What Is Positive Psychology? Essay Example

extensive understanding of mental illness and a language to describe the various pathologist that affect millions of people. Psychology should be more than a repair shop. Disease model isn't very valuable when it comes to promoting health and preventing illness. Psychologists know far less about mental health than they do about mental illness. Eliminating illness does not mean you are mentally healthy Positive Psychology Martin Seligman, in 1998 called for a shift in psychology from trying to undo the worst in human behavior to promoting the best in human behavior. Humanistic psychology criticizes the tendency of traditional psychology to focus on negatives. Humanistic psychologists saw human nature as basically positive, insisting that everyone is born with positive inner potential.

Humanistic psychologies believed that the goal of psychology should be to study and promote conditions that help people achieve productive and healthy lives. Received scientific respectability Positive psychology is partly a mosaic of research and theory from many different areas of psychology tied together by their focus on positive aspects of human behavior Health Psychology. Health psychologists have long suspected that negative emotions can make us sick and positive emotions can be beneficial. Only recently has a biological foundation been developed. Health threatening effects of stress, anger, resentment, anxiety and worry. Stress and negative emotions seem to suppress the immune system and reduce the ability to fight disease.

Positive emotions does the opposite of suppressing the immune system. Emotional expressiveness tends to be fairly consistent Temperament is known to influence how well a person copes with the stress and challenges of life. Researchers found a strong relationship between longevity and the expression of positive

emotion early in life. The average difference in life span was 10. 7 years Clinical Psychology. Many clinicians have begun to shift from the disease method toward a perspective that includes prevention of illness and promotion of positive mental health Developmental Psychology Examination of conditions that threaten healthy development. Research documenting the amazing resilience of ordinary people facing difficult life circumstances highlights a major theme of positive psychology, namely human strength.

Posttraumatic growth: positive growth can occur as a result of traumatic experiences like serious illness, loss of a loved one or a major accident or disability Survey Research and Subjective Well-Being * Public opinion polling has been a long-standing research tool for social psychologists. Diener defines happiness as subjective well being Measures of subjective well being (SWB) assess a person's level of life satisfaction and the frequency of positive and negative emotional experiences. Material success bears only a weak relationship to happiness. If money doesn't buy happiness what does? A lot of research in positive psychology is focused on traits such as self esteem, physical attractiveness, optimism an on states such as work situation, involvement in religion, number of friends, marital status and the quality of relationships. * Helps explain why some people are happier than others

Critical importance of satisfying social relationships and support from others for our health and happiness. Concepts of happiness differ in different places * Dark side of materialism. Religion has become an important topic within positive psychology because it is a significant foundation of well being for most people. Same with the idea of virtue. Acts of forgiveness and gratitude tend to increase life satisfaction for

both givers and recipients

Positive psychology: Assumptions, Goals, and Definitions * Pleasant life: reflects emphasis in positve psychology on understanding the determinants of happiness as a desired state "the good life". What life circumstances and personal qualities make people happy, content, and fulfilled. The engaged life: an aspect of happiness focused on active involvement in activities and relationships with others that express our talents and strengths and give meaning and purpose to our lives.

Leo Auffmann, listening to elderly people's gloomy and fatalistic conversations, insists that they should not dwell on such miserable topics. Douglas and his grandfather, passing by, suggest to Leo that he should make a Happiness Machine. After the conversing people laugh at this apparently absurd idea, Leo becomes determined to do just that. A brief scene of him returning to his family of six children ndicates his happiness at home, exemplified when his wife Lena asks, "Something's wrong? " after Leo expresses his desire to build a Happiness Machine. As Leo Auffmann pedals home we learn that he is a man who thinks about everything, and he decides that his Happiness Machine must help people deal with the changes in life that are difficult—growing up, getting old, and dying. When he gets home he is greeted by his six children, Saul, Marshall, Joseph, Rebecca, Ruth, and Naomi, and learns that they have ice cream to eat with him.

Savoring the ice cream with his family, Leo asks his wife Lena what she would think if he attempted to make a Happiness Machine. She answers with a question of her own: "Something's wrong? " Man's Search for Meaning Man's

Search for Meaning is a 1946 book by Viktor Frankl chronicling his experiences as a concentration camp inmate and describing his psychotherapeutic method of finding a reason to live. According to Frankl, the book intends to answer the question "How was everyday life in a concentration camp reflected in the mind of the average prisoner?Frankl's analysis of his experiences in the concentration camps, while Part Two introduces his ideas of meaning and his theory of logotherapy. It is the second-most widely read Holocaust book in the bookstore of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. According to a survey conducted by the Book-of-the-Month Club and the Library of Congress, Man's Search For Meaning belongs to a list of "the ten most influential books in [the United States]. " (New York Times, November 20, 1991).

At the time of the author's death in 1997, the book had sold 10 million copies in twenty-four languages. Personal Death Awareness Your Personal Death Awareness (hereafter, PDA) is a fluctuating phenomenon, moving up and down daily. Some days, you may act and think as though you are going to live forever. Other days the thought of your own death may seem millions of miles away. The purpose of this entire project is to ask you to raise your PDA, so that you can begin to perceive an entire range of choices about your life and death that you might not have been aware of before.