Continuation of First e-mail:
(3). In the Cole/Levitin article, I found a statement so important: “For the blind-deaf…the task of encountering the world at a distance, the creation of a gap that allows anticipation and adjustment of experiences to come, is an absolutely essential precondition of freeing themselves from the tyranny of direct environmental pressure in order to be able to think.” (p.8). It is the “gap” that I am so interested in, and have written some thoughts attached. For me, imagination and creativity arise from the catharsis created starting in the “gap,” reaching out to something new. Vygotsky gives us specific mechanisms of creativity (“Imagination and creativity in childhood,” Soviet Psychology, 28/1, pp. 84-96). Somehow I cannot separate terms, such as imagination/creativity. In struggling with the concepts of imagination, creativity, I could not come up with a “unit of analysis” [which is always a process, not a static “unit”]. I came
up with a very loose system of coordinates that became a type of mantra whenever I would go to teach. It was a type of reflexive circularity, with an open “gap,” perhaps something like the space Mike and Karl created with their diagram in their text. My system is dynamic, non-linear and starts with code, how that relates to image (e.g., we don’t have to try hard there!), then representation, apperception, persistent imitation (Mark Baldwin), imagination, creativity, to mimesis (inter alia). The key aspect for me is not creativity/imagination (which I assume actually follow). The key is embedded in the word “image” (not eidetic, but visual representations. Often teaching is the process of unfossilizing these representations from inflexible sterotypes). What is important for me in my system is that the coordinates relate to the “whole personality” of the student/or client, and the overall key word is “transformation.” In order to enter
teaching with a fresh approach each time, I would think of some of these concepts, and how to use them…even if it was as simple as wanting to give the students a positive “after-image” of the experience, so that they would want to return and do it again, in a new way. The goal was to create a change of images/visual representations, leading to a transformation of the whole personality.
These are just words….what really sparked by interest in this discussion was Rilke’s poem….instead of all of my words here, a simple poem led me a feeling of catharsis, a metacognitive way to “feel” as well as think. Thanks!
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Attachment:
Still Point Creativity.doc
Description: MS-Word document
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