The "Flow Experience" in Solitary Ordeals

Abstract

Csikszentmihalyi's (1975) concept of the "flow experience" describes a significant coping mechanism for people undergoing solitary ordeals. In fact, limited, confined, and spartan circumstances can be well-suited for the creation of flow experiences for those "nonself-conscious" individuals who do not dwell on themselves but, instead, try actively to become caught up in experiences in their limited worlds. Perhaps the problem many have in coping with adversity today is that they have such heightened awareness and concern with themselves as recipients of life's events rather than as agents that they are victims-in-potentia, inclined to be "hassled" rather than challenged by life's ordinary difficulties, including the widespread problem of loneliness.