ABSTRACT
The inspirational view of creativity is a popular one and has led to the related definition of it as a quality possessed by the few men who have made an outstanding contribution in the Arts or Sciences, Beethoven, Shakespeare, Botticelli, Einstein or Freud. The distinction between creativity and intelligence, however, may not be an altogether helpful one unless creativity is carefully defined and value judgements are not implied. The psychoanalytic, or unconscious, theory of creativity has an intuitive appeal, and yet repels. The psychometric concept of creativity is perhaps the best known since to approach creativity through testing is likely to appeal to academic psychologists. The relationship between these cognitive styles and creativity is not clear, since studies relating scores on psychometric creativity measures to Witkin dimensions have found that high scorers may be either field dependent or independent. Probably the best known study which suggested that creativity and intelligence were discrete, independent traits was that of Getzels and Jackson.
