I wanted to send along a few passages from emails he sent my way while I was a graduate student. I kept them because I thought they were quite funny--something I don't think he could help--and they demonstrated to me that out there somewhere were faculty that were warm, cordial, and encouraging of the young in the field. He did this even though we never met in person.
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[from Martindale, I think on the Div10 listserv] APA should be working against the increasing stupidity of IRBs. The law was miswritten and is literally killing people with its red tape that stiffles research. If one does innocuous research, it can be great fun to torment an IRB. A few years ago, I was doing some studies on random polygons. As required by the stupid law, I dutifully asked for permission for one after another study. Chair of the IRB finally called and told me that I could show people any polygon I wanted, but just stop bothering them. To be sure
I was in compliance, I asked about showing more than one polygon at the same time. Reply - with many expletives deleted - was that was perfectly fine. When I asked about getting ratings of paintings, it was easier even though I warned them that visual stimulation is inevitably followed by death at some point. That approval was almost instantaneous: show the Ss anything I wanted.
Sorry, [XXXX], but my advice is to torment your local IRB. It's fun.
Colin
[to me] Christopher,
Good luck on killing your IRB with over-compliance. I'm sure that the research you... do is as innocuous as mine. I didn't want to put part
2 of the strategy on the listserve: become more vague over time. In the case of paintings, I started off with very specific descriptions such as '17th century Italian paintings containing people, some of whom may be partially nude but all of which are universally recognized works of art'. By the time the IRB gave up, I think I was down to 'pictures' or maybe even 'visual stimuli'. Of course the last is anything from a Hustler centerfold thru a patch of color to a word.
Best,
Colin
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From Ruth Richards:
Dear Colin--How I wish I'd known you better, especially after hearing others' tributes. I knew you a little, I liked you a lot, and you influenced me a lot, too. You were always out there, bringing ideas together. Others will have other memories, but I especially appreciate your initiative with what became the PACA journal. I remember the hard work on that Bulletin issue on creativity and mental health issues. I also very much appreciate your range of thought on creativity overall, and on the psychobiological bases of creativity, in particular. Among other things, you very much helped me see that creativity involves what some could call altered states of consciousness, a theme that was picked up in the creativity book I recently edited. We are not just talking about ordinary mind doing some higher jumps with the usual intellectual programs. There are whole new reconfigurations of the CNS, that link to defocused attention, associational thought and rich mental representations. I thank you so much for this, Colin. In addition, I think of how you said, in Sternberg's (1999) edited Handbook of Creativity, that creativity is remarkable because it involves, simultaneously, so many different qualities that are not always found together-including "intelligence, perseverance, unconventionality, the ability to think in a certain manner." You, Colin, certainly brought together all of this and more. We, and I, will miss you, very much. Ruth Richards
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From Sandra Russ:
Colin was an original and wonderful person. I didn't know him very well, but loved spending time with him and e-mailing him. One of the great pleasures of my time on the Executive Committee was receiving Colin's e-mails. He was very invested in Division 10 and really helped it develop through some difficult times. His comments about the history of the division in a recent PACA issue was true. He has made so many contributions to the field of creativity and the people in it- an APA event is important to hold. . He was brave and generous and I will miss him.
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From Judith Schlesinger:
In June, Colin and I were discussing the validity of the mad creative notion, and he was very encouraging about the article I was writing (it will appear in February's PACA as "Creative Mythconceptions: A closer look at the evidence for the ‘mad genius' hypothesis"). Colin had a rare knack for getting to the heart of things succinctly, and with a minimum of psychobabble. Here's some of what he wrote (in the large type he used as his eyes got worse):
Anyway, there are a lot of similarities between creative people and insane people. But similarity does not mean identity. I think the best approach is to admit the similarities and point out that they don'e mean identities. They might show slightly higher rates of some mental disorder. That remains to be seen. They clearly don't show the extremely high rates claimed by Jamison et al.
Creative people often have very interesting personalities, whereas extremely uncreative, conforming people do not. From the perspective of the latter, a lot of creative people are going to appear strange, abnormal, different. They may say that they are abnormal enough to be called psychopathological. I think this is the basis of the whole problem. Do we want to say that a lot of creative people are sick, different, or interesting?
This last sentence not only summed up the dilemma, but acknowledged a critical factor that is too often overlooked: the role of researchers' agendas in shaping the public's view of creativity. I'm glad I got to share my article with him, but will forever miss his brilliance and perspective.
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From Pamela Joyce Shapiro:
There is a 2001 Colin Martindale rating on RateMyProfessor.com that rings true: "Kind of hard to follow, funny as hell, genius." This was my experience of Colin (though in reverse order). I first encountered his written work--thoughtful, expansive, inspiring, and ahead of its time-genius. I then had the pleasure of meeting him through email correspondence about the 2000 Creativity and Psychopathology issue of the Bulletin and subsequently joined Division 10 and this listserv. His wit and word play delighted all-"funny as hell". In 2002, I met Colin at APA and attended his talk. I found myself grasping only fragments of his paper, but feeling there was something new and important to be learned-"kind of hard to follow." There was a sense that there was more going on his mind than could be expressed in linear conversation. I would add to his ratings "creative," a term we all struggle to define and apply, but are
sometimes fortunate enough to recognize in others-in Colin.
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From Paul Silvia:
It's sad to hear about Colin. He made major contributions to creativity and to aesthetics, a rare thing in our field. I met him only once, during a visit in 2005 to U Maine, but he said something to me that stuck. I had mentioned to him that my first-and-only paper related to aesthetics was accepted by Empirical Studies of the Arts, and he said "Keep at it. It's a small field, so anyone who does good work can zoom right to the top." It was a generous thing to say to someone who had yet to publish anything on aesthetics. I'm going to re-read The Clockwork Muse, my favorite of Colin's books, this week. It's brilliant, contrary, and irascible, much like its author.
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From Dean Simonton:
And let us not forget Colin's major contributions beyond the confines of APA. I'm thinking especially of the International Association of Empirical Aesthetics. I know of nobody since Berlyne who has done more to make the scientific study of the arts a truly international affair.
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From Jerome L. Singer:
I have known Colin for almost four decades. So many have written
fine statements that I have little to add. His creative methodological contributions to studying the qualities of poets and fiction writers is a firm part of psychology's history. I would like to mention his most recent role in editing the Division 10 Bulletin prior to our new APA journal. On a miniscule budget he and a few helpers produced a remarkable series of issues that were not only great to read but aesthetically beautiful.I hope some of you who knew him well can organize a tribute for our next APA Convention. Sadly but also appreciative of Colin's lasting memory.
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From Lisa and Jeff Smith:
