Which is worse, having nothing but your own company, or putting up with other people? The next chapter is divided into two episodes, and in this one we focus on solitude, before turning our attention to the ordeal of other people next time. If only we had an only child who spent the whole of last year thriving in solitude, to deliver a masterclass in dealing with psychic entropy on your own. Great news, we have exactly that.

As we know from previously, avoiding psychic entropy by watching TV, taking drugs or having sex to "kill time" mostly does not lead to Flow experiences, but how can you order consciousness to avoid the chaos of feelings of loneliness? We discuss meditation, and James' updated time walking it off in London. We also imagine how a mosquito has sex, when this seems tenuously relevant in the moment.

Find all episodes of Private Practice Podcast and send us your (ordered) thoughts at www.privatepracticepodcast.net – I'm sure we will enjoy the Flow experience of thinking about your concise, considered and extraordinarily witty contributions.

'Flow' by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi claims to be 'The classic work on how to achieve happiness', although we think it's more like 'how to create states of purposeful complexity', which make for enjoyment, which can be interpreted as happiness. But obviously no one is going to write that on the cover of a book. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi spent over two decades looking scientifically at situations in which people from a variety of social and biological backgrounds report feelings of deep enjoyment. His studies revealed that what makes experience genuinely satisfying is a state of ordered concentration and complexity, which eliminates the psychic entropy that causes anxiety, and he called this 'Flow'.

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