MOC : [[PSYCHOLOGIE]] - [[DÉVELOPPEMENT PERSONNEL]] Date : 2021-05-09 Auteur : [[Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi]] *** ## La conscience de soi disparaît dans le flow Dans le flow, on perd la partie consciente de soi mais on se connecte plus à soi. We have seen earlier that when an activity is thoroughly engrossing, there is not enough attention left over to allow a person to consider either the past or the future, or any other temporarily irrelevant stimuli. One item that disappears from awareness deserves special mention, because in normal life we spend so much time thinking about it: our own self. Hundreds of times every day we are reminded of the vulnerability of our self. And every time this happens psychic energy is lost trying to restore order to consciousness. But in flow there is no room for self-scrutiny. Because enjoyable activities have clear goals, stable rules, and challenges well matched to skills, there is little opportunity for the self to be threatened. The absence of the self from consciousness does not mean that a person in flow has given up the control of his psychic energy, or that she is unaware of what happens in her body or in her mind. In fact the opposite is usually true. When people first learn about the flow experience they sometimes assume that lack of self-consciousness has something to do with a passive obliteration of the self, a “going with the flow” Southern California-style. But in fact the optimal experience involves a very active role for the self. **So loss of self-consciousness does not involve a loss of self, and certainly not a loss of consciousness, but rather, only a loss of consciousness of the self.** What slips below the threshold of awareness is the concept of self, the information we use to represent to ourselves who we are. This growth of the self occurs only if the interaction is an enjoyable one, that is, if it offers nontrivial opportunities for action and requires a constant perfection of skills.