THE OUTSOURCING COURTESAN vs.

the nurturing mother

by Paul Henrickson © 2004 tm. © 2007

In trying to summarize the concept most often functioning in those many opportunities,
which claim to stimulate creativity in business organizations, I finally, and somewhat
reluctantly, chose the above phrase.

There are many organizations, large and small, which claim to be able to assist business
organizations to sustain creative thinking within the group as a device to keep a
competitive edge.

This concept is misleading and, to some extent, might be considered fraudulent. The
reason is that the creative individual is an individual who primarily, functions outside the
group. In fact, that is, normally, the only way the group will allow a creative individual
to function at all. And even then he functions at the peril of his existence, because the
group dynamic is unsympathetic to the creative individual’s thinking process.

Consequently, when one sees, for example, advertisements advertising services for
business organizations which stress, and this one is lifted from a currently on-line source,
such things as: “time sheets”, “schedules”, “task coordinator”, “evaluation”, “calendar”,
and “organizer”, we know we are dealing either with a person who either does not know
what he is offering or he is a fraud. The above are antipathetic to creative thinking.

When one reads, as one can on-line, such offerings as on-line courses which suggest that
creative thinking can be taught and what one is offered is a recipe, a step by step route to
the goal of creativity, or a creative solution we can be quite sure that this mechanistic
approach is merely another version of the age-old, group-dominated mind-set designed to
co-ordinate individual activity to conform to the group image. It makes no difference
whatever in how many languages these instructions appear or how broadly the approach
is advertised, the truly creative mind will elude this attempted capture.

Those efforts which concentrate on producing an elevated sense of accomplishment –

usually as compared to standard expectations—and to generate energetic interest within
the group, such as many brainstorming efforts and week-end seminars in exotic places
claim to do, may be effective in the short run, effective, that is, in producing a temporary
sense of euphoria in what is normally a very conservative and convergent mind. The
creative mind will protect itself from such a crude attempt to entrap it, unless, by some
rare chance it really feels itself secure.

The creative mind, however, does like to play. It is upon that assumption that The
Creative Packet, which is a group of verbal and non-verbal play tasks, is based. Although
this set of tasks will identify the creative minds within a particular group it makes no
claims to being able to generalize for larger populations, although, without doubt, the
principle obtains.

Most businesses, however, are understandably primarily concerned with what occurs
within its most immediate environment. This is why The Creativity Packet people offer to
business organizations this opportunity to assess the identification and the nature of the
creative minds already in their organization and to guide the organization into practices
which might help them to maintain an environment friendly to the requirements of the
creative thinker.

Allow me to expand a little on the basic thesis suggested here, that is, that the creative
thinker is a thinker apart from the mass of the population and, therefore, atypical, the
attributes often associated with a creative personality do not present the profile of a back-
slapping, gland-hand Charley, a profile more appropriate for a politician, most especially
an American politician.

Rather the creative personality is described more like a socially shy person, a loner, a
dreamer, a fantasizer who delights in his own flights of imagination and, often, as
researcher Drevdahl once described, “like a criminal evading the pursuit of the police.”
Now, this type of person may be tragically forced into improving his techniques of
deception in order to preserve, as a mother might wish to preserve, her child, that most
fragile of antennae delight in existence.

In opposition to this most private desire, a desire most singular, is that behavior of the
group, any group, which out of fear for its own existence as a group, imposes one of the
most repressive techniques of behavioral control, that is exclusion. It is an exclusion that
often leads on the part of the creative individual to resentful anti-social behavior, perhaps
in the form of retribution, or, in some cases suicide…and the group justifies its behavior
by telling itself “well, the guy was a bit unbalanced anyway.”

This response on the part of society at large is, as western society is experiencing at this
moment, not in its best interests. Along with the declining virility of many of its
institutions there is an increase in the knee-jerk responses associated with fear such as an
increase in “nationalism”, demarcation of differences among people, satanizing of one’s
opposition, and an obsession with materiality that can only be described as outrageous
greed…supposedly one of the “deadly” sins. And from the point of view of an
experimental psychologist focusing in on the nature of the creative act it is a DEADLY
sin, for you have no creativity where there is paralyzing fear, intimidation and an absence
of personal courage.

Rather, were society to act wisely, it would cherish its creative seers and cultivate their
abilities to assemble facts in a different way from the rest of us. Several decades ago there
was a thirteen year old who was, apparently, having academic difficulty with
mathematics and geometry and in order to keep from being held back from promotion his
parents decided to hire a tutor. There were three or four other young children in this
tutorial and the attention paid to the needs of the individual was more evident so when the
rudiments of geometry were being reviewed and the group was asked how many times
non-parallel straight lines crossed this one fellow failed to respond and the tutor, picking
up on his silence, asked him directly to provide an answer. The answer the tutor got was
not one he had expected, or even wanted, but it was a true one. When the tutor asked the
fellow how many times non-parallel straight lines crossed what the tutor expected was a
socially conventional response. This the tutor did not get. The kid said, instead, “they
cross twice” and the body of the tutor collapsed in futility until the student noticing the
tutors irritation, added “they cross again on the other side of the earth.” Where upon the
tutor, recognizing the novelty of the response, but choosing not to reward it, gently
reprimanded the fellow for “trying to be funny”. “Funny” has no part in learning….
right?…wrong!

Unfortunately, the tutor’s reaction to this insightful response was not encouraging so the
young fellow did not grow up to be an astrophysicist.

In my own experience as a teacher teaching in the still very “English” environment of

rural western Massachusetts in the United States became perplexed by the academic
performance of a fifteen year-old French Canadian boy whose father was the school’s
janitor (now a days it is called either “custodian” or “industrial supervisor” or some other
sanitized title).

This young man, (who happened to be the same age as Conradin von Hohenstaufen when
he was the King of Jerusalem and was a candidate for the position of Emperor of The
Holy Roman Empire) was viewed by his teachers as being retarded both intellectually
and socially and consistently was rewarded for his work in school with grades of “F” and
sometimes a reluctant “D”. He was in the ninth grade, had been held back two years in a
row and was under threat of being held back a third time when I, with some hesitation,
spoke to the school counselor and asked him to test Joe Poirier again for I simply could
not believe that a person with an official I.Q. of 90 (which is on the low edge of normal)
could perform in the art class as intelligently as Joe was doing.

Joe was re-tested and his I.Q. score jumped an unbelievable twenty points to the upper
edges of “normal”. Consequently his grade average rose from a “D-“ to a “C+”. Whether
that rise was due to his actual improvement or to the teachers’ acceptance of the validity
of I.Q. tests I cannot be certain. But Joe was happier…legitimately happier. This, as I
understand it, is the aim of education, to draw out the capabilities and interests of an
individual rather than to impose the more limited insights of the group upon the unique
expressions of the individual in the vain hope of thereby controlling social events and
restricting community growth. Better to shape the perceptions of our shamans into the
paths of righteousness than to frustrate these energies and encourage their being bent into
the devices of resistance to procrustean control. In short, cooperate with genius.
The on-line home page for The Creativity Packet is located at www.tcp.com.mt and it
will be the sections identified as “business”, “education”, and “production” to which you
should go for additional information.

Regards,

Paul Henrickson, Ph.D.

Xaghra, Gozo, Malta