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The Creative PersonalityMihaly Csikszentmihalyi The text is from Creativity: The Work and Lives of 91 Eminent People, by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, published by HarperCollins, 1996.close1RT I have devoted 30 years of research to how creative people live and work. If I had to express in one word what makes their personalities different from others, its complexity. They contain contradictory extremes; instead of being an individual, each of them is a multitude.创意性格米哈伊奇克森特米海伊我花了30年的时间研究富有创意的人是如何生活和工作的。如果要用一个词来概括他们的性格与常人的差别所在，那就是“复杂”。他们身上有着极其矛盾的特征，他们不是 “个体”，每个有创意的人都是“复合体”。close2RT Here are some traits that are often found in creative people. These traits are integrated with each other in a dialectical manner.下面就是富有创意的人身上常会具备的一些特征。这些特征有机组合、辩证统一。close3RT 1. Creative people have a great deal of physical energy, but they are also often quiet and at rest. They can work long hours with great concentration while remaining fresh and enthusiastic all the time. This does not mean that creative people are always active. In fact, they rest often and sleep a lot. The important thing is that they know how to control their energy, which is not ruled by the calendar, the clock or an external schedule. When necessary, they can focus it like a laser beam; when not, creative types immediately recharge their batteries. This is not a biorhythm inherited with their genes; it was learned by trial and error as a strategy for achieving their goals.1. 富有创意的人精力充沛，但也经常安静地休息。他们可以注意力高度集中地工作很长时间，而始终神采奕奕、兴致勃勃。这并不是说富有创意的人超级亢奋。事实上，他们经常休息，睡得也很多。重要的是，他们知道如何掌控自己的精力，而人的精力并不是由日历、时钟或外在的日程安排来控制的。有必要时，他们就能像激光一样专注；没必要时，富有创意的人就会立刻开始充电。这不是得自遗传基因的生物节奏；而是为达到目标而通过反复尝试掌握的一种策略。close4RT 2. Creative people tend to be smart yet naive at the same time. Another way of expressing this dialectic is the contrasting poles of wisdom and childishness. As Howard Gardner reveals in his study of the major creative geniuses of the 20th century, a certain immaturity, both emotional and mental, can go hand in hand with deepest insights.2. 富有创意的人往往精明而又天真。换句话说，这个矛盾体就是智慧和幼稚这两个极端。霍华德加德纳对二十世纪的重要创意天才进行了研究，结果表明，最深邃的洞察力可能与某种程度的不成熟（包括情感和思维方面的）共生共存。close5RT Earlier studies on superior mental abilities show that children with very high IQs do well in life, but after a certain point, IQ does not seem to be correlated any longer with superior performance in real life. Later studies suggest that it might be difficult to do creative work with a lower IQ, but an IQ beyond 120 does not necessarily imply higher creativity.以前对于卓越的思维能力的研究也表明，高智商儿童生活很成功，但过了一定的数值，智商似乎不再与卓越的现实生活表现成正比。后来的研究也说明，智商太低的人要做富有创意的工作可能比较困难，但拥有120以上的智商未必就更有创造力。close6RT Furthermore, creative people seem able to use well two opposite ways of thinking: the convergent and the divergent. Convergent thinking is measured by IQ tests, and it involves solving well-defined, rational problems that have one correct answer. Divergent thinking leads to no agreed-upon solution. It involves the ability to generate a great quantity of ideas; flexibility, or the ability to switch from one perspective to another; and originality in picking unusual associations of ideas. Yet divergent thinking is not much use without the ability to tell a good idea from a bad one, and for this, we must rely on convergent thinking.此外，富有创意的人似乎能很好地使用两种互为对立的思维方式：趋同和求异。趋同思维由智商测试来衡量，涉及的是解决定义清楚、有唯一正确答案的理性问题。求异思维能产生另类的解决之道，它涉及的是产生大量想法的能力；灵活性，或者说是从一个角度转换到另一个角度的能力；以及能独辟蹊径地产生非凡联想的能力。但求异思维本身是没有多大用处的，除非有能力判断一个想法是好是坏，要做到这一点，我们必须依赖于趋同思维。close7RT 3. Creative people alternate between imagination and a deeply-rooted sense of reality. Great art and great science involve a leap of imagination into a world that is different from the present. In fact, the whole point of art and science is to go beyond what we now consider real and create a new reality. 3. 富有创意的人既有丰富的想象力，也有根深蒂固的现实感。伟大的艺术和伟大的科学都是借助想象，跃进与现实迥异的世界中去。事实上，艺术与科学的核心所在，便是超越我们目前所认识的现实而创造出一个新的现实。