ABSTRACT
There is quite a reasonable ambivalence toward the experimental study of any highly valued but largely subjective aspect of human behavior: its value dictates a resistance to any analysis which will make the behavior seem ordinary, routine, or within anyone’s grasp; its subjectivity allows any tentative analysis to be rejected as having missed the point and/or the “true” behavior. This ambivalence is perhaps nowhere more pronounced than in the case of human creativity (Skinner, 1953, p. 256). Creative experience is often described as personal and private, to the point of becoming avowedly mystical (Moustakas, 1967, p. 27, 32). On the other hand, the fundamental humanistic importance ascribed to creativity implies that any psychology which did not treat its nature would be correspondingly incomplete (Hogg, 1969). This latter consideration seems to be the more compelling one: creativity has steadily attracted psychological analysis and continues to do so. Nevertheless, the need to analyze the concept has not obviated the problems intrinsic in its subjectivity, and in consequence present analyses are diverse, sometimes contradictory, frequently tangential, and always subject to rejection as irrelevant. Even so, an applied analysis may still be worth the effort. There may well be a number of highly desirable behavioral targets to be delineated within the creativity context, even if they are not universally accepted as the true or complete essence of creativity.
