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2.1 The Social Components of the Creative Approach

Between 1957 and 1958, several important interdisciplinary symposiums were held at Michigan State University, leading to the successful publication of Creativity and Its Cultivation in 1959: psychologists, psychoanalysts, anthropologists, educators, and communication experts tried to take stock of the situation of studies on the subject, not sparing each other very diverse or even opposing perspectives.

I will use a point of divergence to clarify the perspective of our investigation.

In her speech, Margaret Mead explained her concept of creativity, describing it as the process that takes place in the individual, “who can be said to have performed a creative act if he does, invents, thinks something that is new to him” (Mead 1959, It. trans. 1972, p. 270). First of all, we underline the fact that the characteristic of “novelty” is a fundamental element for all the definitions we have encountered in our study of the subject: there is no creativity if something new does not happen. There is a general consensus on this: while it is true that an important part of the creative process lies in the internalization of the language and symbols of the specific production field, all this laborious acquisition is not enough to achieve a creative result. It is only a prerequisite, since “creativity results when the individual somehow combines these internalized elements and generates some new configuration” (Sawyer 2003, p. 46).

Instead, the more critical point is the apodictic (or at least obscure) statement, “new to him”: if, on the one hand, in this way the emphasis (sacrosanct) is placed on the fact that novelty must be evaluated by the person who has the (creative) experience firsthand, it becomes difficult to say that the very possibility of having an experience and judging it can mature in solitude. Mead, aware of the centrality of the problem, does not back down, indeed, she raises the stakes: the young student who re-discovers in the twentieth century that in a right-angled triangle the square of hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides performs a creative act as much as Pythagoras did, “even though the implications of the discovery are zero for the cultural tradition, since the proposition stated is already part of geometry” (Mead 1959, It. trans. 1972, p. 270).

I am convinced that the subjective (even “solitary”) component of the creative act is a very important aspect and should be pursued. From this point of view, we believe it is legitimate for the agent, especially if young, to defend, preserve, nourish the awareness of his irreducibility to any form of social invasiveness that inevitably results in an impoverishment of self-awareness and expressiveness of his person. Especially in an era of crowded solitude, or “crowded loneliness,” as Bauman brilliantly coined it, the creative potential of young people is severely clouded by the pervasive obsession with “being connected” and, once you go online, “you no longer have any chance of being completely and truly alone. And if you are never alone, it will be much less likely that you will read a book for the pleasure of doing so, that you will make a drawing, that you will look out of the window imagining worlds different from your own” (Bauman 2012, p. 113).

Having said and shared in toto this last intimacy of the creative experience, however, it is important to consider the fact that defense of the subject’s irreducibility is only one of the factors necessary for the possibility of expressing it. To return to Mead’s example to clarify this observation: if Pythagoras made that leap more than two millennia ago, he did so by climbing onto the mathematics (and the mathematicians) preceding or contemporary to him. In this way he was able to evaluate the novelty of his intuition: evaluation is therefore a decisive element (as we will see) and requires clear criteria with which it can be realized.

An important aspect is the association of the American anthropologist between creativity and naivety, or infantile condition: the child (from a certain point of view, as we will clarify) is the most creative of humans and the most important challenge is how to preserve this sharp weapon of knowledge, resisting the opposite current of progressive sclerosis.

However, in that same symposium at Michigan State University, Henry Murray, a psychologist, provided a similar but richer definition. For Murray, creativity is the “occurrence of a new and at the same time valid composition” (Murray 1959, It. trans. 1972, p. 128). The addition of this simple adjective, “valid,” opens up more challenging horizons. As the author himself clarifies, while the attribute “new” implies that the creative production must be characterized by innovative and original ideas, the attribute “valid” instead implies a shared evaluation among a number of people, “capable of generating valid compositions in the future (whether they generate them or not, it remains valid in itself)” (ibid.). This appearance of the Alter in creative dynamics is the original intuition that underlies more recent research, urging the scientific community to “reflect upon, study, and cultivate creativity as a sociocultural phenomenon” (Glăveanu et al. 2019, p. 741), because creativity is, in itself, a social fact. From this point of view, it is important to overcome easy and sterile reductions that oppose agency and structure: “Neither the individual nor society can exist without the other, and neither is possible without creativity” (Reuter 2015, p. 16).

Accepting this invitation would allow us to evaluate the different perspectives of investigation involved, correcting their easy radicalisms: rather than adopting holistic sociological perspectives (creativity derives from the structure) or radical psychological perspectives (creativity derives from individual genius), some researchers opt for a vision of critical realism, maintaining that it is more realistic to affirm “that some people are more creative than others and that the personal characteristics interact with situations” (Fleming et al. 2007, p. 466).

I shall therefore try to follow the path of progressive expansion of interpersonal relationships implicated in the creative experience, starting from a “subjective” perspective and moving to an “inter-subjective” perspective, trying to identify if it is possible to free this exhilarating personal expressiveness from the short circuits of illusory solipsism as well as from an ultimately mortifying instrumentality.

A narrative review that appeared recently on the journal Thinking Skills and Creativity helps to draw up a sort of “index” of social themes recently examined in greater depth during research on creativity: the purpose of this review was to carry out a systematic study of the factors associated with the improvement or inhibition of adolescent creativity in a sample of 65 recently published studies on authoritative international scientific journals. For convenience of exposition, the factors that help, or on the contrary, hinder the development of creative abilities are classified into four categories: individual, parental, educational, and social contextual. Among the individual factors that support the development of adolescent creativity are cited openness to experience, intrinsic motivation, while anxiety is considered the main inhibiting factor. Positive family factors include parental support and autonomous motivation along with maternal involvement. Among the educational factors supporting the development of adolescent creativity, we find the ability to balance freedom and guidance, to propose flexible and open activities, to support and encourage the ideas of the students, to ensure an atmosphere of trust and respect. Finally, the supportive social contextual factors include “providing interactions that encourage expression or challenging of ideas; and encouraging adolescents to view issues from multiple global and temporal perspectives” (van der Zandena et al. 2020, p. 1).

This framework (that drills down into various subcategories) helps us to “see” a condition from above that is often overlooked when we attempt to analyze the countless forms of human action: even in the most intimate, subjective, and creative expressive action, “the environment is not only around us, but is an intrinsic part of ourselves” (Morin 1990, p. 49).

As argued so far, the confrontation of the problem of autopoiesis or heteropoiesis in creativity must necessarily be posed, without any thought of having a formula that resolves the complex relationship: it is right, therefore, to question whether the creative process is more determined by the mind of the creator or by the context in which that mind was formed and exists, and it is plausible to conclude that “the context in which a creative group operates can facilitate its creativity or can hinder it but cannot determine it” (De Masi 2003, p. 502). Similarly, the dialectic between creative-innovative action and society (with its socially shared norms) leads back to the relationship between ideas and structures: Georg Simmel speaks of a mutual influence between the two dimensions, emphasizing the fact that ideas have a creative dimension and cannot be reduced to pure reflections of social conditions, “which, however, can affect the possibility or not of asserting the same ideas” (Savonardo 2010, p. XV).

2.1.1 Creativity and Environment

To adequately address a human resource such as creativity, a fundamental and frequently overlooked condition must be taken into consideration: “Creative outcomes cannot and do not occur in a vacuum” (Shalley and Gilson 2004, p. 35). This simple statement appears obvious, but it is more complex than it seems and we ignore it at our peril.

