Csikszentmihaly
A Hungarian psychology professor, who emigrated to the United States at the age of 22. Now at Claremont Graduate University, he is the former head of the department of psychology at the University of Chicago and of the department of sociology and anthropology at Lake Forest College.
He is noted for both his work in the study of happiness and creativity and also for his notoriously difficult name, in terms of pronunciation for non-native speakers of the Hungarian language, but is best known as the architect of the notion of flow and for his years of research and writing on the topic. He is the author of many books and over 120 articles or book chapters. Martin Seligman, former president of the American Psychological Association, described Csikszentmihalyi as the world's leading researcher on positive psychology.
Csikszentmihalyi once said "Repression is not the way to virtue. When people restrain themselves out of fear, their lives are by necessity diminished. Only through freely chosen discipline can life be enjoyed and still kept within the bounds of reason." His works are influential and are widely cited.
“The task is to learn how to enjoy everyday life without diminishing other people's chances to enjoy theirs.”
“...the concentration is usually possible because the task undertaken has clear goals and provides immediate feedback.”
“But it is impossible to enjoy a tennis game, a book, or a conversation unless attention is fully concentrated on the activity.”
“Wealth, status, and power have become in our culture all too powerful symbols of happiness. ... And we assume that if only we could acquire some of those same symbols, we would be nuch happier.”
“But anyone who has experienced flow knows that the deep enjoyment it provieds requires an equal degree of disciplined concentration.”
“...what the social environment told them to want...”
“The names we use to describe personality traits - such as extrovert, high achiever, or paranoid - refer to the specific patterns people have used to structure their attantion. At the same party, the extrovert will seek out and enjoy interactions with others, the high achiever will look for useful business conacts, and the paranoid will be on guard for signs of danger he must avoid. Attention can be invested in innumerable ways, ways that can make life eihther rich or miserable.”
“The last great attempt to free consciousness from the domination of impulses and social controls was psychoanalysis; as Freud pointed out, the two tyrants that fought for control over the mind were the id and the superago, the first a servant of a genes, the second a lackey of society - both representing the "Other".”
“Pain and pleasure occur in consciousness and exist only there”
“...they make us dependent on a social system that exploits our energies for its own purposes. ...If a person learns to enjoy and find meaning in the ongoing stream of experience, in the process of living itself, the burden of social controls automatically falls from one's shoulders.”
“The essence of socialization is to make people dependent on social controls, to have them respond predictably to rewards and punishments.”
“We are always getting to live, as Ralph Waldo Emerson used to say, but never living. Or as poor Frances learned in the children's story, it is always bread and jam tomorrow, never brad and jam today.”
“But religions are only temporarily successful attempts to cope with the lack of meaning in life; they are not permanent answers.”