Being a structuralist, I get very precise about the use of the word structure. I imagine it is like a scientist being exact about the use of the word science. While people love to use the word science in their ad campaigns about anything from dog food to hair coloring, this degrades the real meaning of the word. Why people use words like science or structure is to boast a worth by association value about whatever they are promoting.
Structure is an entity that has parts that impact each other. To think structurally, we are thinking about the relationship of parts to the whole, and how the underlying dynamics cause things to happen. Structure is causal. It is not effect, although it creates effect. The principle is that the underlying structure gives rise to patterns of behavior.
Most people confuse structure with form. These are NOT the same thing. In music, we have the 12-bar blues. This is a form, not a structure. The underlying harmonic structure gives rise to the form. For example, a macrostructural pattern is not a description of an actual structure, it is the result of a structure. It is a form. Something structural drives that form.
Structural Dynamics in the Creative Process
Structural dynamics is the study of how structure works, and how it generates outcomes. That is why it is so critical in the creative process. If the underlying structure does not support and sustain a creation, the creation will eventually fail. That is what we see in patterns in which the person first creates, but then loses what he or she wants.
Structural tension is a structure. It happens also to be a form. But that it is a structure is more important than it as a form. That is why people who try to adopt it as a form miss the power of it as a structure. It is the contrast of the desired state and the actual state that creates the tension that generates the dynamic to resolve the difference. This is not metaphysics, it is physics. Non- equilibrium striving for equilibrium.
One aspect of current reality is that there are things we don’t know. Too often, people have the tendency to create theories when they don’t know something. In my frames of reality, the long shot is true mysteries. In the conceptual frame, it is mysteries explained. What can limit your mastery of your own creative process is that the underlying structure has an element of a concept that contradicts structural tension by adding an element that makes it hard to see reality exactly as it is. We can understand the human desire to explain the unexplainable, but it really works against mastery of the creative process. Without a clear view of current reality, structural tension is weakened or even contradicted. That is why it is critical to leave out theories, speculations, philosophical constructs, etc.
While this quick form of expression is too short to really go into depth of structural dynamics, it is important to get it right, and not use it for non-structural content. That is one compliant I have about people who have been influenced by my work, but fail to understand the structural dynamics of it. They are adopting the form without the structure, and so it is not as effective. It is like trying to do science without the math.
Finally, the glorification of phenomena is often driven by identity issues. “I’m special because I have these gifts.” As I have said, really no big deal, and to create the larger projects that you may want to create in life, they are a minor resource and unimportant. What is important is your ability to learn.
As German philosopher and poet Friedrich Schiller said,
“Once the soul starts talking, it is no longer the soul that is talking.”
© Robert Fritz 2026 | Used with permission by Creatortools Inc.
About the Author:
Robert Fritz is a composer, filmmaker, organizational consultant, and author of numerous books including the international bestseller The Path of Least Resistance, Your Life as Art, The Managerial Moment of Truth, and Identity.
Photo credit: Self-portrait of Ivan Fritz during the aurora borealis. Sculpture by Patrick Doyle | Layout: Jen Thornton