Two general premises regarding this study.

  1. 1.

    It is useful to briefly report a “logical priority” regarding the succession of events that underlie creative production. Defining a “person” as creative or defining a “process” as creative is a “second” procedure as such attribution is obviously made possible only by a previous evaluation of the “product” as creative. Therefore, a product is not creative because it was produced by a creative person or process: both are considered creative because they manage to create a product considered creative. It is the creativity of the product that has, in a sense, logical priority. Therefore, we must agree with the statement that “the creativity of the product resides not in its psychological origins, but in its objective relations to other, previous, products” (Briskman 2009, p. 25).

  2. 2.

    The creative product can usefully be defined as an “artifact,” which, in Dasgupta’s valuable reflection, must be considered a “non-natural” thing: “No artifact, no creativity” (Dasgupta 2019, p. 15). The following analysis of the characteristics of the creative artifact is very effective, establishing that it (a) is conceived or produced by a conscious being in response to some desire, need, wish, or goal; (b) is in the public domain; (c) has a structure, function, and behavior that “can be understood if and only if one take into account the artificer’s need, want or goal” (ibid., p. 19). As can be imagined this choice of field also has important consequences on the object of study: the artifact must necessarily be distinguished from the “natural” (animals, plants, landscapes, and even “machines”), since natural things “have no purpose.” Hence the decisive distinction between the term “function” and the term “purpose.” Based on this, it is possible, legitimate, and often also useful and necessary to identify and describe the possible functions of natural objects (plants, animals, minerals, planets, black holes, atoms, molecules) by stating that the function of the heart is to pump blood through the body: but, “to assign function is not to ascribe purpose, for purpose originates in the artificer’s mind as the precondition of creation” (ibid., p. 25).

As can be imagined, combining these two general premises renders the frame of reference more complex, and at the same time paradoxically begins to clarify it. The “objective relations” of the creative object (see Briskman) go far beyond the number (albeit vast) of similar previous creative objects: it is in relation with a multitude of other factors, including its author, the relations of its author, production systems, cultural frames, economic and normative processes, social and natural events, etc. So we will start, in this tangle of relations, from the most elementary, structural, physical-biological, and then move on to the more properly socio-cultural.

I shall start, therefore, from the reflection that (as previously cited) comes from the “natural” perspective, from botany that reminds us that, even at the level of biological differentiation, there is a very evident link between evolution and context and that much of the variety of all organic life is linked to environmental variety. Hereditary factors do not rigidly determine the characteristics of the body, function, or behavior: they rather provide the tools through which the subject generates a particular response to a particular environment. Therefore, a given genetic constitution does not determine a specific quality or ability, but rather determines, “a whole repertoire of reactions to a wide range of possible environmental stimuli. The norm or the goal can be different in each environment” (Sinnott 1959, It. trans. 1972, p. 39). In summary, most of the genetic heritage does not determine characteristics but “potential to respond to the environment based on how it presents itself” (Arbiser 2004, p. 10).

These observations become even more interesting when, moving out of the biological, genetic, and also behaviorist fields, we come to deduce that, from a psychological point of view, our characteristics depend on experience, events, and social structures in which we participate and that even imagination (which we have discussed earlier) is strongly and inevitably subjected to the same process of stimuli, influences, and external constraints. Even our “aspirations” (Appadurai 2004) cannot escape this origin and this “social” destiny.

It is only from a wide-ranging investigative horizon that it will be possible to begin to shed light on phenomena that are still difficult to explain today outside of a perspective capable of integrating the different levels involved: how can we explain the historical occurrence of large concentrations of genius in certain moments in time and precise locations? A careful historian of civilizations cannot miss the singular fact that the five millennia from the seventh to the third before Christ and especially the millennium between 3500 and 2500 BC “deserve to be included among these few, large, mysterious concentrations of creativity that have occurred in the course of human history” (De Masi 2003, p. 89).

Consequently, in recent decades the need has emerged to study creative dynamics within the context in which they are activated: hence, while much research has been done on the characteristics of creative personality, there is on the contrary “an increasing need for a greater understanding of the contextual factors that may enhance or discourage creativity” (Shalley and Gilson 2004, p. 34).

In summary, we have discovered that creative production is a complex phenomenon “influenced by multiple individual-level variables as well as contextual and environmental variables” (Reiter-Palmon and Illies 2004, p. 56), giving rise to a series of insights (also of an empirical and demonstrative nature) aimed at identifying more precisely “the different individual and experiential variables that have to do with individual adaptation to the social context” (Mouchiroud and Bernoussi 2008, p. 378).

More convincingly than the theory of the “genius,” this perspective explains why the emergence of people with extraordinary creative capabilities is also and above all linked to dynamics intrinsically beyond the circle of their exceptional abilities. The “accessibility” factor to any expressive field is essential for creativity and represents an environmental constraint: a person cannot be creative in the abstract, but only within the rules of some practice or system of ideas. Because of this environmental constraint (among other very obvious things), “it is impossible for a child living in an isolated tribe or in an urban ghetto to become a creative mathematician, or for an athletic young to become a creative basketball player if that game is unknown in his culture” (Nakamura and Csikszentmihalyi 2003, p. 193).

For some time, the sociology of culture and communication has adopted the concept of gatekeeper, recognizing its central function in any learning or expressive opportunity process: it is a fundamental principle of the well-known communicative theory Two steps flow taken up by social psychologist Kurt Lewin who in 1952 had identified a category of individuals who connect interpersonal communication networks to the “outside,” defining them as “gatekeepers.” The gatekeeper controls an information flow channel so as to hold “the power to decide whether what is passing through the channel should enter or not into the group” (Katz and Lazarsfeld 1955, p. 89). Paraphrasing: Dante, Michelangelo, Mozart found themselves in the right group. It is strange to use these categories in the context of a scientific investigation: however, it must be simply and sadly admitted that “luck is an essential factor.” Being in the right place at the right time makes a huge difference because objectively it is not enough to have innate talent: “One must also have access to the necessary social and cultural capital” (Nakamura and Csikszentmihalyi 2003, p. 189).Footnote 1

To conclude and at the same time open a paragraph for further investigation, I should observe that the group of whom I am talking does not remain “on the threshold,” but comes to define our most intimate perception, our “feeling” of things.

2.1.2 The “Internal Group”

Every environment we “inhabit” presents different dimensions, creatively manageable to various degrees: in addition to those we could define as “natural” (linked to biological processes) and “structural” (linked to the material constraints that concrete reality imposes on experience) we also have to deal with the “social” dimensions of our daily existence. As far as our investigation is concerned, it is useful to observe (in this third perspective) that creative ability not only seems to have an individual dimension but also “seems to be above all a community value” (Federici 2006, p. 15).

The concept of the “community” dimension of creativity has been a rather recent achievement (from a theoretical point of view): when we talk about creativity we usually refer to the individual because “it is the only dimension that studies have taken into consideration” (Melucci 1994, p. 24). According to the author, this “reductionism” is the consequence of two historical-cultural reasons: the first is linked to the fact that the available research on the subject is mostly of a psychological nature (largely subjectivist); the second, already discussed, is that linked to the millennial tradition that culminates in romanticism, for which the creative dimension must be associated exclusively with extraordinary experience, with genius. On the contrary, an investigation into the links between the creative process and the social context forces us not only to abandon the romantic myth of the isolated and cursed genius “but also to question the idea of an ‘I’ independent from the ‘things’ it encounters” (Neresini 1994, p. 191).

