PRESENTED by: Paul Henrickson retrospecting on intellectual and creative inheritance regarding E.Paul Torrance and Kaoru Yamamoto. by Paul Henrickson, PhD. tm. 2o14
Henrickson on Gozo, 2012
A Henrickson crayon drawing referencing his 1984 visit to the tourist port of Kushadasi (Turkey) the present site, more or less, of the biblical Ephesus showing the top floor of the apartment building he nearly purchased a one bedroom apartment next to the building with the orange roof and on the right side of the orange roof a crusader fort perhaps built under the order of a Henrickson ancestor, where, today, the harbour is filled with the scheduled tourist ship dockings and private yaughts from Sri Lanka, the U.K. and Norway For Henrickson a lot of romance illustrated by the flying Turkish carpet
The Song of the Bird a painting Henrickson gave Torrance in expectation of his needed guidance through the rather algorithmic mind set of the professional psychologist. Torrance once said it represented, for him, the epitome of creative thought.
In 1960-1961 I was with E.Paul Torrance at The Bureau of Educational Research at The University of Minnesota along with an Australian (whose name I do not remember) Kevser Arsan from Turkey, who was very proud of her fur coat a smart-arse American who led the Australian a merry pathway for what reasons I hadnt the time to discover and Baldevrage Luthra from India who looked longing for the time when he would raise roses in the Kashmir and Kaoru Yamamoto who may be the only one Henrickson knew at that time who has been able, in anyway, to continue with Torrances work. While Yamamoto seems concerned about the environment of the child there seems no evidence of an interest in their creative behaviour. In some primary way this article is trying to address the matter of intellectual inheritance. When Torrance expressed concern , at the time he knew he was dying, that there was no one to carry on his work he was, One should think, including his associates at both institution, that is The University of Minnesota and the University of Georgia. While Henrickson was relatively familiar with those mentioned above as being at The Bureau the only one in Georgia he remembers was Mary Frazier and the patience, concern and insight her personality projected not only made her the most likely if not the only candidate for that job, but what clinched that result was that she was fully aware of her surroundings (both the personality and intellectual aspects of it) and took the job on...at least for awhile. Later one Bonnie Cramond seemed to be the director who was charming but ineffectual and finally and most recently there is Mark Runco Torrance, at that time seemed like a man with ideas and assets and heirs who sometimes has a difficulty in making decisions as to how and to whom certain assets should be left. History has many examples of how difficult such decisions can be and how, in some cases, the wrong decisions are made. I believe Torrance felt that somehow someone like Mary Frazier might emerge.
Torrance had , in so far as I know, no natural heirs and also, in so far as I know, he left his home and its contents (including The Song of the Bird painting shown here) to the fellow caring for him. I imagine he left most of his intellectual property to The University of Georgia in the expectation that someone in that organization might make a proper decision at the proper time. I am, at this date, not of the opinion that they were able to accomplish that. In an aside I think it might be helpful to disclose some of my heretofore, un enunciated opinions of Torrances character. Whatever the source of the inhibition, or whatever the reason it seems to me Torrance was functionally incapable of making a condemning decision about anyone. This, of course, would make him a prime victim for those who seek out others to manipulate for their own advantage, such as, I believe, Teresa Amabile who secured from him recognition for her work which, judging from her one report which caused a somewhat critical stir in the professional arena telling us that creative people lied as much as non-creative people. In addition to the fact Henricksons research of 1971 The Perceptive and Silenced Minorities indicated quite the opposite I seriously doubt that Torrance would not have instinctively known that creative people do not lie. Of course, the question as to what definition one uses for creative comes into play and, conceivably if one measures creativity in the area of deceit our conclusions will be different. In Amabiles case it is my understanding that other researchers have criticised her for having used a biased sampling of subjects...subjects, already disposed to misrepresent and to deceive. This like those described by John Lash and Thomas Sheridan are considered serious character flaws which divert innocent attention from the real to the fake amusing in the case of the parrot sounding like an opera singer and less amusingly like Simon Magus trying to talk Simon Peter into selling Christs secret of raising the dead. I am not of the opinion that Torrance was a great judge of women and one employing a certain charm could achieve a great deal. This, not very socially oriented lack of perception into the motives of others could have also made him particularly subject to the good ole boy fraternal abuse. If anything, Torrance was a southern gentleman in all its aspects and would suffer fools and insults silently waiting for a better day. Regrettably the appointments to the position made by those in authority at the University of Georgia either 1) failed to understand the issues involved, or 2) didnt care to understand them, either of these qualities would have disqualified them as leaders at a University for they seem to simply to stand by and watch while more personally ambitious, or simply housekeepers assumed the role of intellectual leadership. This is malfeasance. and in the light of what now is not being done, is criminal for a valuable approach to benefiting humanity has been laid aside and, in the minds of some, hopefully forgotten. Perhaps it would be helpful were I to explain my presence at The Bureau of Educational Research in Minneapolis. I had delayed in applying for a repeat of my assistantship in the Art Education Department and so, lost it. However, through the kindness of Clifton Gaynes who was then Head of that Department I applied to Torrance and was immediately accepted. Torrance never explained what, if anything, he expected me to do. I simply made myself available and in that particular environment surrounded by other semi-professional graduate students filled with the vain self-importance so characteristic of that type at that level I immediately decided to withdraw from badly focused and useless competition. Kaoru Yamamoto was , at that time, the only one in whom I recognized any legitimate academic value or for whom I generated any professional respect. The one response we shared in common was the social device of no-involvement with peers . He kept to himself, I kept to myself and that, as well, was what Torrance did. Torrance was not an office task master. He wanted to do what he needed to do in his own mental world and so, Yamamoto and myself (individually) did