Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention

by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi

Raising kids is a far more rewarding thing than earning money for a company, in terms of a sense of satisfaction.”

These accounts of the relationships of creative individuals are so diverse that they cannot prove any one point. But they can disprove a generally held notion that people who achieve creative eminence are unusually promiscuous and fickle in their human ties. In fact, the opposite seems closer to the truth: These individuals are aware that a lasting, exclusive relationship is the best safeguard of that peace of mind they need in order to focus on their creative pursuit. And if they are lucky, they find a partner who fills that need.

Most of us join an organization at an entry level, perform a prescribed role for a number of years, and leave at a higher level. What we do during this period is more or less known in advance, and others could do the same job if we didn’t. A worker may start as a tool-maker and leave as a foreman; a teacher may teach for thirty years and become a principal; a soldier may become a sargeant; a young lawyer

may end up as a partner of the firm, and so forth. These roles are relatively fixed, and we fit into them. It is true that in the postindustrial economy we are now entering this pattern may become less rigid, but I would still be very surprised if most people do not continue to follow career lines that are laid out for them. In contrast, creative individuals usually are forced to invent the jobs they will be doing all through their lives.

One could not have been a psychoanalyst before Freud, an aeronautical engineer before the Wright brothers, an electrician before Galvani, Volta, and Edison, or a radiologist before Roentgen. These individuals not only discovered new ways of thinking and of doing things but also became the first practitioners in the domains they discovered and made it possible for other...

Although all creative persons, in breaking new

ground, must create careers for themselves, this is especially true for artists, musicians, and writers. They are often left to their own devices, exposed to the vagaries of market forces and changing tastes, without being able to rely on the protection of institutions. It is not surprising that so many promising artists give up and take refuge in teaching, rehabbing old houses, and designing for industry rather than flounder forever in the uncharted seas of so vague a profession.

Those who persevere and succeed must be creative not only in their manipulation of symbols but perhaps even more in shaping a future for themselves, a career that will enable them to survive while continu...

According to the developmental psychologist Erik Erikson, the defining task of a person’s middle years is to achieve generativity. This involves

being able to pass on both one’s genes and one’s memes. The first refers to leaving children, the second to leaving one’s ideas, values, knowledge, and skills to the next generation. It is much easier to come to terms with one’s mortality when one knows that parts of oneself will continue to live on after one’s death.

There is often a presumption that these two ways of being generative—the physical and the cultural—are at odds with each other. The Romans had a saying: libri aut liberi (books or children), referring to how difficult it was to have it both ways. In fact, in many cultures it has been the case that those who wrote the books—the monks in early Christendom, the Tibetan lamas, or Buddhist monks—were not supposed to have children, at least o...

One of the problems about being a writer today is that you are expected to be a kind of public show and public figure and people want your opinions about politics and world affairs and so forth, about which you don’t know any more than anybody else, but you have to go along or you’ll get a reputation

of being an impossible person, and spiteful things would be said about you.

The majority of people in every culture invest their lives in projects that are defined by their society. They pay attention to what others pay attention to, they experience what others experience. They go to school and learn what should be learned; they work at whatever job is available; they marry and have children according to the local customs. It is difficult to see how it could be

otherwise. Would it be possible to have a stable, predictable life if most people were not conformists? If we couldn’t count on plumbers doing their jobs, teachers teaching, and doctors abiding by the rules of the medical profession? At the same time, a culture can evolve only if there are a few souls who do not play by the usual rules. The men and women we studied made up their rules as they went along, combining luck with the singleness of their purpose, until they were able to fashion a “life theme” that expressed their unique vision while also allowing them to make a living.

the reason pain is so dreadful is that it forces us to pay attention to it, and so it interferes with concentration on anything else. So chronic pain could end all serious work.

Habits and Personal Traits

Negative changes almost always involved too much pressure and too little time, with the person taking the blame for not learning to avoid overcommitment. Other trait-related

related problems included increasing impatience and guilt over not keeping physically fit. The positive outcomes featured diminished anxiety over performance, being less driven, and exhibiting more courage, confidence, and risk taking.

