The character arc of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
A life drawn by Character Arc from the public record
Born on 29 September 1934 in Fiume, now Rijeka, the third son of a career diplomat at the Hungarian consulate there. Between then and his death sit the killing of one half brother in the Siege of Budapest when he was ten and the sending of another to labour camps in Siberia, a move to Rome, a father who resigned rather than work for the new regime and a family stripped of its citizenship, a restaurant opened to earn a living, school abandoned, emigration to America at twenty two, night work to pay for study, two degrees at Chicago, and the naming of flow. The line below draws the whole story.
Drag along the line to move, pinch or use the buttons to look closer. Tap the line to pluck it, or any mark for its card. Drawn from the public record of his life; the sources are at the foot of the page.
Who was Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi?
He lost a brother, a country and a passport. Then he studied happiness.
He was born in Fiume, now Rijeka, the third son of a career diplomat at the Hungarian consulate there. In 1944, when he was ten, one of his two older half brothers was killed in the Siege of Budapest, and the other was sent to labour camps in Siberia. Decades later the two surviving brothers were reunited in Budapest, which is a sentence that carries about forty years inside it.
His father was appointed ambassador to Italy shortly after the war and the family moved to Rome. When the political situation in Hungary changed in 1949, his father resigned rather than work for the new regime. The response was to expel him and strip the family of their Hungarian citizenship. To earn a living, his father opened a restaurant in Rome, and the boy dropped out of school to help.
At twenty two he emigrated to the United States, working nights to support himself while studying at the University of Chicago. He took his first degree there in 1959 and his doctorate in 1965. He later headed the psychology department at that same university, and the department of sociology and anthropology at another college, and became Distinguished Professor of Psychology and Management at Claremont Graduate University.
What he is known for is flow, a state he recognised, named and then spent decades researching: complete absorption in an activity for its own sake, where the ego falls away and time changes. His formulation is that people are happiest in that state. He described nine component conditions for reaching it. He is also noted for work on happiness and creativity more broadly, and a former president of the American psychological association named him a founding figure in positive psychology.
He died on 20 October 2021 of cardiac arrest, at his home in Claremont, California, at eighty seven.
The moments
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's timeline.
The 1940s
One brother killed, one taken
Setback, and it changed everything. Ten years old, and both older brothers gone in the same year.
The family loses everything
Setback, and it changed everything. His father resigned on principle, and they took the country away.
The 1950s
He leaves school
Setback, and it changed everything. An ambassador running a restaurant, and his son out of school to help.
Stay in Rome, or go
Crossroads, decided.
The paths laid out: go to America, taken, or stay with the restaurant. He took a degree in 1959 and a doctorate in 1965, and went on to name flow.
America at twenty two
Milestone, and it changed everything. A new continent at twenty two, paying for it on the night shift.
A first degree
Milestone, and it changed his direction. The school dropout from Rome, with a Chicago degree.
The 1960s
A doctorate at Chicago
Milestone, and it changed everything. Doctorate finished, in the country he had arrived in with nothing.
The 1970s
He names it flow
Milestone, and it changed everything. He found the state everybody has and nobody had named.
The 1980s
Head of the department
Milestone, and it changed his direction. Running two departments, in two different subjects.
The 1990s
Flow, the book
Milestone, and it changed everything. The book that put one word into everybody's vocabulary.
A founder of positive psychology
Milestone, and it changed his direction. One of the people who made happiness a research subject.
The 2020s
He dies at eighty seven
Milestone, and it changed everything. At home, at eighty seven, seventy years after the passport was taken.
The word he chose is now in ordinary speech, used by people who do not know his name. What he set moving is a name for the best hours anybody has, found and studied by a man who had every excuse to spend his life on the worst ones instead.
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Sources
- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, English Wikipedia biography.
- University of Chicago records for his 1959 degree and 1965 doctorate.
- His own 1990 book, as summarised there, for the definition and components of flow.
- The politics of the period are left unargued on this page. What it records is what happened to his family.