Review Of "The Evolving Self: A Psychology For The Third Millennium" By M. Csikszentmihalyi

Document Type

Book Review

Publication Date

5-1-1994

Published In

Choice

Abstract

An expansion and elaboration on the author's broadly popular Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (CH, Sep'90). This is no mere gloss, however, but an elaborated array of grandly sweeping ideas--on history, genetics, self-illusion, social inequality, faith, and the creation of a utopian future--for which the experience of flow serves as the critical fulcrum. Csikszentmihalyi argues that we must become aware of our evolutionary-based urges in order to transcend their inimical effects on behavior; at the same time, he advocates submitting to what he believes is a genetically based proclivity toward increased complexity. And, by gaining cognizance of undesirable social forces--"parasites and oppressors"--the indulgence in complexity will allow one to then join in a cooperative union with the social world. It is the immersion in complexity--an optimal balance between differentiation and integration--that permits the experience of flow. Through flow, the author believes, one will achieve greater harmony with the self, society, and the physical environment. In self-help style, each chapter is followed by questions designed to provoke the reader into states of generative consciousness. Lucid style, but the enormous ambition combined with lack of self-reflexivity will trouble most scholars. Community college; undergraduate; pre-professional; professional.

Comments

This work is freely available courtesy of Choice Reviews. The review has been reproduced in full in the abstract field.

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