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Charles M. Johnston, M.D.

Charles M. Johnston, M.D.
Born	(1948-09-27)September 27, 1948 Seattle, Washington, United States
Occupation	Author, futurist and psychiatrist
Nationality	American

Charles M. Johnston is a psychiatrist, author, and futurist. He is best known as the originator of Creative Systems Theory with its concept of Cultural Maturity. For twenty years he directed the Institute for Creative Development, a Seattle-based think tank and center for advanced leadership training. He has written over a dozen books and numerous articles on the future and how we can best prepare to meet it.

Biography

Charles Johnston was born in Seattle Washington and grew up in an artistic family. He was accomplished as a sculptor and musician at a young age. In his twenties, his attention turned to from specifically artistic pursuits to teaching classes on creative process. It became increasingly clear to him in doing so that creative process, far from being just about art, was ultimately about life at its most basic. He saw that his classes were in fact psychotherapy, and of an innovative sort. He entered medical school to become a psychiatrist, studying at the University of Washington and doing his psychiatric residency at the University of California, Davis.

Creative Systems Theory grew out of these early reflections. It started with his recognition about how human intelligence has multiple aspects that together work to support and drive our human tool making, meaning-making capacities. Some of the early influences on his thinking about human intelligence included Carl Jung and Jean Piaget. During his psychiatric residency, work with Joseph Campbell (a world renowned chronicler of myth and symbol) and Stanley Keleman (an early innovator in body oriented psychotherapy) supported his explorations in the imaginal/symbolic and body/kinesthetic aspects of intelligence’s creative workings. Insights that followed made connections between these observations and how change and interrelationship in human systems of all sorts work. Over a seven year period in his late twenties and early thirties he brought together the initial ideas of Creative Systems Theory in his book The Creative Imperative: Human Growth and Planetary Evolution.

At this point, Dr. Johnston joined together with colleagues to form the Institute for Creative Development. The Institute’s efforts further developed the theory and trained leaders in the new leadership capacities its thinking helped articulate. The Institute existed as a Seattle-based bricks-and-mortar institution from 1984 through 2004. In 1992, Dr, Johnston wrote a second book, Necessary Wisdom: Meeting the Challenge of a New Cultural Maturity, to support the Institute’s educational efforts. During this time, he also consulted extensively with organizations that he felt contributed to a culturally mature future - e.g., four years of managing an internal think tank on the future of public media for PBS affiliate KCTS-9 in Seattle. The Institute’s work continues today on-line and internationally.

In 2004, Dr. Johnston stepped down from formal leadership of the Institute to commit his time to writing and more in-depth consulting. His books since that time include (2013) Quick and Dirty Answers to the Biggest of Questions: Creative Systems Theory Explains What It Is All About (Really); (2013) Cultural Maturity: A Guidebook for the Future; (2014) Hope and the Future: Confronting Today’s Crisis of Purpose; (2019), On the Evolution of Intimacy: A Brief Exploration into the Past, Present, and Future of Gender and Love; (2020) Rethinking How We Think: Integrative Meta-Perspective and the Cognitive “Growing Up” on Which Our Future Depends; (2021) Creative Systems Theory: A Comprehensive Theory of Purpose, Change, and Interrelationship in Human Systems (with Particular Pertinence to Understanding the Times We Live in and the Tasks Ahead for the Species); (2021) Perspective and Guidance for a Time of Deep Discord: Why We See Such Extreme Social and Political Polarization—and What We Can Do About It; (2022) Insight: Creative Systems Theory’s Radical New Picture of Human Possibility; and (2023) Intelligence’s Creative Multiplicity—And Its Critical Role in the Future of Understanding.

In 2015, Dr Johnston began contributing regular articles on future-related issues on his Cultural Maturity blog. In 2021, he expanded this kind of contribution with this “Ask the Cultural Psychiatrist” YouTube channel. Through all of this time he has continued his practice as a psychiatrist and his work as a consultant to organizations. Dr. Johnston’s ongoing work can be found on his author website. To broaden the awareness of Creative Systems Theory and Cultural Maturity, he has also written articles for numerous publications, including: In Context , Center for Media Literacy, Millennium Alliance for Humanity and the Biosphere and the Spanda Journal. He currently contributes regular blog articles to Psychology Today.

