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Flow and the Foundations of Positive Psychology pp 1–20Cite as

Attention and the Holistic Approach to Behavior

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Abstract

The fate of “consciousness” as a scientific concept is one of the most ironic paradoxes in the history of psychology. Once the central issue, the very essence of what psychology was all about, it is nowadays a peripheral concern, an antiquated idea about as useful as ether and phlogiston are to physicists. According to Murphy and Kovach (1972, p. 51), consciousness “has been a storm center in psychology for a century. Some regard it as an unfortunate and superfluous assumption… Others regard consciousness as only one of many expressions of psychological reality; indeed many psychologists think that the recognition of a psychological realm far greater than the conscious realm is the great emancipating principle of all modem psychology.”

K. S. Pope & J. L. Singer (Eds.), The Stream of Consciousness (pp. 335–358). New York: Plenum © 1978 Plenum Publishing Corporation.

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Acknowledgments

The author wishes to thank Barbara Rubinstein and Ronald Graef for suggestions and criticism in the editing of the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Behavioral & Organizational Science, Claremont Graduate University, Claremont, CA, USA

    Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

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  1. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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Correspondence to Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi .

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Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2014). Attention and the Holistic Approach to Behavior. In: Flow and the Foundations of Positive Psychology. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9088-8_1

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