Flow – Psychology of Optimal Experience

NOTES ■ 269

of the working day of typical English workers before and after the advent

of the Industrial Revolution is reconstructed by E. P. Thompson (1963).

The changing role of women as workers in the public sector is discussed

by, among others, Clark (1919) and Howell (1986).

145 Serafina Vinon is one of the respondents in the groups studied by Delle

Fave and Massimini (1988). Her quote “It gives me great satisfac­

tion.. is from p. 203.

147 The quote “I am free.. is from ibid.

149 Development and complexity. While most developmental psychology

has remained determinedly value-free (at least in its rhetoric, if not in

its substance), the psychology department at Clark University has main­

tained a relatively strong value orientation in its approach to human

development, based on the notion that complexity is the goal of human

growth (e.g., Kaplan 1983, Werner 1957, Werner & Kaplan 1956). For

recent attempts in the same direction see Robinson (1988) and Freeman

& Robinson (in press).

150 “Ting was cutting up ..is in Watson (1964, p. 46), who translated

Chuang Tzu’s Inner Chapters.

Some critics. The criticism that flow describes an exclusively Western

state of mind was one of the first to be leveled at the flow concept. The

specific contrast between flow and Yu was brought out by Sun (1987).

It is to be hoped that the ample cross-cultural evidence presented in

Csikszentmihalyi &. Csikszentmihalyi (1988) will reassure skeptics that

the flow experience is reported in almost exactly the same terms in vastly

different non-Western cultures.

151 “However.. .” is from Watson (1964, p. 97). Waley (1939, p. 39) is

the scholar who thinks the quotation does not describe Yu, but its

opposite; whereas Graham (cited in Crandall 1983) and Watson (1964)

believe it describes Ting’s own way of butchering, and therefore that it

refers to Yu.

152 Navajos. Interviews with Navajo shepherds were conducted by Profes­

sor Massimini’s group in the summers of 1984 and 1985.

153 The life of 17th- and 18th-century English weavers is described by E.

P. Thompson (1963).

155 The flow interviews of surgeons were conducted by Dr. Jean Hamilton,

and written up by her and I. Csikszentmihalyi (M. Csikszentmihalyi

1975, pp. 123-39).

156 The first two quotations are from Csikszentmihalyi (1975), p. 129, the
next two from ibid., p. 136.