Chapter 5: Understanding The Creative Artist: Exploring Protective Factors for the Highly Creative

Creativity has been defined as “the ability to generate new ideas that have value” (Torrance, 1993) and the development of creative talent has been identified as having significant economic importance (Centre for International Economics, 2009). However, a significant body of research has examined the association of creative cognition and temperament with disorder, to the extent that there is a convergence of evidence from different fields to account for productive creative thinking from one side of the discourse and psychosis vulnerability from another (Rybakowski, Klonowska, Parrzala, & Jaracz, 2008). Shelley Carson (2011) proposed a model of shared vulnerability as a way of resolving this paradox. She suggests creative people have protective factors that allow them to mediate those unusual aspects of cognition and temperament that ordinarily overwhelm individuals and are associated with psychosis. This chapter surveys the current literature examining the associations between creativity and psychopathology, in particular, cognition and temperament, in the light of Carson’s conclusions. Further, this chapter examines the literature concerning the association between mysticism (spirituality) and creativity as well as with psychosis spectrum disorder. It is suggested that spirituality may play an additional protective role with the highly creative by moderating both cognitive and temperament vulnerabilities.