Speaker 1: Welcome to the Psychology Podcast, where we give you insights
Speaker 1: into the mind, brained behavior and creativity. I'm doctor Scott
Speaker 1: Barry Kaufman, and in each episode I have a conversation
Speaker 1: with a guest who will stimulate your mind and give
Speaker 1: you a greater understanding of yourself, others, and the world
Speaker 1: to live in. Hopefully we'll also provide a glimpse into
Speaker 1: human possibility. Thanks for listening and enjoy the podcast today.
Speaker 1: It's great to have Ruth Richards on the podcast. Doctor
Speaker 1: Richards is a psychologist, psychiatrist, professor at Sabrook University, and
Speaker 1: Fellow of the American Psychological Association. She has published numerous articles, edited,
Speaker 1: written three previous books in Everyday Creativity, and received the
Speaker 1: Rudolph Arnheim Award for Outstanding Lifetime Achievement from Division ten
Speaker 1: of the American Psychological Association. Doctor Richards sees dynamic creative
Speaker 1: living as central to individuals and cultures and a new worldview.
Speaker 1: Her latest book is called Everyday Creativity and the Healthy Mind,
Speaker 1: Dynamic New Paths for Self and society. Ruth, what an
Speaker 1: honor and delight to have you on the Psychology Podcast. Well,
Speaker 1: it is a delight and an honor and a surprise
Speaker 1: because I thought we were doing this in a week,
Speaker 1: but you will get the real story this way. Yes,
Speaker 1: and I'm really happy to be on this because I
Speaker 1: think you're doing some wonderful topics that are all for
Speaker 1: really toward a better world and better understanding of each other. Well,
Speaker 1: that's thank you for that, really kind I mean, you're
Speaker 1: a legend. So a lot of my work was inspired
Speaker 1: by I mean a long time ago. I mean, do
Speaker 1: you remember like a very young version of me at
Speaker 1: the American Psychological Association conferences and you supporting me in
Speaker 1: like maybe two thousand and five. Yes, And for your listeners,
Speaker 1: Scott was always outside of the box. He was representative
Speaker 1: to Division ten Creativity at the APA, and he was
Speaker 1: there active and outspoken, but it always in a very
Speaker 1: nice and engaging way. So yeah, I thought i'd support
Speaker 1: this nice guy. Oh thanks, Ruth and talented. Well that's
Speaker 1: very kind of you to say. Yeah. So I'm really
Speaker 1: excited to talk to you. And I wanted to ask
Speaker 1: you first of all, because you published this book Congratulations.
Speaker 1: In the book, how do you define the term everyday creativity? Okay,
Speaker 1: you know what it is, your listeners know what it is,
Speaker 1: but often people haven't named it. So that's really one
Speaker 1: of the most important things is to see our strengths
Speaker 1: rather than to take them for granted. I haven't answered
Speaker 1: you yet, Like a fish swimming in water who isn't
Speaker 1: aware of what water is. So here we are swimming
Speaker 1: in our originality of everyday life, swimming in our and
Speaker 1: so now we're talking about the creative person, which is everyone.
Speaker 1: It's part of our evolutionary path. We are talking about
Speaker 1: our ability to intuit, to shift, to have new ideas,
Speaker 1: to try something. This presupposes that we're aware and conscious,
Speaker 1: which is a whole other issue, that we can try
Speaker 1: things in new ways. We humans are you know Theodosius
Speaker 1: dob Shansky. It was an evolutionary biologist who believed that
Speaker 1: humans have a phenotypic plasticity. There's a term that is
Speaker 1: really key to what we are or can be all
Speaker 1: add on this earth. That is that we can adapt
Speaker 1: to so many different situations from you know, from the
Speaker 1: frigid poles to the deserts, to from our crazy world
Speaker 1: today to what we hope it'll look like in a year.
Speaker 1: And this is what we can do by being aware
Speaker 1: of it and by our creative minds, being aware of
Speaker 1: potential alternatives, and having the meta awareness to realize that
Speaker 1: we can change what we do to get from here
Speaker 1: to there. There's a big hope creativity. Every day creativity
Speaker 1: is our originality of everyday life. Hey, I've just given
Speaker 1: you something a little more high flutin. But it is
Speaker 1: how we get through the day. It keeps us alive.
Speaker 1: It helps us get to work or to take a
Speaker 1: new route if we're bored. It very much. Is useful
Speaker 1: in raising kids, noking. It is useful in making a
Speaker 1: wonderful meal, and in decorating a home, in finding new
Speaker 1: reasons to be alive and new paths. Something interesting to
Speaker 1: send your heart. I just send your heart amoticon h
Speaker 1: So for your listeners. This heart has now become a
Speaker 1: re forcer. And I'm wondering why he didn't give me
Speaker 1: more sooner. So I'm going to forget that this is important.
