Creativity Is Within Your Reach with Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Program Description

What does it mean to be a creative person? Here, Czikszentmihalyi tells of the results of extensive research on the subject. He shares how outstandingly creative people differ from ordinary people, and how those of us who consider ourselves more ordinary can cultivate the spark of creativity within. He describes how creative expression improves with age; how to avoid discouraging it in children; how art fits into its social context; and other insights to help you understand and express your own creativity in new ways. “Each one of us can experience the feeling of discovery,” says Czikszentmihalyi. “…That kind of creativity is what makes life really full and worth living.”

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi is a Croation-born professor of American psychology at the Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, CA and is the former head of the Department of Psychology at the University of Chicago, and the author of the bestselling Flow (Harper Collins 1990) and Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention (Harper Collins 1996), Good Work: When Excellence and Ethics Meet (Basic Books 2001)

Topics Explored in this Dialogue:

• How to tell if you have a “creative personality”
• What’s keeping you from being more creative
• How aging affects your creativity
• What made Van Gogh famous
• How society could better support art
• What is the secret of Florence’s cathedral dome

Program Number: 2578                 Host: Michael Toms              Interview Date: 7/9/1996