Proceeding in this direction, the various human sciences have attempted to re-dimension the idea of creativity as an experience that takes place in solitude by highlighting the amount of social relationships necessary to make any innovative production and its evaluation possible, but even going so far as to trace the “social” roots of consciousness itself and the creative drive of the individual, including the “genius.” A new awareness of identity processes, especially in the psychological and psychoanalytic fields, has come to the aid of this bold methodological and disciplinary counteroffensive: the concept of the “internal group” as presented is also very interesting, especially for its applications and its possible developments within specifically sociological research.

I will try to summarize the content of this concept: taking inspiration from various statements contained in the work of Phicon-Rivière (Argentinian psychiatrist), the concept of “internal group” comes to life from a broad reformulation of psychoanalytic theory. It is significant, for the purposes of its application in a broader field of human sciences, the fact that the idea of an internal group recognizes its most immediate ancestor in the contributions of George Herbert Mead and the Sociological School of Chicago, “thinkers to whom a decisive influence in overcoming the ancient individual-society dilemma (Tarde and Durkheim)” (Arbiser 2004, p. 10).

Ultimately, this theory asserts that individual consciousness must be considered a result of the encounter between biological disposition and socio-cultural imprint mediated through the main human groups. These structures are incorporated during evolutionary development and reproduce the social and cultural world in the individual’s inner world. From this perspective, society, often considered a mere sum of individuals, becomes instead a promising research entity with which to clarify the processes through which human beings become individuals through the multifaceted unfolding of the concrete social relations in which they participate. Metaphorically, just as air, invisible and odor-free, makes the environment vital and livable for us, in the same way we float “in a semantic universe of values and contents of culture and social organization” (ibid., pp. 7 and 14). It is for this reason that gestures are “never a subjectivistic or solipsistic performance: […] there is never a solitary gesture. The gesture is always within a story” (Maddalena 2021, p. 60).

Even the most intimate human expressiveness will be the result (“emergence”) of an active social relationality: the important concept of “latency” is used to indicate this original dynamic. Latency is an “exclusively human” phenomenon, considered responsible for the gap that separates us even from the other primates, our biological relatives: thanks to it, millennia of human cultural experience are assimilated in the course of a few years by each generation “latency has a central role in this process, even if not exclusive” (ibid., p. 18).

In other words, everything that has introduced us into the world indicating the meaning of progress remains in the depths of our being, at the origin of every action we take, at the basis of the human agency, even its most personal and creative aspects, so constituting the humus which nurtures it: every great innovation, therefore (in any expressive or research field), is made possible by a previous, necessary accumulation of facts and ideas.

As can be easily imagined, all this is far from leading to the easy syllogism of a social determinism that would eliminate any possibility of an original move by the individual: on the contrary, “the infinite variety of personal stories determines the singularity with which each subject decodes and processes the social universe and the cultural heritage” (ibid., p. 1). The accumulation of facts and ideas does not proceed by its own energy: when the process is at the right point, someone manages to grasp its synthesis and to arrive at the discovery “simply because on him converge the favorable cultural circumstances” (De Masi 2003, p. 519).

Recent psychology has significantly contributed to highlighting the close link existing between creativity and culture: the former uses the signs and tools provided by the latter, thus producing new cultural resources. Culture is neither external to the person nor static, but constitutive of the mind and society “offering the symbolic resources required to perceive, think, remember, imagine and, ultimately, create” (Glăveanu et al. 2019, p. 742).

Referring to the thought of the Hungarian psychologist Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi, some scholars have recently begun to argue that it is the community, not the individual, that represents the unit of appropriate analysis in any research on how creativity is nourished. The creative process is complex because it includes the salient elements of the context with which men interact: “It is at the intersection of these interactions that the creative enterprise emerges” (McWilliam and Dawson 2008, p. 637). Where the boundary line between the two elements in play lies is not a secondary problem and not even simple to solve: it is therefore not without risks of radicalism to assert that “the true historical subject of creation is not man but society: the creative society” (De Masi 2003, p. 21).

2.1.3 Evaluation

I will now return to a theme just mentioned in passing at the beginning of this chapter: to consider an action or a production creative, it is necessary to first agree on the criteria for such evaluation. A first essential characteristic has already established: novelty. “An idea that is not novel, unusual or unique is not creative” (Hernández-Torrano and Ibrayeva 2020, p. 2). I have also observed, however, that it is necessary to decide how many other variables to involve in evaluating this novelty (“new for oneself” vs. “valid for one or more people”). I will now continue on this path of clarifications and conditions.

The political scientist Harold Lasswell also participated at the American symposia of the 1950s mentioned earlier; he was known mainly for his work on persuasive communication and on political propaganda: the basic concept from which he started his contribution at the conference was that “creativity is the disposition to make and recognize appreciable innovations” (Lasswell 1959, It. trans. 1972, p. 247). There are, in this synthetic definition, two words that we could consider “symptomatic” of a position different from the previous ones.

First of all, the dimension (disposition or intention) of “recognizability” is here intrinsically linked to creativity; second, a creative production must be able to offer a shared “appreciability” of its claim. As can be guessed, both characteristics presuppose the centrality of social interactions in order to recognize the gesture as “creative” through an interpersonal evaluation: judgments on creativity are historically situated and “there is no ‘view from nowhere,’ an absolute statement about what is or is not creative” (Glăveanu 2010, p. 90).

Lasswell makes his point of view explicit by stating that to identify an achievement as creative it is necessary that two complicated processes occur: the first (already reiterated), related to its innovation, must bring with it the second, “that is, a certain degree of recognition of the value of innovation” (Lasswell 1959, It. trans. 1972, p. 250). A creative work must certainly be new: yet, as many observe, novelty is not enough, because a new idea can be ridiculous or meaningless. Dreams, for example, can be new but rarely have a lasting impact on the real world. In addition to novelty, “to be creative an idea must be appropriate, recognized as socially valuable in some way for some community” (Sawyer 2003, p. 20).

In other words, if it is true, as we have said, that creative results cannot happen in a vacuum, it is equally important “to understand that ideas are not evaluated in a vacuum. When an idea is evaluated, some sort of a yardstick to which the idea is compared is necessary” (Reiter-Palmon and Illies 2004, p. 69). The two processes identified by Lasswell (innovation and recognition) only occur through the interaction between two social roles: the “innovator” (the creative) who, to be recognized as such, needs the intervention of the second protagonist, the “recognizer.” Often the two individuals are already in contact with each other, sharing similar situations regarding conditions in the social context or personality type. The fact of belonging to the same civilization, the same social class, having the same interests certainly makes the operation of recognition easier. But if you intend to broaden the field, then things become more complex: the general public (and here comes the specific interest of Lasswell for mass dynamics) does not share all these aspects with the innovator and needs “the mediation of someone who is not the innovator, to pay attention to novelty” (Lasswell 1959, It. trans. 1972, p. 252). Hence, the logical conclusion that “the process in question includes, as the reader will have noticed, both communication and collaboration” (ibid., p. 253).

Communication and collaboration: two social dynamics that, from those years onward, became the dominant (if not, sometimes, oppressive) perspective of every investigation into human action and production, even the most intimate and personal.

