232 REFLECTIONS ON CHARACTER AND LEADERSHIP
law? Or is it more a result of the kind of developmental experiences to
which these people were exposed? An interesting corollary is the con-
nection between creativity and madness — given a creative person ’ s often
unorthodox behavior, it is understandable that this association has grown
up. This begs the question of where we draw the line between genius
and madness.
Without getting too deeply into the nature – nurture controversy,
we can safely assume that genetic factors play some part in this. We
all start with a certain biological endowment but superimposed on
this biological matrix are our developmental experiences. Even with
similar biological endowment, our early experiences lead to differences
between individuals. There will be specifi c factors in a creative person ’ s
upbringing that contributed to their genius (Gardner, 1993 ; Simonton,
2004 ).
Think back to when you were growing up. You may now be aware
that, as a child, you dealt with two worlds: there was the everyday world
with all its demands (the things you were expected to do and the ways
in which you were expected to do them) and an intrapsychic world, a
world of inner reality, where your drives, wishes, and needs prevailed.
These outer and inner worlds would later become separate and distin-
guishable, but as a child, a third world existed for you: a space of fantasy
and illusion, a place where connections were drawn between the two
spheres.
Do you remember the way you played and created an imaginary
world? This illusionary place between reality and fantasy has been
described by the psychoanalyst and pediatrician Donald Winnicott as a
world occupied by ‘ transitional objects ’ such as blankets, dolls, and other
playthings: familiar objects that help a child link their outer and inner
realities (Winnicott, 1975 ). To Winnicott this world is the intermediate
area of experience between the thumb and the teddy bear. The capacity
to explore and investigate, the development of an inner sense of cohesion
and an external sense of reality, had its beginning in this illusionary
space.
Winnicott argued that transitional space plays a major role in our
development in a very basic way by helping us establish a sense of self -
esteem. For most of us, the transitional world is part of the process of
resolving the developmental tasks of childhood to arrive at adulthood
and maturity with a unique sense of self. For creative people, however,
there is a difference. For most of them, this process never reaches closure,
and so they do not give up their transitional world. Consequently, their
involvement in the transitional space will continue to affect their
behavior throughout their lives.