What makes a genius?

английский. what makes a geniuse?

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What makes a genius?

Analysis of genius is a difficult one to call. Freud hypothesized that personalities became indelibly imprinted between the ages of five and eight. But the evidence indicates that this infantile personality is set in putty, not concrete. Albert Einstein was the acknowledged scientific genius of the nuclear age, Pablo Picasso the most revered and idolized painter of the twentieth century and Thomas Edison the most prolific inventor in history. They were so creative and innovative, accomplishing such prodigious feats of creativity that they are now seen as the benchmark of creative genius. The similarity of experiences and behavioral characteristics were uncanny for these three titans of creativity. In an exclusive extract from his book Profiles of Genius Gene Landrum analyses what makes a genius.

By Gene Landrum in New York

Many of the factors that appear to be predictive of creative behavior are imprinted by our early experiences with the external world. In almost every case of a creative genius, the family unit remained intact, but the whole family experienced numerous relocations. The early moving is a consistent finding with the longitudinal research done at Berkeley, where they found that successful architects had a similar history of childhood relocations to foreign environments.

The Edison family moved from Ohio to Michigan when Edison was four and then back to Ohio. As a teenager he lived in Cincinnati. Detroit, Louisville, New Orleans, Memphis and Boston. Picasso moved from Malaga, Spain, to Corunna around the age of eight and then on to Barcelona at the age of fifteen. Einstein was moved at the age of one from Ulm, Germany, to Munich and then as a teenager to Milan, Italy. He lived in Zurich, Switzerland, from the age of fifteen.

ALL had entrepreneurial fathers. Edison's father engaged: in lumber, grain, and other trades as an entrepreneur. Success and failure followed him constantly, causing the family to relocate. It also gave young Thomas reason for embarking on an entrepreneurial career at the ripe old age of twelve. Picasso's father was a tutor, teacher, artist and curator at various times during an up-and-down existence in nineteenth-century Spain. He was constantly reassigned or dismissed causing a disruptive existence for the family. Einstein's father was an entrepreneur operating a technology shop in nineteenth century Germany. He specialized in electrical engineering projects and failed at business at least three different times.

Most geniuses are first born. Einstein and Picasso were first-born children. Edison was not first born but seventh, but just as in the case of Freud was born when the youngest sibling at home was fourteen and no longer a threat to the attention and idolization of the newborn. Doting attention and expectations' demands for perfection, and assumed preeminence appear to be the critical factors at work among those raised as first-born or only children.

Most geniuses are .also doted on from an early age by females, Picasso had five women in the household doting on him for his first five years. His mother told him, "If you become a soldier, you'll be a general, if you become a monk, you'll end up as Pope”. A testimony to this inordinate feminine influence was Picasso taking his mother name “Picasso” instead of his father’s name 'Ruiz'. According to Picasso's biographer, he "had a lifelong ambivalence about women. Contempt was his way of exorcising his fear
of women's power."

Thomas Edison said."My mother was the making of me, she understood me; she let me follow my bent" He didn't start school until the age of eight and then his mother removed him from school after only three months. The schoolmaster had said her son was backward. She disagreed and embarked on his format education herself. Einstein was by-product of a Jewish mother and s sister who idolized-him. He was in fact more devoted to his sister than to his wives throughout his life. His biographer said "He preferred to have-women rather than men around him."

Most geniuses are rebellious non-conformers. The Jewish Einstein family was so non-traditional and independent in thinking that they sent Albert to a Catholic elementary school. Albert Einstein always had a fundamental irreverence for authority. He detested German authoritarianism, which culminated in his rejecting his German citizenship at the age. of fifteen. Picasso, on the other hand rejected all authority from any group. He had an all consuming urge to challenge, shock, to destroy and remake the world. He said: "I too am against everything. I too believe that everything is unknown, that everything is an enemy." In elementary school he would purposely disobey the rules in order to be sent to a cell where he could do what he wished - draw. Edison was never accepted by the scientific establishment and he never accepted them. The media characterized him as 'an eccentric and iconoclast'. He delighted in statements that surprised, stunned or provoked his listeners.

Picasso, Einstein and Edison were slow learners as children. Both Picasso and Einstein were classified as dyslexics. Edison dropped out after only three months of formal schooling. Later in life he said: "Do you think I would have amounted to anything if I went to school? University-trained scientists only saw that which they were taught to look for and thus missed the great secrets of nature". Picasso could not pass elementary school classwork and his father bribed the officials to allow him to continue his education, Reading and writing were mysteries he never comprehended.

