Staff Report
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, an authority on the psychology of creativity, will present a free lecture titled "The Creative Person and the Creative Context," today.
Csikszentmihalyi, director of the Quality of Life Research Center at Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, Calif., specializes in creativity and innovation, ethics in business and professions, flow and motivation, leadership, schools-to-work transition and worker satisfaction in his research of the source of individual creativity in society.
He is credited with inventing the concept of "flow" as a metaphorical description of the rare mental state associated with feelings of optimal satisfaction and fulfillment.
The lecture is part of the Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar Program, sponsored by the University Honors Program.
According to its Web site, Phi Beta Kappa is an honorary society that is dedicated to the recognition of intellectual capacities and to an education in the liberal arts and sciences. It strives to encourage intellectual interests and understanding -- not merely knowledge.
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The mission of the University Honors Program is twofold: first, to recruit and attract to the University of New Mexico, students with high academic potential; second, to provide unique opportunities for intensive interdisciplinary and cross-cultural liberal education.
Csikszentmihalyi, who is regarded as the architect of the notion of a subconscious flow in creativity; people enter a zone state when fully absorbed in activity in which they lose their sense of time and have feelings of great satisfaction.
Co-founder of the "Positive Psychology" movement in the American Psychological Association, Csikszentmihalyi also wrote several books including: Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, and his most recent work Good Business: Leadership, Flow and the Making of Meaning.
He is also credited with writing 185 scholarly journal articles.
Csikszentmihalyi earned his doctorate at the University of Chicago and is a professor emeritus of human development.