Speaker 1: Oh boy, well it was, Yes, I mean slip of
Speaker 1: the finger, but it was. I stand by it. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: answer your question in a little more like Often we're
Speaker 1: not like that, right, we are just doing our thing.
Speaker 1: We are stressed, we're rushing, we're trying to finish the
Speaker 1: things we said we would do. We are doing just
Speaker 1: what we did yesterday. So we're programmed, we're mindless, and
Speaker 1: so part of the challenge here is to be aware
Speaker 1: of that and to get beyond it. Do we really
Speaker 1: want to do that? Or find a new way to
Speaker 1: live that's worth the heart? I love it, It is
Speaker 1: worth the heart. Yes, but I don't want to see
Speaker 1: any more heart. Thank you for that. Oh, no problem,
Speaker 1: would you prefer? Yeah? Oh that's cute. Okay, so laughing
Speaker 1: crying em, I'll show you how to do it. I'll
Speaker 1: say how to do it. Yes, And for your listener,
Speaker 1: that was a laughing, crying it couldn't be better kind
Speaker 1: of icon. Yes. So this is such a contrast from
Speaker 1: the way a lot of people tend to talk about
Speaker 1: creativity in the self help space as like high achievement,
Speaker 1: you know, like high creative achievement, and particularly in like
Speaker 1: the arts or something. You know, so you talk about quote,
Speaker 1: universal creative potential and is this something that's not necessarily
Speaker 1: defined by achievement in a specific field. Well, universal creative potential.
Speaker 1: It's your term, mind, but it's your term. It could
Speaker 1: be defined by by anything. So if we're being original.
Speaker 1: It is about doing something in a new way, in
Speaker 1: a different way, or seeing the world differently, understanding it
Speaker 1: can be a thing, this is our creative product. It
Speaker 1: can be some idea, It can be way we behave.
Speaker 1: It can be our relationships with each other, and it
Speaker 1: can be work in the arts, and it can be
Speaker 1: scientific discovery. So one misunderstanding is to think it can't
Speaker 1: be that that everyday creativity is more about the kind
Speaker 1: of stuff that's leftover when you've taken out the arts
Speaker 1: and sciences. Now it's everything. It's about how we live.
Speaker 1: And more worrisome are the people who say I can't
Speaker 1: draw a picture, I can't be creative. For them, that's it.
Speaker 1: They're done. It's all about doing a portrait, which by
Speaker 1: the way, might be more true to life with a camera,
Speaker 1: but about certain art skills. And because they can't do that,
Speaker 1: creativity is not for them. So this is very sad
Speaker 1: because for them, you know, we're talking about being biased
Speaker 1: about what we see is creative or not. They may
Speaker 1: not even be looking for any of the other examples
Speaker 1: I just gave, or it could be anything. So we
Speaker 1: and by we here I'm including my colleague Dennis Kinney
Speaker 1: at Harvard Medical School in McClain Hospital where we did
Speaker 1: a lot of this work, and other people who helped us,
Speaker 1: especially in the beginning Marie Bennet and Anne Merzille, and
Speaker 1: then we had collaborators in Denmark as we were able
Speaker 1: to use Danish participants. But we developed something called the
Speaker 1: Lifetime Creativity Scales, which I won't go into in detail,
Speaker 1: but there's a lot that can be found out about
Speaker 1: it if people are interested, because we were looking at
Speaker 1: what people really did in their lives that we would
Speaker 1: consider unusual, original and meaningful, not useful. That's the favorite
Speaker 1: is original and useful, but you bring it useful and
Speaker 1: suddenly you're anchored in the past. What's the need we
Speaker 1: had yesterday or what is it that we think needs
Speaker 1: to be done today rather than oh, something that may
Speaker 1: not prove it's worth for another week or month, you know,
Speaker 1: or we may be blown away by something that's kind
Speaker 1: of outrageous that doesn't really have the staying power of
Speaker 1: something that is truly creative to change lives. So anyway,
Speaker 1: we don't do that. We just look for what's new
Speaker 1: and what's meaningful. As per the Creativity Giant. Really Frank Baron,
Speaker 1: who's one of my heroes no longer with us, who
Speaker 1: defined it that way. So that's it. Now. It doesn't
Speaker 1: really matter what you do. It's more about how you
Speaker 1: do it. And here we developed and validated with great effort.
