Snyder_Lopez_Handbook_of_Positive_Psychology.pdf

Handbook of Positive Psychology C. R. Snyder Shane J. Lopez, Editors OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS HANDBOOK OF POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY This page intentionally left blank HANDBOOK OF POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY Edited by C. R. Snyder Shane J. Lopez 1 2002 ...

Handbook Psychology C. R. Snyder Shane J. Lopez, Editors OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS HANDBOOK OF POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY This page intentionally left blank HANDBOOK OF POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY Edited by C. R. Snyder Shane J. Lopez 1 2002 1 Oxford New York Athens Auckland Bangkok Bogotá Chennai Dar es Salaam Delhi Florence Kolkata Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Paris São Paulo Shanghai Singapore and associated Berlin Ibadan Copyright 2002 by Oxford Published by Oxford 198 Madison Avenue, New Oxford is a registered trademark All rights reserved. No part stored in a retrieval system, or electronic, mechanical, photocopying, without the prior permission Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Handbook of positive psychology / edited p. cm. Includes bibliographical ISBN 0–19–51 1. Psychology. 2. Health. 3. I. Snyder, C. R. BF121 150.19'8—dc21 1 3 5 Printed in the United on acid-free To the positive in all of us... This page intentionally left blank Foreword It gives me great joy to know that so many sci- entists—many of whom have contributed to this landmark volume—are striving to inspire people to develop a more wholesome focus on the positive aspects of life. I am convinced that one day these scientists will be recognized as visionary leaders, whose research helped to identify, elevate, and celebrate the creative po- tential of the human spirit. Until recently, I had rarely heard about sci- entiﬁc research that examined the life- enhancing power of “spiritual principles”—pos- itive character traits and virtues such as love, hope, gratitude, forgiveness, joy, future- mindedness, humility, courage, and noble pur- pose. Perhaps my long-standing interest in these spiritual principles and character traits is best understood by sharing with you the fol- lowing perspective. My grandfather was a phy- sician during the Civil War, and several of my own children are physicians today. I think we would all agree that my children, because of the enormous number of dollars earmarked for medical research during this past century, know a hundred times—perhaps a thousand times— more about the human body than my grand- father ever did. But I have always wondered: Why is it that we know so little about the hu- man spirit? The research highlighted in this volume pro- vides overwhelming evidence that many tal- ented scholars and award-winning researchers are reclaiming what was once at the core of their discipline: the psyche, the study and under- standing of the power of the human spirit to beneﬁt from life’s challenges. The This page intentionally left blank Preface How often does one have the opportunity to edit the ﬁrst handbook for a new approach to psychology? We had a “once-in-a-lifetime” scholarly adventure in preparing this Handbook of Positive Psychology. There was never a ques- tion in our minds about editing this volume. We were at the right place at the right time, and the book simply had to happen. Fortunately, our superb editors at Oxford University Press, Joan Bossert and Catharine Carlin, shared our enthusiasm about the neces- sity of this volume, and they made this huge editorial undertaking seamless in its unfolding. The authors we invited to write chapters readily agreed. Much to our delight, this handbook al- most took on a life of its own. We attribute to the vitality of the authors, along with the power of their positive psychology ideas and science. We complemented each other as an editorial team. Snyder was a stickler for detail and yet sought ingenuity in thought and expression. Lopez saw linkages in ideas, would call upon the related literatures, and brought unbridled en- thusiasm to the editorial process. What this combination produced was a line-by-line anal- ysis and feedback in every chapter. In short, we were “hands-on” editors. Given the stature of the contributing scholars, with numerous awards, distinguished professorships, and honorary degrees, they certainly could have balked at such editorial scrutiny. But they did not. Instead, they used our feedback and revised their already superb ﬁrst drafts into stellar subsequent chapters. We are indebted to this x PREFACE away planet is Earth. These positive descriptions aptly ﬁt many of the people on Earth. In this regard, hardly anyone (including some cynics) quibbles with this latter conclusion. But no sci- ence, including psychology, looks seriously at this positive side of people. It is this latter trou- bling void that positive psychology addresses. As such, this handbook