CHAPTER 1
1 Happiness. Aristotle’s views of happiness are most clearly developed in the Nicomachean Ethics, book 1, and book 9, chapters 9 and 10. Contemporary research on happiness by psychologists and other social scientists started relatively late, but has recently begun to catch up with this important topic in earnest. One of the first, and still very influential, works in this field has been Norman Bradburn’s The Structure of Psychological Well-Being (Bradburn 1969), which pointed out that happiness and unhappiness were independent of each other; in other words, just because a person is happy it does not mean he can’t also be unhappy at the same time. Dr. Ruut Veenhoven at the Erasmus University in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, has recently published a Databook of Happiness which summarizes 245 surveys conducted in 32 countries between 1911 and 1975 (Veenhoven 1984); a second volume is in preparation. The Archimedes Foundation of Toronto, Canada, has also set as its task the keeping track of investigations of human happiness and well-being; its first directory appeared in 1988. The Psychology of Happiness, by the Oxford social psychologist Michael Argyle, was published in 1987. Another comprehensive collection of ideas and research in this area is the volume by Strack, Argyle, & Schwartz (1990).
2 Undreamed-of material luxuries. Good recent accounts of the conditions of everyday life in past centuries can be found in a series under the general editorship of Philippe Aries and Georges Duby, entitled A History of Private Life. The first volume, From Pagan Rome to Byzantium, edited by Paul Veyne, was published here in 1987. Another magisterial series on the same topic is Fernand Braudel’s The Structures of Everyday Life, whose first volume appeared in English in 1981. For the changes in home furnishings, see also Le Roy Ladurie (1979) and Csikszentmihalyi & Rochberg-Halton (1981).
3 Flow. My work on optimal experience began with my doctoral dissertation, which involved a study of how young artists went about creating a painting. Some of the results were reported in the book The Creative Vision (Getzels & Csikszentmihalyi 1976). Since then several dozen scholarly articles have appeared on the subject. The first book that described the flow experience directly was Beyond Boredom and Anxiety (Csikszentmihalyi 1975). The latest summary of the academic research on the flow experience was collected in the edited volume Optimal Experience: Psychological Studies of Flow in Consciousness (Csikszentmihalyi & Csikszentmihalyi 1988).
4 Experience Sampling Method. I first used this technique in a study of adult workers in 1976; the first publication concerned a study of adolescents (Csikszentmihalyi, Larson, & Prescott 1977). Detailed descriptions of the method are available in Csikszentmihalyi & Larson (1984, 1987).
5 Applications of the flow concept. These are described in the first chapter of Optimal Experience (Csikszentmihalyi & Csikszentmihalyi 1988).
6 Goals. The earliest explanations of human behavior, starting with Aristotle, assumed that actions were motivated by goals. Modern psychology, however, has shown that much of what people do can be explained more parsimoniously by simpler, often unconscious, causes. As a result, the importance of goals in directing behavior has been greatly discredited. Some exceptions include Alfred Adler (1956), who believed that people develop goal hierarchies that inform their decisions throughout life; and the American psychologists Gordon Allport (1955) and Abraham Maslow (1968), who believed that after more basic needs are satisfied, goals may begin to be effective in directing actions. Goals have also regained some credibility in cognitive psychology, where researchers such as Miller, Galanter, & Pribram (1960), Mandler (1975), Neisser (1976), and Emde (1980) have used the concept to explain decision-making sequences and the regulation of behavior. I do not claim that most people most of the time act the way they do because they are trying to achieve goals; but only that when they do so, they experience a sense of control which is absent when behavior is not motivated by consciously chosen goals (see Csikszentmihalyi 1989).
7 Chaos. It might seem strange that a book which deals with optimal experience should be concerned with the chaos of the universe. The reason for this is that the value of life cannot be understood except against the background of its problems and dangers. Ever since the first known work of literature, the Gilgamesh, was written 35 centuries ago (Mason 1971), it has been customary to start with a review of the Fall before venturing to suggest ways to improve the human condition. Perhaps the best prototype is Dante’s Divina Commedia, where the reader first has to pass through the gates of Hell (“per me si va nell’eterno dolore . . .”) before he or she can contemplate a solution to the predicaments of life. In this context we are following these illustrious exemplars not because of a sense of tradition, but because it makes good sense psychologically.
8 Hierarchy of needs. The best-known formulation of the relationship between “lower order” needs such as survival and safety and “higher” goals like self-actualization is the one by Abraham Maslow (1968, 1971).
9 Escalating expectations. According to many authors, chronic dissatisfaction with the status quo is a feature of modernity. The quintessential modern man, Goethe’s Faust, was given power by the Devil on condition that he never be satisfied with what he has. A good recent treatment of this theme can be found in Berman (1982). It is more likely, however, that hankering for more than what one has is a fairly universal human trait, probably connected with the development of consciousness.
That happiness and satisfaction with life depend on how small a gap one perceives between what one wishes for and what one possesses, and thac expectations tend to rise, have been often observed. For instance, in a poll conducted in 1987 and reported in the Chicago Tribune (Sept. 24, sect. 1, p. 3), Americans making more than $100,000 a year (who constitute 2 percent of the population) believe that to live in comfort they would need $88,000 a year; those who earn less think $30,000 would be sufficient. The more affluent also said that they would need a quarter-million to fulfill their dreams, while the price tag on the average American’s dream was only one-fifth that sum.
Of the scholars who have been studying the quality of life, many have reported similar findings: e.g., Campbell, Converse, & Rodgers (1976), Davis (1959), Lewin et al. (1944 [1962]), Martin (1981), Michalos (1985), and Williams (1975). These approaches, however, tend to focus on the extrinsic conditions of happiness, such as health, financial affluence, and so on. The approach of this book is concerned instead with happiness that results from a person’s actions.
10 Controlling one’s life. The effort to achieve self-control is one of the oldest goals of human psychology. In a lucid summary of several hundred writings of different intellectual traditions aimed at increasing self-control (e.g., Yoga, various philosophies, psychoanalysis, personality psychology, self-help), Klausner (1965) found that the objects to which control was directed could be summarized in four categories: (1) control of performance or behavior; (2) control of underlying physiological drives; (3) control of intellectual functions, i.e., thinking; (4) control of emotions, i.e., feeling.
11 Culture as defense against chaos. See, for instance, Nelson’s (1965) summary on this point. Interesting treatments of the positive integrative effects of culture are Ruth Benedict’s concept of “synergy” (Maslow & Honigmann 1970), and Laszlo’s (1970) general systems perspective. (See also Redfield 1942; von Bertalanffy 1960, 1968; and Polanyi 1968, 1969.) For an example of how meaning is created by individuals in a cultural context, see Csikszentmihalyi & Rochberg-Halton (1981).
12 Cultures believe themselves to be at the center of the universe. Ethnocentrism tends to be one of the basic tenets of every culture; see for instance LeVine & Campbell (1972), Csikszentmihalyi (1973).
13 Ontological anxiety. The experts on ontological (or existential) anxiety have been, at least in the past few centuries, the poets, the painters, the playwrights, and other sundry artists. Among philosophers one must mention Kierkegaard (1944, 1954), Heidegger (1962), Sartre (1956), and Jaspers (1923, 1955); among psychiatrists, Sullivan (1953) and Laing (1960, 1961).
14 Meaning. An experience is meaningful when it is related positively to a person’s goals. Life has meaning when we have a purpose that justifies our strivings, and when experience is ordered. To achieve this order in experience it is often necessary to posit some supernatural force, or providential plan, without which life might make no sense. See also Csikszentmihalyi & Rochberg-Halton (1981). The problem of meaning will be discussed in more depth in chapter 10.
15 Religion and the loss of meaning. That religion still helps as a shield against chaos is shown by several studies that report higher satisfaction with life among adults who report themselves as being religious (Bee 1987, p. 373). But there have been several claims made recently to the effect that the cultural values which sustained our society are no longer as effective as they once were; for example, see Daniel Bell (1976) on the decline of capitalistic values, and Robert Bellah (1975) on the decline of religion. At the same time, it is clear that even the so-called “Age of Faith” in Europe, during the entire Middle Ages, was beset by doubt and confusion. For the spiritual turmoil of those times see the excellent accounts of Johann Huizinga (1954) and Le Roy Ladurie (1979).
16 Trends in social pathology. For the statistics on energy use, see Statistical Abstracts of the U.S. (U.S. Dept. of Commerce 1985, p. 199); for those on poverty, see ibid., p. 457. Violent crime trends are drawn from the U.S. Dept. of Justice’s Uniform Crime Reports (July 25, 1987, p. 41), the Statistical Abstracts (1985, p. 166), and the Commerce Department’s U.S. Social Indicators (1980, pp. 235, 241). Venereal disease statistics are from the Statistical Abstracts of the U.S. (1985, p. 115); for divorce see ibid., p. 88.
17 Mental health figures are from the U.S. Social Indicators, p. 93. The budget figures are from the U.S. Statistical Abstracts (1985, p. 332).
18 For information on the number of adolescents living in two-parent families see Brandwein (1977), Cooper (1970), Glick (1979), and Weitzman (1978). For crime statistics, see U.S. Statistical Abstracts (1985, p. 189).
19 Adolescent pathology. For suicide and homicide among teenagers, see Vital Statistics of the United States, 1985 (U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services, 1988), table 8.5. Changes in SAT scores are reported in the U.S. Statistical Abstracts (1985, p. 147). According to reliable estimates, teenage suicide increased by about 300 percent between 1950 and 1980, with the heaviest losses among the privileged cohorts of white, middle-class, male adolescents (Social Indicators, 1981). The same patterns are shown for crime, homicide, illegitimate pregnancies, venereal diseases, and psychosomatic complaints (Wynne 1978, Yankelovich 1981). By 1980 one out of ten high school seniors was using psychotropic drugs daily (Johnston, Bachman, & O’Malley 1981). To qualify this picture of gloom, it should be mentioned that in most cultures, as far as it is possible to ascertain, adolescents have been seen as troublesome (Fox 1977). “The great internal turmoil and external disorder of adolescence are universal and only moderately affected by cultural determinants” (Kiell 1969, p. 9). According to Offer, Ostrov, & Howard (1981), only about 20 percent of contemporary U.S. adolescents are to be considered “troubled,” but even this conservative estimate represents, of course, quite a huge number of young people.
20 Socialization. The necessity to postpone gratification in order to function in society was discussed by Freud in Civilization and Its Discontents (1930). Brown (1959) provided a spirited rebuttal of Freud’s arguments. For standard works on socialization see Clausen (1968) and Zigler & Child (1973). A recent extended study of socialization in adolescence can be found in Csikszentmihalyi & Larson (1984).
21 Social controls. Some good examples of how social controls are enforced by creating chemical dependencies are the case of the Spaniards’ introduction of rum and brandy into Central America (Braudel 1981, pp. 248–49); the use of whiskey in the expropriation of American Indian territories; and the Chinese Opium Wars. Herbert Marcuse (1955, 1964) has discussed extensively how dominant social groups coopt sexuality and pornography to enforce social controls. As Aristotle said long ago, “The study of pleasure and pain belongs to the province of the political philosopher” (Nicomachean Ethics, book 7, chapter 11).
