A few years ago, Howard Gardner made a sensation with his theory of multiple intelligences. Intelligence can not be reduced to merely the verbal and the analytical, taught and tested in schools; instead, it includes other forms as well: artistic creation, spatial reasoning, human empathy, etc. This concept has profoundly changed our view of human nature and the human spirit. Today, Gardner poses a new question: what is creativity? Do there exist psychological traits common to all creative geniuses? Can one characterize creativity in different forms and in different areas? It is impossible to respond to these questions without examining variegated and specific cases of creative genius: artistic, literary, scientific and even political. Thus, Gardner proposes seven psychobiographies characteristic of each type of genius: Freud, Einstein, Picasso, Stravinsky, T.S. Eliot, Martha Graham, and Gandhi. What were the different paths that they chose? How did their creative spirits work? What precisely was exceptional about them? What do they teach us about our own personal resources? The creative genius doesn’t just fall from the sky. He is a product of particular qualities of the spirit ... that everyone, in his own area, can learn to develop. In this sense, this book, a brilliant synthesis, is also a revelation and life lesson for everyone.

Celebrated throughout the world for his revolutionary theory of multiple intelligences, cognitive psychologist Howard Gardner is a professor of educational sciences and co-director of Project Zero in the faculty of educational sciences at Harvard University. He is also a professor of neurology in the faculty of medicine at Boston University. He has also published Les Formes de l’intelligence and Les Personnalités exceptionelles.