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science of production and consumption are justified because of the belief that they make life happier. But, Weber claimed, after this science was perfected it developed its own goals, based on the logic of production and consumption and not that of human happiness. At that point economic behavior ceases to be rational, because it is no longer guided by the goal that originally justified it. Weber’s argument applies to many other activities that after developing clear goals and rules become autonomous from their original purposes, and begin to be pursued for intrinsic reasons—because they are fun to do. This was recognized by Weber himself, who complained that capitalism, which originated as a religious vocation, had in time become a mere “sport” for entrepreneurs—and an “iron cage” for everyone else. See also Csikszentmihalyi & Rochberg-Halton (1981, chapter 9).

CHAPTER 9

This entire section to p. 198 draws heavily on interview transcripts made available to me by Professor Massimini. I translated the Italian answers into English.

The quote by Franz Alexander was cited in Siegel (1986, p. 1). Norman Cousins’s strategy for controlling his illness is described in his Anatomy of an Illness (1979).

“When a man knows…” is from Johnson’s Letters to Boswell, Sept. 19, 1777.

Stress. Hans Selye, who began studying the physiology of stress in 1934, defined it as the generalized result, whether mental or physical, of any demand on the body (1956 [1978]). An important breakthrough in the investigation of psychological effects of such demands was the development of a scale that attempts to measure their severity (Holmes & Rahe 1967). On this scale the highest stress is caused by “Death of spouse” with a value of 100; “Marriage” has a value of 50, and “Christmas” a value of 12. In other words, the impact of four Christmases is almost equal to the stress of getting married. It is to be noted that both negative and positive events can cause stress, since they both present “demands” one must adapt to.

Supports. Of the various resources that mitigate the effects of stressful events, social supports, or social networks, have been studied the most extensively (Lieberman et al. 1979). Family and friends often provide material help, emotional support, and needed information (Schaefer, Coyne, & Lazarus 1981). But even interest in other people seems to alleviate stress: “Those who have a concern for other people and concerns beyond the self have fewer stressful experiences, and stress has less effect on anxiety, depression, and hostility; they make more active attempts to cope with their problems” (Crandall 1984, p. 172).

Coping styles. The experience of stress is mediated by a person’s coping style. The same event might have positive or negative psychological outcomes, depending on the person’s inner resources. Hardiness is a term coined by Salvatore Maddi and Suzanne Kobasa to describe the tendency of certain people to respond to threats by transforming them into manageable challenges. The three main components of hardiness are commitment to one’s goals, a sense of being in control, and enjoyment of challenges (Kobasa, Maddi, & Kahn 1982). A similar term is Vaillant’s (1977) concept of “mature defense,” Lazarus’s concept of “coping” (Lazarus & Folkman 1984), and the concept of “personality strength” measured in German surveys by Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann (1983, 1985). All of these coping styles—hardiness, mature defenses, and transformational coping—share many characteristics with the autotelic personality trait described in this volume.

Courage. That people consider courage the foremost reason for admiring others emerged from the data of my three-generation family study when Bert Lyons analyzed it for his Ph.D. dissertation (1988).

Dissipative structures. For the meaning of this term in the natural sciences see Prigogine (1980).

Transformational skills in adolescence. One longitudinal study conducted with the ESM (Freeman, Larson, & Csikszentmihalyi 1986) suggests that older teenagers have just as many negative experiences with family,