The Componential Model and Its Discontents

This chapter presents an overview of contested and evolving understandings of flow as a collection of components or dimensions, and associated definitional difficulties, including debates as to whether flow is a continuum or an all-or-nothing phenomenon; disagreements as to both how many components constitute flow and how they inter-relate; divergent perspectives with respect to core features of flow; and acknowledgement that existing models and measures might capture/conflate more than one psychological state. The discussion in this chapter initiates an argument for a reworked conceptualisation of flow that simultaneously tightens its focus on the significance of an imbalance in skills versus challenge and recalibrates the relationship between flow and control. Developing and presenting a ‘dimensional-depth’ model of flow that incorporates and integrates multiple and divergent perspectives even within componential constructs of flow, this chapter lays the groundwork for further conceptual reformulation through consideration of channel, process and dynamic understandings of flow in chapter “Channel and Process Models of Flow”.