Originality and Creativity

The gift of creativity as an enduring personal trait is dependent on at least two different factors. First, there must be an urge, drive, or motivation to create something new; and second, there must be talent to carry out and materialize this creative urge.

These two factors, although expected to complement one another, are in fact independent. The evidence lies in the many individuals who are endowed with only one of the factors, and therefore never succeed in being really creative. We know many artists and scientists who are endowed with an outstanding talent and who possess many of the cognitive features claimed by psychological studies to characterize creativity, but who, owing to a lack of motivation to create something new and original, devote themselves only to performing, teaching, studying, or criticizing art or science created by others. We also know the opposite cases—those artists or scientists who are always driven by a strong motivation to create something new and original in their fields of activity, but owing to a lack of sufficient talent, never succeed in creating anything significant.

In several of my former studies (Noy, 1966, 1968, 1972, 1978) I dealt with the second factor responsible for creativity—the talents, cognitive processes, and personality features that enable their possessor to succeed in his creative endeavors. In the present study I intend to deal with the first factor, and to examine the urge, drive, or motivation that brings an individual to invest his efforts in an attempt to create something new and original. We know that such a motivation may express itself in only one isolated area—as in the case of the artist or scientist who is very original in his specific field of creation but does not display any originality in other fields—or it may express itself in several or all fields of activity. However, in both cases, originality—whether combined with the sufficient talent to