Speaker 1: In fact, Daniel Golman even wrote about our scales for
Speaker 1: The New York Times, these ways of assessing quality and
Speaker 1: quantity of creative work over one's adult lifetime. Not quite
Speaker 1: because we were looking I'm going to get too much
Speaker 1: into these scales here, but we were looking for for
Speaker 1: the peak creativity in major enterprises because some people have
Speaker 1: bad years, right, They for years don't do well, and
Speaker 1: suddenly they're doing something well here being what you'd give
Speaker 1: a heart for me, something that could really affect lives,
Speaker 1: but are suddenly on a real role and are doing
Speaker 1: something wonderful. So I'm going to give art examples so
Speaker 1: people don't think it's not about the art. So they've
Speaker 1: written a wonderful book. You wrote a wonderful book with
Speaker 1: Carolyn Gregoire, so you get a heart and a star
Speaker 1: and Riven, okay, you've done other books. But for some
Speaker 1: people it may be years and then suddenly something works
Speaker 1: for them. It may have to do with the home
Speaker 1: they designed and built for themselves. You know, there's no
Speaker 1: end to the examples. So what we like to say
Speaker 1: is we think it's very important to look first of all,
Speaker 1: not to miss this, because then we are not honoring ourselves,
Speaker 1: our potential, our evolutionary potential. Really, what's going to keep
Speaker 1: us alive when we're being pursued or we're lost. It's
Speaker 1: going to be our creative smarts. So we're not honoring that,
Speaker 1: and we are not having the confidence or the ability
Speaker 1: to develop this creative potential further if we don't see it.
Speaker 1: But now let's say we do. We are seeing all
Speaker 1: of these ways that people can do things differently, and
Speaker 1: that ends up being really remarkable. Like an auto mechanic
Speaker 1: we studied who invented his own tools. Now, he probably
Speaker 1: didn't repair cars any differently than someone else who knows
Speaker 1: but well, and yet he had his own process or
Speaker 1: way of doing it. So his creativity was both in
Speaker 1: these product kind of tools and in the process of
Speaker 1: how he worked. But who was looking for that? Maybe
Speaker 1: if you're looking for your artistic canvas, So here was
Speaker 1: this guy. If we turn the camera around, let's look
Speaker 1: at the other there's some people say the four p's
Speaker 1: of creativity, so here they are the product is sometimes
Speaker 1: that's really what people care about. We want this thing?
Speaker 1: How do we make it better? How do we make
Speaker 1: ourselves better at coming up with creative ideas? Let's look
Speaker 1: now at what happens to the creative person, who might
Speaker 1: be a more important product. What is our second P
Speaker 1: creative process? Third P? As a creative person? What are
Speaker 1: some of the ongoing traits? Are the ways we are
Speaker 1: like which I know you're really interested in too. And
Speaker 1: I even made one of your comments into a trait.
Speaker 1: We can come back to that. Oh yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: think that was faith and intuition. Oh yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, that's that's really got to be a trait,
Speaker 1: both being able to do it and caring and knowing.
Speaker 1: This is so in the new book, which we can
Speaker 1: say the name of again, Everyday Creativity and the Healthy Mind,
Speaker 1: buy it by it, hooray And yeah actually Amazon has
Speaker 1: been really discounting it, which is wonderful because because the
Speaker 1: number of people have been buying it and they've dropped
Speaker 1: the price to encourage more. So it's still more expensive
Speaker 1: than i'd like, but less than half as expensive as
Speaker 1: it originally was. So turn the camera around. Getting we're
Speaker 1: demonstrating here associated thinking in all directions, but we're going
Speaker 1: to turn the camera back and look at the creative person.
Speaker 1: So now I'm looking at you. What in your space station? Here?
Speaker 1: It's very impressive. Thanks, Oh your audio equipment? Hey what folks?
Speaker 1: You got to see this? They don't get behind the scenes.
Speaker 1: Maybe we'll eventually, I'll start putting the videos on YouTube. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's at least do a screenshot of this, got it? Okay,
Speaker 1: but stay away from the heart emoticon. Okay, I just
Speaker 1: started chewing an orange slice. But I'll do my best here.
Speaker 1: If we say, one, what does this creative person like,
Speaker 1: or at least during the times that say originality is flowing,
Speaker 1: and then maybe look at some of the things that
Speaker 1: last longer, what would kind of keep this going over
Speaker 1: the days and weeks so that someone is really living
Speaker 1: in a different way. We find, and you have found too,
Speaker 1: that there are some very clear patterns, and some of
Speaker 1: those for us are encouraging also because they suggest these
Speaker 1: may be better ways of living. For example, we are
Speaker 1: talking about someone who's more open to what's going on,
Speaker 1: who's more aware and mindfully aware, at least more than
Speaker 1: than many people are, or that we might be at
Speaker 1: other times. Who is kind of richly able to see alternatives,
Speaker 1: to have vision, to really to stand on the borders
Speaker 1: of infinity and looking at yeah, all the other ways
Speaker 1: things could be. This is big as that is well,
Speaker 1: I don't want to package it's divergent thinking, but it
Speaker 1: would have a bit of that in there, because this
Speaker 1: is going to use all the capacities of our minds
Speaker 1: to be able, and our memories and our imaginations of
Speaker 1: worlds we haven't seen to be able to come up
Speaker 1: with these alternatives, and certainly includes divergent thinking. It might
Speaker 1: even get into our collective unconscious, but we won't go there.
