Positive Psychology and Creativity: How Character Strength Shapes Mental Health and the Good Life

Improving mental health involves not only addressing illness, but also identifying and developing the positive qualities that help us flourish. In search of more information about what these qualities are and how to develop them, Emily and I will be studying a foundational textbook on Positive Psychology.

The book is called Character Strengths and Virtues: A Handbook and Classification, Volume 1 (Christopher Peterson and Martin E. P. Seligman, 2004). In this podcast, we discuss how  creativity may contribute to fulfillment, resilience, and what positive psychologists describe as “the good life.” Other character strengths will be covered in future podcasts.

Our conversation takes a closer look at creativity as a character strength—and how it's much more than being artistic. From problem-solving and divergent thinking to writing, photography, and everyday ingenuity, creativity appears in many different forms.

We also discuss how childhood experiences, education, stress, external criticism, intelligence, and personality may influence how creativity develops and is expressed.

In this episode, discover:

1. What is Positive Psychology?
2. Character Strengths and the idea of “the good life.”
3. Creativity as a positive character strength.
4. Everyday creativity vs. the “Big C” creativity.
5. Divergent vs. convergent thinking.
6. Creativity’s relationship to intelligence and personality.
7. How childhood and environment can influence creativity.
8. Creativity as a coping skill.
9. Why creativity goes far beyond just being artistic.
10. How to recognize and nurture creativity in yourself and others.

This episode ultimately encourages listeners to value their own creativity, give it room to develop, and appreciate its importance in one's holistic approach to wellness.

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello and welcome to the Holistic Psychiatrist Podcast. I'm Dr. Alice Lee, the holistic psychiatrist practicing in Stanford, Connecticut. So today we have a really interesting topic that I'm going to be discussing with my collaborator, Emily. So Emily, welcome to the podcast.

SPEAKER_01 0:19

Hi, thank you for having me as usual. It's going to be an interesting one, especially how difficult it was to dive into the topic, but we'll get into that.

SPEAKER_00 0:29

Today, Emily and I decided we're going to read 800-page of a book called Character Strengths and Virtues, a Handbook and Classification. And the book is written by Christopher Peterson and Martin E.P. Seligman. So the reason why I wanted to read this book was because I read another book by Dan Baker and Cameron Stouth called What Happy People Know. And that was an easy book to read. Found it very entertaining. It was just a few hundred pages. It wasn't really thick. And it held a lot of really practical advice and lots of very interesting vignettes. So it got me interested in what Dan Baker was referring to in that book called Positive Psychology. And that's how it got me started being curious about what is positive psychology. One of the foundational books on positive psychology, apparently, is this book, this 800-page book. So I decided that without really reviewing the book, I said to Emily, let's read this book together and we'll talk about it and see what we think about it.

SPEAKER_01 1:43

It sounded interesting. You did warn me that it might be dry. I do remember you warned me, and I was like, that's fine, that's fine. Even though they describe it as a positive counterpart to the DSM. So it essentially feels like reading a medical textbook, like reading the DSM. But as we discussed before we started recording the podcast, a lot of it is very, very fascinating.

SPEAKER_00 2:06

Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. I think we did the same thing when we started reading the book. We started reading the book, and then pretty soon we were skimming some parts of it. And then we were getting to the interesting parts. Okay. Why don't we start with some areas that kind of jumped out at us? And Emily, you and I were talking before our show a little bit about one area. So I'm gonna let you bring up a topic that you thought was an interesting point in the book.

SPEAKER_01 2:36

Sure. Initially, to me, just the overall idea of the framework was, I think I told you I had to go back and read it a few times to understand it. But it is interesting that ultimately, and of course, I took a whole lot of notes, but the now things are popping into my head that I wish I had taken notes on. But the way that they compare it to the DSM, which of course the DSM is for diagnosing different mental disorders. You've got ADHD, schizophrenia, all of that sort of stuff. Obviously, that's something that you are much more familiar with than I am. But like they say in the book, they want to do a positive counterpart and really look at rather than classifying those psychological disorders, they want to, they wanted to classify positive human character, essentially, right? Is that how I think it would be best described?

SPEAKER_00 3:28

They were motivated by the fact that they believe that mental health isn't just the absence of illness.

SPEAKER_01 3:34

And that you could, what is it that they call it? Not the good life, the the positive, what is it, the positive life? They did call it the good life a lot of times. The good is it okay? So the good life, and that can actually be cultivated that a lot of these characteristics and they argue and that they have different ways of providing evidence, because that was the big thing. As I'm reading the introduction, their big thing is they want to provide empirical evidence, right? And I'm thinking, oh gosh, how are they gonna do that? And it's interesting how they go about doing it. I think that's however where we started skimming more because you read through one study, you read through another study, and then you kind of flip ahead, and there's 10 to 20 more studies that they're going to review. And it's like, okay, I don't need to read all of this.