provides an initial sci- entiﬁc overview of the positive in As with any new and promising paradigm, the reactions of people such as you will determine Contents Contributors, xv PART I. INTRODUCTORY AND HISTORICAL OVERVIEW 1 Positive Psychology, Positive Prevention, and Positive Therapy, 3 martin e. p. seligman PART II. IDENTIFYING STRENGTHS 2 Stopping the “Madness”: Positive Psychology and the Deconstruction of the Illness Ideology and the DSM, 13 james e. maddux 3 Widening the Diagnostic Focus: A Case for Including Human Strengths and Environmental Resources, 26 beatrice a. wright shane j. lopez 4 Toward a Science of Mental Health: Positive Directions in Diagnosis and Interventions, 45 corey l. m. keyes shane j. lopez xii CONTENTS 12 The Positive Psychology of Emotional Intelligence, 159 peter salovey john d. mayer david caruso 13 Emotional Creativity: Toward “Spiritualizing the Passions”, 172 james r. averill PART IV. COGNITIVE-FOCUSED APPROACHES 14 Creativity, 189 dean keith simonton 15 The Role of Personal Control in Adaptive Functioning, 202 suzanne c. thompson 16 Well-Being: Mindfulness Versus Positive Evaluation, 214 ellen langer 17 Optimism, 231 charles s. carver michael f. scheier 18 Optimistic Explanatory Style, 244 christopher peterson tracy a. steen 19 Hope Theory: A Member of the Positive Psychology Family, 257 c. r. snyder kevin l. rand david r. sigmon 20 Self-Efﬁcacy: The Power of Believing You Can, 277 james e. maddux 21 Problem-Solving Appraisal and Psychological Adjustment, 288 p. paul heppner doug-gwi lee 22 Setting Goals for Life and Happiness, 299 edwin a. locke 34 Love, 472 susan hendrick clyde hendrick 35 Empathy and Altruism, 485 c. daniel batson nadia ahmad david a. lishner jo-ann tsang 36 How We Become Moral: The Sources of Moral Motivation, 499 michael schulman PART VII. BIOLOGICAL APPROACHES 37 Toughness, 515 richard a. dienstbier lisa m. pytlik zillig 38 A Role for Neuropsychology in Understanding the Facilitating Inﬂuence Positive Affect on Social Behavior and Cognitive Processes, 528 alice m. isen 39 From Social Structure to Biology: Integrative Science in Pursuit of Human Health and Well-Being, 541 carol d. ryff burton singer 40 Toward a Biology of Social Support, 556 shelley e. taylor sally s. dickerson laura cousino klein PART VIII. SPECIFIC COPING APPROACHES 41 Sharing One’s Story: On the Beneﬁts of Writing or Talking About Emotional Experience, 573 kate g. niederhoffer james w. pennebaker 42 Beneﬁt-Finding and Beneﬁt- Reminding, 584 howard tennen glenn affleck xiv CONTENTS 52 Positive Psychology at Work, 715 nick turner julian barling anthea zacharatos PART X. THE FUTURE OF THE FIELD 53 Positive Ethics, 731 mitchell m. handelsman samuel knapp michael c. gottlieb 54 Constructivism and Positive Psychology, 745 michael j. mahoney Contributors GLENN AFFLECK , Professor, Department of Psychiatry, University of Connecticut Health Center NADIA AHMAD , Doctoral Student, Social Psychology Program, Department of Psy- chology, University of Kansas LISA ASPINWALL , Associate Professor, De- partment of Psychology, University of Utah JENNIFER L. AUSTENFELD , Doctoral Student, Clinical Psychology Program, Department of Psychology, University of Kansas JAMES R. AVERILL , Professor, Department of Psychology, University of Massachusetts, Amherst PAUL B. BALTES ,Director, Center for Life- span Psychology, Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin, Germany JULIAN BARLING , Associate Dean, Research and Graduate Programs, School of Business, Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada C. DANIEL BATSON , Professor, Social Psy- chology Program, Department of Psychol- ogy, University of Kansas ROY F. BAUMEISTER , Elsie B. Smith Chair in Liberal Arts, and Professor, Department of Psychology, Case Western Reserve Uni- versity KERI G. BROWN , Doctoral Student, Clinical Child Psychology, Departments of Psychol- xvi CONTRIBUTORS TIMOTHY R. ELLIOTT , Associate Professor and Psychologist, Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, University of Alabama–Birmingham Medical School ROBERT A. EMMONS , Professor, Department of Psychology, University of California, vis BARBARA L. FREDRICKSON , Associate Pro- fessor, Department of Psychology, Univer- sity of Michigan JUDITH GLECK ,Max Planck Institute for Hu- man Development, Berlin, Germany MICHAEL C. GOTTLIEB , Private Practice, Dallas, Texas JON HAIDT , Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology, University of Virginia, Char- lottesville MITCHELL M. HANDELSMAN , Professor of Psychology and Colorado University Presi- dent’s Teaching Scholar, Department of Psychology, University of Colorado SUSAN HARTER , Professor, Department of Psychology, University of Denver JOHN H. HARVEY , Professor, Department of Psychology, University of Iowa CLYDE HENDRICK , Paul Whitﬁeld Horn Pro- fessor of Psychology, Department of Psy- chology, Texas Tech University SUSAN HENDRICK , Associate Dean, College of Arts and Sciences, and Professor, Depart- ment of Psychology, Texas