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「Research Paper」The theory of "flow" &Art


I updated the paper title to How jewelry making can be considered as a therapeutic tool for childhood trauma? In order to prove whether this idea is reasonable, I need at least three theoretical to support. With the help of kimberley, I learned that there is a theory called "Flow", which can be an argument, so I started to investigate "Flow".



The founder of the theory of flow is Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. In psychology, mobility refers to the state of mind. Its main behavior is to focus on activities. People are always able to enter this immersive state, no matter where they are.


Csikszentmihalyi (1992), a worker named Rico repeated the machinery work more than a hundred times every day in the factory, and this job had lasted for five years. This seems to be a tedious task. However, in an interview, Rico claimed that he surprisingly enjoyed this process because he was able to find endless new interests and goals in the repeating action. Csikszentmihalyi (1992) noted that when a person involuntarily devotes his attention to achieve personal goals, such a state or experience is called the flow experience. Therefore, the authors analyzed that this concentration helps people eliminating negative thoughts in life, and the flow experience has a unique contribution to people's subjective well-being.



I think that art creating is the same as other creative activities like jewelry making which are able to help people enter the state of the flow experience. In their review article (Reynolds et al., 2006), they mentioned that when artists or participants were engaged in any artistic or handicraft activities, such as textile, pottery, painting and collage, they enjoyed the challenge of immersive and creative art. In their analysis of cancer women who are doing creative activities, they found that the flow of experience in the art creation process temporarily eliminates the invasive minds of disease and mortality, patients can transfer their attention away from pain and other symptoms. Thereby the flow of experience enhances subjective well-being and reduces some of the stress caused by cancer.


Reference:



Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1992) Flow : the psychology of happiness. London: Rider.


Reynolds, F., Prior, S. (2006) 'Creative Adventures and Flow in Art-Making: A Qualitative Study of Women Living with Cancer', British Journal of Occupational Therapy, 69(6), pp. 255-262.

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