SPEAKER_00 4:18

Exactly. Well, with the DSM, I was really intrigued by the number of different diagnoses that are actually in the DSM. I don't remember if it was 300 different diagnoses, but I think what they were trying to make the point of is that even though you've kind of classified different groups of symptoms and labeled them, it doesn't necessarily mean that it points to a similar like underlying causes. And so when you pointed that out in the book about the DSM, I was like, I'm glad somebody is mentioning that because as a holistic psychiatrist, what was really important for me to help people get better, not how well the diagnosis fits, but how well are we able to match the symptoms with some idea of underlying causes? Because that's where the healing actually works. The only other thing that I wanted to mention that was really relevant to me was he said that currently psychologists and psychiatrists think of treatment as treating mental illness. And he was talking about facilitating mental health, and the idea popped in my head what if insurance companies only recognized health? You start with maybe some symptoms, but then you have to like show before you get paid that you've actually created certain criteria for health. Is the person happier? Is the person at a greater state of function within society, whatever it is that measures their ability to have more stress resilience or state of well-being? I bet if people are financially rewarded, let's say an insurance company rewards health, then it would shift entirely the whole way in which we treat things. Instead of emphasizing how sick a person is so they can be reimbursed, doctors will be reinforcing and maybe more interested in those modalities that enhance people's health and maintains health.

SPEAKER_01 6:28

Yeah. Yeah, that's almost having the counterpart to a DSM to help guide you on how to do that. I do wonder though, if, and maybe this is going too far off topic, but if I have often wondered how we can, as a society, reach better health when it when we look at things from in terms of finding the root cause, right? Which goes along with what you're saying, if insurance companies could work that way, because insurance companies make money off of sick people, right?

SPEAKER_00 7:01

So if somebody's not sick, if they're not remaining sick, then the insurance would go away. Well, I know there's always catastrophes and car accidents or yeah, yeah. But yeah, I think that if insurance companies reimbursed for truly healing the person so they don't have to see doctors or don't end up in the hospitals, I would imagine that they would save a lot of money and they would make a lot more profit.

SPEAKER_01 7:29

Yeah, that is true. That is very true.

SPEAKER_00 7:32

Okay. So the DSM was one of the things that he mentioned, but I also wanted to reinforce what you were talking about, which is the beginning of the book, quite a few hundred, like about a hundred pages of it, is really about establishing what they did in order to come up with the data and with all of these different areas of character strengths that they talk about. And that was where initially I was like paying attention, and pretty soon I was like, I ended up skimming because they literally covered every possible nook and cranny writing out there from 500 BC or whatever, or once BC to now, in terms of writing. And they went over all of the writings by Confucius and all the writings by the Grecians, all the Aristotle, Plato, so many different people that they studied in order to gather a kind of a foundational set of characters. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:38

And I think that some of that was really interesting to me because they discussed earlier on when they were explaining that before the first DSM, you could have somebody who was diagnosed schizophrenic in what did they say? I think Topeka. And then somewhere overseas, I don't remember the example they use, somebody who was diagnosed schizophrenic, but the symptoms would be nothing alike. So they needed to find common language and common understanding, common ground. And that's ultimately what they were setting out to do with the positive psychology, because they kept referring to the different positive psychology movements from the 60s, 70s, which I wasn't I was not familiar with. But so I assume that it's something similar. So they were trying to find these positive character traits that are accepted through every culture across the world. So that, and it's almost as if that's a more difficult task than mental disorders, right? The flip side, the negative side of it. So it was there was some, there was a lot of it, but it was interesting. See, like you were mentioning Confucius, some of the things they were talking about, Aristotle and Plato and stuff like that. It was a little bit interesting how far back they had to go and to cover everything.

SPEAKER_00 9:51

Yeah, I felt like I was in a college class. So I was going through college, I had an opportunity to take these courses on Plato and Aristotle. And I didn't, I was too busy trying to do my pre-med courses, so I never really got to enjoy it. So I remember I bought some of the textbooks they were using in those classrooms just because I really missed having those courses. Yeah. But when I was reading this book at the beginning, I felt like I was going through it like a very fast summary of all of those speed run of all those. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:28

Yeah. Yeah. I think what I think we should do at this point is Emily, if you can list the character traits that they do eventually talk about, and maybe we can jump into the first one that they jump into in the book. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:43

Yeah. So essentially I've got some notes here that I have to re refer to, of course, but the core frame book, the they propose six universal virtues, I think is where it starts. So you've got wisdom, courage, humanity, justice, temperance, and transcendence. And of course, they explain each of those, which is really interesting. Then those virtues are expressed through 24 measurable, which is interesting, and we'll get into that later, measurable character strengths, because a lot of these character strengths, I never would have thought that they were quote unquote measurable. So that was interesting. Yeah. So the authors develop 10 criteria for determining whether a quality qualifies as a character strength. So examples include if we're looking at one of these character strengths, does it contribute to fulfillment? Fulfillment was the most interesting one for me because they talk about the deathbed test. Because things can feel good in the moment. Drinking with soda when you're trying not to drink carbonated or sugary drinks. But when you're on your deathbed and you think about the things in throughout your life that felt good, that was that's contributes to fulfillment. And these are just some of the examples of what defines it as a character strength. Morally valued within society and with yourself, does not diminish others, has a meaningful opposite, measures as a distinct trait, like a personality trait. It's absent in some people and it's encouraged by institutions. So this was my way of describing it. I think they have different terminology for it, but essentially those they've got 24 different ones, and those are just some of them I think that I found the most interesting.

SPEAKER_00 12:26

Very good. And what are those character traits that they finally decided on? They have creativity, curiosity, open-mindedness, love of learning, perspective, or part of wisdom, bravery, persistence, integrity, vitality, love, kindness, social intelligence, citizenship, fairness, leadership. Those are the chapters that they have in terms of each of the different qualities that this book talks about. But I'm not sure that each one is a character trait.

