Before arriving in the field of communication, Larry Gross was a psychology student at Brandeis University; Creativity: Process and Personality was Gross’s undergraduate thesis at Brandeis, completed in 1964. This mediastudies.press edition is the initial publication of that undergraduate thesis, with a new preface by Gross himself. Creativity: Process and Personality finds Gross exploring the nature of creativity by interviewing some of the era’s most noteworthy experts in psychology, including Herbert Simon, Milton Rokeach, Abraham Maslow, David McClelland, Jerome Bruner, and B. F. Skinner. The result of Gross’s interviews is a nuanced and multi-perspectival set of interlocking chapters, each of which probes the psychological, social, and cultural aspects of creativity. Creativity: Process and Personality remains a provocative consideration of how creativity takes form, while also operating as a revealing snapshot of mid-twentieth century psychological thought.

本書は、マズローやスキナーら心理学界の巨星たちとの対話を通じ、創造性の深淵を鋭く抉り出した傑作です。若きラリー・グロスが巨匠たちの思考の火花を捉え、創造とは単なる閃きではなく、社会や文化とせめぎ合う多層的な「過程」であることを鮮やかに描き出しました。 一九六〇年代の知的熱量を封じ込めた本作は、単なる学術的考察に留まりません。異なる思想が交錯する中で「人間はいかにして無から有を生むのか」という根源的なテーマが立ち上がる様は、圧巻の人間ドラマです。未完の可能性を秘めた若き情熱と円熟した知性が共鳴する、知的興奮に満ちた一級のドキュメントと言えるでしょう。