Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-5wvtr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-17T18:35:19.225Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

1 - The Personalities of Creative Writers

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 January 2010

By
Jane Piirto
Edited by
Scott Barry Kaufman  and
James C. Kaufman
Scott Barry Kaufman
Affiliation:
Yale University, Connecticut
James C. Kaufman
Affiliation:
California State University, San Bernardino
Get access

Summary

Popular images of male novelists and poets show them professorially clad, in khakis or in tweed sport coats with leather patches on the arms, smoking pipes; or, as in the image of writers like Ernest Hemingway or Jim Harrison, cradling rifles or fly-fishing, wearing horn-rimmed glasses or swaggering beneath cowboy hats: They are writing from the ivory tower or writing from the field of battle. These two disparate images are, as we shall see, somewhat true. And what about the female writer? She is clad in mannish clothes, her hair cut in a butch, braless and strident, living with her male and female lovers in the Bohemian garrets of a large city; or she is whimsically virginal and intense, her long, tangled and flowing hair entwined with rosettes of wild flowers just picked, sitting in a meadow, her long delicate fingers slowly turning the pages of a leather-bound book with a ribbon for a marker. As we shall see, the personalities these images imply are also somewhat true.

Creative people are those who do creative acts. The creativity occurs in the becoming, the making. In the struggle to be creative, personality attributes are extremely important. Creative people seem to have certain core personality attributes. I have made personality attributes the base of my Piirto Piiramid of Talent Development (see Figure 1.1).

Many studies have emphasized that successful creators in all domains have certain personality attributes in common (cf. Feist, 1999).

Type
Chapter
Information
The Psychology of Creative Writing , pp. 3 - 22
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2009

