Excerpt, Oliver Sacks, The River of Consciousness (“The Creative Self”)
Discussion Questions: Understanding the Nature Of Creativity
- Sacks describes creativity as an almost universal feature of childhood. Through play, young children express “an elemental hunger for knowledge and understanding.” Though childhood play may sometimes be “repetitive and imitative,” it is also, in Sacks’s words, “exploratory and innovative.” Do you agree with Sacks’s view on creativity in childhood? To what degree is his description your personal experience of play?
- As Sacks’s narrative continues, he notes that, as humans mature, creativity requires that we develop “a basis of knowledge and skills” and that education must have structure but “may kill the once-active inquisitive mind of a child.” To what extent do you agree with Sacks? How has your own formal education affected your creativity as a writer and thinker? Has your education helped you move from “mimicry,” as Sacks puts it, to creativity?
- Lastly, Sacks stresses the importance of incubation (shutting down the conscious mind) for creativity, whether in the arts or sciences. Sacks asserts that “Creativity involved not only years of conscious preparation and training, but unconscious preparation as well. This incubation period is essential to allow the subconscious assimilation of one’s influences and sources, to reorganize and synthesize them into something of one’s own.” To what extent do you agree?
Attribution of Quotes:
Sacks, Oliver. “The Creative Self.” In The River of Consciousness. Vintage Books, 2018. © The Oliver Sacks Foundation. All rights reserved. This content is excluded from our Creative Commons license. For more information, see https://ocw.mit.edu/help/faq-fair-use/.
