{"id":780,"date":"2026-02-20T16:39:44","date_gmt":"2026-02-20T21:39:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/elena.holmgren.ca\/?page_id=780"},"modified":"2026-05-20T14:08:50","modified_gmt":"2026-05-20T18:08:50","slug":"research-2","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/elena.holmgren.ca\/?page_id=780","title":{"rendered":"Research"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Thesis<\/strong><\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Papers<\/strong><\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Invited Chapters<\/strong><\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Work in Progress<\/strong><\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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The Phenomenology of Flow, Well-Being, Autotelic and Self-Transcendent Experience<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

My dissertation develops a Husserl- and Merleau-Ponty-inspired phenomenological account of the flow state, which is a state of absorption in effortless, spontaneous action. Also, flow is autotelic (insofar as action is experienced as its own reward) and self-transcendent (insofar as it involves an experience of oneness and of a dissolution of the boundaries between the self, other agents and the world).\u00a0My dissertation is built around two puzzles that I argue are revealed but unsolved by psychological accounts of flow:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First, psychological accounts of flow present the self in flow as having a maximally enhanced agency, while at the same time ceasing to experience itself as the sole or primary author of its actions. Second, I introduce what I call \u201cthe puzzle of autotelic experience\u201d: autotelic experience appears as both intrinsically valuable (since the experience is its own reward) and as valuable only insofar as it orients the subject to a self-transcendent source of value. My phenomenological account aims to dissolve these puzzles by describing the invariant experiential structures that are conditions for the possibility of flow states. read more<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Papers<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Paper on the Phenomenology of Collective Agency in Group Flow<\/strong> (Revised and Resubmitted)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Abstract coming soon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Paper on Altered Self-Consciousness in Flow States<\/a><\/strong> (title removed for blind review)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I argue that flow states are not cases of loss <\/em>of self-consciousness (as is commonly argued) but are rather instances of altered<\/em> self-consciousness. I give a Husserl-inspired phenomenological account of the experiential structures that jointly constitute this altered and diminished sense of self-consciousness. read more<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Invited Chapters<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Circling Around the Transcendental: the Conscious Subject as the Limit of Nature in Raymond Tallis\u2019 Philosophy and in Phenomenology<\/a><\/strong> – Forthcoming in The Palgrave Companion to the Philosophical Humanism of Raymond Tallis, <\/em>New York: Palgrave Macmillan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This chapter reconstructs and critically assesses Raymond Tallis\u2019 critique of scientific naturalist accounts of consciousness, which for all their diversity share a basic commitment to explaining consciousness by reifying it. My aim is to bolster Tallis\u2019 critique of naturalism by drawing on the theoretical resources of Husserlian phenomenology. read more<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Works in Progress<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Experience For Its Own Sake: Towards a Phenomenology of Well-Being<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this paper, I illustrate how phenomenology can bring greater clarity and precision to our folk concept of well-being. I introduce the task of understanding well-being as a phenomenological problem by explaining how (1) states of well-being must be individuated in terms of their invariant experiential structures before they can become targets of empirical description and explanation, and (2) the inherent normativity of occurrent states of well-being can be elucidated through phenomenological description.  read more<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Distorting Agency: A Phenomenological Critique of Active Inference Accounts of Action in Flow<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this paper, I use phenomenology to show how recent Active Inference accounts of the flow state fail to individuate the intentional and temporal structures that constitute skilled agency in flow. I then argue that their failure in this regard is indicative of more general issues with the fundamental assumptions Predictive Processing accounts have concerning the structural principles that individuate cognitive agents. read more<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Imagining the Brain: A Phenomenology of the Neuroscientific Imagination<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This paper gives a phenomenological account of scientific imagination and visualization which focuses on how neuroscientists use diagrams to understand the brain as a multi-level, hierarchically-organized structure. read more<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Early stages work-in-progress:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n