Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention

by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi

It is not coincidental that Hecht’s main interests in childhood were first music and then geometry. Both domains are among the most highly ordered symbolic systems, and whoever invests attention in them must follow ordered patterns of thought and emotion. Otherwise Hecht’s early years were rather chaotic; his father’s business failed three times, and the family not only lost everything but ended up deeply in debt each time. Nor was the emotional atmosphere much more serene; he remembers suffering extraordinary anxiety and loneliness. Music was the first of these [interests], precisely because it was abstract and therefore could be divorced from all the mess around me. I loved it. I used to listen to it all the time on the radio. I had a little record collection, and played things over and over again until I knew them really by heart. Eventually I would come to know poetry by