Distinguishing features of creativity : A phenomenological study

Creativity is highly sought after in our society, but that is far from obvious what is really meant by it. Many researchers in the field of creativity stress the lack of clarity, and it is described as a divided felt. The aim of this thesis is to clarify the meaning structure of the phenomenon of creativity, i.e. those distinguishing features that together form the experience of creativity. The individual’s experience of creativity is studied in two different contexts, individually and in-group collaboration. The research object is adult people’s experience of creativity in its natural expression in the everyday world. Data have been collected from open interviews, and is constituted of descriptions of a particular situation when the participants experienced creativity. The results consist of the meaning structures for the phenomenon of being creative individually respectively in-group collaboration. In the analysis it has emerged that the creative process is both creating meaning and producing a product at the same time. The three main distinguishing features of the experience of creativity are: 1) an experienced discrepancy between the existing and the possible; 2) a special alertness that surfaces during the creating; 3) a progression which occurs under the process and cannot be completely ruled. The creative process includes thoughts, acts, feelings, body, material and communicative processes; and it results in new knowledge, a new approach, a change in emotion and new constituted gestalts. The experience of creativity individually and in-group collaboration is different, among other things, in that the later is more complex, and that the group makes extra efforts to deal with the higher complexity