Positive Psychology Overview

Positive Psychology is the new and emerging field of the study of optimal human functioning. It is a relatively new discipline having really only been 'founded' in 1998 when Martin Seligman made his Presidential address to the American Psychological Association.

Psychology has spent many years focused on helping people who have problems and has spent relatively little time helping people who are 'OK' become even happier. Positive Psychology seeks to redress this balance by seeking to understand what optimal functioning and a good life look like and how to help everyone achieve them. In other words, rather than helping people move from -7 to 0, Positive Psychology is about helping people move from, say, 2 to 8, 9 or 10. Positive Psychology:

• Focuses on strength as much as weakness

• Focuses on building the best as well as repairing the worst

• Focuses on making the lives of normal people fulfilling as well as with healing illness

• Develops interventions to make people happier and function better

Psychology's lack of focus on this area has caused the massive spread of the self-help or personal development field and it is useful to recognise that Positive Psychology is different from these because it seeks to bring scientific disciplines to the field, carrying out research and providing evidence to support its theories.

In particular Positive Psychology has focused on:

• Happiness, well-being and other positive emotions

• Human strengths and how to apply them

• Positive states of mind such as optimism, confidence, flow, hope and resilience

This understanding is then being applied to individuals, organisations and society or community.