In this new type of approach, the conditions for the existence of a creative phenomenon depend on the context not only as far as its start-up phase is concerned: they are also decisive in its final phase, in the phase of its evaluation. The social context intervenes in this final phase as it sets the measurement parameters and thus establishes what is to be considered already in the public domain and what, on the other hand, not being so, can be considered creative: therefore “it could be defined as the validating context of the creative process” (Neresini 1994, p. 199). For this reason, therefore, individual judgments cannot be considered valid or sufficient: creativity also forms intersubjectively, “as a result of the interaction between the experiences of individual social actors” (Pedroni 2005, p. 459). We are moving toward a vision of the process that shifts toward “reception” as the central phase of creative production, a shift for which the recognition of originality is primarily based on the judgment of the end user: “An artifact’s originality and the artificer’s creativity are thus matters of public judgment” (Dasgupta 2019, p. 32).

This state of affairs consequently is also inevitably accompanied by unpleasant consequences, often evoked with tones tinged with scandal and dejection in equal measure: even the recognition of creativity, to varying degrees, whether we accept it or not, “depends on the outcome of the struggles within the field’s network of power relations” (Nakamura and Csikszentmihalyi 2003, p. 189).

Yet, there is a very immediate aspect that makes the reasonableness of a collective evaluation of the value of a creative gesture understandable: without shared indications at the interpersonal level, individuals will find themselves in the condition of being able to compare their ideas “to a yardstick that they generate based on their own past experiences” (Reiter-Palmon and Illies 2004, p. 69). If we stop at the subjective perception of the creative experience, the creator can be (legitimately) considered the “appropriate” judge: “After all, who knows the artificer’s personal history better than herself?” (Dasgupta 2019, p. 35). Clearly there is nothing worrying about this situation, on the contrary: for the newborn every gesture is innovative, precisely because of the lack of previous personal experiences and, as we will see, we should do everything to preserve this innate, naive ability. But how is it possible when previous experiences increase?

I would like to take this opportunity, at this point, to share an episode from my childhood (I was about 5 or 6 years old), which remained for half a century in a corner of my memory. I remember that one day I built a strange machine with Lego constructions, it had wheels, but it was not attributable to any existing vehicle. Excited about the result, I decided that I should give it a worthy name: I called it Pic Nic. For several days I was proud of both the new creation and the name specially invented for it, so much so that I often repeated it in my head: it was a hypnotic and mysterious sound. Until one evening, on television, I heard a character pronounce exactly the fateful sounds: “Would you like to have a picnic with me?” At first, I wondered who in my house could have “spilled the beans” and, second, what sense could it make for two adults to try to emulate (together) my wheel machine. It was mom who explained the mystery to me, but for a while I did not accept that narrative, continuing to believe that it was a blatant case of plagiarism of intellectual work.

I have brought up this personal memory for two reasons: our creativity uses everything that is given to us (tradition) even unconsciously (who knows where I had heard that sound, which then became “my creature”). The second aspect to remember is that, in the absence of a rich social life, in a narrow circle, there is a risk of considering new what others have already long thought and experienced. A second quality that we have established, in fact, is the “usefulness” of the creative gesture, which “must have some value for a group or a culture” (Hernández-Torrano and Ibrayeva 2020, p. 2). Being creative “always means being creative for someone (person, group, society) at a particular time and place” (Glăveanu 2010, p. 90).

This aspect, however, needs to be clarified, precisely in order not to impair or stifle the innate creative drive that is perhaps the most precious energy of our natural equipment.

2.1.4 The “Unresolved” Gesture

At this point, it is necessary to delve into a delicate theme rarely addressed in the literature I have consulted. Is the dynamics of (social) recognition necessary for the definition of processes, relationships, self-assertions? More precisely, is a creative gesture not recognized by anyone other than its creative creator? Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony literally remained in the drawer for about 40 years, before being performed publicly for the first time long after the composer’s death: the question is, was it a masterpiece even before? Does posthumous creativity become such only when it is recognized? We could broaden the field of examples to other not specifically artistic sectors: is an intuited and unspoken truth not true? Is an affection felt and never expressed, nothing? If a discovery is not shared, does that prevent it from being defined as such? Is an identity “for oneself” not recognized by others illusory?

When answering, it is important to clarify the distinction between the concept of creativity and that of “creative success,” which is evidently of a social nature, is assessable intersubjectively and “is best measured by its reception. For Simonton, ‘unrecognized genius becomes an oxymoron’” (Fleming et al. 2007, p. 450). But precisely, we are dealing with two different objects.

I do not think I am able to answer the questions posed exhaustively: I can only state that this issue perhaps leads us to consider an even deeper aspect of the structure and human condition, which I believe to be the expectation, the ultimate wait for any conscious or unconscious gesture (which, among other things, rarely achieves the goal). I take a stand: is a solitary gesture creative? Yes. Because, as we will see, it is the gesture of the child, for whom everything is new and also, I would dare to say, valid and appreciable. Therefore, from his point of view (from the perspective of his consciousness) seeing a cow (let’s say) and being amazed, the child is creative in trying to connect this new being to what he already knows, regardless of the social repercussions of this personal achievement.

Once again, poetry with its specific heuristic tools can help us understand this anthropologically “natural” state of affairs. The Italian poet Giovanni Pascoli was expert in describing what he called the “poetics of the child”: “There is a little boy inside us. … Child, who cannot reason except in your own way, a childish way that is called profound, because all at once, without making us descend one by one the steps of thought, it transports us into the abyss of truth … you are the eternal child, who sees everything with wonder, everything as if for the first time” (G. Pascoli, The Eternal Child, 1897). It is also true that in general, people, becoming adults, continue to produce interesting ideas, many of which, however, are already known to other people, even though they are new to the creator. In this case Margaret Boden speaks of people who are ““psychologically” or “personally” creative: P-creative, for short” (Boden 2009, p. 237). The creative attitude (which we will discuss) is therefore not necessarily “social”: others may have already created what we have achieved with effort and creativity, “but this does not dilute or diminish her personal cognitive achievement” (Dasgupta 2019, p. 28).

However, I would like to take a further step, which is not limited to the psychological dimension of this “daily” creativity and is instead able to complete the statement I made earlier, more exhaustively and convincingly, by applying a relational perspective: a solitary gesture can be creative, but it is always “unresolved.” It is a “creativity in search of an author” (in this I am perhaps approaching psychoanalytic theories of lack), or rather in search of the fertilizing presence of a recipient. Consciously or not, the creative act is an attempt to establish a strong, reassuring, meaningful bond with the concrete and mysterious reality that surrounds us, especially at its most mysterious level, that is, the human being.

I should therefore conclude that recognition is not just the “condition” for the attribution of the status of “creativity”: it is, rather and more precisely, the “aspiration” of every creative act, which cannot be reduced to simple “progress” (unless, with this term, we also want to indicate an increase in the “quality” of human relationships). To fully understand the sense and deep aspiration of the creative impulse (an energy usable in the face of any pro-vocation of reality), it is necessary to make the logical leap of not stopping at its (undisputed and necessary) instrumental functions: creativity (generation) is underpinned by an ultimately relational urgency.

In artistic creation this appears more evident (even if one can make art trying to disregard it):

The work of art recomposes a unanimity that welds together again the fragments of a divided humanity, not in an absurd and vague idea of man, but in a feasible participation and communication, in which our freedom can find its place. And, reciprocally, when he has composed a work, the artist seems to include himself in an invisible community. […] This fraternity becomes unattainable takes the form of a creative and effective attitude, but as nostalgia for a lost communion, as a forbidden dream, incessantly revived by an irrepressible desire for emotional fusion (Duvignaud 1967, It. trans. 1969, p. 11 and p. 62).