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Andreason, N. (1987). Creativity and mental illness: Prevalence rates in writers and their first-degree relatives. American Journal of Psychiatry, 144, 1288–1292.Google Scholar
Andreason, N., & Canter, A. (1974). The creative writer: Psychiatric symptoms and family history. Comprehensive Psychiatry, 15, 123–131.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barron, F. (1958). The psychology of imagination. Scientific American, 50, 156–165.Google Scholar
Barron, F. (1963). Creativity and psychological health: Origins of personal vitality and creative freedom. Princeton, NJ: D. Van Nostrand.Google Scholar
Barron, F. (1968a). Creativity and personal freedom. Princeton, NJ: D. Van Nostrand.Google Scholar
Barron, F. (1968b). The dream of art and poetry. Psychology Today, 2, 18–23, 66.Google Scholar
Barron, F. (1969). The psychology of the creative writer. Explorations in Creativity, 43(12), 69–74.Google Scholar
Barron, F. (1972). The creative personality: Akin to madness. Psychology Today, 6, 42–44, 84–85.Google Scholar
Barron, F. (1995). No rootless flower: An ecology of creativity. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press.Google Scholar
Berry, W. (2005). A way of ignorance: Essays. Emeryville, CA: Avalon Publishing.Google Scholar
Bland, C. (2004). The world as her own: A profile of Jean Valentine. Poets & Writers Magazine, 32(6), 48–53.Google Scholar
Block, J., & Kremen, A. M. (1996). IQ and ego resiliency. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 70(2), 346–361.Google ScholarPubMed
Bloom, B. (Ed.) (1985). Developing talent in young people. New York: Ballantine.
Burroughs, A. (2002). Running with scissors. New York: Picador.Google Scholar
Burroughs, A. (2003). Dry. New York: Picador.Google Scholar
Casey, N. (Ed.). (2002). An unholy quiet: Writers on depression. New York: HarperCollins.
Cattell, R. B. (1971). The process of creative thought. In Cattell, R. (Ed.), Abilities: Their structure, growth, and action (pp. 407–417). Boston: Houghton Mifflin.Google Scholar
Cattell, R. B. (1990). Advances in Cattellian personality psychology. In Pervin, H. (Ed.), Handbook of personality: Theory and research (pp. 101–111). New York: Guilford.Google Scholar
Cheever, J. (1991). The journals of John Cheever. New York: Knopf.Google Scholar
Coleridge, S. T. (1872). Biographica literaria: or Biographical sketches of my literary live and opinions (Vol. II). New York: Holt and Williams.Google Scholar
Corno, L., & Kanfer, R. (1993). The role of volition in learning and performance. In Darling-Hammond, L. (Ed.), Review of research in education, 19 (pp. 301–342). Washington, DC: American Educational Research Association.Google Scholar
Costa, P. T., & McCrae, R. R. (1992). NEO PI-R professional manual. Lutz, FL: Psychological Assessment Resources.Google Scholar
Cross, T. L., Speirs Neumeister, K. L., & Cassady, J. C. (2007). Psychological types of academically gifted adolescents. Gifted Child Quarterly, 51(3), 285–293.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Csikszentmihalyi, M., Rathunde, K., & Whalen, S. (1993). Talented teenagers: The roots of success and failure. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Dabrowski, K. (1965). Personality shaping through positive disintegration. Boston: Little, Brown.Google Scholar
Dewey, J. (1934). Art and experience. New York: Putnam.Google Scholar
Eysenck, H. J. (1993). Creativity and personality: Suggestions for a theory. Psychological Inquiry, 4(3), 147–178.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Feinstein, E. (2001). Ted Hughes: The life of a poet. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson.Google Scholar
Feist, G. J. (1999). The influence of personality on artistic and scientific creativity. In Sternberg, R. J. (Ed.), Handbook of creativity (pp. 273–296). New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Feist, G. J. (2007). An evolutionary model of artistic and musical creativity. In Martindale, C. & Locher, P. (Eds.), Evolutionary and neurocognitive approaches to aesthetics, creativity and the arts (pp. 15–30). Amityville, NY: Baywood Publishing.Google Scholar
Freud, S. (1976). Creative writers and daydreaming. In Rothenberg, A. & Hausman, C. (Eds.), The creativity question (pp. 48–52). Durham, NC: Duke University Press. (Original work published 1908)Google Scholar
Friedman, B. (1994). Writing past dark. New York: HarperPerennial.Google Scholar
Friend, T. (1990, Dec. 9). Rolling Boyle. New York Times Magazine, pp. 50, 60–68.Google Scholar
Friman, A., & Templin, C. (1994). An interview with Molly Peacock. Poets & Writers Magazine, 22(1), 23–31.Google Scholar
Gannon, M. (2004). Return from silence: An interview with Norman Dubie. Poets & Writers Magazine, 32(6), 34–43.Google Scholar
Garner, D. (1997, Dec. 8). Interview with Allan Gurganus. Salon Magazine. Retrieved from www.salon.com/books/int/1997/12/cov_si_08gurganus.html.Google Scholar
