Transcript of podcast interview with Stephen A. Diamond, PhD, a licensed clinical and forensic psychologist who sees many creative individuals, including members of the Writers Guild and the Screen Actors Guild. He is the author of the book, "Anger, Madness and the Daimonic: The Psychological Genesis of Violence, Evil and Creativity."

The workings of the creative mind have been subjected to intense scrutiny over the past 25 years by an army of researchers in psychology, sociology, anthropology and neuroscience. But no one has a better overview of this mysterious mental process than Washington University psychologist R. Keith Sawyer, author of the book Explaining Creativity: The Science of Human Innovation. In an interview with Francine Russo (Time mag.), Sawyer shares some of his findings and suggests ways in which we can enhance our creativity not just in art, science or business but in everyday life.

Creative individuals are remarkable for their ability to adapt to almost any situation and to make do with whatever is at hand to reach their goals. If I had to express in one word what makes their personalities different from others, it's complexity.

Relationships are the fertile ground in which our uniqueness and strength grow. From this perspective, we can begin to appreciate how relationships with others are a critical part of initiating and sustaining the creative process.

Revolutionary understandings in clinical psychology now suggest that healthy interpersonal relationships are the fuel for optimal emotional, cognitive, intellectual, behavioral, and creative functioning. Contrary to how we’ve been taught to value independence and autonomy, this new scientific evidence is showing that we are at our best when we are connected with others.

My contention is that creativity now is as important in education as literacy, and we should treat it with the same status... Truthfully what happens is, as children grow up we start to educate them progressively from the waist up. And then we focus on their heads. And slightly to one side.

Early researchers linked confabulation with amnesia and abnormal brain chemistry. Nowadays it's more pleasantly harnessed to the marvelous potential of the human imagination. Fantastic and spontaneous outpourings of irrelevant associations and bizarre ideas come quite naturally to ordinary creative folks.

Perfectionism has taken a bum rap. Were it not for perfectionism, we would be in short supply of all those myriad human activities we deem extraordinary, excellent, outstanding or great in quality.

Info on a series of podcasts on the Personal Life Media page "The Joy of Living Creatively: Tapping Your Innovation and Imagination."

The character development work "doing archetypes" is the foundation for discovering and writing your own already-existing characters.