She also seems to share my concern that the term is often applied indiscriminately to an aptitude as well as to an achievement, which seriously blurs the concept, and that the terms creative and gifted have been disadvantageously entangled. A major concern of the creativity theorists is whether one can be creative without a created product. But in fact such a nonproduct assessment of creativity is essentially what is done in talent development education when creativity is defined as creative potential and is considered an inherent type of giftedness. She does it very well, indeed. If you have Piirto s book and those of Teresa M. Amabile, whose work Piirto admires, you have about as clear a picture of the state of theory, definitions, and research into creativity as you could get.
Creativity is a basic human instinct to make that which is new.
While creativity is the natural propensity of human being-ness, creativity can be either enhanced or stifled. The creative personality can be either developed or thwarted. Creativity takes certain habits of mind. Creativity is not separate from intelligence or artistry, but part of the whole. What is unnatural is for it to be repressed, suppressed, and stymied through the process of growing up and being educated.