adj

• (psychology, of an activity, process, person or personality) Containing its own meaning or purpose; deriving meaning and purpose from within.
  "1988, Antonella Della Fave, Fausto Massimini, 12: Modernization and the changing contexts in work and leisure, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Isabella Selega Csikszentmihalyi (editors), Optimal Experience: Psychological Studies of Flow in Consciousness, Cambridge University Press, 1992, Paperback, page 208, It is possible that these three people have jobs that are more autotelic than those of the rest of this group; that they have more responsibility, more initiative and challenge at their workplace than is usual for employees of their type."
• (art, of a work of art or literature) Not motivated by anything beyond itself; thematically self-contained.
  "“Running Water Music II” represents a contemporary version of the autotelic poem, freer than its modernist predecessors to assert connections, celebrate openly, declare connections between self and world, but bound by semantic and imagistic frames that derive from a single source."