Hyperbole of the imagination. operations of the imagination. Connection of imagination with emotional and cognitive processes. Imagination and creativity. Stages of creative activity

Representations are taken from the previous experience of a person, from the experience of contact with objects and phenomena of real life. The images that are recreated in the process of imagination are not taken directly from the real environment as representations, they are taken from representations. At the same time, the process of creating images of the imagination from the impressions received by a person from reality can proceed in various forms.

The processing of representations into images of the imagination goes through two main stage:

1) a kind of division of existing ideas into component parts (a kind of analysis of impressions received from reality or ideas formed as a result of previous experience takes place;

2) synthetic composition of various parts of a new whole (that is, a kind of synthesis takes place).

In the course of primary analysis, the object is abstracted, that is, it appears to us isolated from other objects, from a specific situation. There is also an abstraction of parts of the object. With these images, further transformations of the two main types.

Transformations of the first type - images can be put into new combinations and connections. Transformations of the second type - these images can be given a completely new meaning.

In any case, operations are performed with abstracted images that can be characterized as synthesis. These operations, which are the essence of the synthesizing activity of the imagination, are the second stage in the formation of images of the imagination. It should be noted that analysis can very quickly flow into synthesis, and synthesis into analysis. Forms, in which the synthesizing activity of the imagination is carried out, are extremely diverse.

The simplest form of synthesis in the process of imagination is agglutination- the creation of a new image by attaching parts or properties of one object to another in the imagination. Examples of agglutination are:

image of a centaur

The image of a winged man in the drawings of North American Indians,

The image of the ancient Egyptian deity - a man with a tail and an animal head.

Agglutination is widely used in art and technical creativity. Leonardo da Vinci gave advice to young artists: "If you want to make a fictional animal seem natural - let it be, say, a snake - then take for its head the head of a shepherd dog or a setter dog, attaching to it cat's eyes, the ears of an owl, the nose of a greyhound , the eyebrows of a lion, the whiskey of an old rooster, and the neck of a water turtle." In technology, as a result of the use of agglutination, for example, an amphibious vehicle and a hovercraft have been created.

Agglutination is based on processes associated - sometimes - with a lack of criticality, or a lack of analytical perception. Sometimes these processes are arbitrary, that is, controlled by consciousness, associated with mental generalizations. Most likely, the image of the centaur arose when, in conditions of insufficient visibility, a man riding a horse seemed to someone to be some kind of unprecedented animal. At the same time, the image of a winged man obviously arose consciously, from reflections on the topic of why people do not fly.

Another common way of processing images of perception into images of the imagination is to increase or decrease the object or its parts. With the help of this method, some literary characters were created.

Another possibility of agglutination is the inclusion of already known images in a new context. In this case, new connections are established between representations, thanks to which the entire set of images receives a new meaning. As a rule, when introducing views into a new context, this process is preceded by a certain idea or purpose.

Usually this process is completely controllable. When including already known images in a new context, a person achieves a correspondence between individual representations and a holistic context. Therefore, the whole process from the very beginning is subject to certain meaningful connections.

The most significant ways of processing ideas into images of the imagination, following the path of generalization of essential features, are schematization And emphasis.

Schematization may arise as a result of incomplete, superficial perception of the object. In this case, representations are schematized in a random way, and minor details are sometimes singled out in them, accidentally discovered during the perception of an object. As a result, distortions arise that lead to the creation of images of the imagination that perversely reflect reality. This phenomenon often occurs in children.

The reason for schematization can also be the forgetting of any insignificant details or parts. In this case, essential details and features come to the fore in the presentation. At the same time, the representation loses some individuality and becomes more generalized.

Of great importance is schematization with a conscious abstraction from the non-essential, secondary aspects of the object. A person consciously directs his attention to the essential, as he believes, features and properties of an object, as a result of which he reduces his ideas to a certain scheme.

Emphasis - emphasizing the most significant, typical features of the image. As a rule, this method is used when creating artistic images. The main feature of such a processing of images of perception into images of the imagination is that, reflecting reality and typing it, the artistic image always gives a broad generalization, but this generalization is always reflected in a specific image.

It should be noted that the processing of representations when creating a typical image is not performed by mechanical folding or subtraction of any features. The process of creating a typical image is a complex creative process and reflects certain individual characteristics of the person creating this image.

Another important form of processing ideas into images of the imagination is mutation- relatively random transformation of the original image. It is clear that for the psyche the concept of "random" is very arbitrary. Nevertheless, certain regularities can be seen in agglutination, schematization or accentuation. However, a writer can insert some episode into his book, not because it "suggested itself", but because, for example, a similar episode could just be seen on TV in the news.

A person is able to reflect not only the information recorded in memory. Taking into account past experience, extrapolating herself into the future, she can draw it in her imagination from separate knowledge, for example, the future of humanity or the image of a person whom she has never seen.

