Psychoticism versus Openness
This emphasis on
Destiny stresses that the genius has an unusual life, compared with normal
people. But what does the genius get out of his unusual life?
Usually, he will simply enjoy
being creative; and, indeed, being-creative will be a significant part of his
sense of self, consequently he will be a noticeably different kind of person
from the one whom we would see as ‘conventional.’
Hans Eysenck regarded creativity
as an aspect of the Psychoticism trait – indicating a particular way of
thinking and relating to the world which incorporated creativity as positive,
and psychotic and psychopathic traits as negative, aspects of this trait.
Working more recently, British
psychologist Daniel Nettle’s review of the psychological literature has shown
that certain personality traits – in particular Openness-Intellect and
Neuroticism – are associated with being creative, quite independent of being a
highly successful creative – and indeed most personality psychologists nowadays
regard Openness as the characteristic trait of a creative person.[1]
So which is the best way of
conceptualizing the personality of a creative person? Is it the eccentricity
and originality and semi-craziness of Psychoticism, or the novelty-generation;
and clever, fashionable fertility of Openness?
This is a topic to which we will
return, but in brief we favour the older concept of Psychoticism as a better
description of creativity – and we have derived the Endogenous personality from
Eysenck’s analysis of the genius. However, we have departed from Eysenck by
emphasizing that the high Endogenicity variable is rooted in group
adaptiveness, and not in individual pathology. Also, we focus on a brain
specialized by an innate inner-ness of
orientation as the basis of the personality trait cluster; whereas Eysenck
explained higher Psychoticism in terms of a broader field of associations.
Our reason for our preference and
emphasis for rejecting the currently dominant explanation of creativity by
Openness and our advocacy of a development of the older idea of Psychoticism;
is that Openness and Psychoticism (Endogenous personality) are at opposite ends
of the General Factor Personality dimension: Openness is pro-social and
Psychoticism/ Endogenous is a-social.
In other words, Openness type
creativity is a response from a conscientious and empathic person to social
demands or needs; while Psychoticism/ Endogenous creativity comes from the
inner and innate drive of someone substantially indifferent to current societal
self-awareness, knowledge and roles.
As such, we would suggest that
‘creative’ is not what you ‘do’ but what you ‘are.’
