PSY336H1 Chapter Notes - Chapter N/A: Teleonomy, Negentropy
Document Summary
Optimal experience: psychological studies of flow of consciousness. The flow experience and it"s significance for human psychology. Reductionist theory, which speaks of urges such as hunger driving actions, fails to account for the phenomenon of the self. It can"t account for those times when actions seem to contradict these forces. The consciousness is composed of 3 functional subsystems: Attention, which takes notice of information available. The content of the consciousness is experience, or the sum of all the information that enters it, and its interpretation by awareness. Finitude is one of the most important characteristics of attention. We can only focus on one thing at a time. Once the self becomes established in consciousness, its main goal is to ensure its own survival. Each experience is evaluated with how well it fits the goals. If anything contradicts the consciousness, it can create disorder in it and threaten the integrity of the self.