Representation is a generalized and abstract reflection of a perceived object, phenomenon, etc. MSechenov called representation "the average results of sensory knowledge about the subject"

In psychology, representation is defined as an image of an object or phenomenon, a reproduction of consciousness based on past impressions or thanks to imagination, that is, an image of a previously perceived object or phenomenon, as well as an image created by creative imagination.

Physiologically, the emergence of ideas can be explained as the action of a certain stimulus, fixed in the process of perception in the cerebral cortex, and in the next, this first conditioned reflex connection can be revived, restored, resulting in an image of a previously perceived object, i.e. representation.

Being a generalization of specific objects, a representation can be a generalization of a whole class of types of objects, that is, it is not an elementary phenomenon, but a phenomenon that characterizes a higher level of work of the human brain. Representation is the highest form of reflection in the form of visual-figurative knowledge, it is a transitional step from perception to abstract-logical thinking.

Representation is divided into visual, auditory, olfactory, gustatory, tactile. Often different representations are combined to form a synthetic image. In many ways, the representation is determined by the intellectual-mnestic features of the personality. There is, although rare, the ability to reproduce in all details the images of objects that do not currently work on the analyzer. This phenomenon is called eidetism and is more common in children's vicissitudes.

Imagination is the process of constructing images of objects and phenomena based on previous experience. It differs significantly from figurative memory. Images of imagination a person creates himself, they are the result of perception. Thus, imagination is a mental process that can create on the basis of direct (or indirect) thinking, memory, reflections of the world, new thoughts, images of objects and announcements of objects.

If a person is faced with the task of recreating images of objects, events that were previously presented in her mind, then memory processes are involved. But if the task is to create new images or combine them in a new way, then the activity of the thinking process is turned on. Imagination images are created only by processing individual aspects of images that are already presented in reality. For example, the images of the heroes of science fiction films to some extent reproduce their prototypes that really exist. And the form in which these images are presented in the film, they acquired by processing the original material and supplementing it with the necessary details, in the process of visual representations.

Forms of imagination

Agglutination - combining in the created image the properties and elements of images of other objects

Examples of agglutination are the image of a centaur, the image of a winged man in the drawings of North American Indians, the image of an ancient Egyptian deity (a man with a tail and head of an animal)

Hyperbolization - excessive exaggeration of a real object or its individual parts or their number

Schematization - smoothing differences between compared objects

Typization - mental selection of the essential, repeating in homogeneous images

Aggravation - imaginary underlining of individual features of a real object

Feature transfer - endowing images with uncharacteristic features

The activity of the imagination is greatly influenced by emotional and volitional factors that affect the personality. Imagining desired revenge can evoke positive emotional feelings in a person, which can lift a person out of a negative state.

In the process of constructing an image of the imagination, several techniques operate - hyperbolization, application, schematization, placing an object in an unusual environment, combination (agglutination), etc.

The heroes of the novel were created through hyperbolization and belittling. Swift - giants and midgets. By discarding, skipping certain parts of the perceived image, schemes, maps of the area are created. New images also arise when a person imagines an object outside the usual environment, for example, ships in the air (Figure 727.2).

Imagination images can appear by combination (agglutination) of already existing images. With the help of such a mechanism of imagination, people created the image of a centaur by combining the images of a man and a horse (Fig. 73). Sometimes a group is cuddled up to the image of an object by some parts that are not inherent in it, for example. Janus with two faces.

Manifestations of imagination are observed already at an early age of the child. True, the imagination of preschool children is often characterized by an insufficient ability to distinguish between images of the real and the imaginary. The role of imagination in childhood is subtly noted. K. I. Chukovsky. He described a child to whom parents did not tell fairy tales and thus did not satisfy his needs for imagination. The child himself invented them "He will come up with what will come to her room

Figure 72 . The magical giant dragon is the favorite hero of fairy tales of most peoples of the world.

Figure 73 . There are many different characters in fairy tales, is the result of agglutination

see a red elephant visiting, as if she has a bear friend. Cora, and please don't sit in the chair next to her, because - can't you see?

In older preschool age, a more purposeful imagination is expressed. Then, with the acquisition of experience by a person, every year the role of fantasy in life for her grows. Without imagination, the creativity of a writer, composer, scientist is hardly possible. They essentially "see" the mental image. A true writer always experiences the successes and failures of his characters. For example,. M. Dikksis ended the novel "Antiquities Shop" with the death of heroin and. He wrote that the imaginary death struck him so much that he almost felt like a murderer. Imagination plays an important role in the process of scientific discovery of the process of scientific research.

The physiological basis of imagination is considered to be the division into elements of existing neural connections and their combination into new systems. Thus, images arise that do not coincide with previous experience, but are not divorced from it either.

