Creative Vision

Psychologists and psychiatrists about creativity

Genius… means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way.
William James (January 11, 1842 – August 26, 1910), American psychologist and philosopher

The essence of genius is to know what to overlook.
William James

The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.
William James

Belief creates the actual fact.
William James

In the dim background of our mind we know what we ought to be doing but somehow we cannot start.
William James

Geniuses are commonly believed to excel other men in their power of sustained attention . . . But it is their genius making them attentive, not their attention making geniuses of them.
William James

Seek out that particular mental attribute which makes you feel most deeply and vitally alive, along with which comes the inner voice which says, ‘This is the real me,’ and when you have found that attitude, follow it.
William James

The creative writer does the same as the child at play. He creates a world of fantasy which he takes very seriously–that is, which he invests with large amounts of emotion–while separating it sharply from reality. Language has preserved this relationship between children’s play and poetic creation.
Sigmund Freud (May 6, 1856 –September 23, 1939), Austrian psychiatrist and psychologist

The unreality of the writer’s imaginative world, however, has very important consequences for the technique of his art; for many things which, if they were real, could give no enjoyment, can do so in the play of fantasy, and many excitements which, in themselves, are actually distressing, can become a source of pleasure for the hearers and spectators at the performance of a writer’s work.
Sigmund Freud

…a piece of creative writing, like a day-dream is a continuation of and a substitute for what was once the play of childhood.
Sigmund Freud

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) William Stern (1871- 1938) Joy Guilford (1897-1987)

November 7, 2019 at 11:50 pm Leave a comment