Einstein didn't talk until very late and at age nine was still less than fluent. He was expelled from the Munich Gymnasium for being disruptive and when his father asked the headmaster what profession Albert was suited for he responded: "It doesn't matter he'll never make a success of anything." All three hated school with a passion, as did most of the creative visionaries studied here.

All three had an early inquisitiveness. Edison had a laboratory at the age of ten and his own business selling food on the railroad at the age of twelve. As a teenager he traveled the country living by his wits as telegrapher, laborer and mechanic. He began experimenting and inventing as a teenager with his own lab on a train and operated his own design business by the age of twenty.

Picasso could draw before he could write or talk. He discovered the rewards of creation by drawing for his parents and relatives to receive ego strokes. He painted the Malaga port at the age of seven and a bullfight in oil at eight. He said later:"I never did any childish drawings. Never. Not even when I was a small boy. Einstein was purported to have deduced that something in space was the cause of his father's compass always pointing in the same direction. This was at the age at five.

All three had a huge work ethic. Edison worked eighteen-hour days most of his life and two shifts (sixteen-hour days) at the age of seventy-five. Most of his life and until the age of sixty-five his standard workday consisted of eighteen-hour days with catnaps and occasional breaks to eat. He could often sleep in the lab for days at time. Edison could never understand the limitations of the strength of three or four hours a day and his enormous recuperative powers helping to sustain him.

He once locked his elixir of his life as it is for most great creative geniuses, including Picasso and Einstein.

Picasso had an inexhaustible vitality. He painted eighteen hours a day virtually every day until his eighties and asked why, he said, “ I never get tired.” His biographer said, “ Picasso had an inexhaustible passion and energy for work.” At the age of ninety he was still producing works of art, and told a reporter: “1 am overburdened with work. I don't have a single second to spare, and can't think of anything else”.

Einstein felt that there was never enough time for work. He discarded socks an unnecessary complications of life that diverted one’s energies from what was important. He was considered the absent minded professor not because he was, but because he relegated social and other events to the category of useless wastes of his time and energy.

The great inventors of the world are so confident in their own ability that they often come across as arrogant. Einstein's talent was discounted by educators in his early life due to his arrogance. Professor Weber of Zurich Polytechnic told him: "But you have one fault:: one can't tell you anything." Einstein had the self-confidence of one with vision who 'knows'.

He believed in himself to such a degree that he was capable of defying Newtonian physics and all scientific doctrine of the time. His optimism was borne of inquisitiveness that transcended the dogma of the day. Edison had an irrepressible enthusiasm for every one of his inventions. He said: "The trouble with other inventors is that they try a few things and quit. I never quit until I get what I want." Edison would call a press conference just after having an insightful idea for a new concept. He would then rush back to the lab to validate his intuitive concept through experimentation. This was Edison's method of self-motivation and over-achievement and also served to gain him financial support for his inventions.

Picasso said, “1 do not seek, I find," a tribute to his irrepressible self-confidence. He believed in Nietzsche's superman and honestly felt he was the personification of the superman in art. This omniscient belief system allowed him to defy all authority based on his 'divine' right of creativity and exploration. At eighteen, he did a drawing of himself called 'I, the King," a testimony to an all-consuming self-confidence.

Einstein, Picasso and Edison were voracious readers as children. Books are often the confidants, friends and mistresses of the creative. Edison buried himself in literature from a very early stage. He real Victor Hugo's Les Miserables at ten and Newton's Principia shortly after. At twelve he was quoted as saying: "My refuge was the Detroit Public Library. I started with the first book on the bottom shelf and went through the let one by one. I didn't read a few books, I read the library." Edison's method of investigating a new subject was in buying a book and reading on it. Einstein read Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason at the age of thirteen and understood it. He also read Darwin and other scientific textbooks for pleasure. Picasso read Nietzsche, especially his 'wall to power' thesis, and, like Hitler, was convinced that his iconoclastic behavior and creative destruction were philosophically apt. Voracious reading habits and fantasy heroes have been key to most innovative and creative genius. It imprints 'larger than life' images on the psyches of the young and gives them positive role models to .emulate later in life.

