Good Business_ Leadership, Flow, and the Making of Meaning - Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi [159]
Routinization. The argument here is of course reminiscent of Weber’s (1922) notion of routinization of charisma, developed in his work The Social Psychology of World Religions, and of the even earlier Hegelian idea that the “world of the spirit” eventually turns into the “world of nature” (e.g., Sorokin 1950). The same concept is developed from a sociological viewpoint by Berger & Luckmann (1967).
CHAPTER 2
Consciousness. This concept has been central to many religious and philosophical systems, e.g., those of Kant and Hegel. Early psychologists like Ach (1905) have tried to define it in modern scientific terms, with little success. For several decades, behavioral sciences had abandoned the notion of consciousness altogether, because self-reports of internal states were held to lack scientific validity. Some recent renewal of interest in the topic can be discerned (Pope & Singer 1978). Historical summaries of the concept can be found in Boring (1953) and Klausner (1965). Smith (1969), who coined the term “introspective behaviorism,” gives a definition which is very close to the one used in this volume: “conscious experience is an internal event about which one does do, directly, what one wants to do” (Smith 1969, p. 108). Otherwise, however, there is little overlap between the concept as developed here and that of either Smith or any other behaviorally oriented psychologist. The main difference is that my emphasis is on the subjective dynamics of experience, and on its phenomenological primacy. A fuller definition of consciousness will be provided in the later sections of this chapter.
Phenomenology. The term “phenomenological” is not used here to denote adherence to the tenets or methods of any particular thinker or school. It only means that the approach to the problem of studying experience is heavily influenced by the insights of Husserl (1962), Heidegger (1962, 1967), Sartre (1956), Merleau-Ponty (1962, 1964), and some of their translators into the social sciences, e.g., Natanson (1963), Gendlin (1962), Fisher (1969), Wann (1964), and Schutz (1962). Clear, short introductions to the phenomenology of Husserl are the books by Kohak (1978) and Kolakowski (1987). To follow this volume, however, there is no need to keep in mind any phenomenological assumption. The argument must stand on its own merits and be understood on its own terms. The same is true for information theory (see Wiener 1948 [1961]).
Dreaming. Stewart (1972) reports that the Sinoi of Malaysia learn to control their dreams, and thereby achieve unusual mastery over waking consciousness as well. If this is true (which seems doubtful), it is an interesting exception that goes toward proving the general rule—in other words, it means that by training attention one can control consciousness even in sleep (Csikszentmihalyi 1982a). One recent consciousness-expansion method has been trying to do just this. “Lucid dreaming” is an attempt to control thought processes in sleep (La Berge 1985).
Limits of consciousness. The first general statement about the number of bits that can be processed simultaneously was by Miller (1956). Orme (1969), on the basis of von Uexkull’s (1957) calculations, has figured that 1/18 of a second is the threshold of discrimination. Cognitive scientists who have treated the limitations of attention include Simon (1969, 1978), Kahneman (1973), Hasher & Zacks (1979), Eysenck (1982), and Hoffman, Nelson, & Houck (1983). Attentional demands made by cognitive processes are discussed by Neisser (1967, 1976), Treisman & Gelade (1980), and Treisman & Schmidt (1982). The attentional requirements of storing and recalling information from memory have been dealt with by Atkinson & Shiffrin (1968) and Hasher & Zacks (1979). But