Pushmi-pullyu and little C: A search for the structure of personal creativity in a general population

In reviewing the elusive nature of creativity and the evidence and theories that comprise our understanding of how creativity operates in a system of internal and external influences, the author remarks that there are life-enhancing and life-challenging (a.k.a. pushmi-pullyu) facets to creativity that warrant a closer examination. A bi-path theory of creativity is introduced that synthesizes psychodynamic and humanist perspectives on creativity to formulate a general rubric for describing and examining a pushmi-pullyu dynamic in creativity.The research examines a general population via a questionnaire constructed for the investigation, the Bi-path Creativity System Inventory -- version 2 (BCSI-2). Data was collected in two distinct BCSI-2 modalities: hard copy surveys and Internet surveys. The difference between the modalities produced a difference in the distributions of the modality-grouped data that was equilibrated to establish equivalence.Multiple-group structure equation model methods were used to analyze the data. One of the principal objectives was to identify a factorial invariant structure for explicitly recognizable processes that individuals use in pursuing their personal creative interests and the relationships among those processes and life satisfaction. Another of the principal objectives was to confirm the measurability of bi-path theory's hypothesized dimension of personality and its curvilinear relationship to creative activity -- this is presented in bi-path theory as the reparative-nurtural hypothesis. Finding support for these two objectives confirms fundamental predictions of bi-path theory.The results suggest that individuals explicitly recognize using several distinct processes: knowledge acquisition, skill acquisition, inquisitiveness about knowledge and skill, convergent ideation processes, divergent ideation processes, sensitivity to anomaly, expectation of need for change, abductive reasoning, pre-inventive immersions (dream-like cognitive drifts), spontaneous emergences (a ha! events), top-down and bottom-up concept formations, internal and external loci of assessment standards, and productivity resolve and satisfaction. Furthermore, these processes were found to be complexly related to life satisfaction. Additionally, the reparative-nurtural hypothesis was supported to a large degree. The expected curvilinear relationship was identified but the reparative-nurtural dimension of personality was not found to include all of its predicted characteristics. Pushmi-pullyu and little c: A search for the structure of personal creativity in a general population.I have been chasing an elusive playmate throughout my life. As a child I toddled after curiosities that led me to laugh or develop in new ways as a young teen, I leapt over others' boundaries to shape the margins of my own identity and as an adult, I have searched through a progression of new ideas and expressions, seeking to somehow make something differently better in this world. I found a measure of confidence in the notion that before me, for the past 200,000 years or more, and beside me in time, to varying degrees both large and small, we humans have been engaged in this chase together -- we chase creativity, our common elusive friend and foe. We benefit from its presence during flights of fancy and while negotiating social interactions, solving complex problems, and conceiving new products and ideas. But we also struggle under its displeasure in the way that things go awry, social interactions disintegrate, problems resist solution, and new ideas are dismissed as inconsequential. Much like a pushmi-pullyu, the two-headed creature from The Story of Doctor Doolittle (Lofting, 1920) who looks in two directions at once, we find that it is difficult to make up our minds about creativity. We see both sides of its nature and yet are still somewhat eluded by it. Creativity seems to have the capacity to alternately enhance then challenge our sense of life-satisfaction. The work presented in this article has been guided by a fundamental interest in the way that such pushmi-pullyu characteristics are associated with creativity. Our present goal is to capture a better understanding of how creativity operates as a set of commonly identifiable cognitive processes and how such processes relate to a sense of life-satisfaction.We will begin our investigation by considering creativity's elusive character. This elusivity has been documented across a broad spectrum of ideas regarding "just what?" constitutes the nature of creativity and bears a brief review. Following that, I will argue for and specify a definition for creativity that can be substantiated in a general population and examined to describe creativity's structural relationship to life-satisfaction. Then, I will introduce a theory -- the bi-path theory of creativity -- that synthesizes psychoanalytic and humanist perspectives on creativity to formulate a general rubric for describing the pushmi-pullyu dynamic in creativity. Lastly, we will examine some phenomenological data and look for answers to questions we have posed along the way.