. For example, an electrical engineer, solving a technical problem, is looking for analogies in hydraulics, in thermodynamics.

3. Symbolic analogy or the use of poetic images and metaphors to formulate the problem.

4. A fantastic analogy in which the problem is mentally solved "as in a fairy tale", that is, the fundamental laws of nature are ignored: you can arbitrarily turn on and off the earth's gravity, change the speed of light, etc.

"Diagnosis" of creative abilities

Creativity is judged by achievement. But potential is just an opportunity for success. It just needs to be measured.

Abroad, various tests for determining intelligence, creative abilities and the so-called projective tests, which reveal personality tendencies and its orientation, have become widespread.

In the Soviet school, these tests are not used. Giftedness and abilities of people are revealed in labor activity, in the process of accumulation and, most importantly, active application of skills and knowledge. The conclusion about giftedness is not made according to formal tests, but only after a comprehensive study of the personality.

Hasty judgments based on test results led to curious errors.

But it is impossible to unconditionally reject the test methodology. With a reasonable approach to assessing results, tests can serve a person well; in particular, many tests have been adopted by aviation and space medicine.

The use of tests for career guidance and selection is nothing new. A kind of psychological test is contained in one of the oldest legends. The commander Gideon, after a grueling march, led his troops to the source of Harod. Before a decisive battle, wanting to select the most persistent fighters, he ordered the weary soldiers to drink from the source. Some of them, getting on all fours and pressing their lips to the water, began to eagerly lap it. Others drank sedately, scooping up handfuls of water. These three hundred warriors were taken by Gideon into battle, making up a select detachment against the Midianites.

Any creative work requires different abilities. This is why no psychological test can in principle have absolute predictive power; tests are needed. In addition, to predict successful activity, it is necessary not only to understand the psychology of talent, but also to take into account the conditions in which the activity will take place. Therefore, when evaluating test results, one must exercise prudence and caution.

Using the concepts of "lightness", "flexibility" and "originality", assessing the degree of creative talent with their help, it is necessary to determine what lightness, flexibility and originality are, as they manifest themselves when performing the tasks listed above. Ease is manifested in the speed of completing the task and is taken into account by counting the number of answers in the allotted time period.

Flexibility - the number of switches from one class of objects to others. To the question "How many uses can you think of for a tin can?" the subject names the pot and the cup. When assessing lightness, these are two different answers. But both the saucepan and the cup are vessels into which liquid is poured. This means that responses are counted as one when evaluating flexibility, since there is no switching from one object class to another.

Originality is assessed by the frequency of this answer in a homogeneous group (students of one institute, students of a given school). If 15% of the subjects give the same answer, then such an answer is scored as zero. If less than 1% of the subjects give this answer, then its originality is estimated at 4 points (the highest score). If from 1 to 2% of the subjects offered the same answer, then its originality is estimated at 3 points, etc.

In general, the assessment of test results is not strict enough - the experimenter's arbitrariness can be allowed here.

In addition, the true predictive value of tests remains unclear. Will those students who receive the highest score actually become creative workers (and if so, how effective)? To answer this question, you need to wait several decades, all the while observing the subjects. Therefore, the use of all these methods is of interest so far mainly for psychologists. But in the process of working and analyzing tests, psychologists gain practice and experience that will help them quickly and correctly evaluate new ideas and proposals related to identifying the creative abilities of an individual.

In the meantime, there is no well-founded selection methodology, you either have to act randomly or use empirical methods, which are forced to resort to team leaders interested in selecting creatively gifted employees.

A prominent engineer who ran a large electronics research lab for many years recommends eight tricks to help select young talent. Here is some of them.

Ask the visitor if he considers himself creatively gifted. People, as a rule, soberly assess themselves in this regard. In addition, they are not interested in deception, realizing how risky it is for a mediocre person to take a position that requires creative thinking (for example, the position of a leading engineer). The disadvantage of this technique is that many people themselves are not aware of their creative possibilities.

Find out the number of patented inventions and original articles of the applicant (review articles and reports on ongoing experiments do not count).

If the new applicant is young and does not yet have his own works, it is necessary to find out to what extent his thinking is unconventional. Let him remember those experiments and laboratory work that occupied him when he was a student and impressed him with their unusualness and beauty. From his story it will be possible to judge whether he prefers solving problems to simply memorizing facts. At the same time, it must be taken into account that a gifted person is inclined to talk about poorly studied and obscure aspects of the subject, in contrast to an ungifted person, who speaks only about what is firmly known.

It is necessary to check how much a person uses his visual imagination. Gifted people, especially in the field of technology, make extensive use of visual images and representations in the process of thinking.

Touch on some professional problem in a conversation. Another applicant willingly cites the opinions of high-ranking officials, refers to sources, but does not seek to express his own opinion. Such a person may have a high intelligence quotient (IQ), but it is very unlikely that he has developed creative abilities.

Offer the newcomer a specific task. For example, graduates of physics departments received the following task: a bullet flies out of a rifle barrel; measure the speed with which it passes the first 5 m (the accuracy of the solution is 0.1%). Physicists know many phenomena that can be applied in this case, but not everyone knows how to apply their knowledge. Some believe that it is necessary to turn to the reference literature and read there how such measurements are carried out. Others try to think for themselves, suggest something like a stopwatch that needs to be stopped at the right moment. Although every physicist is familiar with the "decimal counter".

Creatively gifted people usually come up with a lot of ideas, including funny ones, jokes, funny ones. Gradually, the circle of conjectures narrows and remains a few practical, although not fully developed. It is characteristic that sometimes, at the end of the conversation, the carried away visitors forget about the direct purpose of the visit and promise to come up with something else. Intellectually bold, these people are not afraid to make a suggestion, even if it is not quite suitable for a solution. And the quantity of ideas eventually turns into quality. An uncreative person will only come up with an idea if he is absolutely sure of it.

