Reversal Theory

Applications and Development

M. J. Apter, D. Fontana, S. Murgatroyd

• Publisher: Psychology Press
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780906449745
• eBook ISBN: 9781317766544
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Experimental Psychology
• Index: Psychology

First published in 1985. In the eight years since the publication of the first papers by Apter and Smith outlining the basic principles of the theory of psychological reversals, interest in the theory has grown rapidly. So within this book the emphasis is very much upon opening up fresh avenues and interests with a view to stimulating and guiding those psychologists who, whether as academics or as practitioners, are involved with reversal theory at any level. Some of the papers are based upon material presented at the International Symposium on Reversal Theory held under the sponsorship of the Welsh Branch of the British Psychological Society in September 1983, while others have been written specially for this book. The topics covered have been carefully selected to give a representative flavour of what reversal theory is currently about.

Areas of Application

Chapter V

Educating for Creativity

D. Fontana

University College Cardiff, Wales

Areas of Application

After peaking during the 1960s and the early 1970s, psychological research into creativity and the creative process has become relatively quiet in recent years. The reason for this is that it has apparently reached something of a dead-end. No-one is quite sure where we go after the development of divergent thinking tests and the resulting attempts to spot differences in test scores between artists and scientists, men and women, old and young and other disparate groups. We remain unsure what to do with the information thus gained. More importantly, we remain unsure of how consistent the information is. And most importantly of all, we remain unsure whether scores on tests of divergent thinking really have that much to do with the real business of creativity in the world outside the psychological laboratory.

What is needed, it seems, is a major new initiative that will give us insight into the conditions under which creative activity can be maximized. There is reasonable consensus amongst both psychologists and laymen as to what particular endeavours qualify for the term creative (though there are of course major disagreements as to the quality of the creativity involved), and it is probably only the psychologist’s over-concern with psychometrics that launched him on the wild goose chase of divergent thinking tests to the exclusion of any attempt at establishing what prompts and encourages these endeavours. Particularly within formal education, where creativity should clearly be given maximum opportunity to flourish and develop, there is precious little understanding of the frames of mind responsible for creative thought and of the nature of the teaching strategies that facilitate their expression. The observer within the nursery and infant school cannot fail to be impressed by the extent and the quality of the creative experiences enjoyed by children through play and discovery, but the same observer in the secondary school would be hard pressed to find similar cause for excitement. Once children come within the constraints of a more academic timetable, it seems that we are generally unable to remain sensitive to their developing needs for creative expression.

At this point it is appropriate to pause and attempt a definition of what is meant by creativity. Elsewhere (Fontana 1981a) I have suggested that creativity is “a special kind of thinking, a kind of thinking that involves originality and fluency, that breaks away from existing patterns and introduces something new” (p. 134). If we wish to link creativity specifically to problem solving, we could say moreover that this kind of thinking allows the individual to generate a range of possible solutions, in particular to problems which have no single right answer. In terms of this definition, creativity is obviously something that happens frequently in daily life, rather than something confined exclusively to designated creatives like poets, painters and musicians; and in this chapter I shall attempt to show its relationship to telic and, in particular, to paratelic states. The models that I shall be proposing are at present theoretical but they are, in my view, entirely consistent both with reversal theory and with accounts by psychologists and artists of what seems to happen during the creative process. They also suggest a number of possibilities for empirical research, and should provide a degree of impetus both for the development of reversal theory into new areas of psychological concern and for the study and encouragement of creativity itself.

The Creative Process

Our starting point had better be with what is already known about the genesis and development of the creative act. Here, incredibly, there is nothing of great note since the work of Ghiselin back in 1952. Ghiselin set out to gather the first-hand accounts of the creative process supplied by eminent artists and scientists, and in these accounts we find that this process appears typically to follow four stages labelled respectively preparation, incubation, illumination and verification. In the preparation stage the individual recognizes that a problem requires solution, or that a particular idea or theme is a fit subject for creative exploitation, in the incubation stage he allows the whole matter to sink into the unconscious where (presumably) the mind continues to work upon it in some way, in the illumination stage he suddenly finds a solution emerging abruptly into consciousness, and in the verification stage he puts the solution to the test (e.g. by assessing the value of what he has just written or painted or by proving his hypothesis).