Speaker 1: Oh boy, yeah, collect what does it mean to be visionary?
Speaker 1: But we're talking about a person. I'm looking at you,
Speaker 1: and I'm saying, here is someone also who, in being open,
Speaker 1: is also less defensive, right, they are more beyond eco issues?
Speaker 1: Who am I? How did that sound? Did I get
Speaker 1: a heart? Right? Yes? And or a laughing, crying person
Speaker 1: who is into it, involved in this other world, who
Speaker 1: is balancing many things. So this is maybe one way
Speaker 1: of going beyond divergent thinking is that you can push
Speaker 1: another book here, a book that's almost done that I'm
Speaker 1: co editing with David Scholberg and Shan Geisinger for Oxford
Speaker 1: University Press is called nonlinear Psychology. Are you afraid? Non
Speaker 1: linear psychology? What does that mean? Yeah? What's that mean?
Speaker 1: That's scary Keys to chaos and creativity in mind and nature,
Speaker 1: and it's attitude and it's cool. And it has a
Speaker 1: couple of really good interviews and chapters by people who
Speaker 1: are pretty pretty good writers and who are also experts
Speaker 1: in chaos and complexity, including people like Ran Eisler, David Loy,
Speaker 1: Stanley Kripner, Alan Colmes, David and Shan and me and
Speaker 1: others Toby Zelsner, who are showing us that we have
Speaker 1: the wrong worldview, not you and me, right, that many
Speaker 1: too many of us, in including in intro psychology, are
Speaker 1: looking at kind of simple models, linear models. If you
Speaker 1: change ab changes, yeah, it may, but twenty other things
Speaker 1: may be important to understand it. Who are looking at
Speaker 1: direct relationships. If I double A, if I double the force,
Speaker 1: then the velocity is going to be twice as great.
Speaker 1: Do you have a physics degree, don't you yeah, I
Speaker 1: do with distinction, and thank you for mentioning that, because
Speaker 1: I was the only woman to graduate in my classes
Speaker 1: in Stanford in physics. So there are also ender issues
Speaker 1: and many other things we could talk about here around
Speaker 1: the traits of the creative person, but the main one
Speaker 1: that comes up here, as you know, is that highly
Speaker 1: creative people tend to be less boxed in by gender
Speaker 1: stereotypes or any other kind. Right, that's one of the
Speaker 1: very positive also in my book, probably your book, right,
Speaker 1: one of the more positive features to look at toward
Speaker 1: a better future. Yeah. Yeah, So back to the nonlinearity
Speaker 1: is important here because the creative person I'm looking at,
Speaker 1: namely you, are also able to balance many factors and
Speaker 1: this is in a nonlinear way. What's that mean? Just
Speaker 1: one example, Hey, if we take test anxiety, you know
Speaker 1: you may know you know that if you have a
Speaker 1: lot of it, that's horrible and you may not be
Speaker 1: able to do well. If you don't have any kind
Speaker 1: of concern to begin with about some test you're taking,
Speaker 1: you may not even take it. So it's good to
Speaker 1: have a little bit of being on the edge. And
Speaker 1: if and this fits an inverted U curve, so you're
Speaker 1: looking for the optimum, I would say, and this is
Speaker 1: a only one nonlinear kind of thing. We can talk
Speaker 1: about the aha moment totally different. But if you are, say,
Speaker 1: going into your quote unquote unconscious, if you're bringing up
Speaker 1: things that aren't usually at the top of your mind
Speaker 1: or perhaps you never think about, you know, there you
Speaker 1: hear stuff about creativity and being mentally ill, and they're
Speaker 1: really there is something in a relationship between certain kinds
Speaker 1: of family history, bipolar or schizophrenic spectrum, and creativity. But
Speaker 1: it is not about illness. It's about health, and the
Speaker 1: health part has to do with the right balance of
Speaker 1: being able to access these other parts of one's inner wisdom.
Speaker 1: We don't have to go the collective unconscious, but the
Speaker 1: larger part of ourselves which is not visible, which we're
Speaker 1: not aware of at any moment, but also having the
Speaker 1: executive controls if you like, or regression in the service
Speaker 1: of the ego, if you like, but having the balancing
Speaker 1: factor to use it adaptively. So that's simplifying it. But
Speaker 1: we're still at the top of this inverted you. You know,
Speaker 1: we're maybe writing a play and we're and we're letting
Speaker 1: it kind of run for a while and see what
Speaker 1: will happen without using those executive controls. But they're there,
Speaker 1: and I'm kind of seeing what's going to happen with
Speaker 1: this character. But we know when to come in and
Speaker 1: change the prop or have something else happened. I just
Speaker 1: thought to kill a mockingbird, which was brilliant picturing some
Speaker 1: of that happening as I do it, and how that
Speaker 1: play was changed from the book. So back to the person.