Caring is a good feeling, and we’ve lost our appetite for it.

the last psychological stage that people confront in their lives is what he called the task of achieving integrity. What he meant by this is that if we live long enough and if we resolve all the earlier tasks of adulthood—such as developing a viable identity, a close and satisfying intimacy, and if we succeed in passing on our genes and our values through generativity—then there is a last remaining task that is essential for our full development as a human being. This consists in bringing together into a meaningful story our past and present, and in reconciling ourselves with the approaching end of life. If in the later years we look back with puzzlement and regret, unable to accept the choices we have made and wishing for another chance, despair is the likely outcome.

the perspective of an older person is based on a new definition of identity, which could be summarized in the sentence “I am what survives me.” If toward the end of life I conclude that nothing of myself is likely to survive, despair is likely to take over. But if I have identified with some more enduring entities, my survival will provide a sense of connection, of continuity, that keeps despair at bay. If I love my grandchildren, or the work I have accomplished, or the causes I have championed, then I am bound to feel a part of the future even after personal death. Jonas Salk calls this attitude “being a good ancestor.”

secret for a happy life: “Love and work,”

they also stress in their personal narratives the twin themes of work and love. These are the sources from which they build a meaningful story about their pasts

and a bridge to the future.

The fact that they were lucky in having achieved a greater renown than most people get for their efforts does not seem to make much difference. There is no evidence that being awarded one or two Nobel Prizes gives a person a greater claim on wisdom or a surer defense again...

Spirituality, unfortunately, is not a stylish word. It’s not a word that gets used. That’s because we’re such an unspiritual country that we think of it as somewhat corny to talk about spirituality. “What is that?” people say. Spirituality, to me, means the nonmaterial things. I don’t want to give the idea that it’s something mystical; I want it to apply to ordinary people’s ordinary lives: things like love, and helpfulness, and tolerance, and enjoyment of the arts or even creativity in the arts. I think that creativity in the arts is very special. It takes a high degree and a high type of spirituality to want to express things in terms of literature or poetry, plays, architecture, gardens, creating beauty any way. And if you can’t create beauty, at least it’s good to appreciate beauty and get some enjoyment and inspiration out of it. So it’s just things that aren’t totally materialistic. And that

would include religion.

a person aspiring to wisdom knows that the bottom line of a well-lived life is not so much success but the certainty we reach, in the most private fibers of our being, that our existence is linked in a meaningful way with the rest of the universe.

Among the oldest symbolic systems in the world are those organized around the content and the rules of language. The first narrative stories telling of real or imaginary events, the myths and campfire tales of our ancestors, extended dramatically the range of human experience through imagination. The rhyme and meter of poetry created patterns of order that must have seemed miraculous to people who had yet scarcely learned to improve on the precarious order of nature. And when the discovery of writing made it possible to preserve memory outside the fragile brain, the domain of the word became one of the most effective tools and greatest sources of pride for humankind.

Perhaps only art, dance, and music are more ancient; the beginnings of technology and arithmetic probably contemporaneous. What makes words so powerful is that they enrich life by expanding the range of individual experience. Without stories and books, we would be limited to knowing only what has happened to us or to those whom we have met. With books we can join Herodotus during his travels to Egypt, or be with Lewis and Clark on their epic journey to the Pacific, or imagine what it might be like to travel beyond our galaxy a few hundred years hence. But more important, the written word allows us to understand better what is happening within ourselves. In recording real or imaginary events, the writer arrests the evanescent stream of experience by naming its aspects and making them enduring in language. Then by reading and repeating a verse or passage of prose, we can savor the images and their meanings and thus understand

more accurately how we feel and what we think. Fragile thoughts and feelings are transformed by words into concrete thoughts and emotions. In this sense, poetry and literature allow the creation of experiences that we would otherwise not hav...

Strand claims that often he starts writing without anything specific in mind. What gets him started is the simple desire to write. Writing for him—as for the rest of the individuals discussed in this chapter—is a necessity, like swimming for a fish or flying for a bird. The theme of the poem emerges in the writing, as one word suggests another, one image calls another into being. This is the problem-finding process that is typical of creative work in the arts as well as the sciences.

Strand’s modus operandi seems to consist of a constant alternation between a highly concentrated critical assessment and a relaxed, receptive, nonjudgmental openness to experience. His attention coils and uncoils, its focus sharpens and softens, like the systolic and diastolic beat of the heart. It is out of this dynamic change of perspective that a good new work arises. Without openness the poet might miss the significant experience. But once the experience registers in his consciousness, he needs the focused, critical approach to transform it into a vivid verbal image that communicates its essence to the reader.