SPEAKER_01 13:02

So I this is something I was confused about. I thought that essentially you had the universal virtues, and then within those are the characters, right? The character strengths, is that correct? I couldn't actually find a list of all 24.

SPEAKER_00 13:19

Okay. So they have it divided into strengths of character, strengths of courage, strengths of humanity, strengths of justice, strengths of temperance.

SPEAKER_01 13:33

I see now. Okay, this is where it's like I told you, I was so confused. So, for example, under the virtue of wisdom, they have so many character strengths under wisdom, and then under courage, they have so many character strengths. Is that correct?

SPEAKER_00 13:50

We'll figure out because I think if we're confused, uh other people are confused. Okay. Because they do talk about the six virtues and then they want to talk about the character strengths. And I figured they're gonna start talking about the character strengths starting on chapter four. And so the first one they talk about is creativity. So I figured that must be a character strength that they want to talk about.

SPEAKER_01 14:13

And I think they are character strengths of wisdom and knowledge, so like creativity, curiosity, open, open-mindedness, love of learning, perspective. Yeah, because it says strengths of wisdom, strengths of courage, strengths. So these are the character strengths of those things. And then, of course, some of them overlap into other virtues. Should I explain it again? Okay, sure. Did that make sense? I don't know. Go ahead. Okay. So essentially the core framework is that they've broken the idea up into each person can have six, there's six universal virtues. And within those universal virtues, there's the character strengths. There's 24 character strengths. For example, we read a lot about the virtue of wisdom and knowledge, the reading that you and I did. So the character strengths under that are creativity, curiosity, open-mindedness, love of learning, perspective. So those are the main ones. And of course, I think I do remember reading that some of them can overlap under other virtues as well.

SPEAKER_00 15:19

Yeah. So they have this book divided into different sections, but the section number two is on strengths of character. So introduction, strengths of wisdom and knowledge, and then they have a whole list, and they have strengths of courage, and they have a whole list, strengths of humanity, they have a whole list, strengths of justice, strengths of temperance, and that's it. That's what they have. So if they want to categorize it by 24, I don't see 24, but let me see. If I were to count everything listed under the strengths, it'd be one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, fifteen is what I see. If you exclude love. I don't know if love is a character strengths or whether it's something bigger, but I thought love or being loving was a virtue. But but that's what we're gonna cover. We're gonna just follow the book and we'll get it all sorted out, I think, as we go along eventually. I was talking to you earlier, it felt like reading a dictionary for me because they're just trying to define everything. But I felt when they got to chapter four on creativity, that was when I started to find the reading a little bit more palatable. So I was thinking maybe we could jump into chapter four on creativity and we can talk a little bit about some of the things they say about creativity and see if there's something in there that we can talk about.

SPEAKER_01 16:47

Yeah, I think I felt the same way up until that point. We were really learning about the framework, trying to understand and comprehend what exactly the framework was. When I finally hit that, I think I had some big realizations, like I told you, which we'll talk more about. The main one being that I had always viewed creativity as artistic creativity. And I think through reading this, I realized that it goes far beyond that. And the way that I was able to see that in my own life as well.

SPEAKER_00 17:13

Let's start off with Elizabeth Layton as an example, age 68, and how she was very vulnerable to being depressed for most of her life, and that after she lost her youngest son after prolonged illness, she became extremely despairing, was suicidal. But what helped her was her ability to transform or channel her energies actually into a creative outlet. And that in the end, she ended up being able to display a lot of her artwork in many different places as a very highly esteemed artist. But it really highlights how creativity uh helps us towards a good life, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:04

And I think that it's interesting, they talk about the big creativity with a capital C and then everyday creativity.

SPEAKER_00 18:11

Didn't you like when you read that little C and Big C, didn't you wish that you were in the big C category?

SPEAKER_01 18:19

I found it interesting because I was thinking initially they were saying that there were ways to predict whether somebody would have the big C. And in my head, I'm thinking, no, that's it's so much of it is luck. But then they go again, it's study after study. But there are several, not several, but many factors that go into that big C, which is like you were saying, don't you wish you could be there the people who have the big success with their creativity, whether it's celebrities we see on TV, artists, stuff like that. Didn't they describe Elizabeth as she didn't? I think later on, I think they say she didn't actually reach the big C creativity. In my mind, it was though. Maybe it's they define it. I miss the pure definition.

SPEAKER_00 19:06

There's something about creativity that to me kind of rang a little bit off.

SPEAKER_01 19:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:13

And the reason why is they quoted a lot of these philosophers that really emphasized uh the good life in terms of an internal experience, not an external kind of social media kind of thing. But the way they measure creativity is by how many awards or like C for the big C, like how many articles did you publish, how many awards did you get? How much acclaim did you get in the social scheme of things? And I think that's where my thought is that kind of depends very heavily on social context and also on opportunity and luck and all sorts of things. Whereas if you're really following the philosophers who are trying to create the good life, I don't think that they would measure it by the number of awards you get.

SPEAKER_01 20:05

And I never understood why they differentiated between big creativity with the big C, the ones that have that type of success versus everyday creativity. Because when it comes to the criteria that they use to measure whether or not this person has the strength, that character strength, going back to some of those, it's like you have, I can't remember exactly the phrasing they use, but its effects on society, right? Do you have a positive effect? Do you have does it again the fulfillment, the stuff like that? And that could be that's just as easily, if not more often, probably the everyday creativity.