The hypothalamic-limbic system of the brain plays an important physiological role in the process of imagination. Considering the features of this system, which is responsible for the activity of the imagination, it can be noted that imagination affects both skin and organic processes, for example, the functioning of the endocrine glands, the activity of internal organs, metabolism, etc. The idea of ​​various mental illnesses can lead to the fact that a practically healthy person will begin to notice symptoms in himself, the existence of which she herself first imagined.

Renowned psychologist and neurosurgeon. O. R. Luria described an extraordinary experimental fact:

"It was enough. To imagine something or, as he said, to see, and we could observe amazing changes that were seen in his body. In special experiments, we could see how he raised the temperature of his left hand by 1.5 degrees, for this it was enough to "see" that his right hand was lying on the stove, and in his left he was holding a piece of ice.Without great effort, he accelerated the rhythm of the heart (representations of a layuchi. Running after a tram) or slowed it down (saw that he was calmly lying in bed) in him, phenomena of a-rhythm depression were observed on the electroencephalogram, when he, sitting in the darkness of the experimental chamber, began to see a bright beam of light. He could endure the extraction of a tooth without anesthesia, because he saw that another and that other was sitting in the chair , and not to tear his tooth, and not to youmu to tear his tooth.

Psychologists distinguish the following types of imagination as voluntary, involuntary, reproductive and creative

A person's imagination can arise voluntarily and involuntarily. Arbitrary imagination is manifested when a person's images and ideas arise as a result of volitional efforts or a set goal. In the course of its manifestations, the process of imagination is controlled and directed by the person himself. The basis of this process is the ability to arbitrarily call or change the desired images. Therefore, voluntary attention, as a rule, is an active process of transformation of images.

The surgeon, preparing for a complex operation, creates her picture. At the same time, he tries to creatively work out the experience of other surgeons, new achievements of science.

Imagination is called involuntary when the creation of new images is not directed by the special purpose of presenting certain objects or events.

The imagination of dependence on experience, knowledge, abilities, mental characteristics and other personal characteristics of a person enriches the practice, in which it is also tested.

Reproductive imagination consists in creating new objects or phenomena for a person, reminiscent of those that a person has ever seen, or in recreating an image according to a verbal description of an object or drawings. The reproduction of man-made imagination strives for accurate reproduction of the image, it is widely used in various activities. In contrast to the reproductive one, in the creative imagination, a person creates images of objects that she has never seen, for example, the image of a snowman.

A special form of creative imagination is a dream. In dreams, a person creates images of the desired future. Dreams play an important role in a person's life. Due to this. D. I. Pisarev noted that if a person were completely amused by the ability to dream, if she could not occasionally run ahead and contemplate with her imagination in a whole and complete picture the very creation that is just beginning to take shape under his hands, - then it would be impossible to understand what motive causes a person to begin and complete extensive and tedious work in the field of art, science and practical life.

People have the ability to dream to varying degrees. In addition, the individual differences of people are manifested in the extent to which the dream is connected with reality, with its implementation. In some cases, dreams encourage a person to be active, in others they leave her passive, in the world of dreams. Both healthy and sick people can be in this state. If normally a person "baths in dreams" through his inaction, then in pathology this is the result of a change in the psyche under the influence of illnesses.

Involuntary imagination is a simpler form of image creation. Here they arise without special volitional efforts of a person. So, looking at the clouds, we sometimes spontaneously see interesting images: a train is collapsing, different animals, a skinny person.

Involuntary imagination is characterized by the passivity of the process of its activity. The connection between the needs of the individual and her passive involuntary imagination is expressed in the phenomenon of human delirium.

he portrayed a bright representative of this category of people. Gogol in character. Manilov. Almost all of my time. Manilov spent on pleasant, but baseless nonsense. He never tried to fulfill these dreams. In this illusory life, he succeeded in everything, he was a respected person, which he could not claim in real life.

The most striking manifestations of involuntary passive imagination, with a weakened work of consciousness and its disorders, are hallucinations.

One of the manifestations of the deepening or expansion of the imagination is the process of fantasy. Fantasy reveals the process of constructing the image of an object deeper and brighter. Fantasies are inherent in all people, only in different forms of their manifestation, and depend on the age and degree of development of the individual. Given this, we can distinguish a number of separate types of fantasies - children's, scientific, educational, sexual.

The role of fantasy increases with the complexity of labor. However, even in the simplest communication there is a certain element of fantasy. The propensity for transcendent fantasizing is very sharply found in hysterics. At the same time, their fantasies of Asia are similar to those of children, that is, the images created practically do not differ from reality. Often the imaginary is taken for real, it acquires a fruitless, obsessive character. Medical workers should take into account the fact that some patients, under the influence of books read, films seen or heard various statements, may confuse imaginary symptoms of the disease with real ones. These false ideas of laziness lead to serious pathological changes in personality.

With certain psychological disorders, fantasizing can take the form of delirium or manifest itself in the form of delusional fantasies. Thus, there are cases when a person, under the situational influence of a painful imagination, overworked, lied at the beast, for example, made a dog out of himself, began to bark.

