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Positive Psychology Introduction: Positive Psychology and its Main Prerequisites In the mid-twentieth century the theory of self-actualization was developed in the U. S. It became the key element of the humanistic psychology. At the time, humanistic psychology proclaimed itself as the third branch of psychology, opposed to behaviorism and psychoanalysis. By that time the U. S.
won World War II and became economic and military superpower that determined the development of the world policy and economy to a relatively great extent. In the first half of the twentieth century many scientists, writers, musicians were forced to emigrate to the U. S. from European countries. In its turn, it allowed the U.
S. to occupy the leading position in the fields of culture, art, and science. Economic reforms under Roosevelt's governance significantly improved living standards of the U. S. citizens and provided them with a possibility to owe the private property, to obtain appropriate education, and to participate in the entrepreneurship. Scientific discoveries along with the adoption of new technologies in the industry and agriculture resulted in revolutionary changes.
The demand in intellectual labor has increased significantly. In its turn, it required the more developed educational system and talented individuals. These objective factors gave rise to demand for a scientific theory able to describe the perspectives of personality development and successful growth, along with the methods of achieving success in the real world. This theory had to replace the previous theories (mostly represented by philosophy and religion). It is also necessary to note that traditional religions along with the ideals of asceticism, submission, and resignation that examined the objective reality in the capacity of a certain pass-through stage on the way to the real transcendent world were not in the lead. The country of emigrants has always been attractive for those people who strived for liberty to make true their own idea, the individualists relying upon their own forces but not the divine mercy.
Many researchers consider these facts to be conductive to the rapid development of the cult of personal liberty and success in the U. S. In its turn, the range of problems related to the personality growth, development and self-realization became the integral part of the intellectual landscape of the U. S. All these facts and events inevitably have found the reflection in the U. S.
psychology. Before XIX century, psychology was the part of religious or philosophical studies (Haworth, 2004). Further, psychology became an individual discipline and was singled out in an individual branch of knowledge. It claimed for the status of positive science, therefore, it started to examine the individual as the object of the research. By doing this, positive psychologists shifted the focus from intrinsic values to the group or extrinsic properties of the object. It allowed the scientists to adhere to the mask of observers.
The psychologists received the opportunity to provide scientific, statistically substantiated conclusions concerning the object an abstract and average individual. In psychotherapeutic clinical practice this approach allowed to examine the patient as a set of symptoms and syndromes, in the capacity of a particular case that confirms a specific scientific theory, instead of examining the patient as an individual unable to find a specific solution corresponding to the certain cultural standards. In its turn, it allowed to attach the clinical practice positive meaning, this giving birth to the phenomenon of positive psychology. Positive Psychology From all divisions of psychological knowledge positive psychology is the only field of psychology that has a positive potential of a person (both as individual and member of different societies) as a major focus of interest.
The concept of positive psychology came up into existence in late 1990 s mainly due to the initiative of American psychologist Martin Seligman and his colleagues. Generally, positive psychology is the scientific study that examines virtues and strengths that enable the people to thrive. Yet, the ideas of positive psychology are far from new. Seligman and his followers consider that paradigm of the modern psychology should be significantly changed: from negativeness to positiveness; from the concept of disease or malfunction to the concept of health and happiness. The psychologists consider there are human strengths that act as buffers against mental illness: courage, future-mindedness, optimism, interpersonal skill, faith, work ethic, hope, honesty, perseverance, the capacity for flow and insight (Lopez, 2002). Logically, these human strengths, along with the individuals constructive labor and potential, healthy functioning of the person in particular and human society in general should be treated scientifically as the objects of researches.
Positive psychology strives to draw the attention of the psychologists to the different things people do well, to understand it, and to use adaptive and creative elements of the psychics and human behavior in their psychological practice and to explain scientifically and psychologically, why, despite all difficulties in the modern world, the vast majority of people lead a conscious way of life they can be proud of (Sheldon, 2001). Nowadays psychology mainly deals with the negative concepts of life and relationships between the people. It seems, psychology forgets about strong sides and focuses its attention on human weaknesses, being oriented predominantly on the things the individual feel the lack in. Modern psychology places high emphasis on such events like diseases, distresses, etc.
