Many believe that a child’s creativity can only bloom in the warmth of a loving, nurturing and supportive household. While artistic talent can flourish in comfortable surroundings, research has shown that this is not always the case.
Paradoxical though it may seem, studies have found that many creative people had difficult childhoods. Indeed, many well-known artists owe their genius to tough childhood events, from which they escaped by creating mental worlds where they were free to develop their talents.
Famous examples include artistic geniuses like Vincent van Gogh, Franz Kafka, Edgar Allan Poe, Virginia Woolf and Sinéad O'Connor, all of whom suffered adversity in childhood and went on to develop great artistic prowess. Sadly, though perhaps not surprisingly, their talents were often tempered by neuroses and other mental health issues.
Creative people have even noted this in one another. Jean Paul Sartre’s lengthy biography of Gustave Flaubert’s childhood describes its subject as an unwanted, neglected child who was considered mentally disabled by his parents. The book’s title shows how central this was to Flaubert’s identity: L'Idiot de la famille (The Family Idiot).
Escaping childhood suffering
My recent study explores the development of human creativity, which can follow two paths: it can be an imitation of serene and pleasant parental models that inspire a child to thrive and improve, or it can be a way to manage the anxiety that stems from the absence of these models.
As Donald Winnicott explains in his seminal 1971 book “Playing and Reality”, children alleviate the anxiety of temporary separation from their parents by soothing themselves with objects (called “transitional objects”) or behaviours, which temporarily replace the absence of their parents’ affection or attention.
If the absence is prolonged and difficult, these behaviours continue and can, through repetition, develop into a creative skill. Unfortunately, along with creativity, these children sometimes develop harsh behavioural difficulties, and struggle with social relationships.
Some academics have proposed a model to explain this phenomenon. Up to a certain level of separation or neglect from parents, the capacity to develop talents grows, but beyond a certain limit this decreases and alterations in social behaviour become more acute.
Therefore, it is likely that our talents, those of which we will be proud when adults, put down their roots in the first few months of life. The rest of our lives are spent honing the creative behaviours we learned, or took refuge in, when were babies.
By closely observing young children, psychologist Mary Ainsworth found that our attachment style is already defined at the age of one. Other studies have found a similar precocious timing for other mental skills, and this is likely true for creativity as well. Early abandonment or neglect can have dire consequences, but can also be the source of creativity, as it helps children to survive.
Challenges in modern parenting
Today, affective relationships between parents and children are increasingly problematic. Cultural shifts often mean that modern parents are either scarcely or excessively focused on their babies. Working habits have also changed, meaning babies are more commonly separated from parents in the earliest stages of their development.
It is therefore unsurprising that young children today escape into a parallel word that replaces or supplements parental attention, one where they often develop considerable creative abilities and talents: computers and videogames. Screen time is, however, also linked to greater levels of stress, anxiety and isolation, especially as children grow into teenagers.
No substitute for care
Adversity does not always have negative effects, and caregivers should help children to cultivate their creative talents, but this is by no means a substitute for proper care and attention.
Studies show that a supportive attitude is important from the early years of school, but parents can often be with physically absent or mentally distant or distracted from their offspring. This can cause a raft of mental health issues, as a child’s first and most decisive cognitive maps are drawn in the earliest stages of life – late intervention is less effective.
The good news is that this research can help to identify and intervene when a child may be suffering. It also further highlights the deep, primordial psychological significance of children’s, and indeed adults’, talents and creativity.
Carlo Valerio Bellieni, Professor of Pediatrics, Università di Siena
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