Imagination – a special mental process peculiar only to man. Imagination is expressed in the reconstruction and transformation of representations, in the creation of new images that have never been in perception, in the construction of new connections and relationships that are absent in reality. In this sense, imagination can be attributed to intellectual cognitive processes. Imagination also provides foreseeing future results of activity, possible changes in the surrounding world and in oneself, allows you to build a program of behavior, so it can be attributed to integrative processes. Imagination permeates all human mental activity: it transforms perceptual images, ideas, mental concepts, is closely interconnected with memory. The difference between imagination and thinking lies in the fact that thinking discovers the real internal connections of reality, while imagination builds new connections, creates hypotheses about possible relationships, going beyond the limits of the current situation.

Classifications of types of imagination

1. According to the degree of intentionality and consciousness:

· passive imagination It is characterized by the fact that its images arise spontaneously, in addition to the will and desire of a person. Passive imagination is characterized by the creation of images that are not brought to life, programs that are not implemented or cannot be implemented at all. Passive imagination can be intentional or unintentional. Unintentional passive imagination is observed when the activity of consciousness is weakened, with its disorders (hallucinations), in a half-drowsy state, in a dream. Intentional passive imagination creates images (dreams) that are not connected with the will, which could contribute to their embodiment in reality;

· active imagination It is characterized by the fact that, using it, a person, at his own request, by an effort of will, causes certain images in himself. Active imagination can capture a person so much that he loses touch with his time, completely “gets used” to the image he creates. For example, while working on the novel Madame Bovary, G. Flaubert, describing the poisoning of his heroine, felt the taste of arsenic in his mouth.

2. According to the tasks to be solved:

· reproductive (recreative) imagination- reproduction of existing images or creation of new connections of known images stored in memory. When using reproductive imagination, the task is to reproduce reality as it is, and although there is also an element of fantasy, this kind of imagination is more like perception or memory.

· productive (creative) imagination– creation of new images in the process of human creative activity. When using a productive imagination, the task is to transform reality.

3. By the nature of the images (S.L. Rubinshtein):

· concrete imagination operates with single images, burdened with many details, real;

· abstract imagination uses images of a high degree of generalization, images-schemes, symbols.

Imagination Functions:

· goal-setting function the future result of the activity is created in the imagination, it exists only in the mind of the subject and directs his activity to obtain the desired;

· representation of reality in images, as well as creating the opportunity to use them when solving problems. This function of the imagination is connected with thinking and is organically included in it;

· regulation of emotional states. With the help of imagination, a person is able to at least partially satisfy many needs, relieve the tension generated by them. This vital function is especially emphasized and developed in psychoanalysis;

· arbitrary regulation of cognitive processes and human states, in particular perception, attention, memory, speech, emotions. With the help of skillfully evoked images, a person can pay attention to the necessary events. Through images, he gets the opportunity to control perception, memories, statements;

· formation of an internal action plan- the ability to perform actions in a conscious, ideal plan, manipulating images;

· planning and programming activities, drawing up programs, assessing their correctness, the implementation process;

· the function of penetrating into the inner world of another person - on the basis of a description or demonstration, the imagination is able to create pictures of what has been experienced (experienced at a given moment in time) by another being, thereby making it possible to become familiar with its inner world; this function serves as the basis for understanding and interpersonal communication.

With the help of imagination, we can control many psycho-physiological states of the body, tune it to the upcoming activity. There are known facts that with the help of imagination, by a purely volitional way, a person can influence organic processes: change the rhythm of breathing, pulse rate, blood pressure, body temperature. These facts underlie autotraining, which is widely used for regulation.

Allocate basic ways to create images of the imagination: combination (agglutination), accentuation, typification, schematization, hyperbolization.

combination- a combination of data in the experience of elements in new versions. Products of human activity created by combining: a mobile phone, a pencil with a fixed eraser, a powder box with a mirror, a trolleybus - a combination of the properties of a tram and a car, etc.

A special case of combination is agglutination (from lat. aglutinare- gluing) - connection of qualities, properties, parts of objects that are not connected in reality. For example, the fabulous image of a centaur - half a man, half a horse; a hut on chicken legs, a little mermaid, etc.

Emphasis (sharpening)- intentional strengthening in the object of certain qualities that are dominant against the background of the rest. An example is drawing cartoons, friendly cartoons.

hyperbole – enlargement or reduction of an object and its parts. You can create a new image by exaggerations(or understatement) characteristics of the object. This technique is widely used in fairy tales, folk art, when heroes are endowed with supernatural power and perform feats. Examples are the following images: Boy with a finger, Thumbelina, giants Gargantua and Pantagruel.

Typing – singling out the repetitive and essential in homogeneous phenomena and embodying it in a specific image(type of hero, type of villain, typical image of the "Hero of Our Time").

