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.

本作の真髄は、二十世紀心理学の巨星たちが放つ「知の火花」を、若きラリー・グロスが真っ向から受け止めた瑞々しい対話の記録にあります。マズローやスキナーらの生の声を通じて語られる創造性の定義は、単なる理論を超え、人間の魂が持つ根源的な衝動を鮮やかに浮き彫りにします。 社会や文化、個人の資質が絡み合うプロセスを解明する筆致は、知的冒険のような高揚感に満ちています。半世紀以上の時を経て蘇った本書の輝きは、現代に生きる私たちの創造的意欲を激しく揺さぶり、新たな思考の地平へと誘ってくれる究極のテキストといえるでしょう。