SPEAKER_00 20:47

The only other thing I would say is that nowadays with technology where it is, there's not a lot that stands as a barrier to a person being creative in ways that maybe in the past would be an issue. So for example, in the past, when you let's say before computers, if you wanted to publish something, it's usually in a written magazine or it's in a book somewhere. But nowadays, people have the ability to publish not only their own books, but also you can publish online and anybody can access what it is that you write. So it's a very, to me, a much more democratic kind of even playing field when it comes to creativity. And so people nowadays probably publish more on the average than people in the past who were considered the giants of creativity.

SPEAKER_01 21:46

Absolutely, yeah. And then of course, it goes beyond that artistic creativity too. I think that was the big realization, I guess, I had as I was reading. There were certain things that I have four nieces, and there were certain things that made Me think about my oldest niece. We've always considered her very creative, artistic, as well as the rest of my nieces, but her in particular. And there was something I was reading that the they have these sort of stipulations for creativity, which I found interesting. And I was like, yeah, that's definitely not this niece, one of my younger nieces. And the more I thought of it, I said, wait a second, she is creative, but she's different than the older one. She's got that mechanical engineering brain, right? And she's creative in ways that I just am not. My brain does not function that way. I remember one time, gosh, she was young. My vacuum, I couldn't get my vacuum to break. And she was at my house. And I immediately I was like, hey, can you come help me? Because I knew she could help me figure it out at nine years old. And she got my vacuum working again. And so she's always the one to fix it and figure it out. And then I go two pages further and it starts talking about engineering, architecture, it mentions elevators, but all of this in our everyday life, we see creativity constantly, the technology that we use, the inventions, things like that. And that was really interesting because I don't know that I would have, and I'm sure plenty of people do, but for me personally, I have always seen that, and I don't know why as intellect, somebody being really intelligent, but it takes a lot of creativity to look at something that you've never, like a vacuum cleaner, you've never tried to fix a vacuum cleaner before. And she just starts, I wonder if this comes off here. And I wonder that's creativity right there. Exploration, yeah. Yeah, the unknown. Whole new view of that niece. I was like, oh, she's absolutely very creative. It's just a different type of creativity.

SPEAKER_00 23:39

I think by creating this false hierarchy of the little sea and the big sea, which I do feel is going to be a bit of an issue later on. Um I think it kind of creates this innate idea that some creativity is more important than other forms of creativity, more esteemed or more valuable. So you have Einstein and Goethe and all of these big creatives on this pedestal, and then there's this Lassis, like the people who are kind of the average creativity. But I would imagine that creativity is creativity, it's just how it shows itself in anybody's lives. And some people want to think about one thing creatively, and other people choose to think about other things. One of the things that I found very interesting, which really resonated with me on creativity, is this one sentence, and it's talking about divergent thinking. That there's convergent thinking and there's divergent thinking. And in creative, in this chapter on creativity, it talks about divergent thinking being the capacity to generate a great variety of responses to a given set of stimuli. Like some people call it lateral thinking. And then it goes on to say that unlike convergent thinking, which aims at the single most correct response, ideational productivity is emphasized. So a specific instance is the unusual uses test, which asks research participants to come up with as many uses as possible for ordinary objects, such as a toothpick or paper clip. So I think that divergent thinking was what caused me a great deal of pain in medical school. Okay. Because it emphasized convergent thinking. A multiple choice test gave you a question and gave you multiple choices, and you're supposed to do convergent thinking, not divergent thinking. But if you're typically someone who's creative and you think divergently, it's a nightmare because every choice is possible. Oh, yeah, it could be this. Initially, you had an idea of what the answer would be until you get stimuli that says, here are all these other answers, and then your thinking is going off in lots of tangents.

SPEAKER_01 25:59

Yeah. Yeah, I can relate to that in school as well, but not in medical school. So did that did that really affect you quite a bit in terms of the way that you were testing and studying and analyzing?

SPEAKER_00 26:12

I was never fortunate enough as a kid to learn about how the test-taking skills in a multiple choice exam. My children were more fortunate. They were taught how to time themselves and everything. So when I did a multiple choice test, there were certain personality traits that came up that got in the way of a multiple choice test. One was perseverance and dogged want to get this question answered right. The second was the divergent thinking and not being able to decide on one right answer. So oftentimes I tested my scores weren't that bad, but I never could finish my exams. I never timed myself enough to skip a question and go on to the next question and just hop along, which I think once I got out of that kind of an artificial bubble of multiple choice tests, it allowed me to become who I was, which is I figured out how to help people get off psychiatric medications, something that takes a decade or more for a doctor to persevere and doggedly pursue in order for them to kind of gather all the information they need. But it's not a multiple choice kind of situation where you can just, oh, I don't know it. So you can just skip it and go on to the next problem.