Schematization – smoothing differences between objects and identifying similarities between them(a schematic depiction of female and male figures on toilet doors, diagrams in buses, on maps, etc.).

To transform existing images and ideas and create new products in the imagination, as well as in thinking, operations are used - fusion (combination), agglutination, hyperbolization, typification.

Merging involves the arbitrary combination, comparison and union of the qualities and characteristics of different objects in one image. So, Pasternak said that in the image of Lara in his novel Doctor Zhivago, the features of Zinaida Pasternak and Olga Ivinskaya are combined. Tolstoy wrote that the qualities of Sonya and Tanya (that is, his wife and her sister) are merged in the image of Natasha Rostova. In the same way, the fusion can be carried out in a new melody that connects the motifs of several, in a drawing of a building in which several architectural styles are combined, etc.

A special type of fusion is agglutination, in which features and properties of objects that are not connected in reality are combined. The most common examples of agglutination are the images of the sphinx and the centaur, in which the features of a person are combined with the features of a lion (sphinx) and a horse (centaur). Agglutinations are also often used in allegorical images, in poetry (half-sage - half-ignorant), emphasizing the complexity, inconsistency of the created image.

Hyperbolization - an increase or decrease in an object, a change in the ratio of its parts. Hyperbole increases the brightness and expressiveness of the image, highlighting some of its specific features. So, for example, in Fonvizin's classic comedy "Undergrowth" Pravdin, Skotinin do not look like real people, but are created to reflect (and ridicule) certain character traits, behavioral styles. Hyperbolization is also used in fairy tales, which describe, for example, the extraordinary strength or growth of heroes, which emphasizes their courage and courage. The mind and dexterity of the child (Thumb-Boy) are especially great in contrast to the size and stupidity of the cannibal - this is also the result of hyperbolization.

The operation of emphasizing and sharpening, as well as hyperbolization, is associated with the intentional strengthening of any one feature of the described image. The peculiarity of these operations is that in this case some part or detail is highlighted, which becomes dominant. The most common form of emphasis is cartoons and caricatures.

Other ways to give additional expressiveness to the image are typing and schematization. Schematization involves smoothing out the differences between objects and identifying similarities between them, and typification involves highlighting essential features and properties that are repeated in homogeneous phenomena. In both cases, the most typical traits for a given group of people are generalized. Naturally, in this case, all specific personal qualities are completely ignored, although, unlike hyperbolization, the plausibility in the description of the characters is preserved. Typification was used, for example, by A. N. Ostrovsky in describing merchants in his plays, by Molière, who revealed the most common features of upstarts who got rich and aspired to get into another social group.

Imagination is closely connected with other areas of the psyche and other cognitive processes - emotions, memory and thinking.

Any strong emotion stimulates the imagination. Feeling fear, people imagine various dangers, often exaggerating them significantly. Imagination can make a person feel sick or, on the contrary, healthy, add self-confidence, or, conversely, imagine himself completely helpless. Feelings of self-doubt are often associated with imaginary "oblique glances" of others, hidden reproaches in absolutely neutral phrases and situations. Positive emotions, such as expected joy, conjure up a variety of pictures of the fulfillment of desire, while negative emotions lead to exaggeration of failures and troubles, both present and future.

However, not only feelings cause imagination, but imagination enhances experiences. The patient, waiting in line at the dentist, imagines the upcoming test, and the voices or the sound of the drill make the images even more vivid and distinct, increasing fear. The imaginary reaction of a loved one to a gift causes joy from its acquisition, and a possible assessment by others of an unseemly act can cause shame and keep from committing it.

No less close is the connection of imagination with memory, with people's experience. There is a very common stereotype that children's imagination is more lively and rich than that of an adult. However, this opinion is fundamentally wrong, since in children, despite the high flexibility and plasticity of their psyche, the ability to quickly respond to events, the productivity of the imagination is extremely low. Their fantasies reflect their emotional experiences and desires. In their stories, children do not seek to create something, but they want to reduce emotional stress. Therefore, neither the content nor the form of the story excites them, and experiences are molded into a traditional set of phrases and plots borrowed from adult conversations, films or fairy tales. The mentioned stereotype reflects only the fact that children share their imaginary desires and fears more often than adults, and their content is more divorced from life (since there is no experience of this life).

The role of memory and knowledge is especially clearly seen in the reproductive objection, since many facts unknown to man, he simply cannot imagine. This is manifested, for example, in the reaction of people who did not survive the war to the stories or behavior of refugees from Chechnya, descriptions of historical events. In this regard, the example of B. M. Teplov is typical, who told about a boy of seven or eight years old, who, describing the events of the Time of Troubles and the tonsure of Prince Shuisky in a monastery, said that he first went to the hairdresser's, and then was forced to lock himself in the monastery. The concept of monastic vows, unfamiliar to a child, was replaced in the imagination by the more familiar image of a haircut at a barbershop. This extremely vivid and illustrative example illustrates the mechanics of less vivid, but very common mistakes in building imaginary images.

