4:54 PM
Ovidia
By Christopher Peterson, Ph.D. in The Good Life:
Positive psychology is the scientific study of what makes
life most worth living. It is a call for psychological science and
practice to be as concerned with strength as with weakness; as
interested in building the best things in life as in repairing the
worst; and as concerned with making the lives of normal people
fulfilling as with healing pathology.
Nowhere does this definition say or imply that psychology should
ignore or dismiss the very real problems that people experience.
Nowhere does it say or imply that the rest of psychology needs to be
discarded or replaced. The value of positive psychology is to
complement and extend the problem-focused psychology that has been
dominant for many decades.
