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The “Creativity Crisis” as a Mind in Crisis: A Cultural-Historical Activity Theory Position

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Abstract

Creativity is considered a global ability and crucial for ordinary-daily and special (e.g., science, aesthetic) activities. In this paper, from the position of Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (CHAT), we expand the debate about the creativity crisis and hypothesize that the noted crisis is only the tip of the iceberg represented by the crisis of the postmodern’ incoherent mind, reflecting the crisis of self-realization as a leading activity in the individualistic epoch. By investigating creativity as an original functionality of the mind, two key titles are stressed. One is the halting of the activity system; two, it is the inconsistency between the objective meanings sphere and the subjective sense-making sphere. Both titles represent the epistemological rupture embedded in the mainstream culture and praxis rooted in the internal contradictions of individualism and post-modernism as worldview and practices, leading the mind to close its eyes on the contradictions which are the crucial source of grasping the internal content (abstraction and generalization) of the given experience, hence, a crucial source of creativity. Thus, it is considered that not only creativity is in crisis, but also the coherence of the mind as well, as an extreme result of the shattered postmodern existence.

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Funding

This study was partially supported by Program for Science and Technology Development of Henan Province (222102310686), and Talents Program of the Ministry of Science and Technology of the PRC.

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  1. Henan International Joint Laboratory of Psychological Data Science, Zhengzhou Normal University, Zhengzhou, China

    Mohamad El Maouch, Zheng Jin & Kaibin Zhao

  2. Department of Psychology, University of California, Davis, CA, USA

    Zheng Jin

  3. International College, Krirk University, Bangkok, Thailand

    Yujia Zhang

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ME was principally responsible for the text in terms of epistemological, theoretical, and methodological proposals. ZJ, KZ, and YZ contributed to the review and the historical investigation and provided methodological and literature suggestions. All authors contributed to the manuscript’s final form.

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El Maouch, M., Jin, Z., Zhao, K. et al. The “Creativity Crisis” as a Mind in Crisis: A Cultural-Historical Activity Theory Position. Integr. psych. behav. 58, 433–461 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12124-023-09808-6

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