Imagination replaces thinking in cases of difficulty in solving problem situations, helping to supplement the missing data with imaginary ones, while the degree of involvement of the imagination in the process of activity is determined by the degree of uncertainty of the situation, the completeness or deficiency of information available about it.

Creative imagination, like creative thinking, is associated with creativity. Creativity implies creative abilities that characterize a person's readiness to produce fundamentally new ideas. Creativity is often identified with creativity, the desire for productive activity, which has become a stable personality trait. According to many scientists, creativity is included in the structure of giftedness as an independent factor, and therefore is associated with certain psychodynamic characteristics, such as plasticity.

There are figurative and verbal creativity, that is, the predominant ability to create something new in figurative or verbal (verbal) terms. Figurative creativity is the first to appear in ontogeny, which, up to the age of seven or eight, significantly outstrips verbal creativity in all children. We have already mentioned the data of Wertheimer, who proved the sensitivity of creative thinking to the scheme. The development of creativity confirms this fact, since the verbal plan in creativity, as a rule, does not develop if it was not preceded by a figurative-schematic one. In older children and adults, there are already individual inclinations towards the type of creative activity, and its productivity is rarely equally high in both plans.

Guilford singled out the leading parameters of both figurative and verbal creativity:

● originality - the ability to produce distant associations, unusual responses;

● semantic flexibility - the ability, based on the selection of the function of an object, to offer its new use;

● figurative adaptive flexibility - the ability to change the form of the stimulus in such a way as to see in it new features and opportunities for use;

● semantic spontaneous flexibility - the ability to produce a variety of ideas in an unregulated situation.

Subsequently, the characteristic of creativity was supplemented by the ability to detect and formulate problems and the ability to improve by adding details.

The development of the main provisions of Gilford's concept was carried out in the works of E. P. Torrens. Creativity was considered by Torrens as a natural process, which is generated by a strong need of a person to relieve tension that arises in him in a situation of discomfort caused by uncertainty or incompleteness of activity.

An important point that was emphasized by almost all scientists is the discrepancy between the level of creativity and the level of thinking. Studies have shown that the intellect stimulates the development of creativity only to a certain level, and highly developed thinking (especially verbal and logical) can even hinder it, directing intellectual activity to quickly achieve the correct, but not original, result. More closely is the relationship of creativity with memory, rather than with thinking, while good rote memory can be an indicator of creativity, but its absence does not indicate a low level of creativity.

Depending on the degree of activity and awareness of new images by a person, active and passive imagination are distinguished. With passive imagination, images are created that are not implemented, programs that are not implemented. An example of passive imagination are fantasies, dreams, daydreams, dreams, hallucinations. An excellent example of passive imagination is Manilov - a man who imagines a fictional life for himself, where he succeeds, everyone envy him, where he occupies a position that he cannot hope for in real life at the present time.

Active imagination can be recreative and creative. A recreating imagination is an image that a person builds based on an already prepared description. Creating an image according to the description, a person fills the sign system (verbal, numerical, graphic, oral, etc.) with the knowledge and experience he has. The greater the stock of knowledge, experience, the brighter and richer the image that a person draws for himself. The completeness, content and brightness of the image also depend on the artistic skill of the author. Creative imagination is the creation of a new, original image, idea.

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Development of the imagination

For a long time, science was dominated by the idea of ​​the impossibility of algorithmization and learning to imagine. The French psychologist G. Ribot wrote: "As for the "methods of invention", they do not really exist, otherwise it would be possible to fabricate inventors, just as they now fabricate mechanics and watchmakers." Imagination is sometimes called a "whimsical faculty," emphasizing the fact that the imagination operates without discernible determinism. That is why imagination is attributed to spontaneity. It is almost impossible to force yourself to imagine or not to imagine anything. The process starts as if by itself.

Gradually, this view was refuted. The English scientist G. Wallace, studying how famous scientists made their discoveries, identified four stages of the creative process:

• 1) preparation (the birth of an idea);
• 2) maturation (concentration, "pulling" of knowledge directly and indirectly related to the problem, obtaining missing information);
• 3) insight (intuitive grasp of the desired result);
• 4) verification.

Like any complex process, imagination can be mastered by learning certain techniques. There are many ways to develop the imagination. So, even Leonardo da Vinci advised for this purpose to look at clouds, wall cracks, spots and find in them similarities with objects of the surrounding world.

In psychology, the following techniques for creating new images have been identified: agglutination, accentuation, schematization, typification. These techniques work thanks to the mental operations of analysis and synthesis.

Ultimately, the processes of imagination consist in the mental decomposition of the original ideas into component parts (analysis) and their subsequent combination in new combinations (synthesis), i.e. are analytic and synthetic in nature.