22 Genes and personal advantage. The argument that genes were programmed for their own benefit, and not to make life better for their carriers, was first formulated in a coherent way by Dawkins (1976), although the saying “The chicken is only an egg’s way for making another egg,” which encapsulates Dawkins’s idea very well, is much older. For another view of this matter, see Csikszentmihalyi & Massimini (1985) and Csikszentmihalyi (1988).
23 Paths of liberation. The history of this quest is so rich and long that it is impossible to do it justice in a short space. For the mystical traditions see Behanan (1937) and Wood (1954) on Yoga, and Scholem (1969) on Jewish mysticism. In philosophy one might single out Hadas (1960) on Greek humanism; Arnold (1911) and Murray (1940) on the Stoics; and MacVannel (1896) on Hegel. For more contemporary philosophers see Tillich (1952) and Sartre (1956). A recent reinterpretation of Aristotle’s notion of virtue that is very similar in some ways to the concept of autotelic activity, or flow, presented here can be found in the work of Alasdair Maclntyre (1984). In history Croce (1962), Toynbee (1934), and Berdyaev (1952) stand out; in sociology Marx (1844 [1956]), Durkheim (1897, 1912), Sorokin (1956, 1967), and Gouldner (1968); in psychology Angyal (1941, 1965), Maslow (1968, 1970), and Rogers (1951); in anthropology see Benedict (1934), Mead (1964), and Geertz (1973). This is just an idiosyncratic selection among a huge array of possible choices.
24 Control of consciousness. Control of consciousness as developed in this chapter includes all four manifestations of self-control reviewed by Klausner (1965) and listed in the note to page 10. One of the oldest known techniques for achieving such controls are the various yogi disciplines developed in India roughly fifteen hundred years ago; these will be discussed more amply in chapter 5. Followers of holistic medicine believe that the mental state of the patient is extremely important in determining the course of physical health; see also Cousins (1979) and Siegel (1986). Eugene Gendlin (1981), a colleague at the University of Chicago, has developed a contemporary technique for controlling attention called “focusing.” In this volume I am not proposing any one technique, but instead will present a conceptual analysis of what control and enjoyment involve as well as give practical examples, so that the reader can develop a method best suited to his or her inclinations and conditions.
25 Routinization. The argument here is of course reminiscent of Weber’s (1922) notion of routinization of charisma, developed in his work The Social Psychology of World Religions, and of the even earlier Hegelian idea that the “world of the spirit” eventually turns into the “world of nature” (e.g., Sorokin 1950). The same concept is developed from a sociological viewpoint by Berger & Luckmann (1967).
26 Consciousness. This concept has been central to many religious and philosophical systems, e.g., those of Kant and Hegel. Early psychologists like Ach (1905) have tried to define it in modern scientific terms, with little success. For several decades, behavioral sciences had abandoned the notion of consciousness altogether, because self-reports of internal states were held to lack scientific validity. Some recent renewal of interest in the topic can be discerned (Pope & Singer 1978). Historical summaries of the concept can be found in Boring (1953) and Klausner (1965). Smith (1969), who coined the term “introspective behaviorism,” gives a definition which is very close to the one used in this volume: “conscious experience is an internal event about which one does do, directly, what one wants to do” (Smith 1969, p. 108). Otherwise, however, there is little overlap between the concept as developed here and that of either Smith or any other behaviorally oriented psychologist. The main difference is that my emphasis is on the subjective dynamics of experience, and on its phenomenological primacy. A fuller definition of consciousness will be provided in the later sections of this chapter.
27 Phenomenology. The term “phenomenological” is not used here to denote adherence to the tenets or methods of any particular thinker or school. It only means that the approach to the problem of studying experience is heavily influenced by the insights of Husserl (1962), Heidegger (1962, 1967), Sartre (1956), Merleau-Ponty (1962, 1964), and some of their translators into the social sciences, e.g., Natanson (1963), Gendlin (1962), Fisher (1969), Wann (1964), and Schutz (1962). Clear, short introductions to the phenomenology of Husserl are the books by Kohak (1978) and Kolakowski (1987). To follow this volume, however, there is no need to keep in mind any phenomenological assumption. The argument must stand on its own merits and be understood on its own terms. The same is true for information theory (see Wiener 1948 [1961]).
28 Dreaming. Stewart (1972) reports that the Sinoi of Malaysia learn to control their dreams, and thereby achieve unusual mastery over waking consciousness as well. If this is true (which seems doubtful), it is an interesting exception that goes toward proving the general rule—in other words, it means that by training attention one can control consciousness even in sleep (Csikszentmihalyi 1982a). One recent consciousness-expansion method has been trying to do just this. “Lucid dreaming” is an attempt to control thought processes in sleep (La Berge 1985).
29 Limits of consciousness. The first general statement about the number of bits that can be processed simultaneously was by Miller (1956). Orme (1969), on the basis of von Uexkull’s (1957) calculations, has figured that ⅛ of a second is the threshold of discrimination. Cognitive scientists who have treated the limitations of attention include Simon (1969, 1978), Kahneman (1973), Hasher & Zacks (1979), Eysenck (1982), and Hoffman, Nelson, & Houck (1983). Attentional demands made by cognitive processes are discussed by Neisser (1967, 1976), Treisman & Gelade (1980), and Treisman & Schmidt (1982). The attentional requirements of storing and recalling information from memory have been dealt with by Atkinson & Shiffrin (1968) and Hasher & Zacks (1979). But the importance of attention and its limitations was already well known to William James (1890).
30 Limits for processing speech. For the 40-bit-per-second requirement see Liberman, Mattingly, & Turvey (1972) and Nusbaum & Schwab (1986).
31 The uses of time. The first comprehensive tabulation of how people spend their time was the cross-national project reported in Szalai (1965). The figures reported here are based on my studies with the Experience Sampling Method (ESM), e.g., Csikszentmihalyi, Larson, & Prescott (1977), Csikszentmihalyi & Graef (1980), Csikszentmihalyi & Larson (1984), Csikszentmihalyi & Csikszentmihalyi (1988).
32 Television watching. The feelings people report while watching television are compared to experiences in other activities in ESM studies by Csikszentmihalyi, Larson, & Prescott (1977), Csikszentmihalyi & Kubey (1981), Larson & Kubey (1983), and Kubey & Csikszentmihalyi (in press).
33 Psychic energy. The processes taking place in consciousness—thoughts, emotions, will, and memory—have been described by philosophers since the earliest times, and by some of the earliest psychologists (e.g., Ach 1905). For a review, see Hilgard (1980). Energistic approaches to consciousness include Wundt (1902), Lipps (1899), Ribot (1890), Binet (1890), and Jung (1928 [1960]). Some contemporary approaches are represented by Kahneman (1973), Csikszentmihalyi (1978, 1987), and Hoffman, Nelson, & Houck (1983).
34 Attention and culture. The Melanesians’ ability to remember precise locations by floating on the surface of the sea is described by Gladwin (1970). Reference to the many names for snow used by Eskimos can be found in Bourguignon (1979).
35 The self. Psychologists have thought of innumerable ways of describing the self, from the social-psychological approaches of George Herbert Mead (1934 [1970]) and Sullivan (1953) to the analytic psychology of Carl Gustav Jung (1933 [1961]). Currently, however, psychologists try to avoid speaking of the “self”; instead they limit themselves to describing the “self concept.” A good account of how this concept develops is given by Damon & Hart (1982). Another approach uses the term “self-efficacy” (see Bandura 1982). The model of the self developed in these pages has been influenced by many sources, and is described in Csikszentmihalyi (1985a) and Csikszentmihalyi & Csikszentmihalyi (1988).
36 Disorder in consciousness. Psychologists have studied negative emotions, such as anger, distress, sadness, fear, shame, contempt, or disgust, very extensively: Ekman (1972), Frijda (1986), Izard, Kagan, & Zajonc (1984), and Tomkins (1962). But these investigators generally assume that each emotion is separately “wired” in the central nervous system as a response to a specific set of stimuli, instead of being an integrated response of the self system. Clinical psychologists and psychiatrists are familiar with “disphoric moods” such as anxiety and depression which interfere with concentration and normal functioning (Beck 1976, Blumberg & Izard 1985, Hamilton 1982, Lewinsohn & Libet 1972, Seligman et al. 1984).
37 Order. What order—or psychic negentropy—implies will be discussed in the pages below; see also Csikszentmihalyi (1982a) and Csikszentmihalyi & Larson (1984). Basically, it refers to the lack of conflict among the bits of information present in an individual’s consciousness. When the information is in harmony with a person’s goals, the consciousness of that person is “ordered.” The same concept applies also to lack of conflict between individuals, when their goals are in harmony with each other.
38 Flow. The original research and the theoretical model of the flow experience were first fully reported in Beyond Boredom and Anxiety (Csikszentmihalyi 1975). Since then a great number of works have used the flow concept, and extensive new research has been accumulating. A few examples are Victor Turner’s (1974) application of the concept to anthropology, Mitchell’s (1983) to sociology, and Crook’s (1980) to evolution. Eckblad (1981), Amabile (1983), and Deci & Ryan (1985) have used it in developing motivational theories. For summaries of the various research findings, see Massimini & Inghilleri (1986) and Csikszentmihalyi & Csikszentmihalyi (1988).
39 “It’s exhilarating . . .” The quote is from Csikszentmihalyi (1975), p. 95.
40 Complexity. Complexity is a function of how well the information in a person’s consciousness is differentiated and integrated. A complex person is one who is able to access precise, discrete information, and yet is able to relate the various pieces to each other; for example, a person whose desires, emotions, thoughts, values, and actions are strongly individuated yet do not contradict each other. See, for instance, Csikszentmihalyi (1970), Csikszentmihalyi & Csikszentmihalyi (1988), and Csikszentmihalyi & Larson (1984). The notion of complexity used here is related to the same concept as used by some evolutionary biologists (e.g., Dobzhansky 1962, 1967), and it has been influenced by the poetic insights of Teilhard de Chardin (1965). A very promising definition of complexity in physical systems, defined as “thermodynamic depth,” was being worked on by Heinz Pagels (1988) before his recent untimely death. By his definition, the complexity of a system is the difference between the amount of information needed to describe the system in its present state and the amount needed to describe all the states it might have been in at the point at which it changed from the last previous state. Applying this to the psychology of the self, one might say that a complex person was one whose behavior and ideas could not be easily explained, and whose development was not obviously predictable.
41 “[There’s] no place . . .” The quote is from Csikszentmihalyi 1975, p. 94.
CHAPTER 3
42 For research on the relationship between happiness and wealth, see Diener, Horwitz, & Emmons (1985), Bradburn (1969), and Campbell, Converse, & Rodgers (1976).
43 Pleasure and enjoyment. Aristotle’s entire Nicomachean Ethics deals with this issue, especially book 3, chapter 11, and book 7. See also Csikszentmihalyi & Csikszentmihalyi (1988, pp. 24–25).
