Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience

 


 

CVR FlowCVR FlowFlow:
The Psychology of Optimal Experience

by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Ph.D.

 


 

Excellent description, Doctor, where’s the prescription?


Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Ph.D.

Professor Csikszentmihalyi has done a great service by distilling his decades of research into happiness and satisfaction into a well constructed single volume. He writes with wit, insight, and character. His vast learning is often evident but never overbearing.

The book ultimately fails, however, for it invests all of its considerable power in describing Flow and convincing the reader to seek this optimal experience but does too little to (more…)

Two Yous: Who is driving?

Colin WilsonI went through extreme depressions, glooms. There was one occasion on which I decided actually to commit suicide.

I’d got into this state — I was working as a lab assistant at the school, and what would happen was that I’d make tremendous efforts to push myself up to a level of optimism. I’d do it in the evenings by reading poetry, thinking, writing in my journals, then I’d go back to the school the next day and blaaahhh, right down to the bottom again. This was the feeling of The Mind Parasites — there’s something that waits until you’ve got lots of energy and just sucks you dry like a vampire. This sudden feeling that God was (more…)