Speaker 1: Now we have kind of being able to play the
Speaker 1: symphony of mind. So it's not like I'm not saying
Speaker 1: that isn't the virgin thinking. It's many kinds into virgin thinking,
Speaker 1: coming up with many answers to one question, but it's
Speaker 1: also coming up with many questions and knowing when to
Speaker 1: bring other things in and knowing, you know, kind of
Speaker 1: keeping it under control while being loose enough not to
Speaker 1: miss too much. Well, let me try to get this
Speaker 1: podcast chat under control for a second year almost over,
Speaker 1: and there are other things to say. There's so many things,
Speaker 1: so many things that talk to you about you really
Speaker 1: are a legend. You met how many people you've met?
Speaker 1: So many people you met Frank barn Right, you knew him,
Speaker 1: Oh I knew him? I didn't know him that well,
Speaker 1: but I knew him and and he was And let's
Speaker 1: let's do Ravana Helston two while we're doing Frank Barron. Yeah,
Speaker 1: tell me all all the people that, all the legend
Speaker 1: other legends in the field that you met in the sixties.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to show you off the legends. But
Speaker 1: but those two, but those two are important because they
Speaker 1: were at UC Berkeley, where I was as well, with
Speaker 1: the Institute for Personal Assessment and Research, which later was
Speaker 1: your What year were you there? What years? I'm not
Speaker 1: going to say, but you never met like you never
Speaker 1: met Abraham Maslow, right, I never did. I was on
Speaker 1: the wrong coast for that. He was at Brandeis. But
Speaker 1: I certainly knew Mike Aaronswill Mike Aaron's yesistic psychologist who
Speaker 1: worked with Maslow and started maybe the third humanistic school.
Speaker 1: What about uh, Carl Rodgers when I I snuck up
Speaker 1: when I was an undergraduate with another undergraduate at Stanford. Yeah,
Speaker 1: to sneak in to a talk. Carl Rodgers was not
Speaker 1: open to students. That's when you're a physics major. Yeah, yeah, whoa,
Speaker 1: that's okay, he makee me do it. No, So yes,
Speaker 1: I don't want to lose this theme about the creative person.
Speaker 1: So let's let's go back to that, just to stomaize, Okay,
Speaker 1: summarize it quickly, Okay, that we are talking about being open, aware, flexible,
Speaker 1: and kind of richly able to see alternatives while having
Speaker 1: things like being less defensive, being if in some cases
Speaker 1: if oriented that way, more aware of others than connected
Speaker 1: to others, and what's happening in the world. Do you
Speaker 1: think that could make for a better person. We think yes,
Speaker 1: all else being equal, because of course there are many
Speaker 1: malevolent uses of creativity, and that if we had you know,
Speaker 1: even if each person were like two percent more creative,
Speaker 1: which is to say, more aware of the creativity they're
Speaker 1: already doing and building on that, it could be a
Speaker 1: different kind of world with different norms and more awareness,
Speaker 1: more mindfulness, more caring. So that's an important point I
Speaker 1: don't want to lose. Okay, No, that's a great point. No,
Speaker 1: it's really great. And you brought together a lot of questions.
Speaker 1: I was going to ask all in one sentence. But then,
Speaker 1: you know, the elephant in the room is the link
Speaker 1: between creativity and mental illness. You know the research that
Speaker 1: you've pioneered and then has been replicated, suggests that if
Speaker 1: you know you're related to someone with fullblow mental illness,
Speaker 1: you can kind of get a watered down version of
Speaker 1: schizophrenia that actually could be conducive to creativity, right, Schizotippy, Well,
Speaker 1: the so called creative advantage, we're back to the non
Speaker 1: linearity and the inverted you. It can also be a
Speaker 1: person with a full blown illness, but not necessarily when
Speaker 1: they're having the worst time. And there is every and
Speaker 1: there's something that does run in families we don't even know.