44 Children’s pleasure in activity. Early German psychologists posited the existence of Funktionlust, or the pleasure derived from using one’s body in such activities as running, hitting, swinging, and so on (Groos 1901, Buhler 1930). Later Jean Piaget (1952) declared that one of the sensory-motor stages of an infant’s physical development was characterized by the “pleasure of being the cause.” In the U.S., Murphy (1947) posited the existence of sensory and activity drives to account for the feeling of pleasure that sight, sound, or muscle sense occasionally gives. These insights were incorporated into a theory of optimal stimulation or optimal arousal mainly through the work of Hebb (1955) and Berlyne (1960), who assumed pleasure was the consequence of an optimal balance between the incoming stimulation and the nervous system’s ability to assimilate it. The extension of these basically neurological explanations for why one finds pleasure in action was provided by White (1959), deCharms (1968), and Deci & Ryan (1985), who looked at the same phenomenon but from the point of view of the self, or conscious organism. Their explanations hinge on the fact that action provides pleasure because it gives the person a feeling of competence, efficacy, or autonomy.
45 Learning in adulthood. The importance of learning in later life has received much needed attention lately. For some of the basic ideas in this field see Mortimer Adler’s early statement (Adler 1956), Tough (1978), and Gross (1982).
46 Interviews. Most of the interviews mentioned here were collected in the course of studies reported in Csikszentmihalyi (1975) and Csikszentmihalyi & Csikszentmihalyi (1988). Over 600 additional interviews were collected by Professor Fausto Massimini and his collaborators in Europe, Asia, and the southwestern United States.
47 Ecstasy. Extensive case studies of ecstatic religious experiences were collected by Marghanita Laski (1962). Abraham Maslow (1971), who coined the term “peak experience” to describe such events, played a very important role in helping give legitimacy to the consideration of such phenomena by psychologists. It is fair to say, however, that Laski and Maslow looked at ecstasy as a fortuitous epiphany that happened more or less by itself, rather than a natural process which could be controlled and cultivated. For a comparison between Maslow’s concept of peak experience and flow, see Privette (1983). Ecstatic experiences are apparently more common than one might think. As of March 1989, over 30 percent of a national representative sample of 1,000 U.S. respondents answered affirmatively to the item: “You felt as though you were very close to a powerful spiritual force that seemed to lift you out of your self.” A full 12 percent claimed that they had experienced this feeling often or on several occasions (General Social Survey 1989).
48 Reading as a favorite flow activity. This finding is reported in Massimini, Csikszentmihalyi, & Delle Fave (1988). A recent book that describes in detail how reading provides enjoyment is by Nell (1988).
49 Socializing as a flow activity. All the studies conducted with the Experience Sampling Method confirm the fact that simply being with other people generally improves a person’s mood significantly, regardless of what else is happening. This seems to be as true of teenagers (Csikszentmihalyi & Larson 1984) as of adults (Larson, Csikszentmihalyi, & Graef 1980) and of older people (Larson, Mannell, & Zuzanek 1986). But to really enjoy the company of other people requires interpersonal skills.
50 “A lot of pieces . . .” The quote is from a study of how fine-art museum curators describe the aesthetic experience (Csikszentmihalyi & Robinson, in press, p. 51).
51 Professor Maier-Leibnitz described his ingenious way of keeping track of time by tapping his fingers in a personal communication (1986).
52 The importance of microflow activities was examined in Beyond Boredom and Anxiety (Csikszentmihalyi 1975, pp. 140–78). Those studies showed that if people were asked to do without their usual routines, such as tapping their fingers, doodling, whistling, or joking with friends, within a matter of hours they would become irritable. Frequently they would report loss of control and disruption of behavior after only a day of microflow deprivation. Few people were able or willing to do without these small routines for more than 24 hours.
53 The balanced ratio between challenges and skills was recognized from the very beginning as one of the central conditions of the flow experience (e.g., Csikszentmihalyi 1975, pp. 49–54). The original model assumed that enjoyment would occur along the entire diagonal, that is, when challenges and skills were both very low, as well as when they were both very high. Empirical research findings later led to a modification of the model. People did not enjoy situations in which their skills and the outside challenges were both lower than their accustomed levels. The new model predicts flow only when challenges and skills are relatively in balance, and above the individual’s mean level—and this prediction is confirmed by the studies conducted with the Experience Sampling Method (Carli 1986, Csikszentmihalyi & Nakamura 1989, Massimini, Csikszentmihalyi, & Carli 1987). In addition, these studies have shown that the condition of anxiety (high challenge, low skills) is relatively rare in everyday life, and it is experienced as much more negative than the condition of boredom (low challenge, high skills).
54 “Your concentration . . . ,” “You are so involved . . . ,” and “. . . the concentration . . .” are from Csikszentmihalyi (1975, p. 39). “Her reading . . .” is from Allison and Duncan (1988, p. 129). The relationship between focused attention and enjoyment was clearly perceived four centuries ago by Montaigne (1580 [1958], p. 853): “I enjoy . . . [life] twice as much as others, for the measure of enjoyment depends on the greater or lesser attention that we lend it.”
55 “The mystique of rock climbing . . .” is from Csikszentmihalyi (1975, pp. 47–48).
56 “I find special satisfaction . . .” is from Delle Fave & Massimini (1988, p. 197). “I . . . experienced a sense of satisfaction . . .” is from Hiscock (1968, p. 45), and “Each time . . .” is from Moitessier (1971, p. 159); the last two are cited in Macbeth (1988, p. 228).
57 Painting. The distinction between more and less original artists is that the former start painting with a general and often vague idea of what they want to accomplish, while the latter tend to start with a clearly visualized picture in mind. Thus original artists must discover as they go along what it is that they will do, using feedback from the developing work to suggest new approaches. The less original artists end up painting the picture in their heads, which has no chance to grow and develop. But to be successful in his open-ended process of creation, the original artist must have well-internalized criteria for what is good art, so that he can choose or discard the right elements in the developing painting (Getzels & Csikszentmihalyi 1976).
58 Surgery as a flow experience is described in Csikszentmihalyi (1975, 1985b).
59 Exceptional sensitivities. The commonsense impression that different children have a facility for developing different talents, some having an affinity for physical movement, others for music, or languages, or for getting along with other people, has recently been formalized in a theory of “multiple intelligences” by Howard Gardner (1983). Gardner and his collaborators at Harvard are now at work developing a comprehensive testing battery for each of the seven major dimensions of intelligence he has identified.
60 The importance of feedback for the blind is reported in Massimini, Csikszentmihalyi, & Delle Fave (1988, pp. 79–80).
61 “It is as if . . .” is from Csikszentmihalyi (1975, p. 40).
62 “The court . . .” and “Kids my age . . .” are from Csikszentmihalyi (1975, pp. 40–41); “When you’re [climbing] . . .” is from ibid., p. 81, and “I get a feeling . . .” from ibid., p. 41. “But no matter how many . . .” is from Crealock (1951, pp. 99–100), quoted in Macbeth (1988, pp. 221–22). The quotation from Edwin Moses is in Johnson (1988, p. 6).
63 “A strong relaxation . . .” and “. . . I have a general feeling . . .” are from Csikszentmihalyi (1975, pp. 44, 45).
64 The attraction of risk and danger has been extensively studied by Marvin Zuckerman (1979), who identified the “sensation seeking” personality trait. A more popular treatment of the subject is the recent book by Ralph Keyes (1985).
65 One of the earliest psychological studies of gambling is the one by Kusyszyn (1977). That games of chance have developed from the divinatory aspects of religious ceremonials has been argued by Culin (1906, pp. 32, 37, 43), David (1962), and Huizinga (1939 [1970]).
66 Morphy and Fischer. The similarity between the careers of these two chess champions who lived a century apart is indeed striking. Paul Charles Morphy (1837–84) became a chess master in his early teens; when he was 22 years old he traveled to Europe, where he beat everyone who dared to play against him. After he returned to New York potential competitors thought he was too good, and were afraid to play him even at favorable odds. Deprived of his only source of flow, Morphy became a recluse displaying eccentric and paranoid behavior. For parallels with Bobby Fischer’s career, see Waitzkin (1988). There are two lines of explanation for such coincidences. One is that people with fragile psychic organization are disproportionately attracted to chess. The other is that chess, at highly competitive levels, requires a complete commitment of psychic energy and can become addictive. When a player becomes a champion, and exhausts all the challenges of the activity into which so much of his attention has been invested, he runs a serious risk of becoming disoriented because the goal that has given order to his consciousness is no longer meaningful.
67 Gambling among American Indians is described by Culin (1906), Cushing (1896), and Kohl (1860). Carver (1796, p. 238) describes Iroquois playing until they have lost everything they owned, including their moccasins, and then walking back to their home camp in snow three feet deep. An observer of the Tarahumara in Mexico reported that “he . . . may go on playing [stick-dice] for a fortnight to a month, until he has lost everything he has in the world except his wife and children; he draws the line at that” (Lumholtz 1902 [1987], p. 278).
68 Surgeons who claim that performing operations can be “addictive” are quoted in Csikszentmihalyi (1975, pp. 138–39).
69 “It’s a Zen feeling . . .” is from ibid., p. 87.
70 “So one forgets oneself . . .” is from Moitessier (1971, p. 52) cited in Macbeth (1988, p. 22). “I understand something . . .” is from Sato (1988, p. 113).
71 For the sense of self-transcendence while involved in rock climbing see Robinson (1969); while involved in chess, see Steiner (1974).
72 The danger of losing self as a result of “transcendent” experience has been extensively written about. One of the earliest treatments of this possibility is by Le Bon (1895 [1960]), whose work influenced that of McDougall (1920) and Freud (1921). Some recent studies dealing with the relationship of self-awareness and behavior are by Diener (1979), Wicklund (1979), and Scheier & Carver (1980). In terms of our model of complexity a deindividuated person who loses his or her self in a group is integrated, but not differentiated. Such a person yields the control of consciousness to the group, and may easily engage in dangerous behavior. To benefit from transcendence one must also have a strongly differentiated, or individuated self. Describing the dialectical relationship between the I, or the active part of the self, and the me, or the reflected self-concept, was the very influential contribution of George Herbert Mead (1934 [1970]).
73 “Two things happen . . .” is from Csikszentmihalyi (1975, p. 116).
74 The essential connection between something like happiness, enjoyment, and even virtue, on the one hand, and intrinsic or autotelic rewards on the other has been generally recognized by thinkers in a variety of cultural traditions. It is essential to the Taoist concept of Yu, or right living (e.g., the basic writings of Chuang Tzu, translated by Watson 1964); to the Aristotelian concept of virtue (Maclntyre 1984); and to the Hindu attitude toward life that infuses the Bhagavad Gita.