SPEAKER_01 27:28

What about you? As far as the divergent versus thing. Like I said, I can relate to some of that. I find that, and as you were talking, I think that that's a conversation I've had with my mom many times over the years because she worked in education and I struggled in school. And eventually she worked for the State Board of Education and she worked for the specifically for the gifted programs. So a lot of her more advanced degrees were on gifted children, the way that our school system works, the way that, and I still have opinions that differ from hers drastically, but we kind of come to the same place that school is not always set up for those kind of divergent thinkers. I I think that I lean more towards our school systems need completely to be ripped apart and rebuilt far more than my mom sees. She has more experience than me, but I think that's the anger I feel because I felt constantly boxed in growing up. And what's interesting is my dad relates to this. My dad tells a story about when he lived, he was an army brat, when he lived overseas in Holland. He remembers raising his hand and asking a question about their teaching that this is done this way. So he raises his hand and asks, but why? Like, why can't it be this way? And the teacher just yelled at him and he said he remembered his face getting hot and red. And he said, I never asked the question again. And I do think that can shut kids down in school. I remember it shutting me down sometimes in school too. I remember in church in Bible study, very young, or maybe four or five, I asked the question, what had something about where does God come from? Or I just what they were saying didn't make sense to me. And I got a little slap, not physically a slap on the hand. And it's because I think they didn't have the answer. But anyway, those are just like little anecdotal things that maybe again going off on a tangent, but I do think that our school system and oftentimes our society is not really set up for that kind of divergent thinking. The expectation is the opposite sometimes.

SPEAKER_00 29:28

Right. And questioning things is part of creativity because creativity is all about looking at other possible avenues for doing something. If we didn't have that, we wouldn't be able to advance in terms of finding other things, other ways to do things. And I do empathize with your situation because I think that over the course of my life, I've been in a lot of different systems where it's very insulated, very blindfolds. This is a one-way kind of way of thinking. And I remember asking lots of different questions and looking back on it as an older adult, I feel that I those were legitimate questions. But depending on the context in which you ask a question, they can gaslight you and make you feel as if the question is irrelevant or silly or unrelated to what they're talking about because the question challenges the way they do things as a given.

SPEAKER_01 30:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:33

And they don't want to think about that.

SPEAKER_01 30:35

Yeah. But they don't want to spend the time on it. It's they expect you to know X, Y, Z, and it's that's it. That's all you need to know. It's unfortunate because I think that they talk in this book about how creativity can be very much affected by our environment. And these are they're the criterion, I think. Trait-like, for example. This was something I took up a little bit of an issue with here and there through a lot of these kind of characters, because I think that the main thing that they talk about in terms of the environment is that obviously we know those who are encouraged as children, those who are praised, little kid makes a drawing. Of course, we're doing artistic creativity, talking using that as the example. Wow, that's great. They put it up on the fridge. So having that kind of environment growing up definitely makes a difference. But they really in the book stood by that. It seems that creativity requires that kind of positive reinforcement. I have seen the opposite be true. I have seen people become extremely creativity because it's almost as if their escape, it was their escapism from traumatic childhood or their coping mechanisms, writing, putting it down on paper, things like that. And it develops that way.

SPEAKER_00 31:52

Yeah, yeah, definitely. Because creativity, when they bring it up as a strength, I think that when you're under pressure or stress, maybe that stress naturally becomes an incubator for developing certain strengths to help cope with those stressors. For me, I think creativity was or creative outlets definitely showed up in the face of stress. Like I've kept a journal since I was 12. And used to be like almost every day I would write in it. Not so often in med school, unfortunately, but then never gave up. And I do have so much in terms of journaling. Art was also another thing that I did under stress. I'll just enjoy it, but also came up like under stressful circumstances and definitely creative writing. Now, I have a question for you. Like when people use creativity as a coping strategy, and let's say they become really good at something, I wonder if, like, in my situation, I relate to this, I wonder if using it once it becomes a strength as like a marketable skill in some ways allows the person not to address some of the underlying neuroticism associated with the coping strategy. Okay, let me just give you a really clear example of what I mean by myself. Like I use creativity as a way to handle stress, but it became a marketable skill. I became a good writer and ended up getting into UC Berkeley and I wanted to become a creative writer and things. But I felt like it wasn't a skill that I could really, really sink into and rely on for real strength because the moment let's say my parents decided not that they're not gonna send me to Berkeley and I was gonna go to the state college, and I felt, oh, I'm not gonna be the best writer with the best training. I just decided to do something else with my life. So it's almost like you don't really use the strength properly if the foundation in which it's coming out of trauma. You have to actually address the trauma before the strength itself can be used in a mature or wise way, I think. Sure. What do you think?

SPEAKER_01 34:25

No, that makes a lot of sense. And that also addresses something that I've been I'm as I'm reading this book, I'm sort of like, where are we getting with this eventually? How do we put what they're explaining? And of course, like you said, a behemoth of a book. How do they put it into action? How do you, if you're essentially writing the counterpart to the DSM, how are you using it along with what we already know and about traditional therapy, psychology, things like that? And I'm I guess that comes in much later in the book. I have no idea. But I do think it's a really interesting question because I would agree with you, but I also let's look at the big C creativity, the people that have been successful and obviously never uh dealt with fully dealt with their traumas. I think wouldn't Van Gogh be considered one of those people?

