A Research on Positive Psychology
Thursday, April 23rd, 2009Positive psychology is defined as the study of the conditions and processes that contribute to the flourishing or optimal functioning of people, groups and institution. Positive Psychology, therefore simply focus on the wellbeing of humans or the wholesomeness of the personality in contrast to the trouble ones. Prior to the establishment of Positive Psychology, Most psychologists focus entirely on the negative aspect of human emotions and personality. This kind of study dated back as early as the 2nd half of the 20th century. The center of study then was negative human emotions such as depression, anxiety, stress and personality disorders. Experts and professionals in the psychology discipline earn their living by convincing and making troubled people wholesome and normal like everybody else. Hence, many individuals were reluctant to seek the help of psychologists because they were afraid of being labeled as emotionally sick. This is so because psychology has much less to say about character strength, virtues, and the conditions that lead to high levels of happiness or civic engagement. Psychology attempts to improve the lives of the disturbed but focus less on how to improve the lives of average individuals. This conception is likened into a scale, where one tries to make a negative eight into a zero and does not attempt to make a zero into a positive eight. Thus, in layman’s point of view psychology is all about undesirable human emotions and all that come closer to it. However the emergence of Positive Psychology does not necessarily mean that the other forms of psychology are negative. In fact, the ideas embedded in Positive Psychology actually dated back from the time of William James writings when he invented the term healthy mindedness in 1902. Allport had also tackled positive human characteristics in 1958 and a decade later, Maslow advocated for the study of healthy people in lieu of risk people. Finally,Cowan’s research on resilience in children and adolescents was also an example of positive psychology (Cowan 2000).With these facts, one can conclude that positive psychology has indeed undergone a long process of development.
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