Deconstructing the Lone Genius Myth: Toward a Contextual View of Creativity

This essay explores the social dimensions of creativity through a discussion of the "myth of the lone genius" and an outline of existing research. The authors argue thatAmerican individualism and methodological reductionism have prevented laypersons and researchers from fully exploring the implications of the larger sociohistorical context, both in terms of the research on the creative person/process and the actual discourse of creativity itself. Examples are used to demonstrate the social nature of the creative process using a systems/ ecological perspective. The authors believe inquiry into the social dimensions of creativity provides an important entry point into a host of pressing methodological, philosophical, gender, and cultural issues which they hope will prompt much further interdisciplinary research. It doesn't matter how many times we tell the familiar story of Bach writing each week for the honest burghers of Leipzig, or Mozart's relations with the courtly musical patrons of his day; audiences still prefer to think of the musical creator as a man closeted with his idea, unsullied by the rough and tumble of the world around him. -Aaron Copland Music and Imagination