The theory of lateral thinking and the development of informational scripts

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Hryhorii Skovoroda University in Pereiaslav

The theory of lateral thinking and the development of informational scripts

Nabochuk Olexandr Ph.D. in Psychology

Pereiaslav (Ukraine)

Abstract

The aim of our research is to study dominant areas of theoretical and empirical researches in the paradigm of Creative Psychology, to describe the theory of lateral thinking and the development of informational scripts within it.

Methods of the research. The following theoretical methods of the research were used to solve the tasks formulated in the article: the categorical method, structural and functional methods, the methods of the analysis, systematization, modeling, generalization.

The results of the research. It is showed that the main ways to change and develop information scripts in the paradigm of the theory of lateral thinking are: free, unmotivated regrouping of elements; gaining of information; expansion of the information field, inclusion of random "extra" information in the already known individual of the frame; an abrupt way of developing a certain idea. The principles of lateral thinking are: postponement of the assessment; the accident; the information which jumps in any direction; doubts; future; the opposite of absolute confidence.

Conclusions. So, distinguishing between vertical and lateral thinking, we emphasize two cardinal, opposite and interrelated areas of the creative process: the association and dissociation of information elements, the creation of stereotypes and their destruction. It is also substantiated the possibility of creating a system of technologies and methods of creative transformation. It is proved that all these were of fundamental importance for the prospects of developing psycho-correctional and developmental programs in the Psychology of Creativity. Some current issues of Creative Psychology (CREATIVE PROCESS - RESULT - PERSONALITY OF THE CREATOR) are identified, the scientific context of personality is determined, the presupposition and dominant guidelines for further search and implementation of our own empirical researches are showed.

Key words: Creative Psychology, the theory of lateral thinking, vertical thinking, informational scripts, methods of creative transformation, unmotivated regrouping of elements, gaining of information, expansion of the information field.

Набочук Олександр Кандидат психологічних наук, Університет Григорія Сковороди в Переяславі, м. Переяслав (Україна). Теорія латерального мислення та розвиток інформаційних скриптів.

Метою нашого дослідження є вивчення домінувальних напрямків теоретичних та емпіричних досліджень у парадигмі креативної психології, опис теорії латерального мислення та розробки інформаційних сценаріїв у цій парадигмі.

Методи дослідження. Для розв'язання поставлених у роботі завдань використовувалися такі теоретичні методи дослідження: категоріальний, структурно-функціональний, аналіз, систематизація, моделювання, узагальнення.

Результати дослідження. Показано, що основними способами зміни та розвитку інформаційних скриптів у парадигмі теорії латерального мислення є: вільне, невмотивоване перегрупування елементів; інформації; розширення інформаційного поля, включення випадкової «зайвої» інформації до вже відомого індивіду фрейму; стрибкоподібний шлях розвитку певної ідеї. Визначено принципи латерального мислення: відкладання оцінки; випадковість; інформаційні стрибки в будь-який бік; сумніви; майбутнє; протилежність абсолютній впевненості.

Ключові слова: креативна психологія, теорія латерального мислення, вертикальне мислення, інформаційні скрипти, методи креативної трансформації, невмотивоване перегрупування елементів, отримання інформації, розширення інформаційного поля.

Introduction

In Ukrainian science there are some dominant areas of theoretical and empirical researches in the paradigm of Creative Psychology. The first direction concerns the research of the formation of a creative personality due to the formation of a stable motivation to carry out creative activities. So, we called this approach a motivational one. In particular, I. Pototska dealt with these problems (noTo^Ka, 2014). The author studied the creative activity of pedagogically gifted future teachers. Pedagogical talent is considered by a scientist as a holistic, harmonious structure, that contains the following components: a special component (pedagogical abilities); intellectual component (intellectual features of the future teacher's personality, which provide not only uniqueness, but also universality of the possibilities of the cognition process); a motivational component (motivation for success, which orients the individual to the quality and the effectiveness of actions; situational self-actualization, which reflects the tendency of the individual to realize his/her own ideas, including potential ones); a creative component (verbal uniqueness, originality); a spiritual component (moral and valuable qualities of the subject). These components are characterized by some peculiar tendencies of manifestation depending on the age of future teachers (Потоцька, 2014: 14).