Ghiselin, B. (1952). The creative process. New York: Bantam.Google Scholar
Ginsberg, A. (1984). Collected poems, 1947–1980. New York: Harper & Row.Google Scholar
Hart, H. (2000). The world as a lie: James Dickey. New York: Picador.Google Scholar
Helson, R. (1999). Institute of Personality Assessment and Research. In Runco, M. & Pritzker, S. (Eds.), Encyclopedia of creativity (Vol. 2, pp. 71–79). San Diego: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Hill, J. (2001). Legacy of Luna. New York: HarperCollins.Google Scholar
Hillesum, E. (1985). An interrupted life: The diaries of Etta Hillesum, 1941–1943. New York: Washington Square Press.Google Scholar
Jamison, K. R. (1989). Mood disorders and patterns of creativity in British writers and artists. Psychiatry, 52, 125–134.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Jamison, K. R. (1993). Touched with fire: Manic-depressive illness and the artistic temperament. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Jenkins-Friedman, R. (1992). Zorba's conundrum: Evaluative aspect of self-concept in talented individuals. Quest, 3(1), 1–7.Google Scholar
Joyce, C. (1998). Interview with Russell Banks. Salon Magazine. Retrieved from www.salon.com/books/int/1998/01/cov_si_05int3.html.Google Scholar
Kakutani, M. (1995). The art of humor, I: Interview with Woody Allen. Paris Review, 136, 200–222.Google Scholar
Kaufman, J. C. (2001). The Sylvia Plath effect: Mental illness in eminent creative writers. Journal of Creative Behavior, 35, 37–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kaufman, J. C., & Baer, J. (2002). I bask in dreams of suicide: Mental illness, poetry, and women. Review of General Psychology, 6(3), 271–286.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kaufman, J. C., & Baer, J. (Eds.). (2005). Creativity in domains: Faces of the muse. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Kris, E. (1976). On preconscious mental processes. In Rothenberg, A. & Hausman, C. (Eds.), The creativity question (pp. 135–142). Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Kuehl, L. (1978). Interview with Joan Didion. In Plimpton, G. (Ed.), Women writers at work: The Paris Review interviews (pp. 319–336). New York: Penguin Books.Google Scholar
Langer, S. (1957). Problems of art. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.Google Scholar
Lynn, K. S. (1988). Hemingway. New York: Fawcett Columbine.Google Scholar
MacAdam, A. (1991). Interview with Octavio Paz. Paris Review, 119, 82–123.Google Scholar
MacKinnon, D. (1978). In search of human effectiveness: Identifying and developing creativity. Buffalo, NY: Bearly Limited.Google Scholar
Mays, J. (1995). In the jaws of the black dog. New York: HarperCollins.Google Scholar
McCrae, R. R., & Costa, P. T. (1999). A five-factor theory of personality. In Pervin, L. A. & John, O. P. (Eds.), Handbook of personality theory and research (2nd ed., pp. 139–153). New York: Guilford Press.Google Scholar
Miles, B. (1989). Ginsberg. New York: Simon & Schuster.Google Scholar
Myers, I. B., & McCaulley, M. H. (1985). Manual: A guide to the development and use of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. Palo Alto, CA: Consulting Psychologists Press.Google Scholar
Neubauer, A. (Ed.). (1994). Conversations on writing fiction: Interviews with 13 distinguished teachers of fiction writing in America. New York: HarperPerennial.
Ozick, C. (1971). The pagan rabbi and other stories. New York: Knopf.Google Scholar
Piechowski, M. M. (2006). Mellow out, they say: If only I could. Madison, WI: Yunasa Press.Google Scholar
Piirto, J. (1978). The creative process and schooling of creative writers. Paper presented at the National Association for Gifted Children Conference, Houston.Google Scholar
Piirto, J. (1985). The three-week trance diet. Columbus, OH: Carpenter Press.Google Scholar
Piirto, J. (1992). Understanding those who create. Dayton, OH: Ohio Psychology Press.Google Scholar
Piirto, J. (1994). Talented children and adults: Their development and education. New York: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Piirto, J. (1995). A location in the Upper Peninsula: Essays, stories, poems. New Brighton, MN: Sampo Publishing.Google Scholar
Piirto, J. (1998a). Understanding those who create (2nd ed.). Scottsdale, AZ: Gifted Psychology Press.Google Scholar
Piirto, J. (1998b). Themes in the lives of successful contemporary U.S. women creative writers. Roeper Review, 21(1), 60–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Piirto, J. (1998c). Feeling boys, thinking girls, and judging teachers: Talented students and the MBTI. Proceedings of the 1998 Conference of the Center for the Application of Personality Types (CAPT), Orlando, March 8.Google Scholar
Piirto, J. (1999). Talented children and adults: Their development and education (2nd ed.). Columbus, OH: Prentice Hall.Google Scholar
