The teaching of the creative arts in an academic context is relatively complex and may be seen as problematic due to the fact that the creative process includes both rational and non-rational aspects. The rational aspects of creativity, such as cognitive strategies and skills development, are addressed overtly in university courses, but the non-rational aspects of the creative process, such as intuition
and imagination, are often not discussed due to a lack of understanding. Creative intuition, in particular, is seen as mystical an inexplicable, because it is not based on reason or logic. This article, however, argues that creative intuition can be understood. By exploring psychological and philosophical explanations of creative intuition it demystifies the concept and five key principles underlying creative intuition are presented, which may provide the basis for further
discourse in the field of creative arts education.
For the purposes of this article, the creative arts are broadly defined as a collection of disciplines which overtly involve the creative process as part of their educational strategy. These include the fine arts, the performing arts, creative writing, architecture and various other design disciplines.
The creative process is multi-faceted. Whether one is designing a building, composing a piece of music or developing a series of paintings, the process involves both rational and other, less easily explicable, non-rational aspects.
The word ‘intuition’ has its roots in the Latin intueri which means ‘to look at or toward’ or ‘to contemplate’. A typical dictionary definition of the word reads “the act or faculty of knowing without the use of rational processes: immediate cognition” (American Heritage Dictionary online, 2021) or “the ability to understand something instinctively, without the need for conscious reasoning” (OED online, 2021).
Hague defined it as “a spontaneous, immediate perception of truth that does not rely on the intermediary of rational thought processes or overt, external physical evidence” (Hague, 2003). Intuition has been explored from a psychological perspective by Jung, Ornstein and Bastick, amongst others (Bastick, 1982; Jung, 1921; Stein, 1974).
In the context of creativity, Stein defined intuition as “a method of formulating or solving a problem in which the person has no conscious awareness or knowledge of how he arrived at the answer or what stimuli led him to it” (Stein, 1974, p 203).
The creative process (whether it is in the arts, business or the sciences) involves both intellectual, conscious processes of thinking, as well as less conscious intuitive processes of knowing and discovering. Although Jungian psychology provides insight into the nature of intuition as a psychological function, intuition is not well understood by creative individuals and creative arts educators, even though they may be familiar with the intuitive experience itself.
This article is an overview of research findings from a PhD by the author in which the nature of creative intuition and how it functions during the creative process is explored. The experience of creative intuition is fragile and fleeting, characterised by moments of mysterious potentiality and open-ended suggestiveness which generate new and original thoughts, sounds, images and actions.