The ability to charm and motivate followers is fundamental to becoming a great leader. Introverted personalities such as Edison, Picasso and especially Einstein are not easily identified with charisma and showmanship Einstein's biographer, Ronald Clark, said: "If charisma has a modern meaning outside the public relations trade, Einstein had". This is surprising when conjuring up the image of the introverted personality and absent-minded professor who fathered the theory of relativity.

Picasso's charismatic influence was legend. Gertrude Stein said: "His radiance, an inner fire one sensed in him, gave him a sort of magnetism which I was unable to resist." His long-term friend, poet Jean Cocteau, characterized him as having "a discharge of electricity ....rigor, flair, showmanship and magnetic radiance.

He radiated an almost cosmic and irresistible self-confidence." Coco Channel remarked: "I trembled when near him." This was a remarkable influence for a diminutive, five-foot-three Spaniard.

Edison had an irrepressible, infectious enthusiasm. He would use the press for instant credibility and communication for his projects. He was news and the media were responsible for immortalizing him as "the wizard of Menlo Park" and "the father of modern electronics." His ability to charm the world as the great technological problem-solver was truly charismatic. The public rushed to his labs for a glimpse of the 'wizard" at work.

"Factories or Death" was Edison's slogan when the bankers and Wall Street were reticent to finance the production of his light bulb in 1880. He supplied 90 percent of the needed capital because as he said, "Wall Street could not see its way clear to finance a new and untried business... I was forced to go into the manufacturing business myself."

The factories ultimately became the nucleus of the General Electric Company. Edison's philosophy was: "You take the risk to build your product or you do not survive to see the product flourish." He risked his total fortune and was broke by the age of fifty-five after years of creative success based on his belief in his products.

Picasso believed that he could impact reality with his art. He never attempted to appease the establishment and therefore lived his life on the edge of acceptance. He joined the Communist Party after the war in absolute defiance of the establishment. He said: "Painting is freedom. If you jump, you might fall on the wrong side of the rope. But if you're not willing to take the risk of breaking your neck, what good is it? You don't jump at all. You have to wake people up. To revolutionize their way of identifying things You've got to create images they won't accept."

He had an exhibitionist's need to defy and shock, and was trapped in his anxiety and egocentricity.

Einstein’s biographer said "A good deal of his genius lay in the imagination that gave him courage to challenge accepted beliefs." Einstein was not afraid to risk upsetting the establishment and once did so by defying his mentor. Max Planck. Only Einstein would have dared to do it. He was comfortable living on the edge and violating classical dogmatic attitudes.

The personality characteristics and other influences found to be dominant in the creative and entrepreneurial geniuses in this work are very consistent. The differences found between the nineteenth century childhoods of Edison, Einstein and Picasso, and the late-twentieth century childhoods of entrepreneurs and geniuses such as Ted Turner and Bill Gates are not that great. Their work ethic and risk-taking natures are the same.

It shows that success is a matter of focusing energy in an intransigent drive towards goals using unassailable self-esteem to pursue dreams regardless of the obstacles. A Promethean spirit is important, as are other facets of personality of the creator-entrepreneur. This personality type is not genetically preconditioned, as many of us have been taught. The Promethean personality is based on as individual's desire to create and innovate, not on some lucky draw of the cards at birth.

Thomas Edison, Pablo Picasso and Albert Einstein were from completely disparate economic backgrounds, countries, and spoke different languages. Edison, the great inventor/entrepreneur; Picasso, the artist who chronicled the twentieth century's unconscious; and Einstein, the quintessential intellect of our age, all had a Promethean temperament. Their very natures are synonymous with creativity and innovation. The thirteen contemporary innovators detailed in this hook have a similarity of personality: that is amazing. All are as different as were Edison, Einstein and Picasso, but their differences are only reinforced by their similarities.

The Promethean temperament is without question the single most universal factor in large-scale innovative success and these individuals epitomize that behavior.


THE 12 DEFINITIONS OF GENUS
1) Geniuses have creative fathers
2) Geniuses are independent of the environment as a child
3) Geniuses are usually first born or the only young male in the household
4) Geniuses are predominantly brought up by a female
5) Geniuses are non-conformists and rebellious
6) Geniuses are slow learners as children
7) Geniuses show early inquisitiveness
8) Geniuses have a work ethic beyond economic need
9) Geniuses show resolute optimism and confidence
10) Geniuses are voracious readers as children
11) Geniuses are charismatic showmen and have eccentric personalities
12) Geniuses live on the edge