SPEAKER_00 35:18

Yeah. And you wonder, like with Einstein or Goethe, or any of those things, did they have a good life? Yeah, or the Beljar. Another you wonder, like, did the big C people end up with a good life? The good life. I can add to that question or answer that question in the sense that in the book, What Happy People Know, I remember one example, one vignette of a person who had everything financially, had a beautiful wife, that wonderful family, a lot of wealth, but he was very unhappy. And one of the things that the therapist asked this man to do was to visit a section of the hospital nearby where he could be of help with some children there. Some kind of volunteer work or something, where he could actually focus on helping other people to feel less stressed or alone. And it kind of helped him to appreciate, be grateful for that which he had. So I know that some of the ways in which positive psychologists are trying to use the information they know about the value of creativity or the value of generosity or whatever the character trait might be, that they're trying to help support people's ability to develop those traits.

SPEAKER_01 36:43

So essentially it's a manual to be able to recognize, it's the blueprint to be able to recognize these character traits in people. Is that correct? So that they can help them develop them and lead to the other.

SPEAKER_00 36:57

Yeah, and that's what made me very curious when I read the book, What Happy People Know, because the approach of the psychologist in addressing this man's unhappiness was very different from the typical therapeutic intervention. So the typical therapeutic intervention is the focus on the problem until you talked it through and understand it to its core. But with the positive psychology approach, it was completely different. It was almost like the problem itself isn't the focus. The treatment is on establishing the positive characteristics. I see. Okay. Yeah. And when the person is able to capture those positive characteristics, then the problem itself becomes like non-existent. It just fades away.

SPEAKER_01 37:54

Yeah, that's it. Sorry, I'm sitting here processing that because this is it's a lot of information to process, you wouldn't think. Because all we have moving into section two, all we've really covered is creativity, and we've barely even scratched the surface. They, and that's something that was so fascinating to me is so trying to process how this is used in the real world. So yeah, that's that's really interesting. I still am not a hundred percent sure I understand the criterion, the purpose of the criterion. So for creativity, for example, we have criterion one, whether or not it's fulfilling. I mean, I understand why analyze whether your creativity is fulfilling or whether it's is morally valued, does not diminish others' you made me think of a really important aspect of these uh qualities, and that is creativity from their definition is a positive trait, but creativity in and of itself is a neutral quality, and so you can use creativity for good and you can use creativity for bad.

SPEAKER_00 39:01

And sometimes if you use your creativity and all you focus on is negativity, I don't know that it's gonna lead to a good life per se. It will lead to a creative life and you'll create a lot, but I'm not sure that it always leads to a happy life. There is a highlight here that I wanted to go over on correlates and consequences. This is on again on the chapter on creativity. They said two primary conclusions can be drawn about the attributes of highly creative individuals. And I was I highlighted it because I'm like, oh, something firm that we can sink our teeth in. The two primary conclusions that can be drawn about attributes of highly creative individuals. Okay. So first, it says, first of all, creative people are not necessarily intellectually brilliant. Okay, at least not as measured by standard intelligence tests. So it goes on to say that they say highly creative individuals are not unintelligent, all are at least above average in intellectual ability. A figure that is often put forward in the literature is that persons with an IQ of 120 or above are perfectly capable of exhibiting the highest levels of creativity. All right. Okay, two primary conclusions. So one is that you don't need to be brilliant, and the second conclusion complements the first. They said, what really distinguishes creative individuals is not their intelligence, but their disposition. So they say here that such people are characterized by what may be styled a creative personality, defined by a distinctive set of traits. And here are the traits. Highly creative persons tend to be independent, nonconformist, unconventional, even bohemian, and they're likely to have wide interests, greater openness to new experiences, and a more conspicuous behavioral and cognitive flexibility and risk-taking boldness. Let's see. However, it must be recognized that the particular nature of the expected personality profile depends appreciably on the same factors that determine the choice of the optimal assessment instrument. In other words, the profile varies according to the age of the target population, the domain of creativity to be assessed, the magnitude of creativity to be evaluated, and the manifestation of creativity that is to be targeted. This dependency may be illustrated by different examples. So they compare scientific creators versus artistic creators. So these are the two conclusions. And I found that interesting because number one, you don't have to be like super genius to be super creative. And number two, that it has more to do with a person's disposition, this openness to new experiences, and more conspicuous behavioral and cognitive flexibility and risk-taking boldness. So what do you think about that, Emily?

SPEAKER_01 42:14

Yeah, I remember that section caught my attention too. I think for the same reasons, because you're sitting here trying to put all this together. Then, like you said, they give you something more concrete. My initial reaction to the first part was negative because they're explaining that it's the average IQ, what do they say? Something like 120, or that it's the typical IQ of a college graduate.

unknown 42:37

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 42:38

I think is how they explained it. And I think that again, and I don't know why through so much of this, I'm like, well, hold on, I don't agree. And these are MDs and you know, a lot of worse. And for various reasons, I didn't agree. Thinking about people I have met who maybe suspect that their IQ would not be that's equivalent of a college graduate, but incredibly creative. And then I go on to read the second part, which, like you said, is the disposition of the individual. And I'm like, oh, if I'm thinking about that person, they check every one of those boxes. So I did find that interesting because I do think that's true, especially you highlighted risk taking, right? I do think that creativity to some degree definitely involves risk taking. You bring up a really good point.

SPEAKER_00 43:24

Because now I'm thinking, now I'm thinking about like, what about those who are autistic, who are extremely creative artists?

SPEAKER_01 43:33

And a question I wanted to ask you, because I actually don't know how IQ is measured. Like a standard IQ test, does it involve a lot of math? And no?

