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The pendulum swings... ...is positive psychology simply a new blindess?
For those that are interested in psychology, you will have noticed the
rise and rise of "positive psychology" since its conception towards the
end of the 90's.
Positive psychology is "the scientific study of the strengths and virtues that enable individuals and communities to thrive." (according to the University of Pennsylvania, Positive Psychology Centre). It focuses on positive experiences, positive emotions, and generally "optimal human functioning". "Employee Engagement" as a concept is a product of the positive psychology movement.
According to Dr. Martin Seligman, its founder "The most important thing, the most general thing I learned, was that psychology was half-baked, literally half-baked. We had baked the part about mental illness; we had baked the part about repair of damage...The other side's unbaked, the side of strength, the side of what we're good at."
I'm in no doubt that psychology was blind to the positive before, focusing on deficit, mental illness, emotions such as anxiety and anger rather than happiness, but to me, building a whole psychology, as a reaction to the past, that excludes all of the negative aspects of humanity, is just as blind as that which went before. OK, so they may be addressing an imbalance, but it seems that students and professionals are signing up to positive psychology as a "paradigm", and not as one half of a complete whole.
There have, however, been frameworks developed that allow us to coherently explore both the positive and negative aspects of human experience and functioning. One such framework is Reversal Theory, which was conceived by Michael Apter in the 1970s and now has over 30 years of research and application behind it. It gives us the mechanism to understand the positive and the negative side-by-side rather than having to figure them out separately.
In doing so we can explore what really motivated people, what makes them happy, what makes them unhappy, why they perform and why they don't, why they change and why they don't. We can put all of these explanations on the same page.
Surely any movement that excludes one half of human experience simply limits our ability to understand - and therefore to act.
Positive psychology is "the scientific study of the strengths and virtues that enable individuals and communities to thrive." (according to the University of Pennsylvania, Positive Psychology Centre). It focuses on positive experiences, positive emotions, and generally "optimal human functioning". "Employee Engagement" as a concept is a product of the positive psychology movement.
According to Dr. Martin Seligman, its founder "The most important thing, the most general thing I learned, was that psychology was half-baked, literally half-baked. We had baked the part about mental illness; we had baked the part about repair of damage...The other side's unbaked, the side of strength, the side of what we're good at."
I'm in no doubt that psychology was blind to the positive before, focusing on deficit, mental illness, emotions such as anxiety and anger rather than happiness, but to me, building a whole psychology, as a reaction to the past, that excludes all of the negative aspects of humanity, is just as blind as that which went before. OK, so they may be addressing an imbalance, but it seems that students and professionals are signing up to positive psychology as a "paradigm", and not as one half of a complete whole.
There have, however, been frameworks developed that allow us to coherently explore both the positive and negative aspects of human experience and functioning. One such framework is Reversal Theory, which was conceived by Michael Apter in the 1970s and now has over 30 years of research and application behind it. It gives us the mechanism to understand the positive and the negative side-by-side rather than having to figure them out separately.
In doing so we can explore what really motivated people, what makes them happy, what makes them unhappy, why they perform and why they don't, why they change and why they don't. We can put all of these explanations on the same page.
Surely any movement that excludes one half of human experience simply limits our ability to understand - and therefore to act.
Rob Robson
Sport and Business Psychologist, WarwickshirePosted September 24, 2007 at 3:45 AM by robrobson
in
Professional Practice, Development and Careers, Sport Psychology | Permalink | Comments(2)
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