Talk:Autotelic

I suggest moving the material relating to Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi to the existing entry for that author, as the word autotelic does not have specific association with that author's work. I have edited the page to remove the suggestion that Csikszentmihalyi coined the word, which his recorded in 1901.

The entry Autotelic is linked to from Roman Jakobson (poetic - autotelic), but Jakobson's work has nothing to do with Csikszentmihalyi's, as far as I can tell.

Renowned autotelics
I have removed this section, as it was basically unsourced - the only source provided did not use the word 'autotelic'. We shouldn't mention people on this page unless a reliable source specifically uses that word to describe them. Robofish (talk) 13:01, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

Alexander Technique
Removed irrelevant no-citation:


 * Practitioners of the Alexander Technique tend to experience increased autotelic behaviour. They spend time focusing on the "end", so as to lose sight of the "means-whereby", making it easier to achieve the goal.

A philosophical concept too?
Isn't "autotelic" or "autotelian" [gk. autos + teleos - self + goal] a philosopical concept too (Artistotle), for a state of harmony between ends and means, or of activities pursued for its own sake and not for some external purpose or goal - more or less synonymous with the concept of "flow"?--83.108.21.61 (talk) 09:58, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Happiness
I removed the last paragraph talking about happiness. It seems like a tempting thing to conflate autotelic activity with happiness, but those are two conceptually different things. Happiness may involve autotelic activities, but they should not be confused. Wikikrax (talk) 07:39, 8 January 2018 (UTC)

Reads like a dictionary entry
This article reads much more like a dictionary entry than an encyclopedia article. I'm not sure that it needs to exist. Would be helpful if someone could clarify why this deserves to be an article. Perhaps it should be merged with ether the pages for Motivation or Csikszentmihalyi's work. Handpigdad (talk) 01:56, 22 June 2023 (UTC)