Flow: The Psychology of Happiness

328 Pages·2013·1.67 MB·English

by  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

CONTENTS
COVER
ABOUT THE BOOK
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
TITLE PAGE
DEDICATION
NOTES
AUTHOR’S NOTE
PREFACE
1. HAPPINESS REVISITED
Introduction
Overview
The Roots of Discontent
The Shields of Culture
Reclaiming Experience
Paths of Liberation
2. THE ANATOMY OF CONSCIOUSNESS
The Limits of Consciousness
Attention as Psychic Energy
Enter the Self
Disorder in Consciousness: Psychic Entropy
Order in Consciousness: Flow
Complexity and the Growth of the Self
3. ENJOYMENT AND THE QUALITY OF LIFE
Pleasure and Enjoyment
The Elements of Enjoyment
The Autotelic Experience
4. THE CONDITIONS OF FLOW
Flow Activities
Flow and Culture
The Autotelic Personality
The People of Flow
5. THE BODY IN FLOW
Higher, Faster, Stronger
The Joys of Movement
Sex as Flow
The Ultimate Control: Yoga and the Martial Arts
Flow through the Senses: The Joys of Seeing
The Flow of Music
The Joys of Tasting
6. THE FLOW OF THOUGHT
The Mother of Science
The Rules of the Games of the Mind
The Play of Words
Befriending Clio
The Delights of Science
Loving Wisdom
Amateurs and Professionals
The Challenge of Lifelong Learning
7. WORK AS FLOW
Autotelic Workers
Autotelic Jobs
The Paradox of Work
The Waste of Free Time
8. ENJOYING SOLITUDE AND OTHER PEOPLE
The Conflict between Being Alone and Being with Others
The Pain of Loneliness
Taming Solitude
Flow and the Family
Enjoying Friends
The Wider Community
9. CHEATING CHAOS
Tragedies Transformed
Coping with Stress
The Power of Dissipative Structures
The Autotelic Self: A Summary
10. THE MAKING OF MEANING
What Meaning Means
Cultivating Purpose
Forging Resolve
Recovering Harmony
The Unification of Meaning in Life Themes
NOTES
REFERENCES
COPYRIGHT
ABOUT THE BOOK
What really makes people glad to be alive? What are the inner experiences
that make life worthwhile?
This classic work on happiness presents the general principles that have enabled
real people to transform boring and meaningless lives into ones full of
enjoyment. It introduces the phenomenon of ‘flow’ – a state of joy, creativity
and total involvement, in which problems seem to disappear and there is an
exhilarating feeling of transcendence.
Drawing upon extensive research, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi explains how this
pleasurable state can be brought about by all of us and not just left to chance. We
each have the potential to experience flow, whether at work, at play or in our
relationships. Through understanding the concept of flow, we can learn how to
live in harmony with ourselves, our society and, ultimately, with the greater
universe. We can return to the state of happiness that is our natural birthright.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
MIHALY CSIKSZENTMIHALYI is professor and former chairman of the Department
of Psychology at the University of Chicago. For the past twenty years he has
been involved in research on topics related to flow. Funding for these studies has
come from the Public Health Service and various private grants, primarily the
Spencer Foundation. In addition, a great deal of interest in his work has been
building outside academia, spearheaded by substantial articles in Psychology
Today, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, Omni,
Newsweek, and elsewhere. He is the author of Beyond Boredom and Anxiety, and
co-author of The Creative Vision, The Meaning of Things, and Being Adolescent.
Dr. Csikszentmihalyi is a member of the National Academy of Education and
National Academy of Leisure Sciences. He has been a Senior Fulbright Fellow
and currently sits on several boards, including the Board of Advisers for the
Encyclopaedia Britannica. He has appeared on a number of foreign television
networks, such as the BBC and RAI (Italian television), and has taken part in
several hourlong segments of “Nova.”
Flow
The Classic Work on How to Achieve Happiness
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
For Isabella, and Mark and Christopher
Author’s Note
Flow first appeared in the United States in 1990. For several years before that
time, people had been urging me to collect the research that I had published in
obscure academic journals, and to make it available to a wider readership. I
finally heeded the advice and discovered in the process that writing for a lay
audience was much more fun (as well as more difficult) than writing for fellow
scholars. But even as I enjoyed writing this book, I never dreamt of the impact it
would have in the dozen years since its appearance. For instance, so far Flow has
been translated into 14 different languages, including Serbian, Portuguese,
Japanese, and Chinese; a Korean translation is also being prepared. It was
adopted by four book clubs in the US and more elsewhere. A great many readers
from around the world have written letters containing eloquent accounts of how
they have used the book to improve the quality of their own lives. In addition,
the ideas contained in this book have found their way into a variety of
applications, ranging from politics to education; from psychiatric hospitals to the
Cirque de Soleil; from the manufacture of automobiles at Nissan and Volvo to
the design of art museums.
Clearly, Flow has touched a nerve in the collective psyche. For too long
psychology had been focused almost exclusively on the shadows of human
existence. The behavior of men and women was seen as determined by
biological inheritance and by outside forces, twisted by frustrated desire. Scant
attention was paid to what makes life bearable, enjoyable, free. Into this near
vacuum Flow brought a flicker of light, a message that life can be an exciting,
enjoyable and creative adventure.
With each passing decade this message becomes more and more relevant. For,
as esoteric technologies proliferate and increasing powers of creation and
destruction fall into the hands of our species, the responsibility for using such
powers wisely is becoming ever more urgent. Are we going to exhaust the
resources of the planet heedlessly while we could have a much more fulfilling
life with less waste? Is greed going to split humanity into the obscenely rich and
the abysmally poor, fuelling irreparable social conflicts? And, as we move into
the age of genetic engineering, what kind of human beings are we going to
create? Blood and flesh copies of our machines and computers? Or individuals
with a consciousness open to the cosmos, organisms that are joyfully evolving in
unprecedented directions? These are not questions that Flow deals with directly,
but its description of the principles of a fulfilled life—one full of enjoyment and
constantly growing in complexity—suggests ways to prepare ourselves for the
difficult choices that tomorrow will bring. But whatever its usefulness for
confronting the future might be, I hope reading this book will be its own reward,
here and now.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Claremont, California