75 The generalizations about people being dissatisfied with work and with leisure time are based on our studies with the Experience Sampling Method (e.g., Csikszentmihalyi & Graef 1979, 1980; Graef, Csikszentmihalyi, & Gianinno, 1983; Csikszentmihalyi & LeFevre 1987, 1989; and LeFevre 1988). The conclusions are based on the momentary responses adult workers wrote down whenever they were paged at random times on their jobs. When workers respond to large-scale surveys, however, they often tend to give much more favorable global responses. A compilation of 15 studies of job satisfaction carried out between 1972 and 1978 concluded that 3 percent of U.S. workers are “very dissatisfied” with their jobs, 9 percent are “somewhat dissatisfied,” 36 percent are “somewhat satisfied,” and 52 percent are “very satisfied” (Argyle 1987, pp. 31–63). A more recent national survey conducted by Robert Half International and reported in the Chicago Tribune (Oct. 18, 1987, sect. 8) arrives at much less rosy results. According to this study, 24 percent of the U.S. work force, or one worker in four, is quite dissatisfied with his or her job. Our methods of measuring satisfaction may be too stringent, whereas the survey methods are likely to give results that are too optimistic. It should be easy to find out whether a group of people are “satisfied” or “dissatisfied” with work. In reality, because satisfaction is such a relative concept, it is very difficult to give an objective answer to this simple question. It is rather like whether one should say “half full” or “half empty” when asked to describe a glass with water halfway up (or down) the container. In a recent book by two outstanding German social scientists, the authors came to diametrically opposed conclusions about German workers’ attitudes toward work, one claiming they loved it, the other that they hated it, even though they were both arguing from the same exhaustive and detailed survey data base (Noelle-Neumann & Strumpel 1984). The counterintuitive finding that people tend to rate work as more satisfying than leisure has been noticed by several investigators (e.g., Andrews & Withey 1976, Robinson 1977). For example, Veroff, Douvan, & Kulka (1981) report that 49 percent of employed men claim work is more satisfying for them than leisure, whereas only 19 percenr say that leisure is more satisfying than work.
76 The dangers of addiction to flow have been dealt with in more detail by Csikszentmihalyi (1985b).
77 Crime as flow. A description of how juvenile delinquency can provide flow experiences is given in Csikszentmihalyi & Larson (1978).
78 The Oppenheimer quote is from Weyden (1984).
79 “Water can be both good and bad . . .” This fragment from Democritus was cited by de Santillana (1961 [1970], p. 157).
CHAPTER 4
80 Play. After Huizinga’s Homo Ludens, which first appeared in 1939, perhaps the most seminal book about play and playfulness has been Roger Caillois’s Les Jeux et les Hommes (1958).
81 Mimicry. An excellent example of how a ritual disguise can help one to step out of ordinary experience is given by Monti (1969, pp. 9–15), in his discussion of the use of West African ceremonial masks:
“From a psychological point of view the origin of the mask can also be explained by the more atavistic aspiration of the human being to escape from himself in order to be enriched by the experience of different existences—a desire which obviously cannot be fulfilled on the physical level—and in order to increase its own power by identifying with universal, divine, or demonic forces, whichever they may be. It is a desire to break out of the human constriction of individuals shaped in a specific and immutable mould and closed in a birth-death cycle which leaves no possibility of consciously chosen existential adventures” (italics added).
82 Flow and discovery. When asked to rank 16 very different activities as being more or less similar to flow, the groups of highly skilled rock climbers, composers of music, chess players, and so on studied by Csikszentmihalyi (1975, p. 29) listed the item “Designing or discovering something new” as being the most similar to their flow activity.
83 Flow and growth. The issue of how flow experiences lead to growth of the self are discussed in Deci & Ryan (1985) and Csikszentmihalyi (1982b, 1985a). Anne Wells (1988) has shown that women who spend more time in flow have a more positive self-concept.
84 Flow and ritual. The anthropologist Victor Turner (1974) saw the ubiquity of the ritual processes in preliterate societies as an indication that they were socially sanctioned opportunities to experience flow. Religious rituals in general are usually conducive to the flow experience (see Carrington 1977; Csikszentmihalyi 1987; I. Csikszentmihalyi 1988; and Wilson 1985 and in press). A good introduction to the historical relationship between the sacred and the secular dimensions of leisure can be found in John R. Kelly’s textbook Leisure (1982, pp. 53–68).
85 Flow and art. A description of how passive visual aesthetic experiences can produce flow is given in Csikszentmihalyi & Robinson (in press).
86 The religious significance of Mayan ball games is described in Blom (1932) and Gilpin (1948). Pok-ta-pok, as this game similar to basketball was called, took place in a stone courtyard, and the aim was for one team to throw the ball through the opponents’ stone hoop placed about 28 feet above the playing field—without touching it with their hands. Father Diego Duran, an early Spanish missionary, gives a vivid description: “. . . It was a game of much recreation to them and enjoyment among which were some who played it with such dexterity and skill that they during one hour succeeded in not stopping the flight of the ball from one end to the other without missing a single hit with their buttocks, not being allowed to reach it with hands nor feet, nor with the calf of their legs, nor with their arms . . .” (quoted in Blom 1932). Apparently such games sometimes ended in human sacrifices or the killing of the members of the losing team (Pina Chan 1969).
87 Flow and society. The idea that the kind of flow activities a society made available to its people could reflect something essential about the society itself was first suggested in Csikszentmihalyi (1981a, 1981b). See also Argyle (1987, p. 65).
88 The issue of cultural relativism is too complex to be given an unbiased evaluation here. An excellent (but not impartial) review of the concept is given by the anthropologist Melford Spiro (1987), who in a recent autobiographical account describes why he changed his mind from an uncritical acceptance of the equal value of cultural practices to a much more qualified recognition of the pathological forms that cultures can occasionally assume. Philosophers and other humanists have often accused social scientists, sometimes with justification, of “debunking” absolute values that are important for the survival of culture (e.g., Arendt 1958, Bloom 1987). The early Italian-Swiss sociologist Vilfredo Pareto (1917, 1919) has been one of the scholars most keenly aware of the dangers of relativity inherent in his discipline.
89 English workers. The classic story of how the free English workers were transformed into highly regimented industrial laborers is told by the historian E. P. Thompson (1963).
90 The suspicious Dobuans were studied by the anthropologist Reo Fortune (1932 [1963]). For the tragic plight of the Ik of Uganda see Turnbull (1972).
91 Yonomamo. This fierce tribe was immortalized by the writings of the anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon (1979). The sad Nigerian tribe was described by Laura Bohannan, under the pseudonym E. S. Bowen (1954). Colin Turnbull (1961) gave a loving description of the pygmies of the Ituri forest. The quote concerning the Shushwap was contained in a 1986 letter from Richard Kool to the author.
92 The information about the Great Isé Shrine was provided in a personal communication by Mark Csikszentmihalyi.
93 For the percentages of happy people in different nations, see George Gallup (1976). The study that showed U.S. respondents to be about as happy as Cubans and Egyptians was conducted by Easterlin (1974). For a general discussion of happiness and cross-cultural differences, see Argyle (1987, pp. 102–11).
94 Affluence and happiness. Both Argyle (1987) and Veenhoven (1984) agree, on the basis of their evaluation of practically every study in the field conducted so far, that there is conclusive evidence for a positive but very modest correlation between material well-being and happiness or satisfaction with life.
95 The time budgets for U.S. workers are based on our ESM studies (e.g., Csikszentmihalyi & Graef 1980; Graef, Csikszentmihalyi, & Gianinno 1983; Csikszentmihalyi & LeFevre 1987, 1989). These estimates are very similar to those obtained with much more extensive surveys (e.g., Robinson 1977).
96 Stimulus overinclusion in schizophrenia. The concept of anhedonia was originally developed by the psychiatrist Roy Grinker. Overinclusion and the symptomatology of attentional disorders have been studied by, among others, Harrow, Grinker, Holzman, & Kayton (1977) and Harrow, Tucker, Hanover, & Shield (1972). The quotations are from McGhie & Chapman (1961, pp. 109, 114). I have argued the continuity between lack of flow experiences due to severe psychopathologies and milder attentional disorders often caused by social deprivation in Csikszentmihalyi (1978, 1982a).
97 Among the studies of the Eskimo that are worth reading are those of Carpenter (1970, 1973). The destruction of Caribbean cultures is described by Mintz (1985). The concept of anomie was originally developed by Emile Durkheim in his work Suicide (1897 [1951]). The best introduction to the concept of alienation is in the early manuscripts of Karl Marx, especially his Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 (see Tucker 1972). The sociologist Richard Mitchell (1983, 1988) has argued that anomie and alienation are the societal counterparts of anxiety and boredom, respectively, and that they occur when people cannot find flow because the conditions of everyday life are either too chaotic or too predictable.
98 The neurophysiological hypothesis concerning attention and flow is based on the following research: Hamilton (1976, 1981), Hamilton, Holcomb, & De la Pena (1977), and Hamilton, Haier, & Buchsbaum (1984). This line of research is now continuing with the use of more sophisticated brain-scanning equipment.
99 Cortical activation is the amount of electrical activity in the cerebral cortex at a given moment in time; its amplitude (in microvolts) has been used to indicate the general effort taking place in the brain at that time. When people concentrate their attention, their cortical activation is generally found to increase, indicating an increase in mental effort.
100 The study of autotelic families is reported in Rathunde (1988). His findings are in line with many previous investigations, for instance that securely attached infants engage more in exploratory behavior (Ainsworth, Bell, & Stayton 1971, Matas, Arend, & Sroufe 1978), or that an optimal balance between love and discipline is the best child-rearing context (Bronfenbrenner 1970, Devereux 1970, Baumrind 1977). The systems approach to family studies, which is very congenial with the one developed here, was pioneered in clinical settings by Bowen (1978).
101 The people of flow. This is the term Richard Logan (1985, 1988) used to describe individuals who are able to transform trying ordeals into flow experiences. The quote “If the reach of experience . . .” is from Burney (1952, pp. 16–18).
102 Eva Zeisel’s imprisonment is described in a New Yorker profile (Lessard 1987). How a Chinese lady survived the brutalities of the Cultural Revolution is the subject of Life and Death in Shanghai (Cheng 1987). Solzhenitsyn’s accounts of prison are from The Gulag Archipelago (1976).
103 The account by Tollas Tibor is reconstructed from personal conversations we had in the summer of 1957, when he was released from jail after the Hungarian revolution.
104 The quote from Solzhenitsyn is cited in Logan (1985). Bettelheim presents his generalizations about imprisonment based on his concentration camp experiences in the article “Individual and Mass Behavior in Extreme Situations” (1943); for Frankl see Man’s Search for Meaning and The Unheard Cry for Meaning (1963, 1978).
105 The quotation from Russell was cited in an article in Self magazine (Merser 1987, p. 147).
CHAPTER 5
106 The Tarahumara festivals that include ritual footraces up and down the mountains of northern Mexico for hundreds of miles are described in Lumholtz (1902 [1987]) and Nabokov (1981). An account of the ritual elements involved in modern sports is given by MacAloon’s (1981) study of the modern Olympics.
107 The Icarus complex was explored by Henry A. Murray (1955).
At this point it might be appropriate to confront squarely the Freudian concept of sublimation, a topic that, if bypassed, might leave us with the nagging feeling of an unresolved problem. Superficial applications of Freud’s thought have led many people to interpret any action that is not directed to the satisfaction of basic sexual desires either as a defense, when it aims to hold back an unacceptable wish that otherwise might be expressed, or as a sublimation, when an acceptable goal is substituted for a desire that could not be safely expressed in its original form. At best, sublimation is a poor substitute for the unsatisfied pleasure it helps to disguise. For example, Bergler (1970) has argued that games involving risk provide a release from guilt about sexuality and aggression. According to the “Icarus complex” a high jumper is trying to escape from the ties of an Oedipal tangle in a socially acceptable way, but without really resolving the basic conflict that motivates his actions. Similarly, Jones (1931) and Fine (1956) have explained chess as a way of coping with castration anxiety (to mate the opponent’s king with the help of one’s queen is a sublimated enactment of the father’s castration with the collusion of the mother); and mountain climbing has been explained as sublimated penis envy. Nobody seems to do anything, according to this point of view, except to resolve a festering childhood anxiety.
