Creative Characters

The study of creativity is as old as western thought. In recent times any crisis of confidence is likely to involve anxiety about the loss of creativity – scientific, artistic, technological – and to set off a new search for creativity’s definition.

In Creative Characters, originally published in 1991, Elisabeth Young-Bruehl reflects on the long search for an understanding of creativity and offers a novel approach. She notes that studies of creativity fall into types. Some look at the act of...