Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience

by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi

Much of what passes for sexuality is also just a way of imposing an external order on our thoughts, of “killing time” without having to confront the perils of solitude. Not surprisingly, watching TV and having sex can become roughly interchangeable activities. The habits of pornography and depersonalized sex build on the genetically programmed attraction of images and activities related to reproduction. They focus attention naturally and pleasurably, and in so doing help to exclude unwanted contents from the mind. What they fail to do is develop any of the attentional habits that might lead to a greater complexity of consciousness. The same argument holds for what might at first sight seem the opposite of pleasure: masochistic behavior, risk taking, gambling. These ways that people find to hurt or frighten themselves do not require a great deal of skill, but they do help one to achieve the sensation of direct experience. Even pain is better than the chaos that seeps into an unfocused mind. Hurting oneself, whether physically or emotionally, ensures that attention can be focused on something that, although painful, is at least controllable—since we are the ones causing it. The ultimate test for the ability to control the quality of experience is what a person does in solitude, with no external demands to give structure to attention. It is relatively easy to become involved with a job, to enjoy the company of friends, to be entertained in a theater or at a concert. But what ...