Creativity in the Making - Vygotsky’s Contemporary Contribution to Crativity

Moran & John-Steiner / 15 During adolescence, s/he will learn to be reflective and critical about his or her own imaginative products.

Adolescent fantasy is of two kinds, both which are goal directed: subjective, which is emotional and oriented toward desire fulfillment and private inner life, and objective, which is used in understanding reality and later creating artistic and scientific works (Vygotsky, 1998). Objective fantasy focuses on external elements, subjective fantasy on emotional experience. Adolescence is the process of balancing these two processes in the service of self-mastery and, perhaps, mature creative production.

Subjective fantasy holds sway during early adolescence as the youth uses it to master his or her emotions. In fact, Vygotsky boldly asserted in an early work that emotion and fantasy are the same process, with “fantasy as the central expression of an emotional reaction” (Vygotsky, 1971, p. 210). Subjectively, fantasy is art for oneself. Although he criticized Freud’s ideas on the relationship of wish fulfillment and creativity, Freud’s influence on Vygotsky becomes apparent in the construct of subjective fantasy. According to Vygotsky, fantasy helps adolescents clarify their own emotions and impulses by embodying them in creative images, in a manner reminiscent of Karmiloff-Smith’s (1994) representation redescription concept. Based on the drawings and problem solving of children, Karmiloff-Smith suggests that imagination catalyzes a person to put his or her experiences before self and others through extrinsification, such as writing or drawing. This extrinsification process increases both flexibility and control of meaning by making what was implicit explicit through several stages: from unreflective, procedural knowing through decreasing automaticity and increasing consciousness, to the final stage in which a person can reflect and verbally report on the experience.

Objective fantasy provides the means for the adolescent, and later the adult, to anticipate and plan his or her future behavior, helping to construct the culture of which s/he is a part (Vygotsky, 1998). Cultural products, such as art works, created during middle childhood and early adolescence are often syncretic, with different styles and techniques fused in a singular activity; only later do they include social-conventional representation or intentional stylistic elements (Carrothers & Gardner, 1979; Gardner et al., 1990; Smolucha, 1992; Vygotsky, 1987; Winner, 1982). Yet, as tension increases between emotionality and objective criticism during this so-called “literal stage” and beyond, many children stop creating (Smolucha, 1992; Winner, 1982). Social life requires individuals to subject their behavior to norms (Vygotsky, 1997b), but he hinted that these norms may differ by domains, which would parallel Gardner’s (1983, 1993) domain specificity claims. Vygotsky said, “The average adolescent loses interest in