The study of creativity and the inner workings of personality (from existential problems to the artistic reality of the work)
Abstract
The article, based on a presentation at a scientific seminar, analyzes the internal workings of the personality in the creative process and when encountering an artistic work. The author starts from a dilemma formulated in antiquity: is the source of creativity the personality itself (of the artist, reader, listener) or something external to it – for example, the language of art, cultural tradition, or even a divine principle (Apollo and the Muses). Considering the positions of M. Tsvetaeva, S. Nerеtina, and M. Bakhtin, the author concludes that the most productive perspective is the notion of synergy, the symbiosis of the activity of the personality and impersonal artistic forces. As an empirical basis, the author uses two cases. The first is K.G. Jung's recollection of a visionary experience in adolescence, where a blasphemous vision of the destruction of a cathedral led to a rethinking of the image of God and a break with church and family authorities. From this material, the author identifies four stages of the creative process: crystallization of the existential problem, psychosomatic response (unconscious resolution of the problem), conscious work on constructing a framework (new understanding and reality), and, finally, creating conditions for action. The author summarizes these stages in the form of a meta-scheme of "the step of development." The second case is a personal experience of composing a poem for a spouse. The author reconstructs and reflects on their internal work in detail: from preliminary tuning and bodily-rhythmic sensations to constructing the plot and creating the "artistic reality" of the work. Special attention is given to the role of schemes (for example, the scheme of the sacred bird) and expressive means (rhythm, dramaturgy, imagery), which allow the reader not just to understand the text but to live through and experience its events as real. At the end of the article, the author includes the poem itself, which serves as the culmination of the described creative process. The key conclusion of the author: the internal work of the personality in creativity is not a linear but a cyclical process, determined by a problematic situation, psychological response, and conscious construction of a new reality, into which other people can enter.