Speaker 1: That isn't the main thing. The reason evolution hasn't selected
Speaker 1: out for a couple of these major illnesses, and the
Speaker 1: so called creative advantage is more subtle, is in better
Speaker 1: functioning people. That it's also tends to be somewhat different
Speaker 1: between bipolar and schizophrenia. But there's something there, and it's
Speaker 1: something that really tells us help this person get treatment
Speaker 1: there In hell, often i'm a psychiatrist and psychologist. They
Speaker 1: are suffering. They think, maybe, as some do, that they
Speaker 1: will be more creative the sicker. They are wrong, and
Speaker 1: they cannot only end up feeling much better and better
Speaker 1: about themselves. But can begin to make more creative contributions
Speaker 1: which can help all of us. So it's very important
Speaker 1: to see this. We have done this research with everyday
Speaker 1: creativity again Dennis Kinney and others, using the lifetime creativity scales,
Speaker 1: so not some paper and pencil tests or whatever, but
Speaker 1: what people really do and have done, and looking using
Speaker 1: with our Danish collaborators, really complete families, so we could
Speaker 1: look at who is really related to whom, and we
Speaker 1: could look at various levels of intensity or manifestation of
Speaker 1: this underlying I'm going to say diathesis rather than make
Speaker 1: it negative that can come out is really horrible suffering
Speaker 1: from many people. So the message here is learn about this,
Speaker 1: get treatment, find out how it's nonlinear. Yet it's an
Speaker 1: excellent example, and I wrote about in my chapter in
Speaker 1: this forthcoming book as one example of how something can
Speaker 1: be very misunderstood because it's not some simple relationship. It's
Speaker 1: not the sicker the better, if you take too much aspirin,
Speaker 1: you'll die. It's about having, like we were saying about
Speaker 1: the executive functions, a touch of something more. And we
Speaker 1: could talk about latent inhibition or different types of thinking,
Speaker 1: and all of I think all of those are relevant,
Speaker 1: but there are ways. Some people may have a little
Speaker 1: more access that the rest of us can learn from
Speaker 1: to certain ways of thinking, but it needs to be
Speaker 1: in adaptive context where they can can use it rather
Speaker 1: than be used by it. Used by it. Yeah, lose control, Yeah,
Speaker 1: controlled chaos. It seems to be essential here to a
Speaker 1: lot of your work. But creativity can also serve a
Speaker 1: healing function in itself, right, well, that can be the
Speaker 1: healing function. Huh yeh yeah yeah yeah. So. And chaos,
Speaker 1: by the way, isn't a bad thing. It doesn't mean
Speaker 1: anarchy or complete randomness. Chaos as in chaos and complexity theory,
Speaker 1: has to do with a beautiful underlying order. But at
Speaker 1: times things can change very quickly. It's the science of
Speaker 1: change and surprise. It can be like an avalanche, which
Speaker 1: is an example of a chaotic bifurcation, only this might
Speaker 1: be an avalanche of mind. Aha, a new insight, and
Speaker 1: we can so to speak, we can't and I'll say, okay,
Speaker 1: now I'm going to have an insight. But we can
Speaker 1: also we can create conditions in ourselves in the world
Speaker 1: to make these more likely. And so it turns out
Speaker 1: that a creative bifurcation. In chaos theory, which is all
Speaker 1: about energy and a beautiful underlying order, we may not
Speaker 1: see the whole picture. And that's exactly why it's an aha.
Speaker 1: Suddenly something comes to us that really made sense. Yes,
Speaker 1: and we didn't expect, but you know what, it didn't
Speaker 1: pop out of nowhere. It was si'med germinating down there
Speaker 1: if you will, in various ways, and you know, if
Speaker 1: you look at the neurobiology of it. But as you
Speaker 1: also know, there's a whole sequence of things you can
Speaker 1: start to look at now that we didn't know about before.
Speaker 1: And so all that was happening, who was running that
Speaker 1: running that program? But then suddenly something new came into being.
Speaker 1: It's like the avalanche on the mountain with the snow
Speaker 1: that was about to happen. If you knew the hikers
Speaker 1: weren't going up that day and it wasn't the last
Speaker 1: snowflake that accounted for the whole avalanche. Yes, whole series
Speaker 1: of things right, Yes, and you hear about the butterfly effect.
Speaker 1: Don't blame the butterfly. Don't blame the butterfly. Everyone blames
Speaker 1: the butterfly for flapping its wings and causing an earthquake
Speaker 1: in Japan exactly. It's flapping its wings and causes stated
Speaker 1: super Bowl, who should we blame? I mean, who is
Speaker 1: the cause of any Well, why are we blaming anyone?
Speaker 1: We are in this kind of system that is very
Speaker 1: vast and subtle and interconnected, and there are not a
Speaker 1: few butterfly effects. They're butterfly effects every moment. You mentioned earthquakes.
Speaker 1: So I am normally in California. I'm in New York
Speaker 1: right now, but in California, the earthquake trackers are tracking
Speaker 1: all these little bitty ones that are happening all the time,
Speaker 1: and then there are some medium ones, and then there
Speaker 1: are a few more major ones, and we hope there
Speaker 1: won't be with all the other craziness going on the
Speaker 1: big one. But there are a whole range of these,
Speaker 1: and our brains are sparkling with these little insights right now, right. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So this isn't some bad things. It's how it works,
Speaker 1: and it's how good things work, like a stock market
Speaker 1: boom or a good weather day or immune system. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and we have emergent phenomena which is sort of related
Speaker 1: but not quite the same thing. The whole is greater
Speaker 1: than the you know, I love that you know a
Speaker 1: lot of consciousness. It's probably an emergent phenomena. Oh yeahious,
Speaker 1: the whole of consciousness and all our states of consciousness.