There is no evidence as to how long each of these stages takes. It may well depend upon the nature of the problem, the context in which it is being tackled, and the frame of mind of the individual who is doing the tackling. The relative importance and difficulty of each stage may also be influenced by these variables, in particular by the individual’s frame of mind since it seems probable that the second and third stages (incubation and illumination) involve patterns of thinking that are more obviously creative than stages one and four (preparation and verification). McKellar (1968) in fact suggests that creativity (or as he calls it “autistic thinking”) is the author of the creative act while intelligence (“rational thinking” in his terminology) is the editor, thus implying that stages two and three are the product of the creative processes in the mind, while stage four is the result of rational thinking. We could therefore have an individual who is highly successful at the editorial stage of verifying and correcting but who lacks the creative flair necessary at the incubation and illumination stages, while conversely we could have someone who is highly effective at incubation and illumination but lacks the intellectual skills necessary for verification. Amongst English poets Thomas Gray might conceivably be an example of the former (his famous “Elegy” was some six years in the writing) while Samuel Coleridge could be an instance of the latter (judging by the mixture of sumptious imagery and downright doggerel in poems such as Christabel and by the fact that Kubla Kahn was written in a single sitting and without revision).

There are, however, obvious difficulties in attempting a straightfonvard equation between incubation and illumination on the one hand and creative thinking on the other, and between verification on the one hand and intelligent thinking on the other. Firstly we are by no means sure how distinct creativity and intelligence are from each other as psychological skills. The literature on the subject is too vast and confusing to be reviewed here, but the inevitable conclusion we are forced to draw from it is that earlier attempts to establish creativity and intelligence as the product of fundamentally different kinds of thinking appear unproven. Secondly, even if they are separate skills they appear to be so closely linked within the creative act that we cannot usefully consider the one without the other, especially (as we shall see shortly) at stages one and four of the creative process. And thirdly and perhaps most compellingly, an equation of this kind leaves out of account the affective factors so necessary if the creative process is to be brought to satisfactory conclusion. For example, if genius is indeed one per cent inspiration and ninety-nine per cent perspiration then it seems to have at least as much to do with motivation, self-discipline and sheer hard labour as it does with a specialized kind of thinking. It might be argued that the “perspiration aspect” is nothing to do with creativity itself, but if Coleridge had perspired rather more over the writing of Christabel and transmuted it into a work of unflawed genius it is doubtful if even a particularly perceptive literary critic would be able to point to the precise instances in the poem where creativity gives up and perspiration takes over.

What we are saying, therefore, is that if we wish to move towards an understanding of the creative act (and towards an understanding of the conditions which best encourage its expression) it is necessary to look for a model of thinking that appears to take account of both cognitive and affective variables—a cognitive style if you like but one which allows for, or better still explicitly expects, the individual to vary on occasion between either end of the dimension which it contains. Just such a model is supplied by reversal theory, and in particular by the telic–paratelic dimension.

The Creative Process and Reversal Theory

Reluctantly it has to be confessed, that reversal theory does not yet explain the inner workings of the creative act any more than a dimension like extraversion-introversion explains the inner workings of personality. But it has something useful and coherent to say about the different feelings typically experienced by the individual during the act of creation, something to say indeed which allows us to approach the phenomenological state obtaining while creativity is actually taking place. Let us return once again to the four stage model of the creative act. Assuming this model is correct, then it would seem that at the illumination stage the individual is particularly open to ideas emerging from the unconscious. And here perhaps it could be suggested that, although we have no precise psychological language for the phenomenon, we are all aware of those moments when we have something on the tip of our tongue, only to be frustrated by the realization that the harder we try to recall it fully the more elusive it becomes. It is often only when we turn our mind to something else that, with a touching innocence, the material that we are seeking presents itself fully to our attention. Similarly we have probably also experienced the inhibiting effect of anxiety upon the summoning forth of our best ideas and even upon our customary patterns of thinking.

If we search the autobiographical work of many creative artists we find that they speak frequently of these kinds of inhibitory processes at work during the creative act. The muse of inspiration is looked upon as a shy creature, who has to be wooed and coaxed, and tends to make her appearance when we carefully avoid looking directly for her or at her. J. B. Priestley talks of the elaborate rituals that some writers adopt in order to carry out this wooing, the sharpening of unwanted pencils for example, the pottering about the room, the filling of a pipe, all strategies designed to beguile the muse into thinking that we don’t really care whether she turns up or not. Erica Jong even talks of having sometimes to write in the nude to summon inspiration and claims many writers have a similar experience (though it could depend one must suppose on the kind of book one is writing) while other creative individuals talk of only being able to work in a certain room or in a certain chair or at a set time of day. Sometimes even the loss of a familiar pen or pencil can drive the writer to despair as the muse refuses to be solicited by any other implement.

What seems to be happening here is that the author or the painter or the musician needs to put him or herself into the right frame of mind before the conscious self can open to the unconscious and allow illumination to come through. And it is this frame of mind, compounded as it is of mood and intention as well as of cognitive processes, that is one of the major concerns of reversal theory.