I. Pototska proved that in the process of professional training the indicators of motivation for success of future teachers are gradually increasing. At the same time, the important personal determinant of motivation for students' success is strong- willed self-control, which provides persistence, purposefulness and control of their emotions and behavior. Peculiarities of students' motivation to achieve success are also largely determined by their communicative, mnemonic and perceptual abilities. Among the important results of one-factor analysis of variance I. Pototska also included the fact that there are close links between the course of study and situational self-actualization of future teachers (Потоцька, 2014: 14-15).

However, in our opinion, the research of I. Pototska in some respects raises a lot of considerable doubts. If we consider pedagogical talent as a systemic quality of the psyche that develops throughout life and determines the ability of future teachers to achieve higher results in one or more activities (Потоцька, 2014: 6), then there are doubts about the separation of motivation to succeed as a dominant characteristic that determines the formation of pedagogical talent. Moreover, if we take into account the study of classical psychological schools (Гончарук & Онуфрієва, 2018; де Боно, 2015; Івашкевич & Гудима, 2020; Mykhalchuk & Kryshevych, 2019), in which giftedness is generally considered as a genetically determined, innate quality. I. Pototska also contradicts herself, defining a complex hierarchical structure of pedagogical talent, which includes not only motivational, but also intellectual, special components, as well as creativity and spirituality. Why it is the motivation to succeed for the development of pedagogical talent is given priority - remains unclear (Потоцька, 2014).

In the foreign psychology the most known theory is the theory of A. Maslow (Маслоу, 1982). The shortcomings of Maslow's theory include the lack of precise, specific variables that largely control the manifestation and modification of self-actualization of the individual. At the same time, the theoretical foundations of A. Maslow's theory allowed to compensate further for this gap and to develop diagnostic tools for determining the degree of human self-actualization (in this case we use the test of selfactualization of the individual) (Тест САМОАЛ, 2020).

Unlike A. Maslow (Маслоу, 1982), who held the view that human behavior is governed by a hierarchy of needs, C. Rogers (Роджерс, 1993) argued that behavior is largely determined by the function of a person's unique perception of the world around him/her. If in A. Maslow's theory (Маслоу, 1982) the processes of personal development were actually ignored, C. Rogers reveals specific, well-defined forms of the individual development, which greatly contributed to the explication of human ability to improve innate potential. The most important motivational construct is the tendency to self-development and self-actualization, which the scientist considered as a mental and biological fact, as the dominant existantional motive for creative activity. By this motive C. Rogers means so called “guiding frame”, which is manifested in all forms of organic and social life, such a desire for personal development, improvement, maturity, the tendency to explicate and demonstrate all the abilities of the body and the concept of Self. Taking into account the psychotherapist (C. Rogers) own experience, he was completely convinced that creative desire is in every individual and it expects only the most favorable, positive conditions for liberation and manifestation of personal potential (Роджерс, 1993).

It is significant, from the standpoint of the Psychology of Creativity, A. Maslow's hypothesis about the existence of deficient motives related to biological needs and meta-needs (highest values, motives for personal growth), such as truth, beauty, perfection, justice (Маслоу, 1982). Based on our empirical research (Nabochuk, 2021), we concluded that people who lived fully (individuals who were self-actualizing) had the following characteristics: the effective perception of the reality; the acceptance of oneself, other people and the surrounding nature; a desire for self-realization; focusing on the problem, absorbing one's business as an actualization of one's vocation; authenticity - open, understandable behavior in relations to themselves and to other people; the emphasis on the simplicity and naturalness of their behavior; the independence, the autonomy in judgments; self-confidence, adequacy of self-esteem, the ability to actualize peak experiences; public interests; deep interpersonal relationships; initiative and flexibility in the process of decision making; democratic nature of the person's own activity; the ability to distinguish between means and goals; philosophical sense of humor; criticality and a high degree of personal reflection; direct susceptibility to a new information.