Speaker 1: But can't consciousness get in the way of creativity? Like
Speaker 1: in the like the aha moment usually happens when our
Speaker 1: consciousness is U is not on hyperactive dude. So I'm
Speaker 1: hearing you putting consciousness in one box here. I don't
Speaker 1: think you mean that. Oh good point. Okay, on look
Speaker 1: at it as a radio station, right, and we can
Speaker 1: tune into all these different modes, so maybe alpha, maybe beta,
Speaker 1: or gamma or you know, some mixture of those. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And Weiss once showed that there are all these flavors
Speaker 1: of consciousness. And in one of the studies that I
Speaker 1: suspect you to know well by Cuneos and Beeman. Oh yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: their their legends too. Yeah, yeah, they're legends. So one
Speaker 1: of the studies they happened to find that not only
Speaker 1: were these people are having insights having certain brain patterns.
Speaker 1: So I'm talking about we're now orchestrating the in our consciousness,
Speaker 1: which is many things to uh. This is part of
Speaker 1: the loose executive control. And it's interesting very few people
Speaker 1: talk about consciousness here, so thank you for mentioning that.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, what they showed was that some of the
Speaker 1: people seemed able to turn it on in advance without
Speaker 1: knowing it. And what about knowing it? So is it unconscious? No?
Speaker 1: I think you. Let's put it back to you here,
Speaker 1: or i'd say to a class, I bet you know
Speaker 1: the flavor of what it's like to be open to
Speaker 1: a new idea. Yes, we're of tea in the Zen Master. Right,
Speaker 1: you see you looking up to your right. I don't
Speaker 1: know or is that you're right on this picture? It
Speaker 1: was my right. It was my right. I look up
Speaker 1: to my right when I'm thinking, there are right richards.
Speaker 1: So you're saying, where did I read that? Okay, twenty
Speaker 1: ten I wrote something about consciousness. But of course Alan
Speaker 1: Colmes and others have for years at the Stanley Kripner
Speaker 1: and Creativity that here we have different ways of it's
Speaker 1: sort of the big picture of orchestrating things. It's worth
Speaker 1: looking at what some of these findings are different ways
Speaker 1: of orchestrating these things, and that certain kinds of brain
Speaker 1: activity will happen if we do. And now you've written
Speaker 1: a lot about type one type two thinking. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: we could talk a lot about people who look too
Speaker 1: much without and not enough within as well. But is
Speaker 1: there a flavor to that? And so of course we
Speaker 1: will want some of that what some might call the
Speaker 1: default mode, but maybe it's the real mode for getting
Speaker 1: out creative thought. It's funny that you would call it
Speaker 1: the real mode when it's imagination. Yeah, well there you go.
Speaker 1: Is imagination real? You're pulling my mind today with Richard's Yeah,
Speaker 1: of course it's real. But what is real? All right? Well,
Speaker 1: it was an imagination, not real by definition. Well it's
Speaker 1: all real, it's all real. But what do we want
Speaker 1: to manifest in this manifest world? That's so crazy? In
Speaker 1: any event, if you did you do you remember the
Speaker 1: legend Colin Martindale? Oh of course I was going to
Speaker 1: ask if you knew him? I think you did? I
Speaker 1: knew him? Yeah, oh yes, Martin, I met him really
Speaker 1: ahead of the times. Looking at some of the brain
Speaker 1: changes with EEG etc. During insight, so he found not
Speaker 1: only things like right sided visual multiple images, very slow
Speaker 1: brain frequencies the frontal part, those executive functions are kind
Speaker 1: of tuned down there. So he found this brain picture
Speaker 1: at the same time, and a lot of other people
Speaker 1: have sense, but he did way back at The experience
Speaker 1: involves being kind of open to all of these possibilities
Speaker 1: that are floating around. See now you look up to
Speaker 1: the right, I mean the left, right, unless you're ambidexterous,
Speaker 1: and it doesn't matter. Well, you know what, I'm more creative,
Speaker 1: I look to the left. I think when I'm more thinking,
Speaker 1: more analytically, I look to my right. Perhaps I don't know.
Speaker 1: There you go, and your listeners might want to think
Speaker 1: about that in terms of pathways to the brain. But
Speaker 1: is the mind entirely in the brain? Will leave that
Speaker 1: for homework? Yes, Can I ask you a question? I
Speaker 1: know that a lot of people treat creativity and the
Speaker 1: creative person as such an individualistic thing, But can't creativity
Speaker 1: heal the world? Wow, there's a question, and I might
Speaker 1: end in that question. Sure. Well, that's a good one
Speaker 1: to end on. We've been around in some form like
Speaker 1: atoms or substance for maybe going on fourteen billion years,
Speaker 1: and we at all and at least in this cycle.
