A Life in Flow

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was an editor of the Society section (2016-2020). He is a philosopher, essayist, and editor at Radio TOK FM. He is the author of “Clashes with Freud. Myths, Pitfalls and Temptations of Psychotherapy” (2013)."

Iconic psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi tells Tomasz Stawiszyński about his recipe for a particular kind of happiness—a satisfaction with what you do here and now.

The flow starts on Saturday, 30th November 2019 at noon (local time) in Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles. That’s when I get a message from Zuza Lewandowska, my colleague from Przekrój who is responsible for foreign relations. The message is short. “Mihály Csíkszentmihályi will meet you after all. Be at his place in Clermont tomorrow at 2pm. Good luck.”

Csíkszentmihályi, one of the most important contemporary psychologists, had been having health problems for the last few months. Just when it seemed that everything was arranged and that we would soon have our conversation, the interview was unfortunately called off.

I had other appointments in California, and I’d already bought the tickets, so I went to Los Angeles anyway, travelling with my wife, Cveta Dimitrova. We were hoping quietly that Mihály would get better after all. And he did.

We arrive on time. Clermont is a small town about forty kilometers from Los Angeles. The house sits among green gardens where lemon and orange trees grow. Izabela, Mihály’s wife, opens the door. It turns out she’s from Poland. After the liberation of the Dachau concentration camp in April 1945, she and her parents emigrated to America. She speaks excellent Polish, with an incredibly clear accent, but still uses the pre-war syntax. However, she flatly refuses a long conversation in Polish, for she claims that the language makes her uncomfortable.

Then Mihály joins us. Both he and Izabela are so friendly and open that after a quarter of an hour it seems we’re all old friends. They show us photo albums and tell us about their sons – Christopher the artist, and Mark the sinology professor at the University of Berkeley.

Before we sit down with Mihály to talk about his

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Tomasz Stawiszyński:

was an editor of the Society section (2016-2020). He is a philosopher, essayist, and editor at Radio TOK FM. He is the author of “Clashes with Freud. Myths, Pitfalls and Temptations of Psychotherapy” (2013)."

Publish date: 20.03.2020

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Tomasz Stawiszyński:

was an editor of the Society section (2016-2020). He is a philosopher, essayist, and editor at Radio TOK FM. He is the author of “Clashes with Freud. Myths, Pitfalls and Temptations of Psychotherapy” (2013)."

How should we live our lives? We should try to do things that make sense, that are fair and just, and are not governed by emotions. How good are we at it? Well, often we’re not very good at all. But the very fact that we can make this judgement implies that we have the capacity to do better – says Paul Bloom, a Canadian psychologist from Yale, whose book Against Empathy caused quite a stir.

There’s nothing more inspiring and invigorating than an idea that goes against the grain of common sense – provided that it is well argued. Such ideas used to be a domain of philosophers. Take any book on the history of philosophy and you’ll find a flamboyant conga line of outsiders, eccentrics and iconoclasts, stretching for 2500 years. They all had the courage to “think against themselves”, to use the phrase of one of them, eminent 20th century French essayist of Romanian origins Emil Cioran.

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A Cure for a Lack of Reason

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