the same. All the others, with the exception of Baldevrage Luthra, who was sufficiently Buddhist in nature to be content to watch how reality unfolded itself, behaved noncommittally. Consequently, it may well be that Torrances fears, expressed after his stroke, might be realized there will be no one to continue his studies. It is regrettable that Mark Runco who now, it appears, may be in charge of the Torrance Creativity Center at The University of Georgia may be actively involved in dismantling that work when he published comments urging that creative student be taught to be more discreet. Of course, we may not really know what he means by the term discreet but, in general, according to some expectations for social behaviour it means do not speak your mind, keep you opinions to yourself and, most frankly, it means suffer in silence or in some Christian understanding turn the other cheek I think it correct to say that all those above, with the exception of the last, are attitudes Torrance would not support. Consequently, it would appear, I may be the only one from that Minnesota group who is, in any direct way, continuing that work. Of all those others I am probably the least likely to have been thought to do so. In an effort to distinguish myself from the one dozen or so graduate students working with Torrance and, perhaps, as evidence of explanation for any perceived aberrations I include the score sheet Torrance provided those he had tested on various measures. HENRICKSON SCORE on the TORRANCE INVENTORY Henrickson.score...................................Class average Personality Theory pre-test 18 17.8 Creative motivation 28 20.1 critical motivation 4 5.8 Intellectual autonomy 29 23.9 Certiant Motivation 8 10.3 Power Motivation 6 8.7 Quest for Meaning 8 5.9 Quest for Social Relations 8 20.6 rejection of social relations 8.2 7.3 complexity 52 33 ;iberality 67 55.1 Originality 67 63.1 Thinking Introversion 52 41 Celebrating my 83rd. Celebrating Henricksons 83rd \ Family Triptych Bruce Chatwin makes his surprising appearance in this account for his unusual and noteworthy ability to inspirationally and intuitionally detect the genuine from the fake in the area of art criticism. This ability which uses a very different kind of evidential material from that of the statistician indicates very strongly that there is an entire area of human mind set research largely ignored by those who like to count and believe that the sum of a column of figures describes a reality. This difference has been central to Henricksons intellectual life. If there is a describable difference between the work of Yamamoto and that of Henrickson it may lie here where Yamamoto describes the apprehensions the child may have and Henrickson describes the symbolic effort the individual, child or adult, makes to bring a satisfactory order to those perceptions. Henrickson is, at this time, uninvolved in any direct way with any academic institution having been retired for several years but maintains some contact with intelligent individuals who are aware of his interests (photograph above) and the painting shown here demonstrates the solution to a suspicion that only later was evidence found. This second image is another work (painted in 1988) that demonstrates the possibility that artists, at times, are responsive to environmental factors before they become a functioning reality. Towers by Paul Henrickson \ The Small World Of Kids` Fears June 17, 1988|By Joseph B. Verrengia, Scripps Howard News Service. In the era of AIDS, cocaine and the bomb, what children around the world say they fear most is losing a parent, going blind or wetting their pants in class, a University of Colorado study shows. Kaoru Yamamoto, a psychologist and professor of education, said interviews with youngsters in six nations have convinced him that no matter where they were born children live in their own limited spheres.
He said children are acutely concerned about their own security and dignity-far more than parents and teachers may realize-whether the issue is being promoted in school or being picked last for the kickball team at recess. ``When children are young, their fears are very much personalized,`` Yamamoto said. ``When we stop to think about it, we honestly don`t know our children.`` Yamamoto interviewed 1,814 children in grades 3 through 9 from Australia, Canada, Egypt, Japan, the Philippines and the United States. Each child was given a list of stressful events and asked to rate how unpleasant each event would be on a scale of 1 to 7. He found boys and girls had the same fears and that there were no major differences among grades or cultures. Without exception, these children, who were too old to imagine monsters under their beds, rated their worst fear to be ``losing my mother or father,`` whether it be by death, divorce or being left behind in a department store. Not far behind, at No. 5, was another family fear: fights between parents. These disagreements were closely linked to the children`s fear of losing a parent through abandonment or rejection, he said. If the family fights escalate, Yamamoto said, the children suffer an overwhelming feeling of helplessness and, in some cases, fear for their own safety. ``They are not sure who the aggression is aimed at, and they are quite concerned about getting hurt,`` he said. ``There aren`t many things children can do when they are caught in the cross fire. Sometimes they looked at me and said, `What can I do?` `` Though the children`s fears were much the same worldwide, they did reflect some wry and subtle cultural differences, according to Yamamoto. In Japan, where a vast number of children wear eyeglasses, he said they thought it meant they would eventually go blind as adults. In Egypt, Yamamoto assumed that the poor quality of health care in the impoverished, crowded country was the basis for the children`s fear of losing their sight. But his interviews revealed that it came from a less obvious source. ``It turns out that in Arab cultures the common curse `May Allah strike you blind` is a very serious threat,`` he said. ``These kids were keenly aware of it.``
Yamamoto has been analyzing childhood stress and fears since 1979. He also has interviewed 167 teachers, child- development experts and college students about the events they think would be most stressful to children. In 16 of 20 categories, adults` predictions of how children would rank their fears were off the mark. The most glaring difference: The adults said they thought ``having a new brother or sister`` would top the list. The children rated it last. ``Going to the dentist`` was another fear adults predicted would be high on the list. But the children rated it 18th. ``For two people who have lived side by side for such a long time, the adult and the child appear to know amazingly little about each other,`` Yamamoto said. ``It`s not an indictment of the parents-most of them do their level best. But we don`t realize what we`re doing to kids, who can`t always articulate why they`re upset.`` At this time both Yamamoto and Henrickson are retired and this writer is uncertain as to whether Yamamoto has continued his studies and currently publishes, but Henrickson uses www.scribd.com as an outlet for his work in this area.