Flow – Psychology of Optimal Experience

NOTES • 247

page Consciousness. This concept has been central to many religious and

23- philosophical systems, e.g., those of Kant and Hegel. Early psychologists
24 like Ach (1905) have tried to define it in modern scientific terms, with
little success. For several decades, behavioral sciences had abandoned
the notion of consciousness altogether, because self-reports of internal
states were held to lack scientific validity. Some recent renewal of inter­
est in the topic can be discerned (Pope & Singer 1978). Historical
summaries of the concept can be found in Boring (1953) and Klausner
(1965). Smith (1969), who coined the term “introspective behaviorism,”
gives a definition which is very close to the one used in this volume:
“conscious experience is an internal event about which one does do,
directly, what one wants to do” (Smith 1969, p. 108). Otherwise, how­
ever, there is little overlap between the concept as developed here and
that of either Smith or any other behaviorally oriented psychologist.
The main difference is that my emphasis is on the subjective dynamics
of experience, and on its phenomenological primacy. A fuller definition
of consciousness will be provided in the later sections of this chapter.

25- Phenomenology. The term “phenomenological” is not used here to

26 denote adherence to the tenets or methods of any particular thinker or

school. It only means that the approach to the problem of studying

experience is heavily influenced by the insights of Husserl (1962), Hei­

degger (1962, 1967), Sartre (1956), Merleau-Ponty (1962, 1964), and

some of their translators into the social sciences, e.g., Natanson (1963),

Gendlin (1962), Fisher (1969), Wann (1964), and Schutz (1962). Clear,

short introductions to the phenomenology of Husserl are the books by

Kohak (1978) and Kolakowski (1987). To follow this volume, however,

there is no need to keep in mind any phenomenological assumption.

The argument must stand on its own merits and be understood on its

own terms. The same is true for information theory (see Wiener 1948

[1961]).

26 Dreaming. Stewart (1972) reports that the Sinoi of Malaysia learn to

control their dreams, and thereby achieve unusual mastery over waking

consciousness as well. If this is true (which seems doubtful), it is an

interesting exception that goes toward proving the general rule—in

other words, it means that by training attention one can control con­

sciousness even in sleep (Csikszentmihalyi 1982a). One recent con-

sciousness-expansion method has been trying to do just this. “Lucid

dreaming” is an attempt to control thought processes in sleep (La Berge

1985).

28 Limits of consciousness. The first general statement about the number

of bits that can be processed simultaneously was by Miller (1956). Orme

CHAPTER 2