Flow: The Psychology of Happiness PDF
Preview Flow: The Psychology of Happiness
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
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