Flow – Psychology of Optimal Experience

262 ■ NOTES

The importance of music in the lives of Americans is mentioned in

The Meaning of Things (Csikszentmihalyi & Rochberg-Halton 1981),

where it was found that for teenagers the most important object in the

home tended to be the stereo set. The policeman’s interview is also

from the same source. How music helps teenagers recover their good

moods and its role in providing a matrix of peer solidarity are discussed

in Csikszentmihalyi & Larson (1984) and Larson & Kubey (1983).

Recorded music makes life richer. I heard this argument propounded

most forcefully (but, I think, quite erroneously) by the aesthetic philoso­

pher Eliseo Vivas at a public lecture in Lake Forest College, Illinois,

sometime in the late 1960s.

110 Durkheim developed his concept of “collective effervescence” as a

precursor of religiosity in his Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1912

[1967]). Victor Turner’s “communitas” provides a contemporary per­

spective on the importance of spontaneous social interaction (1969,

1974).

The writings of Carlos Castaneda (e.g., 1971, 1974), so influential even

a decade ago, now barely produce a ripple on the collective conscious­

ness. Much has been said to discredit the authenticity of his accounts.

The last few volumes of the enduring saga of his sorcerer’s apprentice­

ship seem indeed confused and pointless. But the first four volumes

contained many important ideas, intriguingly presented; for these the

old Italian saying applies: Se non e vero, e ben trovato—or, “It may not

be true, but it is well conceived.”

110- The stages of musical listening were described in an unpublished

111 empirical study by Michael Heifetz at the University of Chicago. A

similar developmental trajectory was postulated earlier by the musicolo­

gist Leonard Meyer (1956).

111 Plato expresses his views on music in the Republic, book 3, in the

dialogue between Glaucon and Socrates about the aims of education.

The idea is that children should not be exposed to either “plaintive” or

“relaxed” music, because both will undermine their character—thus

Ionian and Lydian harmonies should be eliminated from the curriculum.

The only acceptable harmonies are the Dorian and the Phrygian, be­

cause these are the “strains of necessity and the strains of freedom,”

inculcating courage and temperance in the young. Whatever one may

think of Plato’s taste, it is clear that he took music very seriously. Here

is what Socrates says (book 3, p. 401): “And therefore I said, Glaucon,

musical training is a more potent instrument than any other, because

rhythm and harmony find their way into the inward place of the soul,

on which they mightily fasten, imparting grace, and making the soul of

him who is rightly educated graceful... .”