• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Kim Hermanson PhD

Facilitating Creative Breakthroughs

  • Home
  • Events
  • Readings
    • Request a Reading
    • Testimonials
  • Products
    • Books
    • Self-Study Audio Courses
    • Courses to License
  • Blog
  • About
    • Official Bio
    • Lectures and Interviews
    • Personal Story
  • Doorway Sessions
    • Book a Session
    • What Clients Say
  • Contact
  • Show Search
Hide Search

Constructive Creativity

June 15, 2009

In his book On Becoming a Person, Carl Rogers wrote the following set of conditions for “constructive creativity” (rather than destructive creativity.) BTW, Carl Rogers is considered one of the founders of Humanistic Psychology…


1) Openness to experience, which he called “extensionality.” This is the opposite of psychological defensiveness and it implies a tolerance for ambiguity.


2) An internal locus of evaluation. “The final evaluation lies in the person’s own organismic reaction to and appraisal of the creation.” In other words, it is “right” when the process is satisfying and you feel authentic in what you’ve done.

3) The ability to toy with elements and concepts. For example, the ability to play spontaneously with ideas, colors, shapes, relationships; to translate ideas and principles from one form to another; and so on.


Having been immersed in writing a book about teaching and learning, I would have to say that this is the learning process as well:


a) we need to be open to learn;


b) the only way to really learn anything as an adult in this world is to have your own internal locus of evaluation (otherwise, you’re just receiving endless streams of information and you have no way to filter or process this information); and


c) we have to be able to “play” to learn, because learning as an adult only happens when we follow our own natural interests and enthusiasms. You could say that learning is a process of remembering what you’re interested in.


(Note: this post was inspired by a more detailed explanation of Roger’s work in the book, Higher Creativity by Willis Harmon.)

Previous Post
Next Post

Books, Learning & Creative Process, Teaching, Coaching & Facilitating carl rogers, constructive creativity, creativity, Higher Creativity, learning, on becoming a person, willis harmon

Primary Sidebar

Blog Categories

  • Art
  • Books
  • Doorway Sessions
  • Earth/Nature
  • Imaginal
  • Inspiration
  • Learning & Creative Process
  • Metaphor
  • Social Change
  • Teaching, Coaching & Facilitating
  • Uncategorized

Blog Archives

Blog Tags

aesthetics albert einstein art artist beauty Betty Edwards Book Passage carl jung coaching consciousness creative process creative writing creativity depth psychology depth psychology alliance doorway sessions drawing on the right side of the brain eckhart tolle esalen institute george lakoff getting messy goethe heart learning herbert marcuse image imaginal imagination inspiration james hillman John O'Donohue kim hermanson learning marshall mcluhan martin foss metaphor nature picasso poetry Robert Henri social change Sophia Center stanley kunitz teaching The Art Spirit third space
Give your creativity a kick in the pants.
Get Kim's Guide: "15 Tips for Creative Breakthroughs"
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • LinkedIn
  • Twitter
  • YouTube

Copyright © 2021 Kim Hermanson, PhD

Website by Digital PDX

Header Image by California Artist Logan Payne.