THE CONJOINT EVOLUTION OF CREATIVITY AND CONSCIOUSNESS:
A DEVELOPMENTAL PERSPECTIVE
M. Allan Cooperstein, Ph.D.
Archived: Cooperstein, M. A. (1983). The conjoint evolution of consciousness and creativity: A developmental perspective. Unpublished manuscript. American Society for Psychical Research.
Abstracted: Cooperstein, M. A. (1985). The conjoint evolution of consciousness and creativity. Journal of Creative Behavior, 19, 215-217.
Published: Cooperstein, M. A. (1985). Creativity and consciousness. Saybrook Review, 5, 28-36.
ABSTRACT
The literature on creativity reflects a preponderance of competing theories emphasizing empirical methodologies. Inconsistencies in defining, understanding, and investigating the creative process have been introduced through cultural and professional biases underlying theoretical assumptions. In this writing, creativity is more broadly outlined as an holistic, multilevel, biphasic process of consciousness. A function of ontogenetic evolution, the creative process is described in terms of its role in the development of systems and structures of consciousness for the purpose of adaptation. A developmental theory of the creative process is offered, describing the conjoint evolution of consciousness and creativity, from primal activation and archetypal influences to the emergence of self--reflective awareness, or the thought-self. The impact of society and culture is discussed in the light of a resultant schism in the unfolding continuum of consciousness. The bisection of the range of awareness impairs creative functioning and contributes to social and emotional maladaptions as well as psychosomatic disorders.
Creativity is examined in the light of accession, the capacity to access remote areas of consciousness. Interstitial consciousness, the preconscious, culturally-relative realm of awareness lying between the level of the archetype and the self-reflective mind, is also explored in terms of its origin and purpose in the...