The analytic-synthetic nature of imagination is most clearly manifested in the technique of agglutination (translated from Greek - gluing). Agglutination is a combination, a fusion of individual elements or parts of several objects into one image. So, for example, the image of a mermaid in folk representations was created from the images of a woman (head and torso), fish (tail) and green algae (hair). In the same way, a centaur, a sphinx, a hut on chicken legs, etc. were created. The artist Leonardo da Vinci spoke well about the technique of agglutination: "If you want to make a fictional animal seem natural - let it be, say, a snake - then take the head of a shepherd or a cop dog for its head, attach cat's eyes, ears of an owl, the nose of a greyhound, the eyebrows of a lion, the temples of an old rooster, and the neck of a water turtle." L.N. Tolstoy wrote that when creating the image of Natasha in the novel "War and Peace", he took some features from his wife Sofya Andreevna, others from her sister Tatyana, "reworked" and thus received the image of Natasha. Agglutination is also used in technical creativity. With the help of this technique, a trolleybus, snowmobile, amphibious tank, seaplane, accordion, etc. were created.

Emphasis can also be considered an analytical process of creating images, which consists in the fact that in the image being created, any part, detail is highlighted and especially emphasized, for example, changing in size and making the object disproportionate. Emphasizing allows you to highlight the most essential, the most important in this particular image. This technique is often used by cartoonists. A talker is depicted with a long tongue, a lover of food is endowed with a voluminous belly, etc.

The technique of accentuation can be further developed if it is extended to the entire object. This can be achieved in two ways: we increase the object in comparison with reality (hyperbole) or reduce it (litote). These techniques are widely used in folk tales, epics, when a hero of a powerful physique is depicted, growing "higher than a standing forest, just below a walking cloud", with superhuman strength, which allows him to defeat an entire army of enemies. This is how the images of giants and midgets are created in J. Swift's novel Gulliver's Travels.

Once upon a time there was an elephant

Not a huge elephant, but a small, small, Little elephant, a little more than a mouse. A dandelion bloomed in the sky above him, And a mosquito buzzed like a huge helicopter, And the grass for him is just a forest, just a forest. It just disappeared immediately if it climbed into the thicket.

E. Uspensky

Hyperbolization can be achieved by changing the number of parts of the object or by shifting them: the many-armed Buddha in the Indian religion, dragons with seven heads, the one-eyed cyclops, etc.

The construction of representations of the imagination can also proceed synthetically. In the event that the representations from which a fantastic image is created merge, the differences are smoothed out, and similarities come to the fore, one speaks of schematization. National ornaments and patterns, the elements of which are borrowed from the surrounding world, can serve as an example of schematization. Every person can easily imagine an "Italian", "Englishman", "Chinese" or a representative of any other nation. However, if you ask to determine what are the differences between them, then this will cause difficulty for many, since these images live in our imagination in the form of generalized schemes.

Schematization is, as it were, a preparatory stage for the most complex method of creative imagination - typification, the process of decomposition and connection, as a result of which a certain image (of a person, his deed, relationships) crystallizes. In the image, the artist usually seeks to convey a certain, more or less conscious idea. In accordance with this plan, there is an accentuation of those, and not other features, the selection of such, and not other, moments during agglutination. As a result, some features are omitted, as if falling out of attention, others are simplified, freed from particulars that complicate details, while others, on the contrary, are intensified, and in general the whole image is transformed. On this occasion, A.M. Gorky wrote: “How are types built in literature? They are built, of course, not in portraiture, they don’t take any person separately, but take thirty to fifty people of the same line, one kind, one mood, and from them they create Oblomov, Onegin, Faust, Hamlet, Othello, etc. All these are generalized types." Type is an individual image in which the most characteristic features of people of a whole group, class, nation are combined into one whole.

Successful adaptation in an unstable society requires a high level of creativity. Today, the issue of teaching both techniques and methods of creative thinking is acute. There are many ways to teach creative thinking. One of the most famous is "brainstorming", or "brainstorming". The method and term "brainstorming" or "brainstorming" was proposed by the American scientist A.F. Osborn (based on the version of the heuristic dialogue of Socrates). He noted that collectively generating ideas is more effective than individually. Under normal conditions, a person's creative activity is often constrained by explicitly and implicitly existing barriers (psychological, social, pedagogical, etc.). A tough leadership style, fear of mistakes and criticism, a very professional and too serious approach to business, pressure from the authority of more capable comrades, traditions and habits, a lack of positive emotions - all this hinders creativity and makes you work according to a template. Dialogue in the conditions of "brainstorming" acts as a means to remove the barrier, to release the creative energy of the participants to solve a creative problem.

Currently, several modifications of the "brainstorming" method have been developed.

