Flow, Episode 3 – Enjoy

No pleasure. No happiness. Only enjoyment. Creating new order in consciousness is the subject of this episode, in which we reject the symbolic goal of happiness, pushed by the publishers of 'Flow'. We look at cancelling activities which provide only pleasure, most of which are found guilty of obstructing Flow, concentrating instead on the pursuit of complex enjoyment. Since the Flow experience is not inherently "good" and the super-ego is not always the dominant force in conflict with the shadow, we consider Mihaly's criminal friends and the enjoyment they get from robbing a house. Once Dan has dismissed all social media as mindless pleasure, James makes the case for a wonderfully flowing time there. And if you don't fancy a life of crime or phone addiction, why not try life-long education? Something for all the family. This episode was recorded with James in the Paradise Private Practice in Montpellier, in front of a large jar of jam, and Dan in the London Private Practice. Twenty minutes before the end of the episode Dan says, "So, to summarise…" and this is followed by James finally getting into what he actually wanted to talk about, so do stay to the end…Find all episodes of Private Practice Podcast and send us your thoughts at www.privatepracticepodcast.net – I'm sure we will appreciate your concise, considered and extraordinarily witty contributions.'Flow' by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi claims to be 'The classic work on how to achieve happiness', although we think it's more like 'how to create states of purposeful complexity', which make for enjoyment, which can be interpreted as happiness. But obviously no one is going to write that on the cover of a book. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi spent over two decades looking scientifically at situations in which people from a variety of social and biological backgrounds report feelings of deep enjoyment. His studies revealed that what makes experience genuinely satisfying is a state of ordered concentration and complexity, which eliminates the psychic entropy that causes anxiety, and he called this 'Flow'. This episode is based on Chapter 3 of the book. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.