What Duvignaud called “aesthetics of absolute communion,” as an attempt to fill a “violent need for unsatisfied participation,” is extendable, in my opinion, to every attempt at creative action by humans, well beyond the boundaries of artistic production.

More recently, using very similar metaphors, it has been stated that the great enterprise of the artist is to transform others and themselves into a new form, gathering everyone in a new shared reality: therefore, as the bridge unites the opposite banks of the river, joining lives in continuous movement, “so the creative person throws a bridge over otherness to gather what is foreign into a new belonging” (Hofstadter 2009, p. 211).

At this point, having tentatively clarified an “inclusive” proposal of the origins and purposes of the creative drive, like Lasswell we can ask ourselves: “What are the elements that facilitate certain innovations? And what elements hinder others?” (Lasswell 1959, It. trans. 1972, p. 255).

One last warning before proceeding to examine the factors favoring or, on the contrary, hindering the development of creativity: sociology has often been entangled in the false problem of the “dimensions” of the phenomena it studies, often considering exclusively events that have numerically significant social repercussions, of mass. It is an understandable error because normally sociologists are asked to provide information and indications on phenomena that involve the highest possible number of cases. The risk, however, is that of neglecting events that happen on a small scale and considering them significant only when they eventually explode (think of the sociological importance of Jeff Bezos’ and Steve Jobs’ garages or Mark Zuckerberg’s Harvard dorm room): a creative gesture (following our previous statement) is “complete” when even a single recipient recognizes it as such. The evaluation of at least one other subject (similar and different) allows the creative gesture to fulfill its mission, to avoid the condemnation of being “unresolved.”

2.2 Primary Socialization

I will now identify the social components of creativity, that is, the set of environmental conditions capable of promoting (or not) a creative approach to the problems of existence. If we use a chronological criterion, we must acknowledge that most scholars indicate our entry into the world (birth and childhood) as the moment when our propensity for creativity (as happens for all other propensities) receives a sort of ancestral mark that tends to remain stable for the rest of our life: from birth, “the physical and social context participates in the cognitive, social and emotional development of the child: interactions with the social context can socially promote or hinder the creative development” (Mouchiroud and Bernoussi 2008, p. 375).

For this reason, the contexts in which children operate, play, and live can encourage or discourage their full expression of creativity. The family plays a central role in making “normal,” and therefore stable, a general basic attitude toward the relationship with things and problems: it “is a critically important influence on and quite possibly the major force behind the etiology of creative behavior” (Kemple and Nissenberg 2000, p. 67). Creativity therefore emerges first and foremost in a relationship “between mother and child” (Glăveanu 2010, p. 85).

For this reason, many studies have been dedicated to profiling the relational and educational “styles” that characterize different contexts of socialization in which the young begin to become aware of things and of themselves.

It has thus been observed, for example, that the family context can stimulate or hinder their children’s progressive independence, providing or not the freedom and psychological support necessary to explore, experiment and make decisions, take risks, express their own ideas and feelings without censorship: the choices of parents, their way of approaching reality and the demands or orders established toward their children have a great influence on the future attitude of young people especially toward what is defined as “risk-taking.” This attitude is a starting condition for any creative move, since if something new needs to be discovered (aiming at the future), the category of “guarantee” can only rely on what is previous, old, past.

Among the numerous investigations (also empirical) carried out in recent decades aimed at identifying these family educational variables favoring creativity, some even border on eccentricity (so much has the “creative mania” of the West developed): it has been shown, for example, that younger siblings may be more inclined to more creative forms of expression. Unlike firstborns, subsequent children have more opportunities to experiment with interactions with their siblings during their years of development; this difference “can provide them with greater opportunities to negotiate and behave creatively” (Mouchiroud and Bernoussi 2008, p. 375). Similarly, this line of investigation has led to evaluating the influence of the imbalance in the “physical” relationship between siblings, concluding that the younger children tend to turn earlier toward verbal (more creative?) rather than physical topics in conflict resolution.

Research focused on the family context and cognitive development has then highlighted the importance of adequately considering the relationship between educational/training styles and the socio-economic status of the family, leading to a well-developed line of study in the sociology of education: in this case, however, if it is true that the children of wealthy families enjoy more “opportunities” for creative approaches (the Theory of cultural deprivation) being able to draw on diversified and highly qualified sources, it is also true that less affluent family contexts generate situations that produce the necessity of finding solutions, thus affecting (mostly unintentionally) a fundamental factor for the drive to creativity, “motivation.” The concept of the self-made man envisages a “disadvantaged” start, overcome precisely thanks to the strength of mind that finds ways out, searches for solutions that would not be sought were there no difficulties to be overcome.

Following the lines of this last consideration, scholars have drawn up a list of creative-genetic family conditions. They have found that creative individuals are not usually firstborns, are intellectually precocious, suffer from childhood traumas, their families tend to be economically and socially marginal or both, receive special training early in life and benefit from role models and tutors. There are reservations about the solidity of these results.

The now classic reflection on the social starting conditions of future creatives was accompanied in the 1960s by the classic tripartite recapitulation of educational styles, published by Kurt Lewin, Ron Lippit, and Robert White, of the Jowa University, in their famous Study of Leadership Styles (1939). The three styles (originally conceived to describe the attitudes of teachers) were applied to parents to evaluate the different creative outcomes in their children: the “Authoritarian” parents, therefore, are those who rely on coercive techniques to discipline the child and show a low level of care for their young. “Permissive” parents set fewer limits on their child’s behavior. “Democratic” parents clearly communicate expectations and the reasons for rules, set precise but reasonable limits on their child’s behavior, and show a high degree of care. The child who grows up in an authoritarian context, according to these studies, lacks originality and creativity: on the contrary, the parents of creative children are interested in their children’s behavior, but do not rely on rigid and immutable rules to control it. Instead, they guarantee their children wide margins of freedom, allowing them to make mistakes, in order to learn from them and overcome them. Adults, in summary, “promote the children’s creative development when they allow children to be independent and to take the risks with new and unfamiliar ideas” (Kemple and Nissenberg 2000, p. 68).

In the transition to secondary socialization, more or less the same dynamic is repeated; the teacher (and in later years the professor) becomes the formative subject: schools can provide children with “contexts that allow democratic decisions, like those proposed in alternative educational programs” (Mouchiroud and Bernoussi 2008, p. 375) or deprive them of such a context.

The social status of the family can also have significant repercussions on the development of creativity from childhood onward, both inside and, especially, outside the classroom: “Children from high-status families are more facilitated to participate in extra-curricular activities, which, it is thought, in turn have an impact on the development of creativity” (ibid.).

2.3 Motivation

Why dedicate a space to the theme of motivation in a study on creativity? And above all, why put this analysis in a chapter that concerns the social components of the creative attitude?

To answer the first question, take a look at the existing interdisciplinary scientific literature: many scholars argue that a high “intrinsic” motivation, that which an individual commits “for the love of the activity itself” (Baer et al. 2003, p. 569), is a necessary ingredient to promote creativity.

While the definition is rich and fascinating, and at the same time enigmatic (what does “love for the activity itself” mean?), the critical point is the “management” of the magical ingredient: in fact, so fundamental is the presence of this energy that a new professional figure (as well-paid as the required skills are nebulous)Footnote 2, the “motivator,” has emerged, (!). It is therefore a push toward creativity that can only be personal, but that is affected by the stimuli of the environment. It follows that the answer to the second question is that motivation is partly the result of an initiative of the subject and partly the consequence of a particular “cultural” influence of the social context in which one operates.

The next question has to be: what culture is being developed today to achieve the development and continuity of this fundamental energy for the increase of every human activity? We could introduce the response to this with a general statement: the invitation to be creative today is based on reasons that can be generically defined as “instrumental” (primarily for economic purposes) and this, in the long run, inevitably ends up wearing out and drying up the most intimate sources of the creative drive. In practice, within organizations, motivation simply comes to occupy “the hegemonic role that was first of control” (De Masi 2003, p. 668).

Essentially, it was psychology that highlighted some relational and contextual characteristics that favor a creative approach, especially, if not exclusively (a limit of many investigations), in the workplace: the reasons for this choice can be understood, but this situation already suggests that these will be “sectoral” motivations, which pragmatically stimulate creativity in specific situations, without worrying about intersecting the underlying, original motivation of the operator.

To therefore promote the development of these “feelings,” scholars of organizational processes have insisted greatly on the “type” of activity in which the individual engages, implicitly stating that the creative attitude depends on the characteristics of “what you do.” It thus becomes reasonable to expect that complex jobs (i.e., those characterized by high levels of autonomy, variety of skills, identity, importance, and feedback) encourage higher levels of intrinsic motivation and creativity compared to jobs of a relatively simple and routine nature. When jobs are complex, individuals are more easily motivated and “interested in performing them for the love of the activity itself—conditions that lead to creativity at work” (Baer et al. 2003, p. 572).

For the same reason, jobs that are simpler and routinized may not motivate employees or allow them the flexibility to try new paths, take risks, and operate creatively. It is necessary to ask, then, whether the job is “designed to be sufficiently challenging to motivate individuals to be creative” (Shalley and Gilson 2004, p. 37). From here, logically, a race to make work activity as non-routine as possible, to provide variety in tasks, etc. There are several long-established methods for “shuffling the deck” in an anti-routine function: one of these is job rotation. In some Japanese companies (see Seiko), for example, a prerequisite for career advancement is having done many job rotations, another strategy is voluntary temporary assignment to different departments with incentives such as bonuses, or finally the creation of “‘mixer’ opportunities” (Maruyama 2003, p. 609).

Another element carefully observed is that of the “objectives” of individual operations: they are the ones that increase attention and effort when the goals toward which individuals can direct their energies are clear. It is the sharing of objectives that stimulates attention in the workplace, determines the tenacity and duration of effort, and stimulates efforts toward the discovery of more effective strategies in order to achieve the goals. Goals are more easily achieved when they coincide with the personal ambitions of the worker, when positive feedback rewards proactive attitudes. When employees do not know what the organization wants, because clear objectives are not given, “they felt lower levels of creativity resulted” (Shalley and Gilson 2004, p. 38).

These are evidently facilitating strategies, which, however, as we have mentioned, risk settling at a middle level, not going to the roots: this explains, for example, the fact that, in different cultural contexts, one can even hypothesize the opposite, as Émile Durkheim argued more than a century ago. The French sociologist was very critical of the belief of many entrepreneurs or institutional leaders in the need for what he called “vast horizons,” “overall visions,” “beautiful generalities”: if the worker gets used to this vastness of consciousness, he no longer lets himself to be confined “without impatience” within the narrow limits of a specific task. The division of social labor certainly assumes that the worker does not limit himself to his small, solitary task, that he does not lose sight of his collaborators and that he interacts with them. Certainly, the worker is not and should not become a machine that repeats movements whose objectives he does not understand: he must know that they serve to achieve a goal of some kind. He must be aware, in summary, “of serving a purpose.” But no more than that. It is not necessary for him to be aware of the entirety of the social horizon in which he operates: it is sufficient that he discerns enough to understand that his actions “have a purpose that goes beyond them. From then on, his activity, however specific and uniform, is the activity of an intelligent being, because it has a meaning and he knows it” (Durkheim 1893, It. trans. 1962, pp. 363–364).

Knowing that one’s actions “have a purpose that goes beyond them”: this would be the key to a proactive and creative attitude. However, if we want to share this definition, we are also forced to ask ourselves: toward or until where? For Durkheim this transcendence (from the most daily to the transcendental, i.e., religious) is a product of society: therefore, in the end, everything falls back into the circle of socio-cultural conventions in which one operates. Thus, we have not managed to dissect the concept of “love for the activity itself” from which we started.

Paradoxically, as current psychology teaches us, motivations of this kind may sooner or later come up against the dead end of the so-called over-justification effect, an effect of overmotivation, for which, in the case of a rewarding activity, any external rewards paradoxically end up weakening the intrinsic motivation, “externalizing” it in the reward. Concrete gratifications, therefore, “not only do not encourage, but risk achieving the opposite effect” (Tomasello 2009, It. trans. 2010, p. 26).

Biological sciences can offer an interesting starting point for strategies capable of opposing these regressive effects: bringing up the unconscious (a novelty, for the years in which the concepts that follow were expressed), it began to be thought that incentives are needed to build something new, i.e., a purpose is needed to achieve (and, so far, this is nothing new). The promising aspect of this approach is linked to the declension of this original and universal dynamic in function of a kind of goal that is much less concrete than, for example, the search for food, a mate, promotion, enjoyment, pleasure: some scholars have begun to explore the necessity and irreplaceability of creative energy especially in the presence of something that is still “rudimentary,” “formless,” something that tries to express itself. The urgency and the drive to artistic expressiveness, for example, would be born exactly at this level that in which there are only vague hints or nebulous sketches in the mind. Often this anxious search is accompanied by inner struggles that leave the would-be creator exhausted and undone; “But when he abandons it, the lower levels of his spirit, the unconscious ones, continue it and in many cases with good success” (Sinnott 1959, It. trans. 1972, p. 47).

A different perspective is emerging from this description; a perspective that is not instrumental that ignores declared or conscious objectives. It has its origins in something “formless” that seeks for expression and that does not care, ultimately, about the effects of its own commitment.

A few years ago Richard Sennet devoted much attention to this modus operandi typical of the craftsman, the artisan, a wealth of tradition that risks being lost: for the American sociologist the carpenter, the laboratory technician, and the orchestra conductor are all craftsmen, because for them a piece of work being well-done is important for its own sake. They perform a practical activity, but their work is not simply a means to achieve an end of another order. The “ethics of well-done work,” for the simple pleasure of doing it well, typical of the craftsman, today “is not rewarded or even noticed” (Sennett 2008, It. trans. 2009, pp. 27 and 43).

In this regard, the profound insights of the French poet Charles Peguy come to mind:

Once upon a time, workers were not slaves. They worked. They cultivated an absolute honor, as befits an honor. The leg of a chair had to be well made. It was natural, it was understood. It was a priority. It didn’t need to be well made for the wage, or in proportion to the wage. It didn’t have to be well made for the master, nor for the connoisseurs, nor for the master’s customers. It had to be well made for itself, in itself, in its very nature. A tradition that came, risen from the depths of the race, a history, an absolute, an honor demanded that chair leg be well made. And every part of the chair was well made. And every part of the chair that was not seen was worked with the same perfection as the parts that were seen. According to the same principle of the cathedrals. And it’s only me—I now so bastardized—to make it so long now. For them, in them there was not even the shadow of a reflection. The work was there. They worked well. It was not about being seen or not being seen. It was the work itself that had to be well done (Peguy 1913, It. trans. 1991).

