Conceptual creativity requires psychic freedom. The idea of psychic freedom, it will be noted, is at odds with concept of psychic determinism. Freud, for instance, demonstrated that the voluntarism of the nineteenth century was an illusion. He showed that we did things for reasons which we did not understand. Those reasons were repressed in the unconscious and could only be understood through the methods of psychoanalysis.
But as useful as the idea of psychic determinism is in explaining neurotic behavior, it is less useful in describing a healthy, nonfixated, nondriven person. Creative persons are freer than noncreative persons. Psychologists who study rats in mazes know little about human creativity. Just because rats can be predicted statistically to behave in one way, such a prediction says nothing about the individual rat. It does say something about the conditions of the experiment. There is no freedom in a closed system.
Neurotic people know little subjective freedom. They live their lives limited by their past. As children, they made certain assumptions about life before they were able to make rational choices. These hidden assumptions lead to a closed system without freedom. To be creative we must go beyond those limitations to live in an open system.
Paradoxically psychic freedom increases with awareness of the psychic determinants on individual behavior. The more people know exactly what is influencing their behavior, the more they are able to use that information to make decisions. From the phenomenological viewpoint we know both freedom and determinism.
When I ski, I feel free. That is an exhilarating experience. As I go down the hill, I have one choice after another. Sometimes the choices are forced upon me. When I ski through mogels, for example, the need for the proper decisions increases dramatically. Yet I can still choose whether to go around the mogel or turn on top of it. Although l have certain choices, the range is limited. Powder or ice restrict my choice because I don't know how to use them fully to my advantage. Powder skiers, however, describe a delight and sense of weightlessness which for them is the ultimate in feeling free. And Olympic skiers have exceptional racing times going down hills deliberately iced over so that ruts would not appear in the snow.
When people ski, they delight in the tension between having limits and trying to go beyond them. They wax their skis to go faster and sharpen their edges to slow down for control. Good skiers, like healthy individuals, experience psychic freedom with the knowledge of the limits to their choices. The more they know, the more choices they have in the way that they go down a hill. They want speed, they can go directly down the fall line. If they want control, they can go across the fall line to find the safest way down. If they want interest, they can try new areas or conditions. Psychic freedom is the experience of choice and the awareness of the limits of that choice. The more one is aware, the more that person is free.
Those who are unaware, on the other hand, have little sense of freedom. They may want to choose to go in one direction. but the choice does not work out. Frustration rather than freedom is sensed. Those who are novices on the slopes find their skis going one way and themselves going another. Because they lack the knowledge of where there are choices and where none exist, they are continually frustrated by the limitation of their awareness and the actual requirements of the slope. They may attempt to ski as they walk, transferring old patterns to handle the new situation, but they fall because that isn't the way to ski. Those who are restricted to seeing the present as a repeat of the past lack personal freedom. The present continually frustrates them. When people recggnize the present for its uniqueness as well as certain similarities to the past, they experience psychic freedom.
I don't intend to resolve forever the issues of freedom vs. determinism, but instead would suggest that the issue of freedom or restrictedness often is determined by one's viewpoint. When one observes from the viewpoint of a closed system, the elements within the system are interrelated and restricted by one another. When one observes from the viewpoint of an open system, the elements are not fully bound to one another.
Take the example of a man skiing down the slope. The question can be raised as to what is the fastest route down the hill. The course of the least friction, steepest descent and shortest distance, would appear the fastest route. The course could be considered a closed system for analysis and these variables determined. But there are factors in the skier which might indicate that the chosen route might not be the fastest for him. The skier accentuates the thrust of gravity by his own actions. To hold his balance he might have to check his speed in some areas. Hence the skier may not choose the steepest, most direct route, because a fall would slow him up more. The analysis must be opened up to include the skier's variables.
This is the problem that occurs when individuals limit their analysis to external conditions as psychologists like Skinner are prone to do. Instead individuals must find input for their choices based on their awareness not only of the external conditions but also on their own awareness of themselves. Only when these are in harmony do skiers race the course fastest.
Though a closed system is partially useful for analysis, it does not describe the totality of experience. By knowing a part we do not know the whole. As long as we remain within the system, we feel confident about our results, but we have limited freedom. When other aspects of the universe of possibilities become available, freedom becomes possible. But paradoxically as our knowledge increases arithmetically, our ignorance increases exponentially. Knowledge is the awareness of limitation, but' psychic freedom increases with our awareness of the determinants on our behavior. We become more free as we realize how we are unfree.
I also experience freedom sailing a boat. The movement through the water by windpower exhilarates me. I do not have to go to where the wind blows me. I can sail into the wind, that is, I can move my boat in the direction the wind is coming from. Unlike the skier who must slide downhill with the force of gravity, the sailor uses the sail like a wing to create negative pressure to move the boat towards the source of the wind. Certain planing sailboats, in fact, can move faster than the actual speed of the wind by always moving into new wind.
I could compare psychic growth to sailing. As l move in therapy, I become aware of the exertion of forces from the past. I can continue to move in the direction that those forces are propelling me, like going downwind in a sailboat. Or I can consciously move against the push of my past into new areas. Just as the sailor cannot go directly into the wind because the sail loses its wing configuration, we cannot butt up again our past directly, but we can use it to push against to move into a new direction...but only if we are aware of where those influences are coming from. The sailor who does not know the wind direction goes nowhere--except perhaps backwards. So too with those who are unaware. They don't know the forces on their life; they get pushed around and drift backward --as life moves on. And as they get left in the past, they become less and less able to cope with the present.
In order to move into the wind the sailor must have the centerboard down. It acts as a resistance to the forces pushing the boat downwind. Likewise, those who fail to distinguish the past from the present find themselves drifting downwind. Awareness of presentness acts as a centerboard. We need to be aware of the way in which the present is not a re-edition of the past. We need to see the new aspects of the situation. It requires a willingness to accept the present for what it is, rather than force it into prior constructs learned in the past.
Finally, a sailor needs a rudder to steer the boat. The helmsman who makes too violent movements of the rudder, or even too wide excursions, finds the forward movements of the boat slowed by the increased friction from the water. Likewise when we move smoothly through life without violent alternations in our direction, we move ahead with less conflict. Part of freedom means getting where we want to go when we want to get there. The one who jerks around becomes a "jerk"--he or she gets nowhere. Such persons, in the chaotic movement which they misinterpret as freedom, come to a standstill.
Freedom is moving ahead, using the deterministic forces on our lives to our advantage. When we integrate the forces from our past into the present, the past can work for us rather than against us. When we are aware, we can even use to our advantage those very forces that seem to be going against us. We can move upwind with the sailor.
This essay first occurred in The Journal of Creative Behavior Volume 15 Number 3 Third Quarter
