History of Positive Psychology Interventions

History of Positive Psychology Interventions

The development of positive psychology was shaped in the 1990’s by the considerable efforts of Seligman and Csikszentimihalyi (2000). These two researchers, particularly Seligman (also known as the father of positive psychology), provided major research funding into the clinical benefits of positive psychology.

Seligman attributes the movement of positive psychology to a conversation he had with his 5 year old daughter. From this conversation Seligman realised that psychology should not be aimed at reducing weakness but should promote, identify and nurture an individuals strongest qualities (Seligman, 2002). He believed that in order to cope with psychological disorders such as depression, schizophrenia and anorexia you should look at the disorder in its broader context so you can fully understand it and use your strengths to respond to this disorder rather than illuminating or suppressing the disorder. This technique of coping with psychological disorders is known as positive psychotherapy.

However, it has been argued that positive psychotherapy was developed well before Seligman and in actual fact derived from humanistic psychology. Humanistic psychology was intentionally launched by James, Maslow (1958) and Rogers (1961) to counter the negativity and pessimism of Freud and Skinner. This movement in psychology was based on the study of healthy, creative and self-actualised individuals. Rogers (1961) used humanistic psychology to develop client-centred therapy/psychotherapy. Rogers believed that through psychotherapy individuals could learn to fully understand themselves. They would then be able to use this understanding of themselves and their strongest qualitites to solve their problems. Maslow (1958) also believed that in order for any therapy to be successful in coping with a disorder it should promote the client to realise their full potential. Therefore humanistic psychology used positive psychotherapy and client-centred therapy to deal with clinical populations in the early 90’s which suggests that Seligman did not actually develop positive psychology but instead he used the previous work of Maslow and Rogers and established it as his own.

Mindfulness is another area of positive psychology that originated from another source (Buddhism). This concept is defined as the intentionally focused awareness of your immediate experience. Mindfulness meditation gets an individual not to judge their experience, related thoughts, draw conclusions or try and change anything about it, but instead just to enjoy the experience in the moment. By focusing on the experience at the time an individual can reduces stress, anxiety, depression and chronic pain. However mindfulness was not developed through positive psychology, instead it originated from Buddhist practices. Western psychologists incorporated these practices in positive psychotherapy as they share core principles on how to cope with personal suffering. Buddhists for thousands of years have used mindfulness meditation techniques to cope with psychological disorders. The Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) therapy is used by Buddhists to reduce stress by getting an individual to focus on moment-to-moment experiences and so this promotes the attitude of owning each experience whether it is good or bad. This helps individuals to cope with and reduce depression and anxiety disorders. Buddhists have also used mindfulness meditation to restructure their negative cognitive thoughts into positive ones. For example the way Buddhists would cope with anger is to produce loving thoughts instead which helps reduce the anger. Therefore Buddhist practices have helped shape and develop techniques used in positive psychology for clinical benefits.

If you would like to try out mindfulness meditation here is a link to a short video showing you how you can do it.