Positive Psychology

I’m told that the question that pre-occupied Carl Jung in the second half of his life was:

after therapy what?

That is: you are healed of your past trauma, taken to be the main purpose of psychotherapy, now what are you going to do?

One answer (for which I have much sympathy) is that this is no business of therapists – where do therapists get off telling people how to live their lives? However it seems to me that the question of ‘what then?’ still has some validity.

The useful part of the question I think is: what positive guidance can psychotherapy offer?

One school that tries to answer this question is called Positive Psychology. It was pioneered and popularised by Martin Seligman (he can sound rather triumphalist and smug in some of his writings – he never doubts that science is the way to The Truth for instance – but this doesn’t detract from the value of what he has to say). They have a website (www.ppc.sas.upenn.edu), where they describe Positive Psychology as:

Positive Psychology is the scientific study of the strengths and virtues that enable individuals and communities to thrive. The Positive Psychology Center promotes research, training, education, and the dissemination of Positive Psychology. This field is founded on the belief that people want to lead meaningful and fulfilling lives, to cultivate what is best within themselves, and to enhance their experiences of love, work, and play.

This is very worthwhile I think.

• They have lots of questionnaires you can do to assess your strengths and virtues on their website.
• They have done research on their theory. So far most of the research has been about the tie up between the strengths and virtues they identify and happiness. They find in brief that the more you know and act on your strengths and virtues the happier you are likely to be. So far there isn’t much detail on the process of developing these strengths and virtues (ie. the what you would actually do) but then I haven’t enrolled in their degree, so this might be covered by studying it.

Overall Positive Psychology seems a healthy development in the field of psychotherapy. It could lead to some very useful developments.

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