Creative genius as inherently relevant and beneficial: The view from mount olympus

Abstract

The author responds to Kaufman’s (2018) target essay from a unique perspective – research on creative genius. Although the author began studying little-c creativity, he switched to Big-C creativity when he did his doctoral dissertation, and continued that work for the rest of his career. One implication of such research is that the relevance of creative genius cannot be questioned, even if its benefits are sometimes ambiguous (however obviously consequential). Another implication is that creative geniuses do not require training in creativity, whatever usefulness such instruction may possess for everyday creativity.