“According to the same principle of the cathedrals”: a few years ago, I happened to visit the cathedral of Chartres (much beloved by the French poet). The guide informed us of the significance of the experience of climbing the bell tower: it was, in fact, a privilege reserved for a lucky few, since for many centuries access to the towers had been forbidden. Climbing the steps, I thought to myself: “The decorations that were placed here would not have been seen by anyone and whoever made them knew it.” Therefore, following my exquisitely economic mentality I thought I would find in the back of the tower (the part not visible from below, above the roof of the cathedral at a height of over 100 m) the less pleasing gargoyles, the ones with defects. It was a great embarrassment, turning the corner, to find myself face to face with a monkey carved in stone with a wealth of details, who was watching me as if making fun of me, perfect, without defects.

What I am delving into here opens a further perspective of investigation, focusing on the delicate relationship existing between intrinsic motivation and identity construction: Morris Eagle speaks in this case of “genuine interests” which, exactly like creative activities, require to be pursued autonomously, for themselves rather than for external purposes, among which the American psychologist unexpectedly also considers those aimed at supporting and maintaining the functioning of the ego. The somewhat paradoxical fact is then clarified by stating that if one pursued interests in order to seek support for the ego, they would no longer be authentic interests: only if one pursues interests in themselves, for love, “they can be considered genuine interests and are able to constitute supports for the ego” (Eagle 2013, p. 23).

Culture has a great influence in promoting work well done and its motivations or, conversely, its unstable imitation: today it seems that an investment in the second strategy is more widespread, because it is more rewarding than the first. Therefore, no room should be left for possible individualistic interpretations of intrinsic motivation, interpretations that, under false pretenses, would paradoxically lead to the affirmation of new forms of pure and radical instrumentality or of narcissism under false pretenses.

Creative action, in fact, “challenges the separation between the self and the other” (Glăveanu 2018, p. 29). If intrinsic motivation has been recognized by many as a precious source of creative energies, research so far has produced ambivalent results: for this reason, some scholars argue that the relationship between intrinsic motivation and creativity is enhanced by “psychological processes focused on the other. A perspective-taking generated by prosocial motivation encourages the development of ideas that are useful as well as new” (Grant and Berry 2011, p. 73). The “prosocial” motivation (the desire to benefit others) is therefore considered complementary to the intrinsic one, correcting its possible distortions: it has been observed, in fact, that in some cases, rather than provoking creativity, the productions of intrinsic motivation “could derive from greater enjoyment and satisfaction experienced in expressing creativity” (Amabile et al. 1986, p. 21).

It is important to note that, starting from the 1990s, research (especially American) has increasingly focused on the growing phenomenon of the “third sector,” highlighting aspects which non-profit companies can teach to those which operate for profit. Observing the activities that were carried out in those years in environments supported by volunteers (churches, hospitals, orchestras, museums, universities, Red Cross, Salvation Army, Boy-scouts, etc.), a vertiginous increase in efficiency was recorded just when the performance of human resources was decreasing in large companies. In creative groups, as in “third sector” organizations, there is a strong tension toward the mission which is given “priority over everything else.” The mission is taken as an operational reference point, as a guide to action and as a parameter of evaluation: “Volunteering and disinterest constitute the main spring of belonging” (De Masi 2003, p. 661).

It has therefore been concluded that intrinsic motivation, while it is fundamental in the field of artistic creativity, writing, and solving business problems, in other applications it guides the production of ideas that are certainly new, but not necessarily useful: it has been noted, for example, that “many intrinsically motivated architects had difficulty producing creative ideas because they were focused on the novelty of their projects” (Grant and Berry 2011, p. 75). Prosocial motivation (this term could be translated as “relational”) would therefore be able to improve the impact of intrinsic motivation on creativity by providing the stimulus to “engage based on the concern to help or support other people. […] In this way, our research presents a new relational view of creativity” (ibid., pp. 77 and 91).

2.4 Leadership and Creativity

“In order for creativity to occur, leadership needs to play an active role” (Shalley and Gilson 2004, p. 35). Among the social components of creativity, we must therefore consider the quality of the asymmetric relationship existing between leaders and followers. Also in this case, we must register a potential and practiced reductionist temptation of what we tend to call “authoritative relationship”: the linguistic strategy of using the term “leadership” instead of “authority” signals, on the one hand, the prevalence of professional and work approaches to creativity studies, and, on the other, the strong pragmatic imprint of the English term, which relieves the relationship in question from uncomfortable moral obligations to settle on the less problematic ground of effectiveness, but with the risk of losing interesting opportunities along the way.

The investigations born within work contexts and aimed at improving their productivity and competitiveness focus on various aspects related to the management of authority in promoting or, on the contrary, hindering the creativity of employees: hence, among the main positive functions of the role that leaders play in facilitating the creative production of their subordinates is their responsibility to promote, within the work context, a culture attentive to “the climate of the organization and to the “perception of support for innovation” (Reiter-Palmon and Illies 2004, p. 56), that is, making the climate, environment, and practices (i.e., rewards, incentives, objectives, and expected evaluations) “such that creative outcomes can and do occur” (Shalley and Gilson 2004, p. 35).

Another topic explored by numerous empirical research studies is the relationship between leader behavior and employee creativity: these have been established that creativity is higher when managers listen to their employees’ ideas and ask for their advice in decisions that concern them; that negative feedback from leaders inhibits scientific creativity; that sharing in the problem-building phases and feelings of self-efficacy lead to greater employee creativity; that open interactions with supervisors and receiving encouragement and support lead to increasing employee creativity.

There are also more specific studies on the fact that the different “brokerage” arrangements that can be created may affect greater collaborative creativity: when subject A has ties with subjects B and C, if there is no link between B and C, an “open network” is formed; a link between B and C, on the other hand, would make it a “closed network.” Closed networks, according to some scholars, promote mutual trust based on direct knowledge and this should result in a better flow of information compared to open networks. Since creative efforts generally benefit from new information, a better flow of information should improve creativity. However, in open networks, ties tend to be weaker and more likely to connect people with different interests and perspectives. The so-called brokers (intermediaries) occupy the most advantageous position being at the intersection of different information sources: thanks to this position, therefore, they are the ones who have “the best opportunity to generate new combinations” (Fleming et al. 2007, p. 445).

All of this, confirmed by empirical data, remains a source of practical indications of great value: its very merit, however, its performativity, can be read as a limit, failing to transcend the entirely legitimate constraint of instrumentality. Creativity obtained in this way turns out to be something that can gladly be gotten rid of as soon as the context that strategically values and rewards it is left behind. I think (due to in-depth studies on the authoritative relationship) that something more can be expected (also from the point of view of operational returns) from this structurally asymmetric interaction between who leads and who follows in terms of support for the creative attitude.