So, С. Rogers considers the phenomenon of creativity in the general context of Personal Psychology and the development of civilization as a whole. “I argue”, said C. Rogers, “that much of the serious criticism of our culture is most likely related to a lack of creativity”. If humanity is unable to adapt in a new, original and creative way to the world around us, our culture will perish, and the retribution for lack of creativity will be not only poor personal adaptation, individual adaptation and group tensions, but the complete destruction of all peoples. So, C. Rogers has repeatedly emphasized that all mankind as a whole is characterized by a natural tendency to move towards independence, social responsibility, creativity and maturity. Thus, our life and perception of the world around us is a completely creative act (Роджерс, 1993: 63).

So, the aim of our research is to study dominant areas of theoretical and empirical researches in the paradigm of Creative Psychology, to describe the theory of lateral thinking and the development of informational scripts within it.

Methods of the research

Thus, in the scientific literature creativity is seen as the ability to produce unique ideas, results, ways to solve all life problems, as one of the most important, associated with optimal psychological maturity, characteristics of the person who properly functions (the latter is one of the key terms of C. Rogers, which facilitates the ability of the individual to carry out creative activities). A creative person always uses his/her abilities and talents, realizes his/her personal potential, moves towards full knowledge of himself/herself and the sphere of his/her individual experiences. C. Rogers has identified five characteristics that are quite common to a person who is fully functioning: openness to the person's experience (self-awareness); existential way of life (the ability to live fully in every moment of your life); organic self-confidence; empirical freedom (the ability to make informed choices); creativity. The products of creativity (ideas, new original projects, actions) and creative lifestyle, as a rule, appear when a person seeks to live adaptively and constructively in the paradigm of culture and, at the same time, meets his/her deepest personal needs, facilitates creative activity as such completely creative act (Роджерс, 1993).

C. Rogers considers creativity to be a universal characteristic: “I believe that there is no significant difference in the definition of creativity when creating a picture, a novel, a symphony, inventing new tools for murder, developing scientific theory, finding new features in personal relationships or creating new characteristics of one's own personality” (Роджерс, 1993: 165).

C. Rogers sees the reason for stereotypical thinking in modern society, in the contemporary educational system, which is focused on rather mediocre standards: “Once being educated, we usually become conformists with stereotypical thinking, people with completed education”, and not free creative and original thinking subjects (Роджерс, 1993: 167).

One of the achievements of C. Rogers, of course, is to determine the internal and external conditions of creative activity. The scientist refers to the internal conditions: 1) extensibility (openness to new experiences); 2) internal locus of evaluation; 3) the ability to unusual, unconventional and original combinations. In such a way C. Rogers recognizes the external conditions of creative activity: 1) psychological and personal security (recognition of the unconditional value of the individual, the creation of the surrounding reality, in which there is no external evaluation); 2) freedom of expression. Among the accompanying components of the creative act, C. Rogers includes emotions (aesthetic, heuristic, communicative, etc.) (Роджерс, 1993). vertical lateral thinking

Thus, the problems that humanistic psychologists refer to the Psychology of Creativity, contains various aspects of creative theory: aspects of self-actualization, characteristics of the creative process, stages of the creative process, motivation for creative activity, internal and external conditions that facilitate creative activity. G. Ball, as one of the representatives of Rational Humanistic Psychology, believed that creative interaction between participants in the educational process should be based on tolerance, which prevents dogmatic absolutization of some positions and views and absolute, general denial of others, resists stereotypes based on noble motives gladly attributed only to “them”, while “others” are in a lower row. This principle implies, in particular, the rejection of simplistic, one-sided interpretations of complex phenomena of history and modernity, understanding the part of their adequate interpretation is, along with the truth of “our” community, as well as the truth of those communities which were in conflict, conflict with the person's Self. However, G. Ball argues that the principle of tolerance is directly related to understanding the complexity and different contradictions of the world. However, tolerance does not involve the acceptance of thoughts, experiences, emotions and feelings, actions and deeds of others. However, tolerance is not the same as indifference. On the contrary, tolerance means the manifestation of subjectivity, subjective attitude both personally to the process of creative action, and to the products of creative modeling (Балл, 2017).

