General or Specific Creativity? Individual Case

Abstract

The topic of the article is the dilemma of specificity versus generality of creative abilities and creativity in general, which is important in contemporary research on creativity. In the first part, the authors describe in a synthetic way the main theses of the supporters of the theory of specificity, and then – briefly – present a polemic with the theses of the supporters of the theory of generality of creative abilities. The main part of the text is a description of an individual case study (instrumental and descriptive), the work of a multi-disciplinary scientist and poet – Urszula Zajączkowska. The case study is structured around the answer to the question of what is the factor that allows her to create in various domains of creativity? In the final part, the authors present several conclusions from this and other studies and formulate postulates for further empirical exploration related to the hybrid research paradigm, referred to as the “third way” in research on the dilemma described here.

Keywords

• specificity dilemma–generality of creative abilities
• fields of creativity
• hybrid theory of creativity
• case study