By: Marcia J. Wood
Clinical and other specialties in psychology have focused on positive psychology in recent years
(Keys & Haidt, 2003). Positive psychology is the “scientific study of
ordinary strengths and virtues” (Sheldon & King, 2001, p. 216). During Dr.
Martin Seligman’s year as the president of the American Psychological Association
in 1998, he developed a variety of initiatives to focus on positive psychology
(Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2000).
He and others felt that
psychology too often focused on problems such as child abuse, violence, major
psychopathology, and other significant problems in society without enough
efforts to understand what is good and right about humans and human
relationships. Positive psychology focuses on topics such as hope, love,
ethics, optimism, resilience, happiness, spirituality, forgiveness, and other noble
aspects of human behavior.
While historically clinical
psychologists have focused much of their professional activities and energy on the diagnosis and treatment of psychopathology and significant
problems experienced by individuals, couples, families, and groups, recent efforts
in positive psychology have tried to better train clinical psychologists and
others to appreciate what we know about these more positive human qualities and
ways that we can maximize human experience.
For example, the benefits
of spirituality and religious faith for mental and physical health have
received a great deal of professional and popular attention that can be applied
to all sorts of concerns and issues (Plante & Sherman, 2001). Much of the
research examining happiness can be applied to help others maximize the chances
that they can be happy regardless of the stressors they face (Myers, 2000).
For example, resilient
people are not necessarily those who experience the least amount of stress but
are those who have coping strategies and personality styles that tend to help
them deal better with the stressors that come their way relative to less resilient people (Masten, 2001).
them deal better with the stressors that come their way relative to less resilient people (Masten, 2001).
The new emphasis on
positive psychology will hopefully help clinical psychologists better help
those who come to them for counseling and consultation and help the public
learn more about what is right about the human condition (Keys & Haidt,
2003).
References
Contemporary clinical psychology / Thomas
G. Plante — 2nd ed. Copyright © 2005 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
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