Introduction to Positive Psychology
The millennial issue of American Psychologist was a special edition devoted to Positive Psychology. Edited by Martin E. P. Seligman and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, two of the founding fathers of this orientation of clinical psychology, the editors claimed that while psychologists were quite knowledgeable about how people deal with adverse conditions, they had ‘scant knowledge of what makes life worth living’ (Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2000, p.5).
They believed psychology had adopted a purely pathological orientation, a science devoted entirely to healing, with little concern for the fulfilled individual and the prosperous communities. Depression, racism, violence, self-esteem management, irrationality were issues that since World War II, psychology had learnt a lot about but not so much about characters strengths, virtues and the factors which caused and enhanced happiness (Gable & Haidt, 2005, p.103).
With this, they described positive psychology as: “The field of positive psychology at the subjective level is about valued subjective experiences: well-being, contentment, and satisfaction (in the past); hope and optimism (for the future); and flow and happiness (in the present). At the individual level, it is about positive individual traits: the capacity for love and vocation, courage, interpersonal skill, aesthetic sensibility, perseverance, forgiveness, originality, future mindedness, spirituality, high talent, and wisdom. At the group level, it is about the civic virtues and the institutions that move individuals toward better citizenship: responsibility, nurturance, altruism, civility, moderation, tolerance, and work ethic” (Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2000, p.5).
Since that issue, the positive psychology movement has generated a lot of interest as conferences have been held, edited volumes and handbooks have been published, universities are offering courses in positive psychology and numerous grants have aided the attempts of researchers from countries all around the world. Positive psychology has changed the previous notion of clinical psychology as a kind of medical practice to treat sick souls or sick minds (Maddux, 2002).
Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi (2000) believe that prevention of problems such as depression, drug abuse or schizophrenia in young people or acts such as murderous schoolyard violence is facilitated not by correcting weakness, but by ‘systematically building competency’. Human strengths such as “courage, future mindedness, optimism, interpersonal skill, faith, work ethic, hope, honesty, perseverance, and the capacity for flow and insight” (p. 7) help to safeguard against mental illness and positive psychology aims to understand these and learn how to cultivate these in young people to promote mental wellness. This is its main contribution to clinical psychology.
Similarities with Humanistic Psychology and the Anti-Psychiatry Movement
Martin Seligman had commented that humanistic psychologists were not representatives of positive psychology because they have ‘generated no research tradition, are narcissistic, and are antiscientific’. Taylor (2001) contradicted this by saying that humanistic psychology has spawned a great research tradition which has led to developments in the constructs of self-actualization and personology among other ways in which humanistic psychology has led the way. He also said that humanistic psychology was hardly narcissistic as it had played a critical role in developing “interracial encounter groups, programs in community building, citizen diplomacy, and the peace movement” (p. 22).
Resnick, Warmoth and Serlin (2001) argued that Seligman’s positive psychology had similar themes as humanistic psychology, with the term itself being derived from Abraham Maslow’s (one of the leading founders of humanistic psychology) 1954 book, Motivation and Personality. Taylor (2001, p. 25) also said that positive psychology has its roots in humanistic psychology and psychologists from the latter field “may well be annoyed that they are being denied credit where it is due, but they should be gratified that their influence on the mainstream is finally more self-evident.”
However, Resnick, Warmoth and Serlin (2001, p. 85) said that while “humanistic psychologists and psychotherapists have long recognized the value of positive experience” this has not led to a positive focus in therapy. The focus is on pain and therapy is still carried out from a ‘problem perspective’ and this is where humanistic therapists, counselors, teachers and consultants can benefit from research into positive psychology so that a well-rounded, more deliberate, positive focus can be developed.
In practical terms, this means that positive psychology, even with all its similarities to humanistic psychology, can still help in honing a methodology which can “more directly address our clients’ happiness, fulfillment in their relationships, and satisfaction with their lives” (p. 87). While it would not be entirely correct to call positive psychology a mere rehash of humanistic psychology or the anti-psychiatry movement, it does borrow a great deal from these as it aims to further the concepts of humanistic psychology and remove some of the focus from treating mental illness to augmenting and building human strengths.