Piirto, J. (2002). “My teeming brain”: Understanding creative writers. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press.Google Scholar
Piirto, J. (2004). Understanding creativity. Tempe, AZ: Great Potential Press.Google Scholar
Piirto, J. (2006, September). The Piirto Piiramid and creativity in the domain of visual arts. Keynote speech at European Council for High Ability Conference, Lahti, Finland.Google Scholar
Piirto, J. (in press). 20 years with the Dabrowski theory: An autoethnography. Advanced Development.
Piirto, J., & Fraas, J. (1995). Androgyny in the personalities of talented adolescents. Journal for Secondary Gifted Education, I, 93–102.Google Scholar
Piirto, J., & Johnson, G. (2004, May). Personality attributes of talented teenagers: The HSPQ and the MBTI. Paper presented at Wallace Symposium, Iowa City.Google Scholar
Piirto, J., Montgomery, D., & May, J. (2008). A comparison of Dabrowski's overexcitabilities by gender for American and Korean high school gifted students. High Ability Studies, 19(2), 141–153.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Plato, . (1952). Dialogues: The ion. In Hutchins, R. (Ed.), The great books of the Western world (Vol. 7). Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica.Google Scholar
Plimpton, G. (1995a). The art of humor, II: Interview with Garrison Keillor. Paris Review, 136, 108–127.Google Scholar
Plimpton, G. (1995b). The art of humor, III. Interview with Calvin Trillin. Paris Review, 136, 16–175.Google Scholar
Prescott, F. C. (1920). The poetic mind. Ithaca, NY: Great Seal Books.Google Scholar
Rayneri, L. J., Gerber, B. L., & Wiley, L. P. (2003). Gifted achievers and gifted underachievers: The impact of learning style preferences in the classroom. Journal of Secondary Gifted Education, 14(4), 197–204.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Renzulli, J. (1978). What makes giftedness? Reexamining a definition. Phi Delta Kappan, 60, 180–184, 261.Google Scholar
Richardson, J. (1986). Wallace Stevens: The early years, 1879–1923. New York: William Morrow.Google Scholar
Rothenberg, A. (1990). Creativity and madness. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Runco, M. A. (2006). Reasoning and personal creativity. In Kaufman, J. C. & Baer, J. (Eds.), Creativity and reason in cognitive development (pp. 99–116). New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rush, N. (1995). Healthy subversions. In Baldwin, N. & Osen, D. (Eds.), The writing life: A collection of essays and interviews with National Book Award winners (pp. 215–228). New York: Random House.Google Scholar
Santayana, G. (1896). The sense of beauty: Being the outline of aesthetic theory. New York: Dover.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schapiro, M. (1999). Rewriting Bob Dole: Interview with Mark Helprin. Salon Magazine. Retrieved from www.salon1999.com/weekly/interview 960714.html.
Schneiderman, L. (1988). The literary mind: Portraits in pain and creativity. New York: Insight.Google Scholar
Simonton, D. K. (1994). Greatness: What makes history and why?New York: Guilford.Google Scholar
Simonton, D. K. (1999). The origins of genius: Darwinian perspectives on creativity. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Simpson, L. (1972). North of Jamaica. New York: Harper & Row.Google Scholar
Sinclair, U. (1956). The cup of fury. Great Neck, NY: Channel Press.Google Scholar
Smith, J. (1999). Where the roots reach for the water. New York: North Point Press.Google Scholar
Snyder, G. (2007). Back on the fire: Essays. Emeryville, CA: Avalon Publishing.Google Scholar
Sternberg, R., & Davidson, J. (1995). The nature of insight. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Sternberg, R., & Lubart, T. I. (1991). An investment theory of creativity and its development. Human Development, 34, 1–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Styron, W. (1990). Darkness visible: A memoir of madness. New York: Random House.Google Scholar
Tannenbaum, A. (1983). Gifted children. New York: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Teicholz, T. (1989). Interview with Cynthia Ozick. In Plimpton, G. (Ed.), Women writers at work (pp. 291–317). New York: Penguin.Google Scholar
,The spirit within. (1995). Interview with Amy Tan. Salon Magazine. Retrieved from www.salon.com/12nov1995/feature/tan.html.
Waldron, A. (1989, March 14). Writers and alcohol. Washington Post, pp. 13–15.Google Scholar
Yeats, W. B. (1953). The autobiography of William Butler Yeats: Consisting of reveries over childhood and youth, the trembling of the veil, and dramatis personae. New York: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Zimmerman, B. J., Bandura, A., & Martinez-Pons, M. (1992). Self-motivation for academic attainment: The role of self-efficacy beliefs and personal goal setting. American Educational Research Journal, 19(3), 663–676.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×