Flow first appeared in the United States in 1990. For several years before that time, people had been urging me to collect the research that I had published in obscure academic journals, and to make it available to a wider readership. I finally heeded the advice and discovered in the process that writing for a lay audience was much more fun (as well as more difficult) than writing for fellow scholars. But even as I enjoyed writing this book, I never dreamt of the impact it would have in the dozen years since its appearance. For instance, so far Flow has been translated into 14 different languages, including Serbian, Portuguese, Japanese, and Chinese; a Korean translation is also being prepared. It was adopted by four book clubs in the US and more elsewhere. A great many readers from around the world have written letters containing eloquent accounts of how they have used the book to improve the quality of their own lives. In addition, the ideas contained in this book have found their way into a variety of applications, ranging from politics to education; from psychiatric hospitals to the Cirque de Soleil; from the manufacture of automobiles at Nissan and Volvo to the design of art museums.
Clearly, Flow has touched a nerve in the collective psyche. For too long psychology had been focused almost exclusively on the shadows of human existence. The behavior of men and women was seen as determined by biological inheritance and by outside forces, twisted by frustrated desire. Scant attention was paid to what makes life bearable, enjoyable, free. Into this near vacuum Flow brought a flicker of light, a message that life can be an exciting, enjoyable and creative adventure.
With each passing decade this message becomes more and more relevant. For, as esoteric technologies proliferate and increasing powers of creation and destruction fall into the hands of our species, the responsibility for using such powers wisely is becoming ever more urgent. Are we going to exhaust the resources of the planet heedlessly while we could have a much more fulfilling life with less waste? Is greed going to split humanity into the obscenely rich and the abysmally poor, fuelling irreparable social conflicts? And, as we move into the age of genetic engineering, what kind of human beings are we going to create? Blood and flesh copies of our machines and computers? Or individuals with a consciousness open to the cosmos, organisms that are joyfully evolving in unprecedented directions? These are not questions that Flow deals with directly, but its description of the principles of a fulfilled life—one full of enjoyment and constantly growing in complexity—suggests ways to prepare ourselves for the difficult choices that tomorrow will bring. But whatever its usefulness for confronting the future might be, I hope reading this book will be its own reward, here and now.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Claremont, California