Modern clinical psychology is based on DSM more than 800 -page classification of human misfortunes, diseases, and malfunctions used in diagnostic purposes (Haworth, 2004). For example, there are many scientific studies about prejudices, violence, but virtually no studies of the psychology of generosity, heroism, etc. According to Seligman, the modern psychology is properly a study of victim ology, as it examines the person in the capacity of principally passive creature with the depressed personal responsibility and a so-called learnt helpless, when the person becomes firmly convinced of the thought that he will always be a victim of other people or circumstances. The psychologists traditionally direct their efforts to increase the persons self-appraisal (self-rating). In particular, it is agreed that low self-rating can be conductive to depression, stress, adolescent pregnancy, suicides, violence, and substance abuse. At the same time, high self-rating may cure all these malfunctions.
However, for example, terrorists-suicides, the leaders of criminal organizations and rapists usually have relatively high self-rating. There is a principal trend to increase self-rating. This tendency is very popular in the U. S. , among the pedagogues, psychotherapists, and parents (to a greater or lesser extent this tendency is a result of the activity of the psychologists-humanists, who claim that people should always feel well).
Seligman is a dissenter from this view, as far as he considers that self-rating serves the function of a device that shows status of the persons psychics. Therefore, when the person feels well, his self-rating is high. On contrary, when the person faces difficulties in his life, his self-rating decreases thus leading to stress and depression. Depression becomes younger and younger. Approximately thirty years ago the average age of a patient was 29. 5, while now the average age makes up 14. 5 years.
Medicines are unable to cure the disease; therefore, the only thing psychologists have to teach, is realistic optimism based on the principle of personal responsibility of the people and the things they do well. Three Main Branches of Positive Psychology According to Seligman, positive psychology is divided into the following branches: Subjective feeling of happiness (positive emotions enjoyment, satisfaction, propinquity, constructive thoughts, optimism, self-confidence, energy, etc). Highly positive individual and psychological personal traits (e. g. wisdom, love, spirituality, honesty, courage, kindness, creativity, feeling of reality, searches for sense of life, forgiveness, absolution, sense of humor, sympathy, generosity, altruism, empathy, etc. ). In a manner of speaking, positive psychology deals with the qualities called virtues (Brendtro, 2005).
Positive social institutions (democracy, healthy family, liberal mass media, healthy environment at the persons workplace, healthy local social communities, etc). Human happiness results from no genes or fortune. The person can lead a happy life when he uses his strong sides and personal traits. The concept of flow introduces by the famous American psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi asserts that there are certain kinds of activities peculiar to a certain types of people. These activities allow the person doing exactly the things he wants. Therefore, the time as if stops, and the person wants this activity to be everlasting.
When the person does something he dislikes, the things often go wrong. It is possible to assume that he is located outside the flow. Some psychologists (for example, E. Dinner and D. Cinema) examine subjective (psychological) well-being.
They try to find the answers whether financial well-being and its augmentation can be sufficient in psychological sense of the word. Will the individual be happy, in case he has more capital? According to the results of American social psychologists D. Myers, whereas the average income of the average American is twice as great as it was, compared to 1960 s, the percentage of people, who consider themselves happy, decreased significantly.
Although many people subjectively associate happiness with capital and financial welfare, the most unhappy children and teenagers (judging by psychological criteria) live in rich families. Previously the psychologists considered that in case the individual will be able to get rid of his negative emotions, positive emotions automatically replace them. Yet, in case the individual (for example) has job and enough money, will he stop thinking about one or another occasion and automatically becomes happy? Logically, it is not enough to stop being a pessimist to become an optimist. Fundamental principles of positive psychology in relation to psychological consulting and psychotherapy are aimed to find out the dominating traits of the personality. Seligman offers to image a waitress, who came...
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