The Systems Model of Creativity

Abstract

The previous chapter demonstrates the importance of a systems approach to understanding creativity and gives a brief overview of the literature. This chapter describes and analyses the systems model of creativity developed by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1988, 1990, 1994, 1997, 2003) and provides context for the analyses of creative systems in Part II. What is clear from the previous chapter is a gradual movement in thinking away from a focus on the individual towards confluence or systems approaches to creativity. With one or two notable exceptions, pre-twentieth-century ideas concentrate on creativity as divinely inspired, as the product of an extraordinary individual or genius or as a symptom of mental illness. These ideas were criticized in the twentieth century within the discipline of psychology, and others, as attempts were made to make creativity the subject of scientific study. Working under many of the same assumptions as those they criticized, this intensive period of research did little to alter the fundamental belief that creativity is located in the individual.