Interview With E. Paul Torrance on Creativity in the Last and Next Millennia

Abstract

I interviewed E. Paul Torrance on a bright, cold day in early December at his home in Athens, GA. He still lives in the house near the university that he and Pansy, his wife, moved into shortly before she passed away. The first thing one notices upon arrival at his doorstep is the quilted toy chest on his large front porch. Years ago, the volume of mail coming and going from the Torrance household exceeded the size of a normal mailbox, and he has been using the toy chest as a mailbox ever since. We settled in his study, surrounded by his files and books. He sat with Cherokee Princess, his beautiful, fluffy white cat with calico markings, on his lap. I sat across from him with my notepad and pen and a small tape recorder on a little table to his left. The conversation was comfortable and relaxed, punctuated frequently by laughing and occasionally when Paul rose to get a book or paper to show me. I marveled that he found what he wanted so easily, even books from several decades ago. I was especially impressed that he remembered dates so well and the names that went with them. He'd had a busy day, attending a Christmas party at the Sunday School where he and Pansy used to teach, as well as attending to his correspondence and various projects. After the hour-and-a-half interview, I think we were both a little tired, but his eyes still sparkled with mirth and intelligence. Approximately two weeks later, we met to go over my transcribed notes, and he clarified some issues for me. I was also referred to his recent article on the issue of creativity in the new millennium published in the Korean Journal of Thinking & Problem Solving (2000). C: Now that we are on the cusp of the new millennium, we can look backward and forward to see where research on creativity has been and where it may be going. As an international leader in creativity research, I'd like to ask you to stand on the cusp and tell the readers of JSGE what you see. Most scholars say that research on creativity really began with the impetus of J.P. Guilford's speech to the APA in 1950. Do you agree? T: No, I would disagree. There's no question about it that Guilford gave great impetus to it all along, especially after his 1950 speech before APA when he was president. But, even before that, Guilford had been doing some things and so had other people. And there was some creativity testing even before 1900. They were using the Rorshach and so forth. They were using it differently, I think, then: All they used were common responses and uncommon responses. That had continued and, of course, been validated and indicated originality. The Rorshach people also used movement, human movement, mechanical movement, different kinds of movement for different things. Most of all it goes along with creativity--people who are fast moving. I had that experience with the fighter pilots. I had the experience of being head of the task force studying fighter pilots over Korea. We tested the aces and nonaces and those who had no hits at all, and we found they were all higher than the general population; but, of course, the aces were much higher than the near aces and no hits. Their attitudes were, of course, different, too, but that would be a different story. C: Is that where you got the idea to put the movement and action on the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking as an indicator of creativity? T: I got a lot of my ideas from there, ideas about the biographical inventory that worked out quite well. And I was making progress with that, but Cal Taylor was a competitor. I decided I had enough else to do so I'd leave it with him, but that was a mistake. I'm sorry that I did because he never did make known his answer key and that sort of thing, so it didn't become useful. So, he's now dead and gone, and so is the biographical inventory C: Do you still have yours? T: I still have that, but I haven't developed it. …