He ponders human happiness and the vexing questions of creativity, which may explain the recent state of his desk: Scattered books, papers, pens, pink note sheets and an olive ashtray full of snuffed butts cluttered the large semicircle. From a distance, the desk resembled a painter’s palette smeared with color and toil.
From this daunting pile, University of Chicago professor Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (pronounced ME-high CHICK-sent-me-high-ee) plucked a plum–the Sept. 2 issue of Newsweek. The magazine pegged him as “a favorite author these days” of President Clinton, who became a fan of his 1990 book “Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience.”
“That was a surprise,” said Csikszentmihalyi, 62, a soft-spoken man of Hungarian descent known as “Mike” to friends and colleagues. “When Jimmy Johnson said he read `Flow’ to prepare for the 1993 Super Bowl, that sold a lot of copies. Of course, now he’s not doing so well in Miami.”
But Clinton did get re-elected, and perhaps Johnson hasn’t read the professor’s latest book. In “Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention” (HarperCollins), Csikszentmihalyi examines the creative lives of nearly 100 people, all leaders in their respective fields, almost all lifetime achievers over 60. The interviewees run the gamut from actor Edward Asner to Nobel Prize-winning physicist Rosalyn Yalow.
It took more than four years to lay the groundwork for “Creativity.” Of the 275 people contacted for interviews, a few sent back colorful rejections. Composer George Ligeti’s secretary replied, “He is creative and, because of this, totally overworked.” Photographer Richard Avedon scrawled a single sentence: “Sorry–too little time left!”
Those who did participate conformed to some unexpected patterns. In many cases, “They either had parents who were university professors and artists, or they were miserable or lost their parents early,” Csikszentmihalyi said. “What’s missing is the huge middle ground.”
Likewise, there wasn’t a mad genius or tortured artist in the bunch. If anything, most of the subjects led normal, happy or almost routine lives outside of work. That hardly seems to surprise Csikszentmihalyi. “I don’t believe for a moment that creativity is linked to mental illness,” he asserted. “If you become addicted or depressed, you lose it.”
More than just the age and stature of the subjects sets this book apart from the creativity guides flooding the market these days. Here, Csikszentmihalyi insists that most people use the term “creative” too liberally. Part-time painters, hobbyists or hot-shot music students might be unique or “personally creative.” But when it comes to what he calls “creativity with a capital C,” what counts is the person’s impact on society, he argues.
Using that litmus test, who gets dubbed “Creative”? Only a select few: “individuals like Leonardo, Edison, Picasso or Einstein, (who) have changed our culture in some important respect,” Csikszentmihalyi writes. “They are the creative ones without qualifications . . . and the persons included in my study belong to this group.”
He acknowledged that this definition might sound elitist. “I know this book is going to upset a lot of people,” Csikszentmihalyi said. “People are going to say, `I know what creativity is; my kids are creative, they fingerpaint.’ If you want to call that creativity, sure, but the word loses its meaning. I’m trying to reclaim some of its specificity.”
The crowded lifeboat
But what if, far from the halls of academia, a sports team rewrites the playbook? Csikszentmihalyi recalled watching the 1988 Seoul Summer Olympics, when a TV announcer praised the Canadian synchronized swimming team.
“He said they were the most creative team in the Olympics,” Csikszentmihalyi said. “At first I said, `What’s this hogwash?’ I thought it was such a dumb sport.”
But Csikszentmihalyi swam a few mental laps. He thought: Value judgments aside, synchronized swimming is an organized sport, with its own system of rules and moves. A team comes along, and with a few twists on some old patterns, develops a novel routine. The judges award high scores; some swimmers stand back in awe, while the rest take mental notes, with an eye to copy this new thing they see.
The sport changes, peers recognize the achievement–that, in a word, is Creativity. “It’s intriguing, good and doesn’t break any of the conditions that people think are necessary for this event to be pleasing,” he said.
Still, that argument might not prove much comfort to all those parents who tack junior’s scribblings on the fridge, or the veterans of countless open mike nights and poetry slams. Are they, to borrow from Professor Mike’s example, just swimming in circles?
“The problem is that in the second half of the 20th Century, we have lost faith in so many things,” he said. “Creativity has become the last refuge of feeling good about being human. It’s like the lifeboat that’s overloaded with everything, and it’s sinking.”
A product of war
Creativity and psychology have absorbed Csikszentmihalyi since childhood. Growing up in Europe, he saw the unfolding horrors of World War II, while adults around him cloaked themselves in denial.
His father, Alfred, was a Hungarian consul in Fiume, Italy (now part of Croatia). In September 1944, as the Russians advanced on Budapest, he ordered Mihaly, his mother and two sisters to flee to Venice, where he was waiting.