The logical consequence of reducing motivation to a search for pleasure that is instigated by a few basic genetically programmed desires, however, is a failure to account for much of the behavior that differentiates humans from other animal species. To illustrate this, it is useful to examine the role of enjoyment in an evolutionary perspective.
Life is shaped as much by the future as it is by the past. The first fish to leave the sea for dry land were not programmed to do so, but exploited unused potentials in their makeup to take advantage of the opportunities of an entirely new environment. The monkeys who use sticks to fish for ants at the mouth of anthills are not following a destiny carved in their genes, but are experimenting with possibilities that in the future may lead to the conscious use of tools, and hence to what we call progress. And certainly human history can only be understood as the action of people striving to realize indistinct dreams. It is not a question of teleology—the belief that our actions are the unfolding of a preordained destiny—because teleology is also a mechanistic concept. The goals we pursue are not determined in advance or built into our makeup. They are discovered in the process of enjoying the extension of our skills in novel settings, in new environments.
Enjoyment seems to be the mechanism that natural selection has provided to ensure that we will evolve and become more complex. (This argument has been made in Csikszentmihalyi and Massimini [1985]; 1. Csikszentmihalyi [1988]; and M. Csikszentmihalyi [1988]. The evolutionary implications of flow were also perceived by Crook [1980].) Just as pleasure from eating makes us want to eat more, and pleasure from physical love makes us want to have sex, both of which we need to do in order to survive and reproduce, enjoyment motivates us to do things that push us beyond the present and into the future. It makes no sense to assume that only the pursuit of pleasure is the source of “natural” desires, and any other motivation must be its pale derivative. The rewards of reaching new goals are just as genuine as the rewards of satisfying old needs.
108 The study of the relationship between happiness and energy consumption was reported in Graef, Gianinno, & Csikszentmihalyi (1981).
109 The U.S. dancers’ quotations are from Csikszentmihalyi (1975, p. 104). The Italian dancer’s is from Delle Fave & Massimini (1988, p. 212). The cultivation of sexuality. An excellent historical review of Western ideas about love, and of the behaviors that accompanied it, is given in the three volumes of The Nature of Love by Irving Singer (1981). A compendium of contemporary psychologists’ views on love was collected by Kenneth Pope (1980). A very recent statement on the subject is by the Yale psychologist Robert Sternberg (1988), who expands the classical description of love as eros or as agape to three components: intimacy, passion, and commitment. Liza Dalby (1983), an American anthropologist who spent a few years training as a geisha in Kyoto, gives a good description of the refinements involved in the Far Eastern approach to sexuality. For the lack of romance in antiquity, see Veyne (1987, esp. pp. 202–5).
110 The way in which the rules of the Jesuit order developed by Saint Ignatius of Loyola helped organize life as a unified activity, potentially suited to provide flow experience for those who followed them, is described in I. Csikszentmihalyi (1986, 1988) and Toscano (1986).
111 A brief introduction to Patanjali’s Yoga can be found in the Encyclopaedia Britannica (1985, vol. 12, p. 846). Eliade (1969) provides a more thorough immersion in the subject.
112 Some of the most powerful contemporary insights on the psychology of aesthetics are in the works of Arnheim (1954, 1971, 1982) and Gombrich (1954, 1979), who stress the role of order (or negative entropy) in art. For more psychoanalytically oriented approaches, see the three volumes edited by Mary Gedo, Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Art (1986, 1987, 1988).
113 “There is that wonderful . . .” is from Csikszentmihalyi & Robinson (in press).
114 “When I see works . . .” and “On a day like this . . .” are from Csikszentmihalyi & Robinson (in press).
115 The use of music by the pygmies is described in Turnbull (1961).
116 The importance of music in the lives of Americans is mentioned in The Meaning of Things (Csikszentmihalyi & Rochberg-Halton 1981), where it was found that for teenagers the most important object in the home tended to be the stereo set. The policeman’s interview is also from the same source. How music helps teenagers recover their good moods and its role in providing a matrix of peer solidarity are discussed in Csikszentmihalyi & Larson (1984) and Larson & Kubey (1983).
117 Recorded music makes life richer. I heard this argument propounded most forcefully (but, I think, quite erroneously) by the aesthetic philosopher Eliseo Vivas at a public lecture in Lake Forest College, Illinois, sometime in the late 1960s.
118 Durkheim developed his concept of “collective effervescence” as a precursor of religiosity in his Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1912 [1967]). Victor Turner’s “communitas” provides a contemporary perspective on the importance of spontaneous social interaction (1969, 1974).
119 The writings of Carlos Castaneda (e.g., 1971, 1974), so influential even a decade ago, now barely produce a ripple on the collective consciousness. Much has been said to discredit the authenticity of his accounts. The last few volumes of the enduring saga of his sorcerer’s apprenticeship seem indeed confused and pointless. But the first four volumes contained many important ideas, intriguingly presented; for these the old Italian saying applies: Se non è vero, è ben trovato—or, “It may not be true, but it is well conceived.”
120 The stages of musical listening were described in an unpublished empirical study by Michael Heifetz at the University of Chicago. A similar developmental trajectory was postulated earlier by the musicologist Leonard Meyer (1956).
121 Plato expresses his views on music in the Republic, book 3, in the dialogue between Glaucon and Socrates about the aims of education. The idea is that children should not be exposed to either “plaintive” or “relaxed” music, because both will undermine their character—thus Ionian and Lydian harmonies should be eliminated from the curriculum. The only acceptable harmonies are the Dorian and the Phrygian, because these are the “strains of necessity and the strains of freedom,” inculcating courage and temperance in the young. Whatever one may think of Plato’s taste, it is clear that he took music very seriously. Here is what Socrates says (book 3, p. 401): “And therefore I said, Glaucon, musical training is a more potent instrument than any other, because rhythm and harmony find their way into the inward place of the soul, on which they mightily fasten, imparting grace, and making the soul of him who is rightly educated graceful. . . .”
Alan Bloom (1987, esp. pp. 68–81) provides a spirited defense of Plato and an indictment of modern music, presumably because it has an affinity for Ionian and Lydian harmonies.
122 Lorin Hollander’s story is based on conversations we had in 1985.
123 Eating. For instance, ESM studies show that of the main things adult Americans do during an average day, eating is the most intrinsically motivated (Graef, Csikszentmihalyi, & Giannino 1983). Teenagers report the second highest levels of positive affect when eating (after socializing with peers, which is the most positive), and very high levels of intrinsic motivation—lower only than listening to music, being involved in sports and games, and resting (Csikszentmihalyi & Larson 1984, p. 300).
124 Cyrus the Great. The information comes from Xenophon’s (431 B.C.–350 B.C.) Cyropaedia, a fictional account of Cyrus’s life. But Xenophon is the only contemporary who had actually served in Cyrus’s army, and who has left a written record of the man and his exploits (see also his Anabasis, translated as The Persian Expedition, Warner 1965).
125 Puritans and enjoyment. On this topic see the extensive history by Foster Rhea Dulles (1965), Jane Carson’s account of recreation in colonial Virginia (1965), and chapter 5 in Kelly (1982).
CHAPTER 6
126 Reading. In the interviews conducted by Professor Massimini around the world, reading books was the most often mentioned flow activity, especially in traditional groups undergoing modernization (Massimini, Csikszentmihalyi, & Delle Fave 1988, pp. 74–75). See also the study by Nell of how reading provides enjoyment (1988).
127 Mental puzzles. The Dutch historian Johann Huizinga (1939 [1970]) argued that science and scholarship in general originated in riddling games.
128 “Works of art . . .” is from Csikszentmihalyi & Robinson (in press).
129 The normal state of the mind is chaos. This conclusion is based on various lines of evidence collected with the ESM. For example, of all the things teenagers do, “thinking” is the least intrinsically motivating activity, and one of the highest on negative affect and on passivity (Csikszentmihalyi & Larson 1984, p. 300). This is because people say they are thinking only when they are not doing anything else—when there are no external demands on their mind. The same pattern holds for adults, who are least happy and motivated when their mind is not engaged by an externally structured activity (Kubey & Csikszentmihalyi in press). The various sensory deprivation experiments also show that without patterned input of information, the organization of consciousness tends to break down. For instance, George Miller writes: “The mind survives by ingesting information” (Miller 1983, p. 111). A more general claim is that organisms survive by ingesting negentropy (Schrödinger 1947).
130 The negative quality of the television viewing experience has been documented by several ESM studies, e.g., Csikszentmihalyi & Kubey (1981), Csikszentmihalyi & Larson (1984), Csikszentmihalyi, Larson, & Prescott (1977), Kubey & Csikszentmihalyi (in press), and Larson & Kubey (1983).
131 Mental imagery. For some of Singer’s work on daydreaming, see Singer (1966, 1973, 1981) and Singer & Switzer (1980). In the last decade, a widespread “mental imagery” movement has developed in the U.S.
132 The Buñuel reference is from Sacks (1970 [1987], p. 23).
133 Reciting names of ancestors. Generally, the task of remembering belongs to the elder members of the tribe, and sometimes it is assigned to the chief. For example: “The Melanesian chief . . . has no administrative work, he has no function, properly speaking. . . . But in him . . . are enclosed the clan’s myth, tradition, alliances, and strengths. . . . When he delivers from his own lips the clan names and the marvelous phrases which have moved generations, he enlarges time for each one. . . . The chief’s authority rests on a simple quality which is his alone: he himself is the Word of the clan” (Leenhardt 1947 [1979], pp. 117–18). One example of how complex kinship reckoning can be is illustrated by Evans-Pritchard’s work on the Nuer of the Sudan, who divide their ancestors in maximal, major, minor, and minimal lineages, all connecting to each other for five or six ascending generations (Evans-Pritchard 1940 [1978]).
134 Riddles. The rhyme translated by Charlotte Guest, as well as the material on the following page, come from the famous account Robert Graves (1960) gives of the origins of poetry and literacy in The White Goddess. Graves belonged to that wonderful period of British academic life when serious scholarship coexisted with unfettered flights of the imagination—the period when C. S. Lewis and R. R. Tolkien taught classics and wrote science fiction at Oxford. Graves’s mythopoetic reconstructions are controversial, but they provide the layperson with a feeling for what the quality of thought and experience might have been in the distant past, to an extent that one cannot get from works of more cautious scholarship.
135 Rote learning. H. E. Garrett (1941) has reviewed the experimental evidence that contributed to the demise of rote learning in schools; see also Suppies (1978). This evidence showed that learning nonsense syllables did not improve a generalized aptitude for remembering. It is difficult to understand why educators would have thought such results relevant to making students stop memorizing meaningful texts.
136 The control of memory. Remembering, like dreaming, seems not to be a process under volitional control of the self—we cannot bring into consciousness information that refuses to be called up. But just as with dreaming—except even more so—if one is willing to invest energy in it, memory can be greatly improved. With a little method and discipline, it is possible to build a whole set of mnemonic devices to help remember material that otherwise would be forgotten. For a recent review of how some of these methods were used in antiquity and the Renaissance, see Spence (1984).