Tech University P. PAUL HEPPNER , Professor, Department of Educational and Counseling Psychology, University of Missouri–Columbia JOHN P. HEWITT , Professor, Department of Sociology, University of Massachusetts, Amherst RAYMOND L. HIGGINS , Professor, Clinical Psychology Program, Department of Psy- chology, University of Kansas ALICE M. ISEN , Samuel Curtis Johnson Pro- fessor of Marketing and Professor of Behav- ioral Science, Johnson Graduate School of Management and Department of Psychol- ogy, Cornell University REBECCA J. JOHNSON , Doctoral Student, Clinical Child Psychology, Departments of JEANA L. MAGYAR - MOE , Doctoral Student, Counseling Psychology Program, Depart- ment of Psychology and Research in Educa- tion, University of Kansas ANNETTE MAHONEY , Associate Professor, Department of Psychology, Bowling Green State University MICHAEL J. MAHONEY , Professor, Clinical Psychology Program, Department of Psy- chology, University of North Texas ANN S. MASTEN , Director, Institute of Child Development, and Emma M. Birkmaier Pro- fessor in Educational Leadership, University of Minnesota JOHN D. MAYER , Professor of Psychology, Department of Psychology, University of New Hampshire MICHAEL E. MCCULLOUGH , Associate Pro- fessor, Department of Psychology, Southern Methodist University JEANNE NAKAMURA , Research Director, Quality of Life Research Center, Claremont Graduate University JASON E. NEUFELD , Doctoral Student, Coun- seling Psychology Program, Department of Psychology and Research in Education, Uni- versity of Kansas KATE G. NIEDERHOFFER , Doctoral Student, Social Psychology Program, Department of Psychology, University of Texas SUSAN NOLEN - HOEKSEMA , Professor, De- partment of Psychology, University of Michigan SHIGEHIRO OISHI , Assistant Professor, De- partment of Psychology, University of Min- nesota KENNETH I. PARGAMENT , Professor, De- partment of Psychology, Bowling Green State University ANITA PARSA , Doctoral Student, Clinical Psychology Program, Department of Psy- chology, University of Kansas BRIAN G. PAUWELS , Doctoral Student, Per- sonality and Social Psychology, Department of Psychology, University of Iowa BRETT W. PELHAM , Associate Professor, De- partment of Psychology, State University of New York at Buffalo xviii CONTRIBUTORS MICHAEL SCHULMAN , Clinical Department, Leake and Watts Services, Bronx, New York GARY E. R. SCHWARTZ , Professor of Psy- chology, Neurology, Psychiatry, and Medi- cine, Director, Human Energy Systems Lab, Department of Psychology, University of Arizona MARTIN E. P. SELIGMAN , Fox Leadership Professor of Psychology, Department of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania SHAUNA L. SHAPIRO , Doctoral Student, Clinical Psychology Program, Department of Psychology, University of Arizona CHARLES M. SHELTON , Professor of Psy- chology, Department of Psychology, Regis University DAVID R. SIGMON , Doctoral Student, Clini- cal Psychology Program, Department of Psychology, University of Kansas DEAN KEITH SIMONTON , Professor, Depart- ment of Psychology, University of Califor- nia, Davis BURTON SINGER , Professor of Demography and Public Affairs and the Charles and Ma- rie Robertson Professor of Public and Inter- national Affairs, Ofﬁce of Population Re- search, Princeton University C. R. SNYDER ,M. Erik Wright Distinguished Professor of Clinical Psychology, Depart- ment of Psychology, University of Kansas ANNETTE L. STANTON , Professor, Clinical Psychology Program, Department of Psy- chology, University of Kansas TRACY A. STEEN , Doctoral Student, Clinical Psychology Program, Department of Psy- chology, University of Michigan WILLIAM B. SWANN , William Howard Beas- ley Professor, Department of Psychology, University of Texas JUNE PRICE TANGNEY , Professor, Depart- ment of Psychology, James Madison Uni- versity SHELLEY E. TAYLOR , Professor, Department of Psychology, University of California, Los Angeles I Introductory and Historical Overview This page intentionally left blank 1 Positive Psychology, Positive and Positive Therapy Martin E. P. Seligman Positive Psychology Psychology after World War II became a science largely devoted to healing. It concentrated on repairing damage using a disease model of hu- man functioning. This almost exclusive atten- tion to pathology neglected the idea of a fulﬁlled individual and a thriving community, and it ne- glected the possibility that building strength is the most potent weapon in the arsenal of ther- apy. The aim of positive psychology is to cata- lyze a change in psychology from a preoccu- pation only with repairing the worst things in life to also building the best qualities in life. To redress the previous imbalance, we must bring the building of strength to the forefront in the treatment and prevention of mental illness. The ﬁeld of positive psychology at the sub- jective level is about positive subjective ex- perience: well-being and satisfaction (past); ﬂow, joy, the sensual pleasures, and happiness (present); and constructive cognitions about