Speaker 1: I love that. Yeah, And it is hard to imagine
Speaker 1: that humans the way some of us are acting these days,
Speaker 1: or most of us. Are it the purpose at least
Speaker 1: in this solar system of that evolution, that there isn't
Speaker 1: further to go? Yeah, and so what directions look promising
Speaker 1: without trying to go into it all? In the last
Speaker 1: chapter of this new book, I took three examples, and
Speaker 1: one of them from humanistic psychology, in Abraham Madelow, whom
Speaker 1: you brought up. I always bring him up. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: well worth looking further because he was and he was
Speaker 1: looking beyond self actualization and his higher views human potential
Speaker 1: into rather more mystical things and getting more Eastern as well.
Speaker 1: Oh yes, yeah, so let's just put that for one.
Speaker 1: I happen to love theory. You just about groups Auto Charmer,
Speaker 1: Peter Sange and others. Charmer's located at MIT. They have
Speaker 1: a process which looks like a you, not an inverted you,
Speaker 1: for groups in business to go deeper into some thing together.
Speaker 1: It actually includes meditation as part of the process. So
Speaker 1: already you know they're doing some good. And I've been
Speaker 1: a meditator for over twenty years and have a couple
Speaker 1: wonderful Buddhist Teachers' surprised you've opened up a gate of consciousness?
Speaker 1: Yeah right, yeah, yeah, So what they do is they
Speaker 1: do that together, and they do that not to meet
Speaker 1: some objective of their business plan, but to find out
Speaker 1: what it might become. So they are looking to welcome
Speaker 1: the future, not unlike an ikdo master who's looking at
Speaker 1: the bigger picture and choosing moves based on what's happening
Speaker 1: in this larger context. And then they come out of
Speaker 1: this I'm sure someone else could describe it better, but
Speaker 1: they come out of this bottom place with ideas and
Speaker 1: they implement them, and they prototype them, and they test
Speaker 1: them and so on. So it could be brainstorming where
Speaker 1: the group comes up with many ideas, but it's much
Speaker 1: deeper than that, and it involves a different worldview than that.
Speaker 1: And now we're talking about groups and whatever they come
Speaker 1: up with is important, but equally important is what they're
Speaker 1: doing and coming up with it because they are prototyping
Speaker 1: a different way we can work together to find a
Speaker 1: better future. So that's number two, and number three is
Speaker 1: Walt Whitman. Could have been someone else, but Walt Whitman
Speaker 1: is one wonderful exemplar of quote unquote cosmic consciousness where
Speaker 1: it is as tick John Hans said, there's a finger
Speaker 1: pointing to the Moon and some of his poetry. Likewise,
Speaker 1: Whitman's that you can see something very important coming through
Speaker 1: that can represent our higher potential. Yes, yes, so this
Speaker 1: is a good place to end one or higher potential.
Speaker 1: Yes yeah, our higher creative potential, universal creative potential, separately
Speaker 1: and together. And this has not, of course escaped the
Speaker 1: notice of the doll I Lama. Yes, And so I'd
Speaker 1: also recommend a book I cited heavily in there, which
Speaker 1: is like number twenty something in his mind Life Dialogues,
Speaker 1: where the Dolla Lama is actively looking to bring together
Speaker 1: Western science with some of this newer to us thousands
Speaker 1: of years old contemplative, deep subjective wisdom of our thinking.
Speaker 1: Thinking's a bad word, wisdom of our consciousness. So I
Speaker 1: do see for all the people who misuse creativity that
Speaker 1: it brings out of the shining qualities of awareness, of openness,
Speaker 1: of going beyond ourselves, our expectations, our fears, and embracing
Speaker 1: the possible new as real hope. And that's why I'm
Speaker 1: doing this and wrote the book. Do you want to
Speaker 1: give your heart right now? Here we go? Here we go?
Speaker 1: That deserves it? I want you expand my consciousness every
Speaker 1: time I'm in your presence, and I just want to
Speaker 1: thank you again for all the stuff you've done for
Speaker 1: the field and for me personally. I really appreciate that,
Speaker 1: and I could see that potentially new back when you
Speaker 1: were wet behind the ears graduate suit. Yeah, very early graduates, dude. Well,
Speaker 1: thanks again for being on the show. Thanks for listening
Speaker 1: to the Psychology Podcast. I hope you enjoyed this episode.
Speaker 1: If you'd like to react in some way to something
Speaker 1: you heard, I encourage you to join in the discussion
Speaker 1: at the Psychology podcast dot com. That's the Psychology Podcast
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Speaker 1: great supporter of the podcast, and tune in next time
Speaker 1: for more on the mind, brain, behavior, and creativity.