We have only to extend our discussion of the waywardness of the muse and of the strategies adopted for summoning and arousing her to see that the illumination stage of the creative act appears to belong descriptively to the paratelic rather than to the telic state. Poets speak of being “caught up” in the creative act, of being “possessed” and sometimes “shaken” and “overwhelmed” by it. The whole language of inspiration has to do with excitement, even of being taken over by a strange force which acts in and through the conscious self but often without its volition. At our own levels we doubtless have each experienced the same feelings, and can sharply contrast on the one hand the glorious flow of expression that comes when we are inspired, with on the other the stumbling efforts we make (when writing and lecturing) on the regrettably much more frequent occasions when we are not. The very word “inspiration” suggests a suffusion into the self of something from outside, a deep breath of genius that fills and energizes us, leaving us when it departs “shaken” as Spender puts it “as if from sobbing”.

Should anyone fail to recognize the mood I hope they will excuse the somewhat high flown prose of the last paragraph, but the point is that the muse often fails to come when one sets out doggedly to summon her, and that when she does come one associates her presence with the excitement of high arousal. She is thus, it seems, a wayward paratelic lady, wooed by paratelic states and bringing with her paratelic sensations. We play with her, we entice her, and when she arrives we lose our sense of self and become absorbed into the delights she has to offer. If further illustration at a different level is needed we can take the word just introduced, “play”, and watch a small child creating. To the child there is no question of a serious goal to his activity. As I have pointed out elsewhere (Fontana 1981b) the child of three and four years creates a painting without any thought of what it is meant to be, of what it is for, and responds with puzzlement to the adult who persists in asking him to give it a title. Creation and play are to him the same thing. He paints or runs or moulds a piece of clay for the sheer delight of the activity itself, and the very idea of judging or assessing his creation never enters his head until it is put there firmly by those who are entrusted with his education.

The more telic we become about illumination, the harder we try for it; and the more persistently we pursue it, the more it would seem to recede from us. The poet Housman (who incidently describes illumination by quoting the words of Eliphaz the Temanite; “A spirit passed before my face: the hair of my flesh stood up”) describes how many of the enchanting lines of A Shropshire Lad came to him as he went on his country walks “thinking of nothing in particular, only looking around me” and contrasts the pleasure of this experience with the laborious business of writing the stanzas that refused to come to him virtually ready made, one of which had to be re-written thirteen times “and took more than a twelve month” to get right. If Housman is not to your taste, you can turn instead to Wordsworth’s assertion that poetry is “the spontaneous outflow of powerful feelings” or to Burns’ confession that “I have two or three times in my life composed from the wish rather than from the impulse, but I never succeeded to any purpose”. These last lines remind us of the small child’s lifeless effort when he is told to “paint a house” as compared to the glorious swirls of colour when he is allowed to smear away as the mood takes him.

The Role of the Telic State

We have drawn most of our examples from poets, because poets always seem to write more prolifically (and more sublimely) about their working methods than other artists. But on the autobiographical evidence available it looks very much as if the moment of illumination is induced and experienced in much the same kind of way whatever the artist’s chosen medium of expression. Rather than pursue illumination any further for the moment however we must return to the other stages in the creative process. Incubation we know little about, since the profound workings of the unconscious remain a mystery, but both the preparation and the verification stages would seem to be of a very different order from that of illumination. If we use again McKellar’s model of the author and the editor we could say that the author works primarily in the paratelic mode and is concerned with the business of illumination as we have tried to describe it, while the editor is a different sort of customer altogether. Few writers have a great deal to say about the editor, and one suspects this is because he is a demanding soul, forcing us into the telic mode of revising, checking and correcting. It is at the editorial stage too that we fall to considering whether what we have written is going to enhance our reputation or depress it, whether it is going to make money and get good reviews or fall, as Hume said of one of his own major works, “still-born from the press”.

The verification stage, then, is when we come back to earth. What seemed like deathless prose or like world shaking ideas in the writing now all too often seems flat and unimaginative. What seemed like stunning originality now frequently looks the sort of thing that everyone else must have thought about but scorned to put on paper because it wasn’t worth saying. The editor banishes the writer, with his absurd pretensions, back into the comer in disgrace. Something of this antagonism between editor and writer, something of the rejection we feel for the opposite end of the dimension when we reverse from the paratelic to the telic, is caught by the poet William Cowper who wrote of the kee...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Acknowledgments
• Preface
• Contents
• I Introduction to Reversal Theory
• Research Evidence
• Areas of Application
• Theoretical Developments
• List of Contributors
• A Glossary of Reversal Theory Terms
• Reversal Theory: For Further Reading
• Subject Index
• Author Index