Creative action, according to G. Ball, is also provided by the principle of mediation. The latter involves the participation of the individual in the fact of a dialogue. In a case of creative process there is a mediation of not working out and mastering different meanings. In this context, mediation is opposed to inversion, which is a means of actualizing the dual opposition in the semantic paradigm. The mechanism of inversion, according to the scientist, involves giving absolute preference to one of the poles of dual opposition, such as justifying their point of view, their position or opinion in the process of creative interaction. In a case of disappointment in the creative search a person usually jumps to the opposite pole in the space of existing cultural meanings. In this regard, the logic of mediation will have the aim of finding completely new meanings beyond the meanings had been formed much earlier (Балл, 2017).

By his example, G. Ball always tried to demonstrate a creative approach to any phenomena and processes of the reality, which are around us. The scientist tried “to get” a creative product everywhere, in everything that was nearby, in all frames, scripts and models, which at the first glance did not interest either researchers or ordinary citizens. Here is, for example, how G. Ball explained his desire and creative actions to enrich the Ukrainian language with new terminology: the term “learning” as a counterpart to a Russian equivalent of “teaching” (which can be interpreted as a process or the activity). The next term is “study”. And further: “The noun “teaching” has long existed in the Ukrainian language (it is, in particular, in the famous dictionary of Boris Grinchenko), and was introduced into scientific use by G.S. Kostiuk. It is time to take the next step and enrich Ukrainian psychological and pedagogical terminology with the adjective “a student”, formed from this noun according to the same model, according to which the adjective “thinking” is formed by the adjective “mental”, and the noun “speech” as “a speech act”. The last two adjectives are psychological by their character. Then the above-mentioned important concepts will quite naturally appear in the Ukrainian Psychology as “action activity”, “action with a purpose of action” and “action task” (Балл, 2017: 65).

In the paradigm of Humanistic Psychology, considering the structure of the creativity, A. Maslow identifies several levels: the creativity of the first and the second levels, as well as the creativity of the highest level - so-called integrated creativity (Маслоу, 1982). Creativity of the first level is a kind of the result of the actualization of human unconscious motives, which brings the understanding of creativity into the humanistic paradigm to understanding of this phenomenon according to the theory of psychoanalysis by Z. Freud. Creativity of the second level involves the active operation of the person's complex thought processes in order to solve a creative task: all the knowledge that the subject had so far, what he/she analyzed, systematized and rethought, creatively interpreted and substantiated, uniquely interpreted (Freud, 1992). The last, in the full sense of this word, the most perfect level is integrated creativity - it is the lay of two previous levels, which are integrated into a single whole, and, according to R. May, this level of creativity is a prerequisite for creating the most famous masterpieces and discoveries. In our opinion, the latter statement creates considerable opportunities for empirical research of various types of creativity, including management, which will be the subject of our analysis in further publications (May, 1975).

Another area in the Psychology of Creativity is Ontopsycho- logical. The semantic center of theories and concepts of creativity, which are a part of the paradigm of this direction (Urban & Jellen, 1989), recognizes the process of the development of creative of the individual with his inherent spiritual world, values, aspirations, areas of relationships, ideas about himself/herself, about others, about his/her creative purpose in our life. Onto- psychology examines how the individual builds his/her life, realizes himself/herself in the activities, in the creative processes, in communication.

Analyzing a person as an active subject of life, Ontopsycho- logy identifies two main ways of human existence and, accordingly, two types of attitudes to life. The first way is life that does not go beyond the relationships in which a person exists, where each of his/her attitudes is an individual attitude to individual phenomena, but not to life as a whole. In this case a person is not able to comprehend his/her entire complex life path as a single harmonious whole. In itself, life is an uncontrollable natural process for a man. This way of living is an unconscious, a kind of submission to the dominant tendencies or the will of the majority.