Key Concepts

Creative Systems Theory and the Concept of Cultural Maturity

Creative Systems Theory (CST) presents a comprehensive framework for understanding purpose, change, and interrelationship in human systems. It addresses how human systems of all sorts—individuals, relationships, families, communities, nations—understand and act in the very different ways that they do at particular times and places. The theory proposes that what ultimately most defines us as humans is our striking toolmaking, meaning-making creative natures. (CST uses the word “creative” in a particularly encompassing way). The theory goes on to describe how human intelligence, with its different aspects, is structured specifically to support our remarkable innovative capacities. In many respects, Creative Systems Theory shares kindred insights with the work of Abraham Maslow, Gregory Bateson, Alfred North Whitehead and Ludwig von Bertalanffy.

The Creative Systems Theory concept of Cultural Maturity addresses how our times are requiring—and making possible—a new chapter in culture’s developmental story, an essential “growing up” as a species. Cultural Maturity’s changes are products of a new kind of cognitive organization. They alter not just what we think, but how we think. The result, what the theory calls Integrative Meta-perspective, allows us to both more fully step back from, and more deeply engage, the whole of our cognitive complexity. These changes take us beyond the absoluteness of belief that has come with how, in times past, we’ve treated culture as a mythic parent. They also make possible new human capacities that will be necessary if we are to effectively address the important questions before us—such as better tolerating uncertainty and complexity, a new maturity in our relationships with limits, and an ability to think about questions of all sorts more systemically.

The notion of a creative frame has significance in the broader history of ideas in that it provides a new kind of “fundamental organizing concept” that takes us beyond the mechanistic assumptions of Modern Age thought. It offers that we might think in ways that better reflect that we are alive—and alive in the particular way that makes us human. The evolutionary picture that follows from the theory’s application of a creative frame not only helps make our times more understandable, it supports understanding why we have thought in the particular ways that we have at previous times in culture— including the assumptions of our Modern Age. Creative Systems Theory argues that human understanding has always been creative in this sense, but that we are only now becoming capable of the maturity of perspective needed to recognize how this might be so.

The Creative Function

The Creative Function lies at the heart of Creative Systems Theory. It describes how human creative/formative processes evolve as a progression of polar juxtapositives with two halves, a differentiation phase and an integration phase. Formative process’s differentiation phase takes one from a time of original unity, to a first budding off of new possibility, to a period of struggle into solid manifestation, to a time of finishing and polishing. With formative process’s integration phase the newly created form reengages with the system as a whole and becomes increasingly “second nature.” The Creative Function can be used to map both change in human systems (what the theory calls Patterning in Time) and here-and-now systemic relationships (what the theory call Patterning in Space).

Creative Function

Intelligence’s Creative Multiplicity

The theory describes how human intelligence, with its different aspects, is structured specifically to support creative/formative process. With creative process’s initial incubation stage, the intelligence of the body is primary (kinesthetic/body intelligence). With creative process’s inspiration stage, the intelligence of imagination steps to the fore (mythic/imaginal intelligence). With creative process’s perspiration stage emotional intelligence holds sway (emotional/moral intelligence). And with creative process’s finishing and polishing stage rational intelligence increasingly prevails (rational/material intelligence).

Creative Stages and Multiple Intelligences

The Creative Systems Personality Typology

Along with addressing developmental processes of all sorts, Creative System Theory also brings new perspective to differences and interconnections that we find between human systems at any one point in time. The Creative Systems Personality Typology (CSPT) is the most elaborated and refined tool in the theory for understanding such here-and-now (Patterning in Space) significance and difference. The CSPT’s power lies in the depth with which it engages differences, the breadth of its scope, its effectiveness as a tool for supporting collaboration, and its direct pertinence to the kind of thinking effective future leadership will increasingly require.

