NOTE - This includes text from our longer interview, not just this excerpt.
Douglas Eby : Hello, Dr. Kaufman.
James Kaufman : Hello, thank you for having me.
Douglas Eby
You're welcome. In her chapter in the The Psychology of Creative Writing titled "The personalities of creative writers," Jane Piirto relates that William Styron considered his drinking a shield against depression.
What is your take on that, and the use of mind altering substances by writers.
James Kaufman
What's interesting is that there is clearly a research literature that supports that people believe that this connection exists.
So if you look at studies, where you interview teenagers, and you ask them, Why have you tried marijuana, one of the five reasons is I want to enhance my creativity.
And you find these results over again with alcohol. And you find that if you tell somebody that you're giving them marijuana, or that you're giving them alcohol, they will believe that they are more creative.
But, actual research shows either no link, or a negative link.
So what they what they found is that people who in in clinical studies were given marijuana created products that were less creative than people who are given a placebo.
They did another study looking at habitual users and novice users. And they found that across all conditions, habitual users were generally less creative. Similar findings have been found with alcohol.
Douglas Eby
So somebody like William Styron, being an example of a writer who's engaged in years of drinking, as I understand it, is more the exception than the proof of the myth?
James Kaufman
Yes, and certainly with William Styron, you have so many issues going on, you not only have the alcohol, but also his very severe depression, which is its own beast. And it is possible, there was an interaction between the alcohol and his depression that in some way, helped him. But there's no way of arguing that it helped his creativity.
Douglas Eby
Very interesting. Well, in your, in your summary of the book written with your co editor, Scott Barry Kaufman, you note that Grace Waitman and Jonathan Plucker argue that if writers do not hold the genius myth stereotype, they may feel a greater control during the process of writing creatively. Could you expand on that on the genius myth idea...
James Kaufman
This idea is actually something that I've written about with Jonathan, as well as with one of his students, former students now, Professor Ronald Beghetto.
And the idea, the central idea is that there are two ways of approaching creativity. And this isn't just for researchers - it is the way that people may conceive of it.
One way is what's called Big C, and Big C is genius. And this is if you think of creativity, and you think of Mozart, you think of Shakespeare, you think of you know, people like Paul Robeson, or Toni Morrison - these are great people who will be remembered forever.
And there's a problem with that, which is... if that's what you think of when you think about creativity, and if that is your model, in order to be creative, you better be like Einstein, you know, and that, gosh, I want to be a creative writer. Well, I'm gonna hold myself up to Hemingway and Poe and Twain. Right.
The problem is that if you if you do that, you're going to fail. I mean, as as a playwright, and musical theater lyricist myself. When I start writing, I can't think in the back of my mind, gosh, I bet Sondheim would have done this better. Of course, of course.
It's, you know, I mean, if I'm working on a play, I can't think you know, Tom Stoppard did this better in Arcadia.
Well, yes. But it doesn't devalue what you're doing.
And the other approach to consider is the idea of little c which is everyday creativity, and that is more the kind of creativity of you know, you find a new way home from work, you try a new path or maybe you're you're cooking and you decide you're going to add a few more ingredients. Or you write poetry and then stories and plays and maybe you you you put one on at a local community theater.
And the danger is that if you only focus on Big C You end up feeling like you can't be creative. And, you know, almost why bother? Because you know, I mean, most of us, sadly, are are not Mozart, I'm going to be Shakespeare. And if you feel well, I'm not Mozart, so why should I write music? Then you don't have any music.
Douglas Eby
A related idea seems to be the myth of the creative Muse and having to wait for, you know, this magical inspiration from outside in order to be creative. That sounds like what you're talking about out as well.
James Kaufman
Absolutely. And and the danger of hoping for a muse is that a lot of studies have found that it is generally healthier and more creative, if you believe that you are in control.
And that if you believe that, you know, I've done this and it is good, and to do good, because I am a good person. I mean, that is that very basic train of thought is healthy, you know that, you know, if you've done something good, you think, Gosh, I must be a good writer.
You really focus on the muse, you don't give credit to yourself. I mean, obviously, that would be an extreme case. But the more that you start relying on the muse, the more you take control away from yourself.
And the more that you don't even reward yourself because you know, you you want to thank the muse or inspiration or whatever it is. And and it's almost too easy to figure, well, the Muse isn't calling, I guess I'm going to go sit in the couch and watch TV.
Douglas Eby
Right, it's all too easy to do. Well, you also have some very intriguing references in the book to research that people with positive mood may actually generate more ideas.
But those with negative mood tend to generate less ideas but that may actually be higher quality.
That kind of caught me by surprise, I thought most research indicated negative mood states like anxiety and depression really inhibit creativity, what's your take on all that?
James Kaufman
I actually think that both things are true. The way that they generate negative moods in the studies is that they will show somebody a clip of a movie to make them feel sad.
And what they found is that - actually the results are quite complicated, unfortunately - but what they generally found is that if you're in a good mood, you tend to produce more ideas and are more creative.
However, if you look at it over a longer period of time, let's say 10 minutes instead of five, then the people in the negative mood will keep producing in minute 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 in a way that people in a positive mood won't.
However, it is again important to emphasize: It's not like these people were in a negative mood because they were generally anxious or generally depressed, or because something serious had happened. These are people who were shown a movie that had a sad scene or had a disgusting scene.
Yeah, they may have felt "Ooh, or oh, that's bad," right. But it's to a degree artificially created.
The one study that's been done by Teresa Amabile and her colleagues, actually had little timers or pagers, and they asked people to report their mood and report what they were working on. And she found pretty unequivocally that people in positive good moods are more productive and are more creative.
Douglas Eby
Yes, yeah. All that really clarifies. Going back to William Styron, as an example of someone who was very creative, a lot of productive output, who suffered from depression. And I've read a number of biographies of creative artists, not only writers, whose depression has apparently really inhibited their production, which makes sense.
That's been my experience in my own life. Do you have any further extension on that in your own research with depression or other mood states and creativity?
James Kaufman
One thing that I found in some of my work is that a lot of it is based on the domain that people are creative in.
So we found, for example, that if you look at eminent people, female poets were more likely to have mental illness - and other types of writers - and I call this the Sylvia Plath effect which may not have been terribly considerate, given some of the blog posts I've seen.
What struck me the most interesting, more interesting than the finding is the fact that so many people misinterpreted it. And so many people who were "little c" creativity generally worried about their own, you know, "Well, I'm a poet, and I'm a woman, and I'm worried that you know..." - whereas, in fact, in almost all the literature on mental illness, their research was done on eminent Pulitzer Prize winning poets.
And there's a lot of research that indicates that the more prizes and the more eminence a person has, the more likely they are to have mental illness.
There's been very little research done on so to speak, "little c" creativity and mental illness.
Some of this work is currently going on in my lab. But I feel like the mental illness creativity question is generally very misunderstood.
There's a wonderful paper by Judith Schlesinger in the most recent issue of a journal that I head called the Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, and she deconstructs the works of Kay Redfield, Jamison, Nancy Andreasen, and I think it's Arnold Ludwig.
And it talks about the many flaws in these works. And I mean, I tend to be somewhere in the middle about everything, but she made some really good points, that people accept Jameson and Andreasen as complete gospel, right.
And the fact is, it's a really complicated subject matter.
And that there are there's a question of eminence, there's a question of domain, you know, in that if we're talking about creativity, well, we don't have terribly many ideas about creative architects becoming nuts.
You know, we don't think I mean, yes, we have the mad scientist idea, and maybe people think, "Oh, all psychologists are crazy"but generally, we don't think of creative people who aren't in the arts as having mental illness.