137 The reference to Archytas and his thought experiments is from de Santillana (1961 [1970], p. 63).
138 The evolution of arithmetic and geometry. Wittfogel (1957) gives a brilliant materialist account of the development of the sciences (as well as political forms) on the basis of the prior development of irrigational techniques.
139 That new cultural products are developed more for the sake of enjoyment than out of necessity is argued in Csikszentmihalyi (1988). This seems to be true even in the introduction of such basic techniques as the use of metals: “In several areas of the world it has been noted, in the case of metallurgical innovation in particular, that the development of bronze and other metals as useful commodities was a much later phenomenon than their first utilization as new and attractive materials, employed in contexts of display. . . . In most cases early metallurgy appears to have been practiced primarily because products have novel properties that made them attractive to use as symbols and as personal adornments and ornaments, in a manner that, by focusing attention, could attract or enhance prestige” (Renfrew 1986, pp. 144, 146).
Huizinga (1939 [1970]) argued that institutions such as religion, law, government, and the armed forces originally started as play-forms, or games, and only gradually did they become rigid and serious. Similarly Max Weber (1930 [1958]) pointed out that capitalism started as an adventurous game of entrepreneurs, and only later, when its practices became rigidified in laws and conventions, did it become an “iron cage.”
140 For the anecdotes concerning Democritus, see de Santillana (1961 [1970], pp. 142ff.)
141 For an introduction to the sagas of Iceland, see Skuli Johnson’s (1930) collection.
142 The argument about how conversation helps maintain the symbolic universe is in Berger & Luckmann (1967).
143 How poetry can be taught to ghetto children and to old people in retirement homes without formal education is beautifully told by Koch (1970, 1977).
144 Writing and depression. At least since the Romantic era, artists of all types have been held to be “tortured” or “demonically impelled.” There is reasonably good evidence that many modern artists and writers in fact show a variety of depressive and obsessive symptoms (see, e.g., Alvarez 1973, Berman 1988, Csikszentmihalyi 1988, and Matson 1980). Recently much has been written also about the relationship of manic depression and literary creativity (Andreasen 1987, Richards et al. 1988). It is very likely, however, that this relationship between psychic entropy and artistic creativity is the result of specific cultural expectations, and of the awkward structure of the artistic role, rather than anything necessarily inherent in art or in creativity. In other words, if to survive as an artist in a given social environment a person has to put up with insecurity, neglect, ridicule, and a lack of commonly shared expressive symbols, he or she is likely to show the psychic effects of these adverse conditions. Vasari in 1550 was one of the first to express concern that the personality of the young Italian artists of the time, already influenced by Mannerism, a precursor of Baroque and Romantic styles, displayed a “certain element of savagery and madness” which made them appear “strange and eccentric” in a way that previous artists were not (Vasari 1550 [1959], p. 232). In earlier periods, such as the thousands of years of Egyptian civilization, or the Middle Ages, artists were apparently quite pleasant and well adjusted (Hauser 1951). And of course there are several more recent examples of great artists, like J. S. Bach, Goethe, Dickens, or Verdi, that disprove the existence of a necessary link between creativity and neurosis.
145 Remembering the personal past. In part under the influence of Erikson’s psychobiographical accounts of the lives of Hitler, Gorki, Luther, and Gandhi (1950, 1958, 1969), a concern for “personal narrative” has become prominent in life-span developmental psychology (see Cohler 1982; Freeman 1989; Gergen & Gergen 1983, 1984; McAdams 1985; Robinson 1988; Sarbin 1986; and Schafer 1980). This perspective claims that knowing how a person sees his or her own past is one of the best ways to predict what he or she will do in the future.
146 Every home a museum. Csikszentmihalyi & Rochberg-Halton (1981) studied over 300 members of three-generational families around Chicago, who were asked in their homes to show interviewers their favorite objects, and to explain the reasons for cherishing them.
147 The four quotations from Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962) are from pages 24, 38, 38, and 36, respectively. One of the most exciting promises of flow theory is that it may help explain why certain ideas, practices, and products are adopted, while others are ignored or forgotten—since at this point the histories of ideas, institutions, and cultures work almost exclusively within a paradigm informed by economic determinism. In addition, it might be revealing to consider how history is directed by the enjoyment people derive or anticipate from different courses of action. A beginning in that direction is Isabella Csikszentmihalyi’s analysis of the reasons for the success of the Jesuit order in the 16th and 17th centuries (1988).
148 Breakthroughs. It would go against the central message of this book to claim that the flow experience is “good for you” in the sense that it helps people achieve scientific or any other kind of success. It needs to be stressed again and again that what counts is the quality of experience flow provides, and that this is more important for achieving happiness than riches or fame. At the same time, it would be disingenuous to ignore the fact that successful people tend to enjoy what they do to an unusual extent. This may indicate that people who enjoy what they are doing will do a good job of it (although, as we know, correlation does not imply causation). A long time ago, Maurice Schlick (1934) pointed out how important enjoyment was in sustaining scientific creativity. In an interesting recent study, B. Eugene Griessman interviewed a pot-pourri of high achievers ranging from Francis H. C. Crick, the codiscoverer of the double helix, to Hank Aaron, Julie Andrews, and Ted Turner. Fifteen of these celebrities completed a questionnaire in which they rated the importance of thirty-three personal characteristics, such as creativity, competence, and breadth of knowledge, in terms of helping them achieve success. The item most strongly endorsed (for an average of 9.86 on a 10-point scale) was enjoyment of work (Griessman 1987, pp. 294–95).
Another indication of how flow may be linked to success is suggested by the work of Larson (1985, 1988). In a study of high school juniors writing a month-long assignment, he found that the students who were bored wrote essays expert English teachers found boring, students who were anxious wrote disconnected essays that were confusing to read, whereas students who enjoyed the writing task created essays that were enjoyable to read—this controlling for differences in intelligence or ability among the students. The obvious suggestion is that a person who experiences flow in an activity will end up with a product that others will find more valuable.
149 The interview with the wife of Susumu Tonegawa appeared in USA Today (Oct. 13, 1987, p. 2A).
150 The amazing variety of things adults learn in their free time is described in the investigations of Allen Tough (1978); see also Gross (1982). One of the areas of knowledge to which laypersons continue to contribute is that concerning health. One keeps hearing how people (often mothers) will notice some peculiarities in the health patterns of members of their family, which when communicated to health experts turn out to have beneficial consequences. For example Berton Roueché (1988) reports how a woman in New England, struck by the fact that her son and many of his friends were suffering from arthritic pains in the knee, alerted doctors of this suspicious coincidence, and as a result of her information researchers “discovered” Lyme disease, a potentially serious affliction transmitted by ticks.
151 It may be presumptuous to present a “reading list” of the great philosophers, but to simply name them without a reference would also offend professional scruples. So here goes. A few of the most seminal works in each area might include the following. As to ontology, there are Christian von Wolff’s Vernunftige Gedanken, Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, Husserl’s Ideas: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology, and Heidegger’s Being and Time (1962); for these last two, it might be a good idea to start with the introductions to Husserl by Kohak (1978) and by Kolakowski (1987), and to Heidegger by George Steiner (1978 [1987]). In terms of ethics, one would certainly wish to tackle Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics; Aquinas’s treatises on Human Acts, on Habits, and on the Active and Contemplative Life in the Summa Theologica; Benedict Spinoza’s Ethics; and from Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil and Genealogy of Morals. In aesthetics, Alexander Baumgarten’s “Reflections on Poetry,” Benedetto Croce’s Aesthetics, Santayana’s The Sense of Beauty, and Collingwood’s The Principles of Art. The 54-volume series of the Great Books of the Western World, now edited by Mortimer Adler and published by the Encyclopaedia Britannica, is a good introduction to the most influential thinkers of our culture—the first two Syntopicon volumes, which contain a summary of the main ideas of the books that follow, could be especially useful to the amateur philosopher.
152 Medvedev (1971) provides an informed account of how the agricultural policies of Lysenko, based on Leninist dogma, resulted in food shortages in Soviet Russia. See also Lecourt (1977).
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153 For the time budget allocated to work by preliterate people, see the excellent volume by Marshall Sahlins (1972) and the estimates of Lee (1975). Some glimpses of the working patterns of medieval Europe are to be found in Le Goff (1980) and Le Roy Ladurie (1979). The pattern of the working day of typical English workers before and after the advent of the Industrial Revolution is reconstructed by E. P. Thompson (1963). The changing role of women as workers in the public sector is discussed by, among others, Clark (1919) and Howell (1986).
154 Serafina Vinon is one of the respondents in the groups studied by Delle Fave and Massimini (1988). Her quote “It gives me great satisfaction . . .” is from p. 203.
155 The quote “I am free . . .” is from ibid.
156 Development and complexity. While most developmental psychology has remained determinedly value-free (at least in its rhetoric, if not in its substance), the psychology department at Clark University has maintained a relatively strong value orientation in its approach to human development, based on the notion that complexity is the goal of human growth (e.g., Kaplan 1983, Werner 1957, Werner & Kaplan 1956). For recent attempts in the same direction see Robinson (1988) and Freeman & Robinson (in press).
157 “Ting was cutting up . . .” is in Watson (1964, p. 46), who translated Chuang Tzu’s Inner Chapters.
158 Some critics. The criticism that flow describes an exclusively Western state of mind was one of the first to be leveled at the flow concept. The specific contrast between flow and Yu was brought out by Sun (1987). It is to be hoped that the ample cross-cultural evidence presented in Csikszentmihalyi & Csikszentmihalyi (1988) will reassure skeptics that the flow experience is reported in almost exactly the same terms in vastly different non-Western cultures.
159 “However . . .” is from Watson (1964, p. 97). Waley (1939, p. 39) is the scholar who thinks the quotation does not describe Yu, but its opposite; whereas Graham (cited in Crandall 1983) and Watson (1964) believe it describes Ting’s own way of butchering, and therefore that it refers to Yu.
160 Navajos. Interviews with Navajo shepherds were conducted by Professor Massimini’s group in the summers of 1984 and 1985.
161 The life of 17th- and 18th-century English weavers is described by E. P. Thompson (1963).
162 The flow interviews of surgeons were conducted by Dr. Jean Hamilton, and written up by her and I. Csikszentmihalyi (M. Csikszentmihalyi 1975, pp. 123–39).
163 The first two quotations are from Csikszentmihalyi (1975), p. 129, the next two from ibid., p. 136.
164 The ESM study that looks at how much flow American workers report on their job and in leisure was reported in Csikszentmihalyi & LeFevre (1987, 1989) and LeFevre (1988).
165 Dissatisfaction. The low percentages of dissatisfied workers were computed by a meta-analysis performed in 1980 on 15 national surveys between 1972 and 1978; see Argyle (1987, p. 32).
166 Our studies of American workers. In addition to the ESM studies, here I am drawing on data I have collected over a period of five years (1984–88) on about 400 managers, from different companies and all parts of the country, who have attended the Vail Management Seminars organized by the Office of Continuing Education of the University of Chicago.