SPEAKER_00 43:44

Here's the thing back when I was in my first, maybe no, it was my second year in my residency program, there was a psychologist at the VA hospital, and I asked her to give me an IQ. IQ tests because I'd never taken an IQ test and I was very curious about what my IQ was. At the time, I was like very despondent about my job as a resident in psychiatry. So I was like feeling very down at the time. I didn't really like what I was doing. And so I took the test because I felt like it was something for me to understand about myself, or do I have other options besides being a psychiatrist? Am I smart enough to do something else? Anyway, so I took the IQ test. And what I did notice was that there was absolutely nothing in there that had anything to do with creativity. It's not like you're creating anything, it's just recognizing patterns and like knowing a little bit of information. And I don't know. It's just it's almost like doing little puzzles. And these are puzzles that you should be able to do in a minute or two minutes, and then you move on to the next thing. So I think of it not so much. How is it possible for you to use an IQ test to really assess creativity? I think IQ tests probably wouldn't be the best instrument. But in this book, anyways, they did mention some other different tests that came up that people created to measure creativity. Right.

SPEAKER_01 45:16

Yeah. I found that interesting though, that the those two kinds of what do they call them again? You have it there in front of you, I think. The conclusions essentially. The two conclusions about creativity. So I don't know. I don't know enough about how people measure intellect, but I do think that there are examples, plenty that I have experienced in my life, where it would be my assumption. I don't know somebody's like, but my assumption would be through enough interactions that maybe the IQ wouldn't be that high. But certainly the creative was vast, whether that was artistic creativity or other problem-solving type creativities. That's why I laughed at myself when I moved to that next paragraph and they describe what that kind of person looks like.

SPEAKER_00 46:02

Yeah. When I was going through that list, I could see parts of myself in that list. The only thing that I didn't think described me was Bohemian. Okay. Unconventional to the point of being bohemian. And I think that's more of a contextual kind of a context. If you're Asian, you're not going to be bohemian. I can tell you that.

SPEAKER_01 46:23

Okay, okay, that's fair.

SPEAKER_00 46:25

Yeah. You probably won't be allowed. How would you define bohemian? I don't know. Someone who's careless about societal norms and flaunts it in a way that is just kind of like you don't really care what other people think. You just kind of do things in a very freedom-loving kind of way. Okay. Yeah. And I guess it really depends on what field you're in, because I don't think bohemians exist in medicine.

unknown 47:01

Okay. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 47:02

Not if you want to be a doctor with a license for long.

SPEAKER_01 47:05

But in terms of the definition, because I did look up the definition, ignoring or going against social norms, social rules, that would be a holistic doctor in a lot of ways, right? Not as much now as maybe it was when you first entered the field as a holistic doctor.

SPEAKER_00 47:22

Yeah, I wouldn't use the word bohemian, but it is definitely against social rules. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 47:28

Breaking the rules.

SPEAKER_00 47:29

One time. It was late at night. I was in, I was living in Gaithersburg, Maryland at the time. My daughter was in her maybe early teens, maybe even younger than that. She came into the room late at night. Maybe it was a weekend. And we had this, I don't know what you call it, but it was one of those puff balls that have these little rubber strings all over.

SPEAKER_01 47:52

It's like a yeah.

SPEAKER_00 47:54

And so you can literally take up a string and all it is is these little rubber strings that make a ball, like about this big.

SPEAKER_01 48:01

And it would like down, right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 48:05

Yeah. And so it was late at night, and my daughter and I got into this back and forth fun activity where we took the ball and we held it up or we did something with it to make it represent something else than what it was. One was who was the person that said the sun was the center of the earth instead of the earth? It's the sun was the center of the solar system. Not Copernicus, but Galileo. Okay, yeah.

unknown 48:37

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 48:37

Yeah. So one of the things we said was we held out the ball and said, I'm sorry, Galileo, but I don't think they liked your idea of the solar system. That was you or her? That was me. Okay. And she had some other like pieces of the ball, just different ways in which that ball became a part of uh like a story and it became funny. Maybe we did that for about an hour, maybe an hour and a half, a back and forth, where that ball became one thing and then became another. And that is the unconventional thinking, the creative thinking that I think that people who are creative really love and find funny. My daughter is actually a very accomplished artist. She went to RISD, did illustration and stuff. And now she's at Yale doing her MBA, but she's just really smart and very creative. So the two of us were going back and forth with all of the different ways in which that rubber ball could be like something other than that rubber ball.

SPEAKER_01 49:34

It goes back to the divergent thinking, too, that we were discussing earlier, right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 49:40

But I think as a photographer, you are in the midst of creativity as part of your work.

SPEAKER_01 49:48

Sure. Yeah. Yeah. And it's every single client that comes through the door is different. They have a different story to tell. They're all coming. I'm a boudoir photographer. So I don't know if I've mentioned that on the podcast before, but it's not a copy and paste. I don't every it's different with every client. So it requires creativity. And when I get into the studio too, because I use a natural light studio, the light is always different. So a lot of problem solving things like that. So according to the criterion, it's very fulfilling. I get that creative outlet in my work through different ways. Definitely. Yeah. Right.

SPEAKER_00 50:23

Okay. So creativity is one of the aspects that positive psychology tries to keep in mind for creating the good life. I highlighted other parts in the chapter. And maybe we can finish up with this one little highlight that I picked, unless you wanted to go over anything you highlighted in the chapter.

