Abraham Maslow on Creativity

"It seems to me terribly impressive, as I read the creativeness literature, that the relationship with psychiatric healthy or psychological health is so crucial, so profound, so terribly important, and so obvious, and yet it is not used as a foundation on which to build."

"It is my very powerful conviction that the problem of creativeness is the problem of the creative person (rather than of creative products, creative behaviors, etc.)"

"If you think of the person, the creative person, as being the essence of the problem, then what you are confronted with is the whole problem of transformation of human nature, the transformation of the character, the full development of the whole person."

"The best thing to do is to improve the general systemic health. In the same way general creativeness, holistically conceived, emanates from the whole system, generally improved." "Psychotherapy, in my experience, can be counted on to enhance the creativity of a person without your ever trying to or without your ever mentioning the word."

"Psychotherapy may normally expected to release creativeness which did not appear before the psychotherapy took place."

Excerpts are from chapter 5 (A Holistic Approach to Creativity) of "The Farther Reaches of Human Nature," by Abraham Maslow.

For a Classical Adlerian perspective, also see psychotherapy stages 10-12 at http://go.ourworld.nu/hstein/stages2.htm .

Replies:

Re: Abraham Maslow on Creativity, by Harry Stark, 9/30/99

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