The Courage to Create (May, 1994)

Product Description
"A lucid and highly concentrated analysis of the creative process. . . . [May] describes the requisites for the creative encounter and the moment of the 'breakthrough'."—Saturday Review

What if imagination and art are not, as many of us might think, the frosting on life, but the fountainhead of human experience? What if our logic and science derive from art forms, rather than the other way around? In this trenchant volume, Rollo May helps all of us find those creative impulses that, once liberated, offer new possibilities for achievement.

Review by amazon.com reviewer "Well-read" (Chicago, IL United States) August 12, 2002

I have taught a Psychology of Creativity course for over 13 years now and this has been the only book I have ordered for every single course. Not only does May describe the creative process (e.g., the encounter), blocks (fear of life/death), environment (history, mythology) but he DOES offer real-life practical solutions in terms of self-questioning. A Humanistic, Transpersonal, Existential psychologist, May expounds on the "life is a journey" worldview: it is what we make it, yes, but not the "it is what "I" make it. WE, not "I". Laid out like a recipe, May discusses at least two paradoxes of creativity that other psychological theories might refer to as indicative of error. First, his definition of courage is the willingness to take action DESPITE despair. I interpret this not that creativity derives from despair but that it is better measured within the context of despair, for example John Nash "A Brilliant Mind." Secondly he defines creativity as the willingness to be fully committed while keeping in mind we might be wrong (which brings to mind the cognitive concept of functional fixedness). Tolerance for ambiguity is a key characteristic of creative personalities. A willingness to move beyond the "ok" solution in preference for the "original idea".
Physical, Moral, Social and Creative courage are each discussed in practical terms. Unlike many books which incorporate "creativity" in the title, this book truly focuses one possible reason creativity continues to elude empirical measurement, not unlike Heisenberg's "uncertainty principle." We can know about the world/nature-at-large but it depends on what we ask. Perhaps there is another side to what it means "to know." If this question intrigues you then read, and re-read The Courage to Create. It is a guidebook for lifetime existential quest that doesn't kick aside practical application. Tolerance for ambiguity--that's the key.

preface All my life I have been haunted by the fascinating questions of creativity. Why does an original idea in science and in art "pop up" from the unconscious at a given moment?

p.26 Why is creativity so difficult? And why does it require so much courage? Is it not simply a matter of clearing away the dead forms, the defunct symbols and the myths that have become lifeless? No... it is as difficult as forging in the smithy of one's soul.

p.30 the creative artist... must fight the actual... gods of our society - the god of conformism as well as the gods of apathy, material success, and exploitative power. These are the "idols" of our society that are worshiped by multitudes of people.

p.31 Creativity is a yearning for immortality. We human beings know that we must die... We know that each of us must develop the courage to confront death. Yet we also must rebel and struggle against it. Creativity comes from this struggle - out of the rebellion the creative act is born. Creativity is not merely the innocent spontaneity of our youth and childhood; it must also be married to the passion of the adult human being, which is a passion to live beyond one's death.

p.32 Artists are generally soft-spoken persons who are concerned with their inner visions and images.

p.40 Creativity, as Webster's rightly indicates, is basically the process of making, of bringing into being.

p.41,44 The first thing we notice in a creative act is that it is an encounter... there must be a specific quality of engagement... This leads us to the second element in the creative act - namely, the intensity of the encounter.

p.50 We arrive finally in analyzing the creative act in terms of the question What is this intense encounter with? An encounter is always a meeting between two poles. The subjective pole is the conscious person in the creative act itself. But what is the objective pole of this dialectical relationship? ... it is the artist's or scientist's encounter with the world.

p.54 genuine artists are so bound up with their age [JLJ - Rolo May means the age in which they live] that they cannot communicate separated from it... "Creativity," to rephrase our definition, "is the encounter of the intensively conscious human being with his or her world."

p.77 I wish to propose a theory and to make some remarks about it, arising largely out of my contacts and discussions with artists and poets. The theory is: Creativity occurs in an act of encounter and is to be understood with this encounter as its center... This vision involves an omission of some aspects of the scene and a greater emphasis on other aspects

p.113 creativity itself requires limits, for the creative act arises out of the struggle of human beings with and against that which limits them.

p.114-115 Consciousness is the awareness that emerges out of the dialectical tension between possibilities and limitations... If there had been no limits, there would be no consciousness... the struggle with limits is actually the source of creative productions... Creativity arises out of the tension between spontaneity and limitations, the latter... forcing the spontaneity into the various forms which are essential to the work of art

p.120-121 Imagination is the outreaching of the mind... In creative endeavors the imagination operates in juxtaposition with form. When these endeavors are successful, it is because imagination infuses form with its own vitality. The question is: how far can we let our imagination loose?

p.122 Artists are the ones who have the capacity to see original visions. They typically have powerful imaginations and, at the same time, a sufficiently developed sense of form to avoid being led into the catastrophic situation. They are the frontier scouts who go out ahead of the rest of us to explore the future... we will be better prepared for the future if we listen to them.

p.131 The human imagination leaps to form the whole, to complete the scene in order to make sense of it. The instantaneous way this is done shows how we are driven to construct the remainder of the scene. To fill the gaps is essential if the scene is to have meaning.

p.133 is it not only our intellectual understanding that plays a role in our forming and re-forming the world in the process of knowing it, but do not imagination and emotions also play a critical role? It must be the totality of ourselves that understands, not simply reason.

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