167 Jobs are easier to enjoy. That leisure can be a problem for many people has been recognized for a long time by psychologists and psychiatrists. For example, the Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry ended one of its reports in 1958 with the bald statement “For many Americans, leisure is dangerous.” The same conclusion was reached by Gussen (1967), who reviewed some of the psychological ills that people who cannot adapt to leisure manifest. The role of television as a way of masking the perils of free time has also been often remarked upon. For instance, Conrad (1982, p. 108) writes: “The original technological revolution was about saving time, shortcutting labor; the consumerism which is the latest installment of that revolution is about wasting the time we’ve saved, and the institution it deputes to serve that purpose is television. . . .”
168 The leisure industry. It is difficult to estimate the economic value of leisure, because the worth of federal land used for recreation and the cost of the space devoted to leisure at home and in public buildings are truly incalculable. Direct spending on leisure in the United States has been estimated at $160 billion for 1980, double the amount for 1970 when adjusted for inflation. The average household spends about 5 percent of its income directly on leisure (Kelly 1982, p. 9).
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169 The importance of human interaction. All the ESM studies show that the quality of experience improves when there are other people around, and deteriorates whenever the person is alone, even if by his or her own choice (Larson & Csikszentmihalyi 1978, 1980; Larson, Csikszentmihalyi, & Graef 1980). A vivid description of how and why people depend on public opinion for their own beliefs is given by Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann (1984). From a philosophical perspective, Martin Heidegger (1962) has analyzed our continuous dependence on the they, or the intrapsychic representation of other people we carry in our minds. Related concepts are Charles Cooley’s (1902) “generalized other” and Freud’s “superego.”
170 To be among men. This section is indebted to Hannah Arendt’s brilliant treatment of the public and private realms in The Human Condition (1958).
171 The company of others. Here again we refer to the findings of the ESM studies mentioned in the last note. That interactions with other people improve the mood for the entire day has been reported by Lewinsohn & Graf (1973), Lewinsohn & Libet (1972), MacPhillamy & Lewinsohn (1974), and Lewinsohn et al. (1982). Lewinsohn and his group have developed the clinical applications of a psychotherapy based on maximizing pleasant activities and interactions. If one were to develop a therapy based on flow—and steps in that direction have already been taken at the Medical School of the University of Milan, Italy—this would also be the route to follow. That is, one would endeavor to increase the frequency and intensity of optimal experiences, rather than (or in addition to) decreasing the incidence of negative ones.
172 Baboons. Stuart Altmann (1970) and Jeanne Altmann (1970, 1980) know more about social relations among these primates than possibly anyone else. Their work indicates that the role of sociability for ensuring survival in such primates gives a good clue as to how and why human social “instincts” evolved.
173 People are flexible. It was Patrick Mayers’s doctoral dissertation (1978), which utilized the Experience Sampling Method for gathering data, that first alerted us to the fact that teenagers listed interactions with their friends as both the most enjoyable and also the most anxiety-producing and boring experiences in their day. This usually did not happen with other categories of activities, which were, in general, either always boring or always enjoyable. Since then the finding has been replicated with adults also.
174 The realization of how important communication skills are for effective management was suggested by the data collected in the Vail program (see note to p. 160). For middle managers especially, better communication is the number one strength they wish to develop.
175 Books on etiquette. For a particularly mind-boggling example of such, see Letitia Baldridge’s Complete Guide to a Great Social Life, whose advice includes such perfectly true but rather fulsome pearls of wisdom as “Flattery is an immensely useful device. . . .” and “Any host . . . is proud to have well-dressed guests at his or her party. They convey a sweet smell of success.” (Compare this last quote with Samuel Johnson’s remark recorded in Boswell’s Life, March 27, 1776: “Fine clothes are good only as they supply the want of other means of procuring respect.”) See review in Newsweek (Oct. 5, 1987, p. 90).
176 Human relations are malleable. This has been one of the basic tenets of symbolic interactionism in sociology and anthropology (see Goffman 1969, 1974; Suttles 1972). It also underlies the systems approach to family therapy, e.g., Jackson (1957), Bateson (1978), Bowen (1978), and Hoffman (1981).
177 Intolerable solitude. See notes to p. 165.
178 Sunday mornings. That people tended to have an unusual number of nervous breakdowns on Sunday mornings was already noted by psychoanalysts in turn-of-the-century Vienna (see Ferenczi 1950). They, however, attributed the fact to more complicated causes than the ones we are postulating here.
179 The literature on television viewing is so enormous that even a short summary would probably be too long. A reasonably complete review is given in Kubey & Csikszentmihalyi in press. Given the scale of the phenomenon, and its social and economic implications, it is very difficult to maintain scientific objectivity when dealing with television. Some researchers stoutly defend it, claiming that viewers are perfectly able to use television for their own purposes and turn viewing to their advantage, while others interpret the data to show that it makes the viewers passive and discontented. Needless to say, this writer belongs to the second faction.
180 The conclusion that drugs are not consciousness-expanding is based on interviews with about 200 artists whom our team has been studying for the past 25 years (see Getzels & Csikszentmihalyi 1965, 1976; Csikszentmihalyi, Getzels, & Kahn 1984). Although artists have a tendency to glorify drug-induced experiences, I have yet to hear of a creative work (or at least one that the artists themselves thought was a good one) produced entirely under the influence of drugs.
181 Coleridge and Kubla Khan. One of the most often-quoted examples of how drugs help creativity is Coleridge’s claim that he wrote Kubla Khan in a flash of inspiration caused by the ingestion of laudanum—or opium. But Schneider (1953) has cast serious doubts on this story, presenting documentary evidence that Coleridge wrote several drafts of the poem, and made up the opium story to appeal to the romantic tastes of early-19th-century readers. Presumably if he had lived now, he would have done the same.
182 Our current research with talented teenagers shows that many fail to develop their skills not because they have cognitive deficits, but because they cannot stand being alone, and are left behind by their peers who can tolerate the difficult learning and practicing required to perfect a talent (for a first report on this topic, see Nakamura 1988 and Robinson 1986). In the latter study, equally talented high school mathematics students were divided into those who by objective and subjective criteria were still involved in math by senior year, and those who were not. It was found that the involved students spent 15 percent of their waking time outside of school studying, 6 percent in structured leisure activities (e.g., playing a musical instrument, doing sports), and 14 percent in unstructured activities, like hanging out with buddies and socializing. For those no longer involved, the respective percentages were 5 percent, 2 percent, and 26 percent. Since each percentage point corresponds to about one hour spent in the activity each week, the figures mean that students still involved in math spend one hour a week more studying than in unstructured socializing, whereas those no longer involved spend 21 more hours a week socializing than studying. When a teenager becomes exclusively dependent on the company of peers, there is little chance to develop a complex skill.
183 The description of Dorothy’s life-style is based on personal experience.
184 For Susan Butcher, see The New Yorker (Oct. 5, 1987, pp. 34–35).
185 Kinship groups. One of the most eloquent essays on the civilizing effects of the family on humankind is Lévi-Strauss’s Les Structures élementaires de la Parenté (1947 [1969]). The sociobiological claim was first articulated by Hamilton (1964), Trivers (1972), Alexander (1974), and E. O. Wilson (1975). For later contributions to this topic see Sahlins (1976), Alexander (1979), Lumdsen & Wilson (1983), and Boyd & Richerson (1985). The attachment literature is now very large; the classics in the area include work by John Bowlby (1969) and Mary D. Ainsworth et al. (1978).
186 Primogeniture. For the effects of inheritance laws in Europe see Habakuk (1955); in France, see Pitts (1964); in Austria and Germany, see Mitterauer & Sieder (1983).
187 Monogamy. According to some sociobiologists, however, monogamy does have an absolute advantage over other mating combinations. If we assume that siblings help each other more in proportion to the genes they share, then children of monogamous marriages will help each other more because they share more genes than children whose parents are not the same. Thus under selective pressures, children of monogamous couples will get more help, and thus might survive more easily, and reproduce proportionately more, than children of polygamous couples growing up in a similar environment. Moving from the biological to the cultural level of explanation, it seems clear that, other things being equal, stable monogamous couples are able to provide better psychological as well as financial resources for their children. Just from a strictly economic point of view, serial monogamy (or the frequency of divorce) seems to be an inefficient way of redistributing income and property. For the plight of one-parent families, economic and otherwise, see, for instance, Hetherington (1979), McLanahan (1988), and Tessman (1978).
188 Cistothorus palustris. The marital practices of the marsh wren are described in the Encyclopaedia Britannica (1985, vol. 14, p. 701).
189 Cicero’s quote about freedom was printed in my seventh-grade school assignment diary, but despite several attempts I have been unable to find its source. I sincerely hope it is not apocryphal.
190 Family complexity. Following the lead of Pagels’s (1988) definition of complexity, we could also say that a family whose interactions are more difficult to describe, and whose future interactions are more difficult to predict on the basis of present knowledge, is more complex than a family that is easier to describe and to predict. Such a measure would presumably give very similar results to a measure of complexity based on differentiation and integration.
191 Suburban teenagers. The anthropologist Jules Henry (1965) gave a profoundly insightful description of what growing up in suburban communities entailed a generation ago. More recently Schwartz (1987) compared six Midwestern communities in terms of what opportunities they gave adolescents for experiencing freedom and self-respect, and found striking differences from one community to the next, which suggests that sweeping generalizations about what is involved in being a teenager in our society might not be very accurate.
192 If parents talked more. In one study of adolescents at a very good suburban high school, we found that although teenagers spent 12.7 percent of their waking time with parents, time alone with fathers amounted to an average of only five minutes a day, half of which was spent watching television together (Csikszentmihalyi & Larson 1984, p. 73). It is difficult to imagine how any deep communication of values can occur in such short periods. It might be true that it is “quality time” that counts, but after a certain point quantity has a bearing on quality.
193 Teenage pregnancy. The United States now leads other developed countries in teenage pregnancies, abortions, and childbearing. For every 1,000 girls between the ages of 15 and 19, 96 get pregnant in the United States each year. Next is France, with 43 pregnancies per 1,000 (Mall 1985). The number of out-of-wedlock births to teenagers has doubled between 1960 and 1980 (Schiamberg 1988, p. 718). At present rates, it has been estimated that 40 percent of today’s 14-year-old girls will become pregnant at least once before they turn 20 (Wallis et al. 1985).
194 Families that provide flow. The characteristics of families that facilitate the development of autotelic personalities in children are being studied by Rathunde (1988).
195 Positive moods with friends. When teenagers are with friends, they report very significantly higher levels of happiness, self-esteem, strength, and motivation—but lower levels of concentration and cognitive efficiency—than they report in any other social context (Csikszentmihalyi & Larson 1984). The same pattern is true for older people studied with the ESM. For example, married adults and retired couples report more intense positive moods when they are with friends than when they are with their spouses or children—or anyone else.
196 Drinking patterns. The different patterns of public drinking, and the resultant patterns of social interaction that they make possible, have been described in Csikszentmihalyi (1968).
197 Instrumental versus expressive. The distinction between these two functions was introduced into the sociological literature by Talcott Parsons (1942). For a contemporary application, see Schwartz (1987), who argues that one of the main problems with teenagers is that there are too few opportunities for expressive behavior within the boundaries of society, and thus they have to resort to deviance.