The listed selection methods justify themselves in practice, but it would be interesting to combine these empirical methods with psychological testing, which includes testing a wide variety of creative abilities.

In conclusion, Stephen Leacock's opinion on psychological tests, which he expressed in the short story "The Test":

“John Smith had been serving military service for some time, but did not show either quick wit or initiative. At first he was sent to the infantry, but it turned out that he was too stupid for this kind of troops. They tried the cavalry, but there he proved himself even worse. However, since Smith was a strong, healthy guy, they could not dismiss him from the army at all.The only thing left was to transfer him to another unit.

And so John Smith reported his arrival to the new boss.

Well, John, - he said, - the main thing in military service is to always be smart and enterprising. In other words, intelligence. Understood?

Yes, sir.

Now listen to me carefully: I'll give you a test, I'll give you a test. Do you think you have intelligence?

Who knows! - drawled, shifting from foot to foot, John.

Now we'll see. Tell me what it is: it has two soles, two heels and 24 lace holes.

John Smith thought hard for about three minutes. Small drops of cold sweat broke out on his forehead.

I don't know, sir, he finally said.

Here's an eccentric, - the officer grinned. - It's one pair of boots! But let's continue. Tell me what it is: it has four soles, four heels and 48 lace holes.

Five minutes later, sweating from the tension, John repeated:

I don't know sir...

M-mda-ah ... It's two pairs of shoes! Well, let's try the last question. What has six legs, two horns, and flies and buzzes in May? If you don't answer, I don't know what to do with you.

Without hesitation, John Smith blurted out:

So that's three pairs of boots, sir!"

Are there limits to creativity and how healthy can we become? Scientists explore higher states of consciousness - Higher Consciousness.

TM technique

The TM technique: why is it attributed to doctors, practiced in high offices, approved by the clergy of all religions, and why is it enjoyed by millions of people?

What are the limits of human creativity and intelligence, how healthy can we become, and how long can we live?

“Science already has a fairly complete understanding of the pathology of disease, how the mind and body succumb to disease,” says world-renowned physiologist Dr. Robert Keith Wallace. “Now, at last, we have reached a clear scientific understanding of the other extreme of the range of human potential, of how healthy the body can become and how creative and developed the mind can be.”

Throughout history, there have been geniuses, scientists and artists whose creative and mental abilities far exceeded what was considered ordinary.

“What allows such people to use more of their creative potential compared to other people?” asks Dr. Wallace. “Maybe this is what a person should be born with? Or can everyone develop their full creative potential?”

Dr. Wallace is working at the forefront of a new field of consciousness development research in collaboration with leading scientists from universities around the world who are studying the TM technique to better understand the potential of the mind and body. Such an endeavor, says Wallace, "holds the key to solving critical social and economic problems, and will promote prosperity and progress as we approach the 21st century."

As Dr. Wallace describes, TM is "a simple, natural technique for developing the full potential of the mind and body." It is attributed by doctors, practiced in high offices, approved by the clergy, and millions of people have been trained in it. Over 30 years of scientific research on this technique has provided new insights into the evolution of human consciousness, says Dr. Wallace.

Transcendental Consciousness

Research shows that the TM technique generates a fourth state of consciousness, which has been called "pure consciousness" or "Transcendental Consciousness." Subjectively, this is perceived as a calm state of pure inner wakefulness, a state in which consciousness is alone with itself. Objectively, studies show that the body reaches a deep state of rest and that the brain and nervous system operate in a mode unlike that of waking, dreaming, or deep sleep.”

Dr. Wallace emphasizes that the TM technique does not simply induce a general state of rest, or an altered state, like hypnosis: instead, it results in a unique and completely natural mode of neurophysiology functioning.

Dr. Wallace and fellow researcher Fred Travis, Ph.D., cite excerpts from studies that show dramatic changes in heart rate, brain wave coherence, breathing rate, and skin resistance, indicative of "very specific parameters" of a state of pure awareness.

Research by Russian neuroscientist Professor Nikolai Nikolayevich Lyubimov, director of the Neurocybernetics Laboratory of the Institute of the Brain at the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow, shows that the TM technique revitalizes what Lyubimov calls "hidden reserves of the brain", areas that are not usually used in such states of consciousness, like wakefulness, deep sleep, and dreaming.

Wallace says that the development of consciousness does not stop with the experience of pure consciousness. "Hundreds of studies on the effect of the TM technique on activity testify to the significant development of the mental and physical potential of a person."

The results show marked improvements in health, memory, intelligence, creativity, perception, responsiveness, self-actualization, and reversal of the aging process. Wallace says that research into the impact of the TM technique on everyday life provides clear physiological and psychological indications of higher states of consciousness.

“According to the ancient Vedic texts, there are seven states of consciousness, which include the well-known states of wakefulness, deep sleep and dream sleep. The fourth state of consciousness, pure consciousness, can be systematically experienced during TM practice,” says Dr. Wallace.

Further, the Vedic texts describe the fifth state of consciousness - "Cosmic Consciousness" - as it includes wakefulness, deep sleep and dream sleep along with deep rest and calm awakening of pure consciousness. The texts also describe the sixth state of consciousness, the subtle cosmic consciousness, and the seventh state of consciousness, "Unity Consciousness" - the full realization of the limitless potential of each person.

As Dr. Wallace says, each of these higher states of consciousness has its own special state of neurophysiology.

“As researchers, we are working on the greatest frontier of science - exploring the unfolding of the full potential of man, as it manifests itself in the work of his physiology, his brain and his behavior. We find quantitative indicators of a new way of functioning of the nervous system. And it's so exciting to be able to trace this great leap forward in human development,” says Dr. Wallace.