SPEAKER_01 50:47

No, I think the only thing I kind of had left as a question was after reading this, are there specific things in here that we can take away that would help somebody nurture their creativity essentially? But I don't know that that was more of a question to see if you gather that because as I was reading through, I'm like, I don't know if I'm able to really put that together. And it may come together later on, right?

SPEAKER_00 51:14

Yeah, I don't know if this book will end up being the right book for us when it comes to that question. But I do think that it does suggest that there's a kind of a context that allows creativity to flourish. And some of that might be withholding negative judgment of oneself when one starts to create. It is a character strength. And just knowing that, I think it's important. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 52:36

And I think beyond that, what everything you said made me recognize too was that goes back to the realization about my nieces. So being able to recognize different types of creativity within ourselves. Because I think often, for a lot of people, again, not everybody, we think of creativity as artistic creativity. And there are so many different types of creativity. We gave a few examples here, my niece being one of them. And that's really important and definitely a strength as well. So being able to recognize it in those around you, I think is important. Children, if you have them, yeah, and in yourself. Because I think that's something that while I'm not my young niece level, that's something I'm like, I do that a little bit too. And I can give myself a pat on the back with that specific type of creativity. So yeah.

SPEAKER_00 53:22

There is one thing here in the chapter towards the end that says for creativity to advance beyond its everyday forms, however, the individual must acquire considerable expertise within the chosen domain of creative activity. This need for expertise acquisition is often expressed as a 10-year rule. Then he puts in parentheses hey, according to this rule, no person can make creative contributions to a particular domain without first devoting a full decade to the mastery of the necessary knowledge and skills. I'm not sure that's a hard and fast rule.

SPEAKER_01 53:55

Maybe that goes to their big C again.

SPEAKER_00 53:57

Whatever. I I know that there are a lot of people who are truly gifted and are very creative and they can do it in much less time. But but I think what they're giving people permission for is to allow themselves to have time. So even if you're not reaching the heights of creativity in a certain field, you have to realize that the majority of the people require 10 years before they even get close to being able to count themselves as a contributor in a particular domain. Not that this is a hard and fast rule, but giving yourself time and being patient with yourself, I think, is a really important part of permission. There is one other thing I thought of as you were talking though. And that is to be aware of those people who might want to rob someone of their creative joy in their lives. Because there are people who are out there who out of their maybe unaddressed traumas respond to other people's creativity, especially if they haven't found a way to express their own creativity, who might pour cold water on it. And I want to encourage people to hang on to their love of creativity and to be able to stick with what their innate heart tells them about what they love to do and to pursue it, even if they run across people who cold pour cold water on it. Yeah. Oh, you can't do that. It's not gonna make enough money. That's often a very common cold water kind of thing that you can lose. Creativity. Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 55:38

And I think on my own journey too, I had to learn to find internal validation in different ways of doing that. I think that I often had to sit down and find places where just it felt good, it brought me joy. That's that fulfillment again, right? Outside of making money. And if I'm enjoying it, this is still something I'm gonna pursue. If there's aspects that I feel good about, I'm still gonna pursue it. If I'm not feeling great, if I can't find that internal validation, then I sit there and I pick it apart. What is it that I need to learn? And of course, the very next chapter in this book is curiosity, which I think feeds into a lot with creativity. And you can always work to get better. That's the big thing, right? Creativity is they discuss some of it being innate, a lot of it being innate. But things like photography, so much of that is learned. So much is learned. So you can always improve. Color, I am not an artist, a painter, anything like that, but I have a good friend who is, and I'm always fascinated to hear she's getting her graduate degree right now, what she's learning. I'm like, I had no idea that much went into painting. So there's always more to learn. There's always room to improve. But eventually working towards that internal validation, I think is important.

SPEAKER_00 56:51

Very good. I want to end there. I think that's a wonderful way to finish up our podcast. Emily and I are gonna go through this book. We're gonna plug away. We are going to keep going and look at all the other traits and give our two cents worth for what it's worth, right? And our opinions and stuff. And but the final thing is we do want our listeners to feel encouraged, to be creative, to add that as a positive trait in their lives to cope with stress, to find fulfillment in their lives, that it is a very important part of positive psychology. And that's why they put it first, one of their first character traits. All right. Thank you for all of you for listening to this podcast to the end. As usual, I want to say that holistic psychiatrists can build well-being from the thought up. And I am so grateful for my work as a holistic psychiatrist that I've been able to help people heal and be part of their healing journeys. If you want to learn more about my practice, please check out my holistic psychiatrist website. It has my podcast in there, my links or tabs for getting my articles and even my Substack articles, which I write about everything else besides psychiatry. Although I am starting to write a little bit more about psychiatry. And hopefully every two weeks, Emily and I will be back to create more podcasts. Emily, did you want to finish up with a few words?

SPEAKER_01 58:21

Yep, it was great. I think we made it through the most confusing part of this book. Okay. The whole section one. Okay. Hopefully it'll be easier moving forward. I'm looking forward to next time. Like I said, Curiosity is the very next chapter. I found that one really interesting too. So I think we're going to find a lot of interesting stuff here.

SPEAKER_00 58:38

Yeah, and I think we're going to have lots of opinions about curiosity.

SPEAKER_01 58:42

I think so.

SPEAKER_00 58:43

It'll be fun. All right. Okay. Until next time, I hope you have all a good week. Thanks for listening. Bye bye.