Some relatives tried to persuade them to stay put. They argued, among other things, that the mosquitoes in Venice were terrible during the fall, “and that the theater season had not started yet, so why were we going?” Csikszentmihalyi recalled. “This was even as the guns were blazing around the city.”
Mihaly and his immediate family boarded the train. Minutes after it crossed the Danube into Austria, the Russians blew up the bridge. As winter approached, his grandfather and other relatives who remained behind perished during the Russian siege and eventual occupation.
“I really got struck by how irrational it all was,” Csikszentmihalyi said. “The violence, the denial really made me want to understand how people thought and led their lives.”
Eventually, his family settled in Rome. After the communists took over Hungary in 1948, his father quit the foreign service and opened a restaurant, Il Piccolo Budapest (The Little Budapest), visited by the likes of Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, the Queen of Persia and King Farouk. Mihaly waited tables there in the summer and spent his teenage years working odd jobs from foreign correspondent to movie poster painter.
Short stories, painting and poetry captivated Mihaly during his younger years. He might well have pursued the artist’s life himself; in 1962, he sold a story of his wartime experiences to The New Yorker. “I was always interested in the artistic way of viewing reality,” he said.
A turning point
But it was another event a decade earlier that helped decide his adult career. In 1951, 17-year-old Mihaly was in Zurich on a ski vacation when he heard about a free lecture by Swiss psychologist Carl Jung. “It was about the confusion that Europe was falling into that resulted in World War II. It got me to thinking that this (psychology) was one way of understanding” how adults had behaved during the war, he said.
He began reading Jung’s books, and five years later came to America to study psychology. He took the train from New York to Chicago, arriving with only $1.25 in his pocket.
He worked the night shift at the former Sherman House and enrolled at the University of Illinois’ Navy Pier campus, where he met Isabella Selega, a native of Poland and a survivor of the German concentration camp at Dachau.
The two wed in 1961, and four years later Selega edited her husband’s doctoral thesis for the University of Chicago. The project paved the way for a lifetime of exploring “what makes life worth living,” as Csikszentmihalyi calls it.
While most of his fellow students were engrossed in neuroses, psychoses and rodents in mazes, he decided to study a group of 35 Art Institute students. For the one-time artist, it was familiar turf. For the budding psychologist, it proved a turning point.
“What struck me by looking at artists at work was their tremendous focus on the work, this enormous involvement, this forgetting of time and body,” Csikszentmihalyi said. “It wasn’t justified by expectation of rewards, like, `Aha, I’m going to sell this painting.’ I wanted to know, `Hey, what’s going on here?’ “
The flow and creativity
Csikszentmihalyi coined the term “flow” to describe what he saw. “The obvious parallels that came up were children playing and athletes performing,” he said. “There was no good reason to expend that energy except that people enjoyed the activity.”
Though he discovered and greatly expanded on flow–his 1990 book is available in a dozen languages–creativity was the original focus of his doctoral study. The new book, he said, brings everything back full circle.
“It’s 180 degrees different from flow,” Csikszentmihalyi said. “For flow, it doesn’t matter what anybody else thinks. You know when you have it. But I don’t think creativity is the same thing. It adds something to culture and society.”
That Csikszentmihalyi has added to the study of psychology is hardly a subject of debate among his peers. “He’s changed the way people in the field think about creativity,” said Howard Gardner, a psychologist at Harvard University and an expert in learning and intelligence. “He’s studied enough creative people to know what really makes them tick, what motivates them and how they lead their lives.”
Sometimes, the accolades come from less expected places. Poet Anthony Hecht, a favorite of the professor’s for his balance of strength and sensitivity, penned these lines to celebrate the completion of “Creativity”:
“An Oprhic calling it is, one that invites
Responsories, a summons to lute-led
Nature, as morning’s cinnabar east ignites
And the instinctive sunflower turns its head.”
Does Csikszentmihalyi consider himself creative, by his own definition? “Like everybody else I do, but whether I am or not remains to be seen,” he said. “It depends on how useful these ideas are.”
He added: “I was always interested in the artistic way of viewing reality. I started out as a painter.”
SOME CREATIVE SUGGESTIONS
In his book “Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention,” author Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi dedicates his final chapter to suggestions for making life “more vivid, more enjoyable, more rewarding.” These include:
Try to be surprised by something every day. “Life is nothing more than a stream of experiences–the more widely and deeply you swim in it, the richer your life will be.”
Wake up in the morning with a specific goal to look forward to. “Creative individuals don’t have to be dragged out of bed; they are eager to start the day. This is not because they are cheerful, enthusiastic types. . . . But they believe there is something meaningful to accomplish each day.”
Make time for reflection and relaxation. “It is important to schedule times in the day, the week and the year just to take stock of your life. . . . New ideas and conclusions will emerge in your consciousness anyway–and the less you try to direct the process, the more creative they are likely to be.”