Parts Work

Parts work is a hands-on approach that directly supports culturally mature understanding. In doing Parts Work, a person engages the various aspects of their cognitive complexity like characters in a play. It can be applied as a method in psychotherapy. And it can be used in the training of leaders to help people effectively grasp the complexities of current social conditions. The method is original to Creative Systems Theory.

An Evolutionary History of Music

Once each year during the Institute’s “bricks and mortar” years, Dr. Johnston did a day-long presentation using the history of music and movement to bring insight to how culture, and human systems more generally, creatively evolve. The presentation was particularly significant because of how powerfully it applies non-rational intelligences to making sense of change dynamics. It was significant also for its contribution to our understanding of music and music’s creative functioning in culture. The last presentation was taped and can be found at. www.Evolmusic.org

Transition and Transitional Absurdity

Creative Systems Theory proposes that we can understand our times as a transitional period between Modern Age thought and Cultural Maturity’s newly possible next chapter in culture’s creative story. (What the theory calls Transition is more commonly referred to as postmodern). During this period, we predictably find both inspired innovation and awkward in-between dynamics that can seem quite crazy. The theory refers to the later as Transitional Absurdity. Transitional Absurdity’s can manifest as overshooting the mark (like with techno-utopian beliefs), as stopping short in the face of obvious new challenges (like with climate change), or as regressive dynamics that protect systems from being overwhelmed by the tasks ahead.

Diagram showing the dynamics of transitional absurdity

Books

• The Creative Imperative: Human Growth and Planetary Evolution, 1984, Celestial Arts.
• Necessary Wisdom: Meeting the Challenge of a New Cultural Maturity, 1992, Celestial Arts.
• Pattern and Reality: A Brief Introduction to Creative Systems Theory, 1994, ICD Press.
• The Power of Diversity: An Introduction to the Creative Systems Personality Typology, 1994, ICD Press.
• An Evolutionary History of Music: Introducing Creative Systems Theory Through the Language of Sound (DVD), 1996, ICD Press.
• Quick and Dirty Answers to the Biggest of Questions: Creative Systems Theory Explains What It Is All About (Really), 2013, ICD Press.
• Cultural Maturity: A Guidebook for the Future, 2013, ICD Press.
• Hope and the Future: Confronting Today’s Crisis of Purpose, 2014, ICD Press.
• On the Evolution of Intimacy: A Brief Exploration into the Past, Present, and Future of Gender and Love, 2019, ICD Press.
• Rethinking How We Think: Integrative Meta-Perspective and the Cognitive “Growing Up” on Which Our Future Depends, 2020, ICD Press.
• Creative Systems Theory: A Comprehensive Theory of Purpose, Change, and Interrelationship in Human Systems (with Particular Pertinence to Understanding the Times We Live in and the Tasks Ahead for the Species), 2021, ICD Press.
• Perspective and Guidance for a Time of Deep Discord: Why We See Such Extreme Social and Political Polarization—and What We Can Do About It, 2021, ICD Press.
• Insight: Creative Systems Theory’s Radical New Picture of Human Possibility, 2022, ICD Press.
• Intelligence’s Creative Multiplicity—And Its Critical Role in the Future of Understanding, 2023, ICD Press.

Book Chapters

• “The Future of Ethics and Morality,” Encyclopedia of the Future, edited by George Thomas Kuian and Graham T.T. Molitor, 1996, Macmillan Library Reference.

External Links

• Author/professional page: www.CharlesJohnstonmd.com
• Cultural Maturity Blog: www.CulturalMaturityBlog.net
• Ask the Cultural Psychiatrist YouTube channel: youtube.com/@cjohnstonmd
• The Institute for Creative Development: www.CreativeSystems.org
• Creative Systems Theory: www.CSTHome.org
• An Evolutionary History of Music: www.Evolmusic.org
• Psychology Today “Cultural Psychiatry” blog: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/cultural-psychiatry