198 Politics. Hannah Arendt (1958) defines politics as the mode of interaction that allows individuals to get objective feedback about their strengths and weaknesses. In a political situation, where a person is given a chance to argue a point of view and to convince peers of its worth, the hidden capabilities of an individual are allowed to surface. But this kind of impartial feedback can only occur in a “public realm” where each person is willing to listen and evaluate others on their merit. According to Arendt the public realm is the best medium for personal growth, creativity, and self-revelation.
199 Irrationality of economic approaches. Max Weber (1930 [1958]), in his famous essay on the Protestant ethic, argued that the apparent rationality of economic calculation was deceptive. Hard work, savings, investment, the entire science of production and consumption are justified because of the belief that they make life happier. But, Weber claimed, after this science was perfected it developed its own goals, based on the logic of production and consumption and not that of human happiness. At that point economic behavior ceases to be rational, because it is no longer guided by the goal that originally justified it. Weber’s argument applies to many other activities that after developing clear goals and rules become autonomous from their original purposes, and begin to be pursued for intrinsic reasons—because they are fun to do. This was recognized by Weber himself, who complained that capitalism, which originated as a religious vocation, had in time become a mere “sport” for entrepreneurs—and an “iron cage” for everyone else. See also Csikszentmihalyi & Rochberg-Halton (1981, chapter 9).
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200 This entire section to p. 198 draws heavily on interview transcripts made available to me by Professor Massimini. I translated the Italian answers into English.
201 The quote by Franz Alexander was cited in Siegel (1986, p. 1). Norman Cousins’s strategy for controlling his illness is described in his Anatomy of an Illness (1979).
202 “When a man knows . . .” is from Johnson’s Letters to Boswell, Sept. 19, 1777.
203 Stress. Hans Selye, who began studying the physiology of stress in 1934, defined it as the generalized result, whether mental or physical, of any demand on the body (1956 [1978]). An important breakthrough in the investigation of psychological effects of such demands was the development of a scale that attempts to measure their severity (Holmes & Rahe 1967). On this scale the highest stress is caused by “Death of spouse” with a value of 100; “Marriage” has a value of 50, and “Christmas” a value of 12. In other words, the impact of four Christmases is almost equal to the stress of getting married. It is to be noted that both negative and positive events can cause stress, since they both present “demands” one must adapt to.
204 Supports. Of the various resources that mitigate the effects of stressful events, social supports, or social networks, have been studied the most extensively (Lieberman et al. 1979). Family and friends often provide material help, emotional support, and needed information (Schaefer, Coyne, & Lazarus 1981). But even interest in other people seems to alleviate stress: “Those who have a concern for other people and concerns beyond the self have fewer stressful experiences, and stress has less effect on anxiety, depression, and hostility; they make more active attempts to cope with their problems” (Crandall 1984, p. 172).
205 Coping styles. The experience of stress is mediated by a person’s coping style. The same event might have positive or negative psychological outcomes, depending on the person’s inner resources. Hardiness is a term coined by Salvatore Maddi and Suzanne Kobasa to describe the tendency of certain people to respond to threats by transforming them into manageable challenges. The three main components of hardiness are commitment to one’s goals, a sense of being in control, and enjoyment of challenges (Kobasa, Maddi, & Kahn 1982). A similar term is Vaillant’s (1977) concept of “mature defense,” Lazarus’s concept of “coping” (Lazarus & Folkman 1984), and the concept of “personality strength” measured in German surveys by Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann (1983, 1985). All of these coping styles—hardiness, mature defenses, and transformational coping—share many characteristics with the autotelic personality trait described in this volume.
206 Courage. That people consider courage the foremost reason for admiring others emerged from the data of my three-generation family study when Bert Lyons analyzed it for his Ph.D. dissertation (1988).
207 Dissipative structures. For the meaning of this term in the natural sciences see Prigogine (1980).
208 Transformational skills in adolescence. One longitudinal study conducted with the ESM (Freeman, Larson, & Csikszentmihalyi 1986) suggests that older teenagers have just as many negative experiences with family, with friends, and alone as younger teenagers do, but that they interpret them more leniently—that is, the conflicts that at 13 years of age seemed tragic at 17 are seen to be perfectly manageable.
209 Unselfconscious self-assurance. For the development of this concept see Logan (1985, 1988).
210 “Each individual crystal . . .” This quote from Chouinard was reported in Robinson (1969, p. 6).
211 “My cockpit is small . . .” is from Lindbergh (1953, pp. 227–28).
212 Discovering new goals. That a complex self emerges out of various experiences in the world, just as a creative painting emerges out of the interaction between the artist and his materials, has been argued in Csikszentmihalyi (1985a) and Csikszentmihalyi & Beattie (1979).
213 Artists’ discovery. The process of problem finding, or discovery, in art is described in a variety of papers starting with Csikszentmihalyi (1965) and ending with Csikszentmihalyi & Getzels (1989). See also Getzels & Csikszentmihalyi (1976). Very briefly, our findings show that art students who in 1964 painted in the manner described here (i.e., who approached the canvas without a clearly worked out image of the finished painting) were 18 years later significantly more successful—by the standards of the artistic community—than their peers who worked out the finished product in their minds beforehand. Other characteristics, such as technical competence, did not differentiate the two groups.
214 Setting realistic goals. It has been reported that adults who commit themselves to very long-term goals, with few short-term rewards, are less satisfied with their lives than people who have easier, short-term goals (Bee 1987, p. 373). On the other hand, the flow model suggests that having too-easy goals would be equally dissatisfying. Neither extreme allows a person to enjoy life fully.
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215 Hannah Arendt describes the difference between meaning systems built on eternity and immortality in her The Human Condition (1958).
216 Sorokin worked out his classification of cultures in the four volumes of his Social and Cultural Dynamics, which appeared in 1937. (An abridged single volume with the same title was published in 1962.) Sorokin’s work has been forgotten almost completely by sociologists, perhaps because of his old-fashioned idealism, perhaps because in the crucial decades of the 1950s and 1960s it was overshadowed by that of his much more theoretically astute colleague at Harvard, Talcott Parsons. It is likely that with time this enormously wide-ranging and methodologically innovative scholar will receive the recognition he deserves.
217 Sequences in the development of the self. Very similar theories of stages of development that alternate between attention focused on the self and attention focused primarily on the social environment were developed by Erikson (1950), who believed that adults had to develop a sense of Identity, then Intimacy, then Generativity, and finally reach a stage of Integrity; by Maslow (1954), whose hierarchy of needs led from physiological safety needs to self-actualization through love and belongingness; by Kohlberg (1984), who claimed that moral development started from a sense of right and wrong based on self-interest and ended with ethics based on universal principles; and by Loevinger (1976), who saw ego development proceed from impulsive self-protective action to a sense of integration with the environment. Helen Bee (1987, especially chapters 10 and 13) gives a good summary of these and other “spiraling” models of development.
218 Vita activa and vita contemplativa. These Aristotelian terms are extensively used by Thomas Aquinas in his analysis of the good life, and by Hannah Arendt (1958).
219 A description of how the Jesuit rules helped create order in the consciousness of those who followed them is given in Isabella Csikszentmihalyi (1986, 1988) and Marco Toscano (1986).
220 Emergence of consciousness. A stab in the direction of speculating about how consciousness emerged in human beings was made by Jaynes (1977), who ascribes it to the connection between the left and right cerebral hemispheres, which he speculates occurred only about 3,000 years ago. See also Alexander (1987) and Calvin (1986). Of course this fascinating question is likely to remain forever beyond the reach of certainty.
221 The inner life of animals. To what extent animals other than humans have feelings that approach ours has been extensively debated; see von Uexkull (1921). Recent studies of primates who communicate with people seem to suggest that some of them do have emotions even in the absence of concrete stimuli (e.g., that they can feel sad at the memory of a departed companion), but the evidence on this issue does not yet appear conclusive.
222 The consciousness of preliterate people. Among many others, the anthropologist Robert Redfield (1955) argued that tribal societies were too simple and homogeneous for their members to be able to take a self-reflective stance toward their beliefs and actions. Before the first urban revolution made cities possible about 5,000 years ago, people tended to accept the reality their culture presented to them without much question, and had no alternatives to conformity. Others, such as the anthropologist Paul Radin (1927), have claimed to find great philosophical sophistication and freedom of conscience among “primitive” people. It is doubtful that this ancient debate will be resolved soon.
223 Leo Tolstoy’s novella has been often reprinted; see Tolstoy (1886 [1985]).
224 That the complexification of social roles has resulted in the complexification of consciousness has been argued by De Roberty (1878) and by Draghicesco (1906), who developed elaborate theoretical models of social evolution based on the assumption that intelligence is a function of the frequency and intensity of human interactions; and by many others ever since, including the Russian psychologists Vygotsky (1978) and Luria (1976).
225 Sartre’s concept of the project is described in Being and Nothingness (1956). The concept of “propriate strivings” was introduced by Allport (1955). For the concept of life theme, defined as “a set of problems which a person wishes to solve above everything else and the means the person finds to achieve solution,” see Csikszentmihalyi & Beattie (1979).
226 Hannah Arendt (1963) wrote an authoritative analysis of the life of Adolf Eichmann.
227 The autobiography of Malcolm X (1977) is a classic description of the development of a life theme.
228 Blueprint of negentropic life themes. The counterintuitive notion that transference of attention from personal problems to the problems of others helps personal growth underlies the work of the developmental psychologists mentioned in the note to page 221; see also Crandall (1984), and note to p. 198.
229 The best English-language biography of Antonio Gramsci is by Giuseppe Fiore (1973).
230 Edison, Roosevelt, and Einstein. Goertzel & Goertzel (1962) detail the early lives of 300 eminent men and women, and show how little predictability there is between the conditions in which children grow up and their later achievements.
231 Cultural evolution is another concept prematurely discarded by social scientists in the last few decades. Among the attempts to show that the concept is still viable see, for instance, Burhoe (1982), Csikszentmihalyi & Massimini (1985), Lumdsen & Wilson (1981, 1983), Massimini (1982), and White (1975).
232 Books as socializing agents. For studies on the effect of books and stories told in childhood on the subsequent life themes of individuals see Csikszentmihalyi & Beattie (1979) and Beattie & Csikszentmihalyi (1981).
233 Religion and entropy. See, for instance, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s early essay, written in 1798 but not published until 110 years later: Der Geist der Christentums und sein Schiksal (The spirit of Christianity and its fate), in which he reflects on the materialization that Christ’s teachings underwent after they were embedded into a Church.
234 Evolution. A great many scholars and scientists, from a diverse variety of backgrounds, have expressed the belief that a scientific understanding of evolution, taking into account the goals of human beings and the laws of the universe, will provide the basis for a new system of meanings. See, for instance, Burhoe (1976), Campbell (1965, 1975, 1976), Csikszentmihalyi & Massimini (1985), Csikszentmihalyi & Rathunde (1989), Teilhard de Chardin (1965), Huxley (1942), Mead (1964), Medawar (1960), and Waddington (1970). It is on this faith that a new civilization may be built. But evolution does not guarantee progress (Nitecki 1988). Humankind may be left out of the evolutionary process altogether. Whether it will or not depends to a large extent on the choices we are about to make. And these choices are likely to be more intelligent if we understand how evolution works.