Positive Psychology applications to Psychotherapy
Seligman, Rashid and Parks (2006) call using positive psychology as a means of psychotherapy to relieve depression, positive psychotherapy (PPT). While earlier psychotherapeutic activities followed the basic premise that talking about troubles is curative, PPT was derived from the hypothesis that possible treatments for depression comprised not just of reducing its negative symptoms but also of “directly and primarily building positive emotions, character strengths, and meaning” (p. 775).
They conducted a number of exercises in PPT, where each was designed to advance one or more of the three scientifically tangible components of happiness which were proposed by Seligman (2002): positive emotion (the pleasant life), engagement (the engaged life), and meaning (the meaningful life). The exercises which were conducted in informal student and clinical arrangements resulted in people reporting these interventions as ‘life-changing’.
The exercises which were delivered on the Web relieved depressive symptoms for at least 6 months. Two face-to-face studies of PPT were conducted. One was group therapy for mild-to-moderate depression, which resulted in decreased levels of depression through a follow-up of 1 year. The second was delivery of PPT to individuals between 18 to 55 years of age and fulfilling DSM-IV criteria for major depressive disorder, which resulted in higher remission rates than the usual treatment, which even included medication.
Via these studies, Seligman, Rashid and Parks (2006) concluded that PPT did lead to clinically and statistically significant decreases in depression and that it would be beneficial for patients if treatments for depression were accompanied by exercises which focus on enhancing positive emotion, engagement and meaning.
Joseph and Linley (2005) reviewed the effects of the emerging field of positive psychology on therapeutic practice. They quote research which ties successful therapy to positive therapy or positive clinical psychology, where ‘deep strategies’ are used, such as instilling hope, providing narration and building strengths. Mindfulness and well-being therapy is also discussed in which clients are provided possible means of enhancing their self-determination and self-awareness, as he identifies the areas of his psychological well-being which need help.
Positive therapists also seek to consciously move away from the “inappropriate medicalization of psychological problems” and the “medical approach to understanding psychopathology” (p. 8). They are choosing rather to employ positive therapeutic approaches based on person-centered theory to help clients hear their own inner voice and facilitate personal change, which might be in discord with the social and political context.
Wong (2006) described a new therapeutic model based on the positive psychology of character strengths and virtues as well as social constructionist perspectives on psychotherapy known as Strength-Centered therapy. Wong quotes substantial research to discuss the advantages of an approach which explicitly focuses on character strengths and weaknesses. One of his reasons is that it supports a more comprehensive notion of mental health, which included not just mental illnesses, but also pays attention to optimal functioning and human prosperity. Second, the focus on character strengths is in line with the increasingly important presence of managed care in psychotherapy.
And lastly, people want to not just be free from mental illness, but also have a desire to be ‘good’. Hence, therapeutic goals and interventions which emphasize character strengths will serve a larger purpose as they will also include the goals which clients have a personal interest in. this way psychotherapy will be transformed from “simply being an engagement in positive behaviors, cognitions, and emotions to a focus on what clients strive to be” (p. 135).
ST translates into psychotherapy via four phases: explicitizing, envisioning, empowering and evolving. Except for the evolving phase, which is a key part of the last stages of psychotherapy, the other phases are not to be followed in a particular order but rather, are themes which can be applied more than once in the duration of the psychotherapeutic process (Wong, 2006).
Explicitizing is the process of clearly identifying the character strengths which the client has and this can be accomplished by using different strategies. The therapist can slightly refer to her perceptions of what the client’s strengths might be and expect him to pick up from there, or reword what might be perceived a character weakness as a character strength. In the envisioning phase, clients are aided to foresee the character strengths that they wish to develop and understand how the strengths they identified in the earlier phase would assist them in achieving their therapeutic objectives. In the empowering phase, it is ensured that clients experience empowerment in the development of their preferred character strengths.
They are enabled to experience empowerment by being given ample opportunities to use their desired character strengths and the motivation to do so. As mentioned above, the evolving phase is most relevant during the termination period of psychotherapy. Its very name symbolizes the never-ending process of growing in character strengths, which continues even after psychotherapy has been completed. In this stage, the therapist and client both assess the process by which they’ve come this far and the benefits of the psychotherapy to the client. They also team up to discover the path the client should take on from there and what more the client can do in order to utilize character strengths to deal with future challenges (Wong, 2006).
