We value your privacy

This site uses essential cookies to function. With your consent, we also use cookies to understand which organizations visit our website. Read our Cookie Policy

Positive Psychology

Positive psychology complements traditional psychological approaches to mental health. The stance of positive psychology is to study ‘what makes life worth living.’ Practitioners of positive psychology focus on interventions that develop a sense of optimism, and that foster positive attitudes (toward oneself, one’s subjective experiences, and life events). Positive psychology in its current implementation was given a boost by Martin Seligman’s presidential address given to the American Psychological Association in 1999. He proposed that although contemporary psychology successfully focused on curing mental illness it largely neglected other historical goals of helping everyone to lead more productive and fulfilling lives, and identifying and nurturing talents. Other psychologists throughout the 20th century have also aspired to help psychology focus on aspects other than dysfunction:

“The science of psychology has been far more successful on the negative than on the positive side. It has revealed to us much about man’s shortcomings, his illness, his sins, but little about his potentialities, his virtues, his achievable aspirations, or his full psychological height. It is as if psychology has voluntarily restricted itself to only half its rightful jurisdiction, and that, the darker, meaner half.” (Maslow, 1954).
Read more
+ Show all problems

What Is Positive Psychology / Positive Psychotherapy?

Assumptions of Positive Psychology / Positive Psychotherapy

  • Psychopathology is the result of the thwarting of people’s inherent capacity for growth, fulfillment, and happiness.

  • Positive emotions and strengths are as authentic and real as symptoms and disorders.

  • Therapy is a place where hope, optimism, gratitude, compassion, contentment, and emotional and social intelligence are given as much prominence as resentment, frustration, jealousy, anxiety, and competition.

  • Authentic happinessis composed of the pleasant life, the engaged life, and the meaningful life (Seligman, 2002).

  • “Build what’s strong” is as valid as “Fix what’s wrong” (Duckworth, Steen, & Seligman, 2005).

Procedures and Techniques of Positive Psychology / Positive Psychotherapy

Positive psychology interventions include (adapted from Seligman, Rashid, & Parks, 2006):

  • identification and building of signature strengths

  • cultivation of signature strengths and positive emotions

  • expression of good and bad memories, writing tasks

  • forgiveness tasks including writing a letter of forgiveness to a transgressor

  • cultivation of gratitude

  • satisficing (accepting ‘good enough’) instead of maximizing

  • cultivating optimism and hope

  • cultivating love and attachment

  • savoring and making things last

  • giving the gift of time

References

  • Duckworth, A. L., Steen, T. A., & Seligman, M. E. P. (2005). Positive psychology in clinical practice. Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, 1, 629–651.

  • Maslow, A. H. (1954). Motivation and personality. New York: Harper.

  • Seligman, M. E. P. (2002). Authentic happiness: Using the new positive psychology to realize your potential for lasting fulfillment. New York: Free Press.

  • Seligman, M. E. P., Rashid, T., & Parks, A. C. (2006). Positive psychotherapy. American Psychologist,61, 774–788.

Links to external resources

Psychology Tools makes every effort to check external links and review their content. However, we are not responsible for the quality or content of external links and cannot guarantee that these links will work all of the time.

Please login to view our external resources.

Product

Company

Support

Legal