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Article Excerpt
Since World War II, the field of psychology has largely focused on suffering. Psychologists now measure such formerly fuzzy concepts as depression, schizophrenia, and anger with respectable precision. We have discovered a fair amount about how these disorders develop across life, about their genetics, their neurochemistry, and their psychological underpinnings. Best of all, we can relieve some of the disorders. By my last count fourteen of the several dozen major mental illnesses could be effectively treated--and two of them cured--with medications or specific psychotherapies. (1)
Unfortunately, for many years interest in relieving the states that make life miserable has overshadowed efforts to enhance the states that make life worth living. This disciplinary bias has not preempted the public's concern with what is best in life, however. Most people want more positive emotion in their lives. Most people want to build their strengths, not just to minimize their weaknesses. Most people want lives imbued with meaning.
What I have called Positive Psychology concerns the scientific study of the three different happy lives that correspond to these three desires: the Pleasant Life, the Good Life, and the Meaningful Life. The Pleasant Life is about positive emotions. The Good Life is about positive traits--foremost among them the strengths and the virtues, but also the talents, such as intelligence and athleticism. The Meaningful Life is about positive institutions, such as democracy, strong families, and free inquiry. Positive institutions support the virtues, which in turn support the positive emotions. (2) In its scope, then, Positive Psychology diverges markedly from the traditional subject matter of psychology: mental disorders, developmental stunting, troubled lives, violence, criminality, prejudice, trauma, anger, depression, and therapy.
But can a science of Positive Psychology lead us to happiness? Five years ago, in an effort to answer that question, I started to teach an annual seminar to undergraduates at the University of Pennsylvania.
This seminar is similar to the other courses I have taught for the last forty years: we read and discuss the primary scientific literature in the field. It differs, however, in an important way: there is a real-world homework exercise to do and write up every week. When one teaches a traditional seminar on helplessness or on depression, there is no experiential homework to assign; students can't very well be told to be depressed or to be alcoholic for the week. But in Positive Psychology, students can be assigned to make a Gratitude Visit, or to transform a boring task by using a signature strength, or to give the gift of time to someone they care for. The workload is heavy: two essays per week, one on the extensive readings and the other on the homework exercises.
The course begins with personal introductions that are not perfunctory. I introduce myself by narrating an incident in which my then five-year-old daughter, Nikki, told me that she had given up whining and if she could do that ("It was the hardest thing I've ever done, Daddy"), I could "stop being such a grouch." I then ask all of the students to tell stories about themselves at their best, stories that display their highest virtues. The listening skills taught in traditional clinical psychology center around detecting hidden, underlying troubles, but here I encourage the opposite: listening for underlying positive motivations, strengths, and virtues. The introductions are moving and rapport building, and they easily fill the entire three hours.
The course then spends four meetings on what is scientifically documented about positive emotion: about the past (contentment, satisfaction, serenity), about the future (optimism, hope, trust, faith), and about the present (joy, ebullience, comfort, ecstasy,...
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