ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses a topic tangential to that of convergence and divergence: originality, or as psychologists have it, ‘creativity’. Many psychologists, particularly American ones, see the diverger as potentially creative and the converger as potentially uncreative. In some circles ‘creative’ does duty as a word of general approbation – meaning, approximately, ‘good’. It is rather the same with its derivative noun, ‘creativity’. ‘Creativity’ applies to all those qualities of which psychologists approve. Open-ended tests are known throughout the United States as ‘creativity’ tests. The issue of whether ‘creativity’ tests measure creativeness has been further confused by certain commentators. Much writing on creativity rests on the assumption that creative people are open, flexible and unconventional, and that the uncreative are inflexible and authoritarian. The psychologists interested in ‘creativity’ also assume that because the diverger appears more emotionally open than the converger, he is automatically the healthier of the two.
