Flow – Psychology of Optimal Experience

NOTES • 243

before venturing to suggest ways to improve the human condition.
Perhaps the best prototype is Dante’s Divina Commedia, where the
reader first has to pass through the gates of Hell (“per me si va neU’etemo
dolore.. before he or she can contemplate a solution to the predica­
ments of life. In this context we are following these illustrious exemplars
not because of a sense of tradition, but because it makes good sense
psychologically.

Hierarchy of needs. The best-known formulation of the relationship

between “lower order” needs such as survival and safety and “higher”

goals like self-actualization is the one by Abraham Maslow (1968, 1971).

Escalating expectations. According to many authors, chronic dissatis­

faction with the status quo is a feature of modernity. The quintessential

modern man, Goethe’s Faust, was given power by the Devil on condi­

tion that he never be satisfied with what he has. A good recent treatment

of this theme can be found in Berman (1982). It is more likely, however,

that hankering for more than what one has is a fairly universal human

trait, probably connected with the development of consciousness.

That happiness and satisfaction with life depend on how small a

gap one perceives between what one wishes for and what one possesses,

and that expectations tend to rise, have been often observed. For in­

stance, in a poll conducted in 1987 and reported in the Chicago Tribune

(Sept. 24, sect. 1, p. 3), Americans making more than $100,000 a year

(who constitute 2 percent of the population) believe that to live in

comfort they would need $88,000 a year; those who earn less think

$30,000 would be sufficient. The more affluent also said that they would

need a quarter-million to fulfill their dreams, while the price tag on the

average American’s dream was only one-fifth that sum.

Of the scholars who have been studying the quality of life, many

have reported similar findings: e.g., Campbell, Converse, & Rodgers

(1976), Davis (1959), Lewin et al. (1944 [1962]), Martin (1981), Michalos

(1985), and Williams (1975). These approaches, however, tend to focus

on the extrinsic conditions of happiness, such as health, financial afflu­

ence, and so on. The approach of this book is concerned instead with

happiness that results from a person’s actions.

Controlling one’s life. The effort to achieve self-control is one of the

oldest goals of human psychology. In a lucid summary of several hun­

dred writings of different intellectual traditions aimed at increasing self-

control (e.g., Yoga, various philosophies, psychoanalysis, personality

psychology, self-help), Klausner (1965) found that the objects to which

control was directed could be summarized in four categories: (1) control

of performance or behavior; (2) control of underlying physiological

drives; (3) control of intellectual functions, i.e., thinking; (4) control of

emotions, i.e., feeling.