On Creativity

The concept of genius has been a subject of much speculation and debate since the eighteenth century. However, in a world obsessed with creative genius and the possibilities of the human imagination, the actual workings of the creative process and its psychological underpinnings remain a mystery. In On Creativity , a group of experts seeks to unlock this enigma.The essays of Sudhir Kakar, Gunter Blamberger and Weihua Niu provide a cross-cultural perspective, comparing historical and actual concepts of creativity in the East and the West. The essays of Patrick Mahony, James Kaufman and Margaret Boden offer an interdisciplinary perspective, demonstrating the successes and limits of the psychoanalytical and psychological approaches to understanding creativity while also discussing cognitive biology as the seemingly most promising approach to solving the puzzle of the creative mind. Brilliant, lucid and thought-provoking, these essays examine and illumine the reasons that compel us to innovate further.