Much work has been done on cognitive processes and creativity, but there is another half to the picture of creativity -- the affect half. This book addresses that other half by synthesizing the information that exists about affect and creativity and presenting a new model of the role of affect in the creative process. Current information comes from disparate literatures, research traditions, and theoretical approaches. There is a need in the field for a comprehensive framework for understanding and investigating the role of affect in creativity. The model presented here spells out connections between specific affective and cognitive processes important in creativity, and personality traits associated with creativity. Identifying common findings and themes in a variety of research studies and descriptions of the creative process, this book integrates child and adult research and the classic psychoanalytic approach to creativity with contemporary social and cognitive psychology. In so doing, it addresses two major questions: * Is affect an important part of the creative process? * If it is, then how is affect involved in creative thinking? In addition, Russ presents her own research program in the area of affect and creativity, and introduces The Affect in Play Scale -- a method of measuring affective expression in children's play -- which can be useful in child psychotherapy and creativity research. Current issues in the creativity area are also discussed, such as artistic versus scientific creativity, adjustment and the creative process, the role of computers in learning about creativity, gender differences in the creative process, and enhancing creativity in home, school, and work settings. Finally, Russ points to future research issues and directions, and discusses alternative research paradigms such as mood-induction methods versus children's play procedures.

Affect and Creativity: the Role of Affect and Play in the Creative Process (Personality Assessment Series)

Health, Fitness & Dieting

Russ, Sandra Walker

Mental Health

Psychology Press/Lawrence Erlbaum Associates

The Neuropsychology of Dreams (Institute for Research in Behavioral Neuroscience Series)

In this book, Mark Solms chronicles a fascinating effort to systematically apply the clinico-anatomical method to the study of dreams. The purpose of the effort was to place disorders of dreaming on an equivalent footing with those of other higher mental functions such as the aphasias, apraxias, and agnosias. Modern knowledge of the neurological organization of human mental functions was grounded upon systematic clinico-anatomical investigations of these functions under neuropathological conditions. It therefore seemed reasonable to assume that equivalent research into dreaming would provide analogous insights into the cerebral organization of this important but neglected function. Accordingly, the main thrust of the study was to identify changes in dreaming that are systematically associated with focal cerebral pathology and to describe the clinical and anatomical characteristics of those changes. The goal, in short, was to establish a nosology of dream disorders with neuropathological significance. Unless dreaming turned out to be organized in a fundamentally different way than other mental functions, there was every reason to expect that this research would cast light on the cerebral organization of the normal dream process.

The Neuropsychology of Dreams: A Clinico-anatomical Study (Institute for Research in Behavioral Neuroscience Series)

SOLMS, Mark

Psychology & Counseling

At least since Hippocrates, human beings have been trying to describe and analyze the behavioral and cognitive consistencies now referred to as personality. And in recent decades, no less than in the preceding centuries, they have generated a bewildering variety of construals and constructs. In this landmark book, Jack Block, who has spent more than 50 years studying the many facets of personality, takes a long look at current debates and finds common ground on which to construct an integrative model. Perceiving more congruence among disparate formulations than has hitherto been appreciated, he elaborates his vision of personality as an adaptive system that enables the individual to maintain equilibrium in an environment that is both threatening and engaging. Taking in and organizing information and maintaining nondisruptive levels of anxiety while responding to outer and inner demands are the tasks of this system, which consists of a perceptual apparatus and a control apparatus operating in delicate balance. After presenting his model of personality, Block discusses its intellectual history and its connections to major current alternatives. He lays out some implications for practitioners confronted by dysfunction. Finally, he traces the developmental origins of personality. Provocative, innovative, and analytical, Personality as an Affect-Processing System: Toward an Integrative Theory points to new directions for all those who seek to understand human psychological functioning.

Personality as an Affect-processing System: Toward An Integrative Theory

Block, Jack

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Books by Psychology Press/Lawrence Erlbaum Associates