The Hyper-Creative Personality by Blaire Palmer (2007)

A Book Review By:

Dr. Yehia A. Ibrahim, Certified Trainer &

HRD Consultant
Email address: aboudalia@yahoo.com

This book contains an introduction and eleven chapters in

160 pages. It is an excellent book, especially for those who
are familiar with Myers-Briggs personality types. It adds a
very important dimension into the right-side half of Myers-
Briggs personality table, wherein intuition is the predominant
information-gathering function. As a hyper-creative
personality, the author had a novel way of listing the book's
table of contents, especially the main topics. It may not be
considered this way by many readers especially those who
occupy the left-side half of Myers-Briggs table of types. I
believe that the table of contents should have been identical
to the topics addressed inside the book.

This book is considered to be one of the most important

books dealt with the subject of creativity. It focuses on the
flip-side of one of the greatest innate potential of human
beings, i.e., hyper-creativity. Even though I do not agree
with the authors in his classification of the hyper-creative
types based on Jung's and Myers-Briggs' elements of
personality, I think it is a great initiation that can be used to
look even deeper into the hyper-creative types. As an expert
in Myers-Briggs Types, I consider that Palmer's treatment is a
very good approach to the subject of hyper-creativity but not
to the hyper-creative types, because not all the six hyper-
creative types are extremist all the time or even most of the
time. Likewise, we can also look at the practical types in
their extreme forms. As I consider myself super-creative, not
a hyper one, I share some of the diagnostics of Palmer's
description, especially those behaviors that may turn super-
or hyper-creativity into a curse. In this regard, I think the
author of this book was rather merciful in pinpointing the
flip-side behaviors of Hyper-Creative personality as we can
go on and add many more behaviors. Based on this book, the
author and I are structured hyper-creatives but with different
orientation for she is an extravert and I am an introvert. I
believe the author's MB-type is likely to be an ENFJ. I do
not consider this type hyper-creative but I consider it super-
creative turning to hyper-creative only when under stress. It
is the same for me (my MB-type is likely to be an INFJ).

The author has made a wonderful connection between the

two guidance systems (the primitive system and the
intelligence-based system) and the problems with Hyper-
Creative Personality. I wish she had explored this topic in
further details. I also wish she started her book with chapter
on the sixteen personality types and then explain why hyper-
creative are such so in the context of or as compared to all
other types. I hope that the new edition takes my wishes into
consideration and also enriches the text with some models to
explain the author's wonderful and snowy ideas. The book is
certainly rich in the ideas that serve in self- and social
awareness of hyper-creatives. This awareness will help
individuals and organizations invest in the hyper-creativity
potential and turn it into an asset rather than a curse.

To my understanding the six Hyper-Creative types listed in

the book (page 23) can be reclassified as four super-creative
types and two hyper-creative types. If we take this multi-
classification system, we can then include the other two
intuitive types as only creative. To make this point clear, let
us look at the eight intuitive types of Myers and Briggs and
put them under this suggested classification system that may
add value to the author's new edition.
The Creative Types:
Introvert / Creative / Analytical / Structured
Extravert / Creative / Analytical / Structured
The Super-Creative Types:
Introvert / Creative / Beliefs-driven / Structured (Me)
Extravert / Creative / Beliefs-driven / Structured (The author)
Introvert / Creative / Analytical / Flexible
Extravert / Creative / Analytical / Flexible

The Super-Creative Types:

Introvert / Creative / Beliefs-driven / Flexible
Extravert / Creative / Beliefs-driven / Flexible

This classification may also help the readers to identify

themselves more specifically with the problem behaviors
combined with their creativity. Those behaviors are more or
less causally related to the dark sides of creativity main
function (intuition) or to the dark side of the creativity
auxiliary functions (beliefs-driven and or flexibility). It is
likely that under stress and time pressure, the first two super-
creative types turn to hyper-creative and the second two types
turn to plain creative. This point may not be clear to those
who are not familiar with Myers-Briggs types. Should the
author or the reader of the book like to understand this point,
s/he can contact me at my email address
(dr_yehia_ibrahim@hotmail.com).
The author adds a wonderful portion of the book with lots of
ideas on how to invest in the hyper-creativity personality both
at the personal and organization levels. The last point I like
to make is that the word "complimentary" or its derivatives
was misused to mean "complementary" many times
throughout the book. Also Myers-Briggs was misspelled in
the index section (page 159).
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