242 ■ NOTES
4 Flow. My work on optimal experience began with my doctoral disserta
tion, 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).
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 de
scriptions 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 Aris
totle, assumed that actions were motivated by goals. Modern psychol
ogy, 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 discred
ited. 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 Abra
ham Maslow (1968), who believed that after more basic needs are satis
fied, 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 con
sciously chosen goals (see Csikszentmihalyi 1989).
9 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