The second way is related to the active development of personal and intellectual reflection, it is a way to build a moral nature of a human life on a creative basis. In this case, the man is the creator of his/her own life and the life of the society as a whole to which he/she belongs. The main goal of ontopsychology is the creative realization of a man, the achievement of authenticity, conformity to his/her nature, harmonization (coincidence) of conscious and unconscious frames, the formation of a person's reflective, creative, moral attitude to his/her own life.

Ontopsychology proceeds from the position that if a person's consciousness is uncreative, it should be considered as a “sick” one. It turned out, that “sick” consciousness reflected reality in a rather distorted form, thus distorting the personality, blocking its individual development. The person in this case is in a state of “existential schizophrenia” (Suler, 1980), implying rather uncoordinated existence. Only those human actions that correspond to the creative consciousness and, at the same time, are consistent with the code of nature, are healthy, positive, promote personal growth and self-development, meet the laws of life in general.

Ontopsychology gives a special role to artistic activity, art, which, according to different scientists (Nabochuk, 2021; Onu- friieva, 2017), have a positive impact on the environment, make a special contribution to the sphere of culture. The systems of influencing the personality include music, dance, painting, architecture, fashion and even culinary arts, etc.

The paradigm of Ontopsychology has developed practically oriented technologies for the growth of creativity, including imagogics (from the Latin “action in the middle of Me”) - it is a method of moving the unconscious layers of human spiritual life, images with unconscious content that arise spontaneously, and providing their actualization by conscious level. In the science of imaging, the achievements of scientists are engaged into meditation, symbolic visualization, psychosynthesis, visual thinking and projective psychodiagnostics, which were synthesized in a whole system. These methods allow us to analyze the inner essence of a man, to identify areas of psychological issues that are inaccessible to conscious vision, which allow us to actualize the hidden reality that affects a person and determines his/her behavior. The key concept and the object of studying in imagogy is the image. Traditionally, in order to create a creative image, three procedures are used: the analysis of dream images; deciphering images that arise spontaneously; the analysis of artistic products. As a rule, images are interpreted in terms of so called “biological truth”, not cultural myths, religious views, scientific theories. The image analysis contains all the details, nuances, which, according to Ontopsychologists, due to the huge amount of information facilitates the creation of creative products.

Thus, anthropological basis of creativity and the technologies of diagnostics and improvement of creative possibilities of the person are developed in the whole harmonious paradigm; they also are positive for the development of Psychology of Creativity in a paradigm of Ontopsychology.

The next direction in the study of the Psychology of Creativity is social one. The theory of lateral thinking is dominant in the paradigm of this direction. So, E. de Bono considers the problem of informational transformation to be the semantic center of the theory of lateral thinking. E. de Bono emphasizes the urgency of this problem, especially in social terms. The scientist believes that the need to transform ideas and isolate creative products is becoming more acute with the ever-faster pace of our lives. Thus, E. de Bono notes that creativity is often facilitated by the methods of restructuring ideas, and sometimes even complex, conflict and cognitive dissonance situations (де Боно, 2015).

According to the last statement, E. de Bono (де Боно, 2015) describes the vertical and lateral thinking that makes creativity possible. The characteristics of lateral thinking are compared to the qualities of “vertical” thinking; they are shown in Table 1.

Comparing the characteristics of vertical and lateral thinking, E. de Bono does not oppose them, but notes that lateral thinking significantly expands the possibilities of vertical thinking, making this process highly effective. Characterizing vertical thinking as a fairly defined way of processing information, which in any case results in the creation of models and stereotypes, the scientist emphasizes both the advantages of this method (in particular, the speed of recognition, stability and structure of the orientation of the subject in the world around him/her), as well as the limitations of the search and a purely negative consequences of creative activity. The results of vertical thinking and peculiar clichй models have the characteristics of fixity; they are quite difficult to change, and as a result inhibit their development. Having exhausted their resources, such models are created mainly by vertical thinking. These models become a kind of “trap” and do not allow the subject to move forward (де Боно, 2015).

Table 1 Characteristics of lateral and vertical thinking (according to E. de Bono)

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