[The relationship between mental health, socialization and creativity].

It is shown, that there are two traditions of thought in research as well as in psychotherapy which foster different assumptions about the relationship between a persons creativity and his mental well-being and between his creativity and the child-rearing practice of his parents. One tradition suggests that most creative people have experienced more intense suffering during childhood than others. The other tradition takes the opposite position, that a permissive, non-authoritarian home environment is most conducive for later creativity. Results of empirical research relevant to this questions have been contradictory, partly due to considerable methodological difficulties, and partly due to the ideological biasis of the experimenters and reviewers. Our own research on the child rearing practices and attitudes related to creative/non-creative 12-year old children of both sexes, as measured by questionnaires and observations of mother-child interaction, opposes the latter tradition. We have observed that mothers of high creative children behave more active and evaluating when engaged in dyadic problem solving situations with their children, and this pattern is symmetrically reflected in the behavior of their children. Mothers of low creative children, however, interact in a more guarded and cautious manner, yet with more visible demonstrations of positive affect. Questionnaire data on the fathers' attitudes on child-rearing seems to oppose the belief that creative children have permissive, non-authoritarian fathers.