Obsessed as he is with his art, Strand realizes

that he could not really work in such a concentrated way longer than he does now, for more than a few hours a day. Besides, the enterprise of writing makes sense only within the context of a broader, more mundane reality. Some artists get so involved in their creations that they lose their appetite for raw experience, but Strand welcomes ordinary life—puttering in the yard, having meals with the family, going on hikes, lecturing, even shopping. These activities: take me out of myself. Poetry relocates you in yourself. [When doing ordinary things] you’re focused elsewhere. You’re not focused on something you’re making, something that is entirely formed...

He knows that he is good at his craft, which is to express in arresting and accurate language what he has learned from witnessing life.

hardship and tragedy have marked her life, and it is doubtful she would have survived this long if she had been unable to impose the ordered meter of verse on the chaos of her experiences.

All through their life together, she had been protected by her husband; but in this crisis she felt alone and helpless. “And that is why all of a sudden…I flew into language.” This flight into a world of symbols saves the writer from the unbearable reality where experience is raw and unmediated. When painful experience is put into words, the poet is relieved of some of her burden:

[The emotion] gets fulfilled, I guess. You know what was in you, and you can look at it now. And it is kind of a catalyst. Wouldn’t you say? Yeah, I think so. You are freed for a time from the emotion. And the next reader

will take the place of the author, isn’t it so? If he identifies with the writing he will become, in his turn, the author. And he then also gets freed. Like the author gets freed. The emotion may not be exactly the same, ...

Honesty is always touching because so few people are honest, no? I don’t make words around it.”

Honesty is important to the poet for at least two reasons. The first is that if she lets ideology or undue optimism color the way she reports her experiences, the truth content of the poem will be corrupted. The second is that the poet must be honest with herself, always evaluating what she writes and not letting wishful thinking stop her from improving the evolving work. “In every art, you have to be your own critic,” Domin says. “If you get up to a real good standard, you have to be

both the one who writes and the one who corrects at the same time. It is paradoxical, but you have to be paradoxical, otherwise you cannot live in this world.” The creative individual must reject the wisdom of the field, yet she must also incorporate its standards into a strict self-criticism. And for this one must learn to achieve the dialectical tension between involvement and detachment that is so characteristic of every creative process: You must always keep distance from yourself. Don’t you think? It is the change between being quite close and being quite distant. You must always be in it and always see it from the outside. While you are doing it, you are in it. But you must always keep also a distance. And evidently the more you have the skill, the craft, the more you are able to at the same time be in it and also keep the distance and know what you are doing. Like, for example, when you eliminate a word.

In the beginning you eliminate it after you have written it. And when you are more skilled you eliminate while you are writing. A schizoid process, is writing. You are the emotional person that kind of furnishes the words, and at the same time yo...

When you write poetry honestly, and

when you read it honestly, then you become an individual and build up a defense against becoming programmed. And if you read poetry to young people, which I very often do—I go to schools, I have even gone to prisons—I feel you can raise in people’s minds the wish never to be an opportunist, never to be a mindless follower. To look always at what’s happening and not to look away from it. That’s the most you can do. You cannot change the world, but you can change the single person, I guess. And a single person who decides not to join the crowd…. You should not look whether you are in or out. You should look into your own heart. Confucius says that you should listen to the silent voice of your own heart. This is what poetry can do.

RELEASED BY STYLE

Anthony Hecht is a lyric poet whose verse has been published in numerous collections and in The New Yorker and other leading magazines. He has been awarded fellowships by all the major foundations and has won a great number of prizes for his work, including the Pulitzer in 1968. Hecht’s poems are crystalline, elegant to the point of refinement, constructed with a rigorous attention to form. A Vivaldi concerto could provide a passable musical analogy to his writing. He often uses the sonnet, or even earlier canzoni of the kind used in the Middle Ages, more than six hundred years ago. The rules of these forms are so rigid that even Dante complained that to write according to them was like hanging chains upon himself and that he never would write in that style again. Yet, paradoxically, it is by following such demanding discipline that poetry can liberate the writer—and the reader—from the jumbled onslaught of raw experience.

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 ...