In work, it is necessary to optimally combine logic and intuition. In the conditions of generating ideas, it is desirable to weaken the activity of logical thinking and encourage intuition in every possible way. This is largely facilitated by such rules as the prohibition of criticism, delayed logical and critical analysis of the ideas put forward.

The undoubted advantages of this method is that it allows you to learn the techniques of creative thinking in a group. Laziness, routine thinking, rationalism, the absence of an emotional "fire" in the conditions of applying this method are, as it were, automatically removed. A benevolent psychological microclimate creates conditions for relaxedness, activates intuition and imagination.

To develop creativity, along with brainstorming, the method of heuristic questions is also often used. This method is also known as the "key questions" method. In the practice of teaching, they are also called leading questions, since a question successfully posed by the teacher leads the student to the idea of ​​the correct answer.

Heuristic questions were widely used in their scientific and practical activities by Socrates and the ancient Roman philosopher Quintilian. Quintilian recommended that his students, in order to collect sufficiently complete information about any event, set themselves and answer the following seven key questions (heuristic): Who? What? What for? Where? How? How? When?

The method of heuristic questions is based on the following patterns and their corresponding principles:

• 1. Problems and optimality. By skillfully posed questions, the problematic nature of the problem is reduced to an optimal level.
• 2. Breakdown of information (heuristic questions make it possible to break down a task into subtasks).
• 3. Goal-setting (each new heuristic question forms a new strategy - the goal of the activity).

Heuristic questions should stimulate creative problem solving.

• 1. You need to clearly understand the proposed task, and to do this, ask yourself questions: what is unknown? What is given? What is the condition? Is it possible to satisfy the condition? Is the condition enough to define the unknown? Or not enough? Or excessive? Or contradictory? It is useful to make a drawing. It is important to introduce suitable notation. Divide the condition into parts, try to write them down.
• 2. When looking for a solution idea and when drawing up a solution plan, it is important to find a connection between the data and the unknown. Ask yourself: Do you know of any related task? Can't you use it? Is it possible to use a method to solve it? Shouldn't some auxiliary element be introduced to take advantage of the former task? Is it possible to formulate the problem differently, more simply? Is it possible to come up with a more accessible task? More general? More private? A similar task? Is it possible to solve part of the problem, to satisfy part of the condition? Is it possible to extract something useful from the data? Have you used all the data and conditions? Have all the concepts contained in the problem been taken into account?
• 3. While implementing the solution plan, control every step you take. Is it clear to you that the step you have taken is the right one? Can you prove that he is correct?
• 4. You always need to control the resulting solution. Ask yourself: is it possible to check the result? Is it possible to check the progress of the solution? Is it possible to get the same result in a different way? Is it possible to check the correctness of the result obtained? Is it possible to use the obtained result in some other task? Is it possible to solve the problem inverse to this one?

The advantage of the method of heuristic questions lies in its simplicity and efficiency for solving any problems. Heuristic questions especially develop the intuition of thinking, the general logical scheme for solving creative problems.

P. Torrens made a great contribution to the development of methods for developing the creative thinking of children. He suggested at the first stage of working with children to give them tasks for solving anagrams (search for a word in a meaningless sequence of letters). Then, using the pictures, the subject had to develop all the probable and improbable circumstances that led to the situation depicted in the picture, and predict its possible consequences. Later, the subjects were offered different objects and asked to list all the possible ways to use them. Torrens believed that such an organization of classes would free a person from the framework set by society and he would begin to think creatively and outside the box.

Valuable recommendations for the development of children's imagination are given by the famous Italian writer Gianni Rodari in the book "Grammar of Fantasy. An Introduction to the Art of Inventing Stories." In particular, he proposes to develop the child's verbal creativity by presenting him with pairs of words to invent stories, the neighborhood of which would be unusual. For example, Cinderella is a steamer, grass is icicles, etc.

Many creativity trainings are based on the game. The game, like no other activity, makes you come up with something new, fantasize, create.

No matter how perfect the methodology of teaching creativity, it is obvious that creative activity requires certain personal characteristics and a lot of work from a person. Such qualities as curiosity and perseverance are important. Creative people see the problem where everything is clear and understandable to others. They can look at the situation from a completely different angle than most people.

Swiss inventor Georges de Mestral invented the Velcro fastener. Once, while hunting, burdock heads stuck to his clothes and to the fur of his dog. Trying to tear the burrs off his clothes, de Mestral wondered why they stuck so tightly to the fabric. He examined the burdock under a microscope and found that each head had hundreds of small hooks. For many years he persistently tried to find a way to attach such hooks to a ribbon of fabric. In the end, he got "Velcro".

Many prominent personalities describe the creative process as everyday hard, almost routine work. Beethoven spent long hours composing music, then tearing up the sheets of writing and rewriting everything again. Nobel laureate Thomas Mann claimed that he forced himself to write at least three pages daily. Creativity and fantasy do not seem to exist without systematic labor.