Chapter 8: Sociocultural Influences On Flow In Schools

Anthropologists, cultural psychologists, and other scholars of culture have shown many ways in which cultures differ, as well as differences in the ways people in different cultures make meaning and adapt to their environment. Nevertheless, cultural differences have historically been assumed to be the details of an underlying universality of human nature, including both biological and psychological similarities shared by all humans (Csikszentmihalyi &Asakawa, 2016). Especially to the extent that Freud is accredited as its father, the field of psychology was predicated on a distinctive theory of the human mind and universal psychic structure (i.e., id, ego, and superego), and psychoanalysis was prescribed for treating pathologies arising from universally experienced conflicts (e.g., the Oedipus complex, repression, etc.) in the human psyche (Freud, 1999).