Position Exchange, Life Positioning, and Creativity

Abstract

Many traditional theories of creativity have located the engines of innovation within the cognitive processes of individuals. In this chapter. I agree with the importance of perspective taking for creativity, but shift the traditional and still popular emphasis on perspective taking as an individual, psychological power to perspective taking as a socioculturally grounded process. In doing so. I consider the ways in which perspective taking is grounded in the interpersonal and material aspects of our interactivity with others and objects within everyday sociocultural practices and traditions. Of particular importance to my project are (1) the idea of position exchange and (2) the method of life positioning. Position Exchange Theory (PET) is highly relevant to theory and research on creativity. It helps to provide a developmental account of the emergence of perspective taking and creative agency within physical, material, interpersonal, and sociocultural contexts. This is a description that emphasizes the importance of how creators are positioned and come to position themselves within different phases of interactivity with objects and others. Life Positioning Analysis (LPA) offers a social psychological, biographical method for studying the life projects and creative accomplishments of individuals in interaction with others and objects within socioculturally sanctioned and constituted conventions and traditions, LPA also situates lives and creativity within the human condition in a way that captures the salience of existential concerns that attend the lives and life projects of individuals and communities. In what follows, PET and LPA are elaborated, discussed, and then illustrated with material from the lives of two historically important figures in psychology: Sigmund Freud and B.F. Skinner. But first, it is necessary to establish further the centrality of perspective taking and position exchange for understanding and studying creativity. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved)