The Hyper-creative Personality

The Hyper-Creative Personality by Blaire Palmer (2007)

A Book Review By:

Dr. Yehia A. Ibrahim, Certified Trainer & HRD Consultant Email address: [email protected]

This book contains an introduction and eleven chapters in 160 pages. It is an excellent book, especially for those who are familiar with Myers-Briggs personality types. It adds a very important dimension into the right-side half of MyersBriggs personality table, wherein intuition is the predominant information-gathering

function.

As

a

hyper-creative

personality, the author had a novel way of listing the book's table of contents, especially the main topics. It may not be considered this way by many readers especially those who occupy the left-side half of Myers-Briggs table of types. I believe that the table of contents should have been identical to the topics addressed inside the book.

This book is considered to be one of the most important books dealt with the subject of creativity. It focuses on the flip-side of one of the greatest innate potential of human beings, i.e., hyper-creativity. Even though I do not agree

with the authors in his classification of the hyper-creative types based on Jung's and Myers-Briggs' elements of personality, I think it is a great initiation that can be used to look even deeper into the hyper-creative types. As an expert in Myers-Briggs Types, I consider that Palmer's treatment is a very good approach to the subject of hyper-creativity but not to the hyper-creative types, because not all the six hypercreative types are extremist all the time or even most of the time. Likewise, we can also look at the practical types in their extreme forms. As I consider myself super-creative, not a hyper one, I share some of the diagnostics of Palmer's description, especially those behaviors that may turn superor hyper-creativity into a curse. In this regard, I think the author of this book was rather merciful in pinpointing the flip-side behaviors of Hyper-Creative personality as we can go on and add many more behaviors. Based on this book, the author and I are structured hyper-creatives but with different orientation for she is an extravert and I am an introvert. I believe the author's MB-type is likely to be an ENFJ. I do not consider this type hyper-creative but I consider it supercreative turning to hyper-creative only when under stress. It is the same for me (my MB-type is likely to be an INFJ).

The author has made a wonderful connection between the two guidance systems (the primitive system and the

intelligence-based system) and the problems with HyperCreative Personality. I wish she had explored this topic in further details. I also wish she started her book with chapter on the sixteen personality types and then explain why hypercreative are such so in the context of or as compared to all other types. I hope that the new edition takes my wishes into consideration and also enriches the text with some models to explain the author's wonderful and snowy ideas. The book is certainly rich in the ideas that serve in self- and social awareness of hyper-creatives.

This awareness will help

individuals and organizations invest in the hyper-creativity potential and turn it into an asset rather than a curse.

To my understanding the six Hyper-Creative types listed in the book (page 23) can be reclassified as four super-creative types and two hyper-creative types. If we take this multiclassification system, we can then include the other two intuitive types as only creative. To make this point clear, let us look at the eight intuitive types of Myers and Briggs and put them under this suggested classification system that may add value to the author's new edition. The Creative Types: Introvert / Creative / Analytical / Structured Extravert / Creative / Analytical / Structured

The Super-Creative Types: Introvert / Creative / Beliefs-driven / Structured (Me) Extravert / Creative / Beliefs-driven / Structured (The author) Introvert / Creative / Analytical / Flexible Extravert / Creative / Analytical / Flexible

The Super-Creative Types: Introvert / Creative / Beliefs-driven / Flexible Extravert / Creative / Beliefs-driven / Flexible

This classification may also help the readers to identify themselves more specifically with the problem behaviors combined with their creativity. Those behaviors are more or less causally related to the dark sides of creativity main function (intuition) or to the dark side of the creativity auxiliary functions (beliefs-driven and or flexibility). It is likely that under stress and time pressure, the first two supercreative types turn to hyper-creative and the second two types turn to plain creative. This point may not be clear to those who are not familiar with Myers-Briggs types. Should the author or the reader of the book like to understand this point, s/he

can

contact

me

at

([email protected]).

my

email

address

The author adds a wonderful portion of the book with lots of ideas on how to invest in the hyper-creativity personality both at the personal and organization levels. The last point I like to make is that the word "complimentary" or its derivatives was misused to mean "complementary" many times throughout the book. Also Myers-Briggs was misspelled in the index section (page 159).

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