ST is a useful psychotherapeutic application of positive psychology, the purpose of which is to not just help the client think or feel more positively or to discourage discussions of negative experiences. In some situations the process might even involve hard work and pain, because character development sometimes requires adversity, though in the end the client will feel uplifted due to the therapeutic change. What sets ST apart from other therapies is its inherent focus on clients’ character strengths and virtues (Wong, 2006).
From the above examples of psychotherapeutic applicants of positive psychology it is evident that existing clinical/psychotherapeutic theories of psychology can be improved by the research advancements in positive psychology. Earlier the focus was entirely on human weaknesses, but today, there is increased knowledge about and focus on human strengths which will enable researchers and practitioners to develop more robust theories.
Import into Multicultural forms of counseling and psychotherapy
The aim behind positive psychology was to recover the two other missions of psychology aside from treating mental illness and they were to facilitate ‘the good life’ and to nurture talent or genius. But there remains a question mark on the topic of multicultural awareness within the context of positive psychology. Sandage, Hill and Vang (2003) reiterated the general goal of researching into further areas or constructs which are representative of positive psychology, but expressed concern about the lack of attention paid in theory and research on positive psychology to the important role of culture and other systemic factors that shape the perceptions of strengths or virtues in different cultural contexts.
The same way, Lopez et al. (2002) also discussed the concentration of most positive psychology research on predominantly White populations. They said that positive psychology needs to be “placed in a multicultural context” and should not exclude “valuing diverse meanings of the good life” and optimal human functioning. Other researchers have also criticized positive psychology researchers for lack of attention to diverse social and cultural contexts.
In order to develop a multicultural positive psychology, researchers and clinicians will need to study the impact of cultural and contextual factors on the diverse expressions of virtues. Sandage, Hill and Vang (2003) aimed to do that by focusing on the ‘culturally embedded nature’ of the virtue of forgiveness. They showed how important an indigenous psychology approach is by taking the example of the traditional Hmong culture and describing some of the dynamics related to conflict resolution and forgiveness.
The Hmong culture was chosen because it is a collectivistic culture, in stark contrast to the Western culture and its individualistic cultural orientation which dominates most of the available psychological literature.
They concluded that while initial attempts in positive psychological research on virtues like forgiveness are important to understand the contribution these virtues make to the flourishing of individuals, families and communities, the very nature of these virtues is so ‘culturally embedded’ that meaningful attention must be given to dialogue with particular communities in order to attain a more multicultural perspective. Human culture is rich and diverse and therefore, the approaches to conflict resolution, forgiveness and other virtues are also equally diverse. Psychological research and application of these virtues must adopt a more multicultural perspective in the future, to truly become positive (Sandage, Hill and Vang, 2003).
Lopez and Magyar-Moe (2006) agreed that at this point there was a substantial lack of research which studied the multicultural aspects of optimal human functioning, one of the pursuits of positive psychology. As times and cultures change, so does the extent to which any given human characteristic is positive and adaptive. Culture is also a major determinant of the positive psychological experiences of people of color and to truly identify the factors which contribute to optimal human functioning in various cultures, and to combine positive psychology with multicultural forms of counseling and psychotherapy, more research needs to be done and integrated with research findings from other specialties.
As Frazier et al. (2006) said, “We believe that counseling psychology can significantly contribute to the growing field of positive psychology by taking a more critical look at the literature of ethnic-minority psychology and, more important, by testing hypotheses with rigorous methodologies. In doing so, we move beyond reasoned rhetoric and concurrently establish the science of counseling psychology at the forefront of the study of cultural assets and strengths and optimal functioning in people of color” (p. 297). Hence, positive psychology can possible have import into multicultural forms of counseling and psychotherapy, but there is lack of adequate research in this area to provide a definite answer.
Conclusion
It would be wrong to say that positive psychology has entirely different themes from humanistic psychology, but there are differences in the approaches both have taken especially in the practical applications that positive psychology has spawned in psychotherapy. Positive therapeutic treatments of intervention, prevention and promotion of health and well-being can definitely contribute to and supplement the existing clinical/psychotherapeutic theories of psychology. However, more research is required in the diverse cultural factors which have an impact on the positive psychological experiences of people belonging to different backgrounds for positive psychology to be imported into multicultural forms of counseling and psychotherapy.
References
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