In the mid-1970s, an article was published by three American psychologists (Jerome Bruner, David Wood, and Gail Ross) who highlighted (with empirical results) that the most effective way to teach a child to solve problems—in their case “creatively” building a pyramid using small wooden blocks—is to “scaffold” his activity, until such operation proves unnecessary: to scaffold indeed means to support an operational situation (e.g., in construction) through supports, which, once the task is completed, must be dismantled. In the educational field, the English term has been understood as “a form of ‘vicarious consciousness’ provided by an adult for the benefit of a younger student” (Littleton 2013, p. 52).

The three psychologists, retracing the path previously traced by the Russian psychologist and pedagogue Lev Vygotsky, used the metaphor of scaffolding precisely to describe how educators can provide more assistance to students “within the Zone of Proximal Development to help them move towards independence” (Smit et al. 2012, p. 820). Radically revisiting the methods of transmitting elementary principles of problem solving and acquiring skills to children, the three authors critically judged the usual premise that envisages the young student isolated and without assistance: “fending for oneself” is not always the best method to really get by. The intervention of a tutor must involve something more: the process of “scaffolding” must allow the young person the possibility of solving a problem, carrying out a task or achieving a goal that would be beyond his capabilities, if not assisted. This scaffolding must be provided by an adult who performs the function of “control” from above, through the management of those elements of the task that are initially beyond the student’s capacity, “thus allowing him to focus on the elements and complete only those that are within his range of competences” (Wood et al. 1976, p. 90).

As can be inferred, the success of this procedure has two preliminary conditions: the first consists in giving priority to the learning process according to the potential abilities present in the young person compared to the ability to apply theories and strategies present in the teacher; the second condition is that the tutor demonstrates a marked sensitivity in understanding “which” skills the child already possesses and, based on these, which he could acquire in a certain educational path. In summary, well-executed scaffolding begins with attracting the child to actions that produce “recognizable-for-him” solutions. Then the tutor can show the discrepancies of the path taken and finally assume “a role of confirmation until the assisted person is enabled to fly alone” (ibid. p. 96).

Ultimately, it is an effective methodology thanks to its synergy with the most elementary dynamics of learning: social psychology teaches that people’s experience settles into routine practices, orders, and regulations that constitute a scaffolding of stability, becoming a sort of “hard core” of what will then be experienced as non-problematic, as taken for granted. Routines (which we can consider the basic ground on which to then begin the real adventure of social creativity) necessarily imply a partly creative and partly instrumental communication and require “a recurring but transitory time commitment, and once the action is completed it does not involve further reflections” (Emiliani 2008, pp. 187 and 199).

When you manage to create an educational context with these characteristics, the adult-child interaction is subject to a constant re-definition of the situation by the two participating subjects within an ever-increasing “intersubjectivity”: as the child masters the task, the adult decreases the extent of his assistance while remaining on the border of a continuous expansion of the child’s competence. In this way, the progressive transition from the interpsychological to the intrapsychological level takes place, which involves a progressive and constant decrease in the adult’s interventions: basically, the adult must transit from doing the action for the child to providing directions on how to do the action to mere supervision, “as children grasp the functional meaning of the actions performed” (Pontecorvo 1999, pp. 56–58).

In summary, the educator indicates the path, then lets the student proceed ahead of him for new explorations; he provides suggestions to avoid missteps or mishaps; knowing the end of the journey, he guides the student, always leaving open the choice of the itinerary. The educator must assume the responsibility of his function, without distorting it with excesses of authority, without continuing it when it is no longer useful. His action must be “temporary”: he is in that position to overcome a stage. Then he must disappear. The child, the teenager, “will continue his journey, either with another guide, or autonomously” (Postic 1979, It. trans. 1994, p. 120). Therefore, while the leader or teacher must know how to attract and involve, even more important is knowing when to withdraw, “to disappear without the group crumbling under the weight of mourning or the feeling of impotence” (De Masi 2003, p. 670).

The phase of “disappearance” is the fundamental element and the final stage of the scaffolding process as it highlights a very particular way of using power and educational authority: the progressive decrease of teacher control, as soon as the students demonstrate understanding and mastery of practices, is made possible through “fading” and the “transfer of responsibility.” The phase of “handing over” for independence, the ultimate goal of the scaffolding process, clearly documents the temporary nature of the scaffolding: the temporary nature of the educational relationship is respected when it comes to recognizing operationally that “the handover (effective) is a process that includes fading of teacher support” (Smit et al. 2012, p. 821).

This temporariness of the guiding function and the discovery made goes well beyond the learning processes typical of the early stages of life: science too must move respecting these coordinates having as a guideline the existence of a “given” reality, intersubjectively recordable, eternally inexhaustible and exceeding every stage of new knowledge: the scientist’s research presupposes the existence of an external reality, according to Michael Polanyi. It starts from this “given,” the search for a hidden truth toward which the clues point; and when the discovery finally ends the research, “its validity is sustained by a vision of reality pointing further beyond it” (Polanyi 2009, p. 162).

A research relationship (elementary, practical, or scientific) based on these pedagogical cornerstones is perhaps the most precious source of education for creativity, as an attitude toward reality and not just as a tool for professional and social climbing however this is an infrequent dynamic, not at all taken for granted, which needs to be bolstered by an ideal, almost revolutionary, force capable of opposing the powerful mainstream of the instrumental approach.

It means, in other words, strongly supporting the primacy of the person over his products: promoting creativity, in this sense, means accepting the individual as an “unconditional value.” The leader promotes creativity when he recognizes that the individual entrusted to him for whatever reason or situation represents “a value in itself.” This also happens when the teacher, the parent, or whosoever for them perceives the potential of the child and, consequently, “is able to have in him an unconditional trust, whatever the conditions of the moment” (May 1959, It. trans. 1972, p. 106).

During the recent International Conference on Trust at the Institute of Social Sciences in Tokyo in which I had the pleasure of participating, Prof. Bart Nooteboom (Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Tilburg University, The Netherlands) made a very interesting reference to a new model of worker emerging forcefully in our production systems using the expression, “Isolated and fully monitored professionals.” He asked at this point: “Is there any need for trust left?” The answer, which is relevant to this investigation, is precisely related to the risks for creativity when trust is lacking: No creativity without trust.

This “unconditional trust” is perhaps the most essential relational condition to support the weight of the dark side of every creative endeavor: the risk. Creativity implicitly involves “risks”: to develop new and useful products or processes, “individuals have to be willing to try and to possibly fail” (Shalley and Gilson 2004, p. 36). The famous American basketball player, Michael Jordan, expressed this unwelcome but essential ingredient of “failure” with a pithy phrase that is widely circulated on the internet: “I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost more than 300 games. Twenty-six times I’ve been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over again in my life. And that’s why I’ve succeeded.” No one can relieve a person from the straits of risk and possible failure, because in that case, they would no longer be creative. An authoritative or simply personal relationship, however, can guarantee human and also psychological support to resist the temptation to withdraw from the venture before “having tried.”

I shall conclude this section observing that the support dynamic we investigated as the most suitable methodology to develop children’s creativity retains its validity (with appropriate expressiveness and modalities) even when the child becomes an adult; there is a social development that can be derived from this observation, i.e., that adult creativity, not just individual but collective, can in turn be supported through a “subsidiary” policy, i.e., capable of scaffolding the bottom-up attempt to respond creatively to the needs that a group of people find themselves sharing. The theme of “civil creativity” should perhaps be resumed with courageous policies of civil, social, administrative, and political scaffolding, in which public institutions should attempt, at a certain point, to apply the hoped-for fading.