close8RT 4. Creative people tend to be both extroverted and introverted. Were usually one or the other, either preferring to be in the thick of crowds or sitting on the sidelines and observing the passing show. In fact, in current psychological research, extroversion and introversion are considered to be the most stable personality traits that distinguish people from each other. Creative individuals seem to exhibit both traits at the same time.4. 富有创意的人往往既外向又内向。我们一般都二者居其一，要么偏爱呆在人群之中，要么独坐一旁，冷眼看戏。事实上，在目前的心理研究中，外向和内向被视为能区分彼此的最稳定的性格特点，但富有创意的个体似乎同时显示这两种特点。close9RT 5. Creative people are humble and proud at the same time. These individuals stand on the shoulders of giants. Their respect for the area in which they work makes them aware of the long line of previous contributions to it. And theyre usually so focused on future projects and current challenges that past accomplishments, no matter how outstanding, are no longer very interesting to them.5. 他们既谦虚又傲气。这些个体站在“巨人的肩膀上”。他们尊重自己工作的领域，因而能意识到前人的大量贡献。他们通常如此专注于未来的工程和当前的挑战，过往的成就，不论多么出色，都无法再引起他们太多的兴趣。close10RT 6. Creative people are both rebellious and conservative. Being only traditional leaves an area unchanged; constantly taking chances without regard to tradition rarely leads to novelty. But the willingness to take risks is absolutely necessary. The economist George Stigler is very emphatic in this regard, Id say one of the most common failures of able people is a lack of nerve. They just play safe games. In innovation, you have to play a less safe game, if its going to be interesting. Its not predictable that itll go well.6. 富有创意的人既叛逆又保守。一味传统，会令一个领域殊无变化，而时时冒险、罔顾传统亦鲜有创新，但冒险精神是绝对必要的。经济学家乔治施蒂格勒特别强调这个方面：“我会说，有能力的人之所以失败，大多都是由于缺少冒险精神，凡事四平八稳。要创新，你就不能太求稳，结果才可能有意思。结果是否会顺利是无法预测的。”close11RT 7. Most creative people are very passionate about their work, yet they can be extremely objective about it as well. Without the passion, we soon lose interest in a difficult task. Yet without being objective about it, our work is not very good and lacks credibility. 7. 绝大多数富有创意的人对工作激情如火，同时也极为冷静客观。没有激情，我们很快就会对困难任务失去兴趣。但如果不够客观，我们的工作就难以出色，缺乏可信度。close12RT 8. Creative peoples openness and sensitivity often exposes them to suffering and pain, yet also to a great deal of enjoyment. Inventors have a low threshold of pain. Things bother them. A badly designed machine causes pain to an inventive engineer, just as the creative writer is hurt when reading bad prose.8. 富有创意的人胸无城府而敏感，这往往令他们痛苦，但同时也令他们体会到很多乐趣。发明家们对痛苦的容忍度很低，身边的事物会让他们看不顺眼。设计拙劣的机器会令富有创意的工程师痛苦，而富有创意的作者看到蹩脚的文字同样也会感觉受伤。close13RT Being alone at the forefront of a discipline also leaves you exposed and vulnerable. Eminence invites criticism and often vicious attacks. When an artist has invested years in making a sculpture, or a scientist in developing a theory, it is devastating if nobody cares.居于学科前沿，也会令你暴露于众人视线中，易受攻击。卓越会招致批评，甚至往往是恶毒攻击。艺术家倾注多年心血终于完成一件雕塑作品，科学家皓首穷年提出一种理论，到头来若是无人问津，这种打击无疑是灾难性的。close14RT Perhaps the most difficult thing for creative individuals to bear is the sense of loss and emptiness they experience when, for some reason, they cannot work. This is especially painful when a person feels his or her creativity drying out.对于富有创意的个体而言，最难以忍受的事情莫过于由于某种原因而无法工作的那种失落感和空虚感。如果一个人自觉创意枯竭，或许就更加痛苦不堪了。close15RT Yet when a person is working in the area of his or her expertise, worries and cares fall away, replaced by a sense of happiness. Perhaps the most important quality, the one that is most consistently present in all creative individuals, is the ability to enjoy the process of creation for its own sake. Without this trait, poets would give up striving for perfection and would write commercial jingles; economists would work for banks where they would earn at least twice as much as they do at universities; and physicists would stop doing basic research and join industrial laboratories where the conditions are better and the expectations more predictable.而当一个人在自己擅长的领域里工作时，他的一切担心和忧虑都会消失，取而代之的是一种愉悦感。也许最重要的品质，在一切富有创意的人身上最常见的一种品质，就是能够享受创造过程本身。没有这种品质，诗人将不再追求完美而写些商业性的喧嚣之作；经济学家将会去银行任职，收入至少会是大学里的两倍；物理学家也会停止基础研究而加入工业实验室，那里条件优越而且结果也容易预测。close
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