Expository Writing: Creativity, Psychological Underpinnings

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English
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Expository Writing
Introduction
The experiences that an individual may have gone through during the early years of their lives may well be the determining factor of how they live their lives later when they are all grown up. According to Martha Stouts, through her many years of experience in psychology, telling on how normal an individual is, can be quite a difficult task. This is because the look or dressing cord of an individual cannot determine anything to do with their sanity. The author of the book Ecstasy of Influence, a plagiarism, Jonathan Lethem, tends to differ with a huge number of people on their understanding of the word creativity. To most people, creativity refers to originality. However, Jonathan is categorically clear that nothing is completely original, that everything has a source where the idea emerged. The final ideas may be different although their primary sources could be one. This paper looks at the two differing perspectives posed by these two authors, on creativity and its psychological underpinnings.
Discussion
First, creativity is directly associated with one’s personal experiences. Adverse experiences that an individual goes through in their daily lives are likely to stick in the mind longer than the positive experiences would. At times the negatives can build the positives. Commonly, people go through tough times in their lives. However, the same people have the power to change the tough times into something tangible they can use to rectify the situation of that particular time. It is evident that trauma changes the brain. People who have been abused in the past have difficulties connecting to the present times. Research shows that the brain plays out traumatic memories differently from the way it records ordinary memories. As quoted by Stout, ‘Such memory fragments are wordless, placeless and external long after the original trauma has receded into the past' at times people may witness some things take place and its activities their brain to declare emergencies where none exists’ (Stout). In terms of how actions affect creativity, Lethem says, “Most artists are brought to their vocation when their own nascent gifts are awakened by the work of a master. That is to say, most artists are converted to art by art itself” (Lethem 214).I other terms, he disagrees with the notion that the call of most artists towards their artistic works is solely as a result of their inner voice. Instead, he notes that it is out of the inspiration they get from the admiration of other masterpieces. The two authors relate to creativity from different perspectives. Stout comes from the perspective that creativity can be accidental and also coincidental. In other terms, creativity can emanate from a single experience that greatly impacts the mind, especially the most traumatic, or the happiest. Musicians have so often found creativity in their songs out of their own experiences, in most cases, bad ones. For example, a heartbreak can easily turn someone into a great poet, or a musician. Take the case of an individual who saw some injustices happen some time back then as they are going through their daily lives something similar repeats itself. The individual body is likely to change drastically; their heart beats much quicker than before. To people who have dissociated, they may sometimes lose their concentration and even forget where they are at different times. Their last moments can trace a time when they got into class then realize that the professor already dismissed them.
Secondly, the notion of creativity might in some cases not be an inherent aspect of an individual. On the contrary, it might be a manifestation of the first reaction or point of remedy that one takes up after a particular experience. According to Stout, the experiences of an individual might result in instantaneous character changes, which might be a reflection of totally new personalities in a whim. As she notes, ‘Not all traumatized individ...