the future—optimism, hope, and faith. At the in- dividual level it is about positive personal traits—the capacity for love and vocation, cour- age, interpersonal skill, aesthetic sensibility, perseverance, forgiveness, originality, future- 4 PART I. INTRODUCTORY AND HISTORICAL done. And if I can stop whining, you can stop being such a grouch.” This was for me an epiphany, nothing less. I learned something about Nikki, something about raising kids, something about myself, and a great deal about my profession. First, I real- ized that raising Nikki was not about correcting whining. Nikki did that herself. Rather, I real- ized that raising Nikki was about taking this marvelous skill—I call it “seeing into the soul”—and amplifying it, nurturing it, helping her to lead her life around it to buffer against her weaknesses and the storms of life. Raising children, I realized, is more than ﬁxing what is wrong with them. It is about identifying and nurturing their strongest qualities, what they own and are best at, and helping them ﬁnd niches in which they can best live out these pos- itive qualities. As for my own life, Nikki hit the nail right on the head. I was a grouch. I had spent 50 years mostly enduring wet weather in my soul, and the last 10 years being a nimbus cloud in a household of sunshine. Any good fortune I had was probably not due to my grouchiness but in spite of it. In that moment, I resolved to change. But the broadest implication of Nikki’s lesson was about the science and practice of psychol- ogy. Before World War II, psychology had three distinct missions: curing mental illness, making the lives of all people more productive and fulﬁlling, and identifying and nurturing high talent. Right after the war, two events— both economic—changed the face of psychol- ogy. In 1946, the Veterans Administration was founded, and thousands of psychologists found out that they could make a living treating men- tal illness. At that time the profession of clinical psychologist came into its own. In 1947, the Na- tional Institute of Mental Health (which was based on the American Psychiatric Association disease model and is better described as the Na- tional Institute of Mental Illness) and academics found out that they could get grants if their research was described as being about pathology. This arrangement brought many substantial beneﬁts. There have been huge strides in the understanding of and therapy for mental illness: At least 14 disorders, previously intractable, have yielded their secrets to science and can now be either cured or considerably relieved (Seligman, 1994). But the downside was that the other two fundamental missions of psychology— CHAPTER pervision, a mean streak, and access to weapons? What we have learned over 50 years is that the disease model does not move us closer to the prevention of these serious problems. Indeed, the major strides in prevention have largely come from a perspective focused on systemati- cally building competency, not correcting weak- ness. We have discovered that there are human strengths that act as buffers against mental ill- ness: courage, future-mindedness, optimism, in- terpersonal skill, faith, work ethic, hope, hon- esty, perseverance, the capacity for ﬂow and insight, to name several. Much of the task of prevention in this new century will be to create a science of human strength whose mission will be to understand and learn how to foster these virtues in young people. My own work in prevention takes this ap- proach and ampliﬁes a skill that all individuals possess but usually deploy in the wrong place. The skill is called disputing (Beck, Rush, Shaw, & Emery, 1979), and its use is at the heart of “learned optimism.” If an external person, who is a rival for your job, accuses you falsely of failing at your job and not deserving your po- sition, you will dispute him. You will marshal all the evidence that you do your job very well. You will grind the accusations into dust. But if you accuse yourself falsely of not deserving your job, which is just the content of the au- tomatic thoughts of pessimists, you will not dis- pute it. If it issues from inside, we tend to be- lieve it. So in “learned optimism” training programs, we teach both children and adults to recognize their own catastrophic thinking and to become skilled disputers (Peterson, 2000; Se- ligman, Reivich, Jaycox, & Gillham, 1995; Se- ligman, Schulman, DeRubeis, & Hollon, 1999). This training works, and once you learn it, it is a skill that is self-reinforcing. We have shown that learning optimism prevents depression and anxiety in children and adults, roughly halving their incidence over the next 2 years. I mention this work only in passing, however. It is in- tended to illustrate the Nikki principle: that building a strength, in this case, optimism, and teaching people when to use it, rather than re- pairing damage, effectively prevents depression and anxiety. Similarly, I believe that if we wish to prevent drug abuse in teenagers who grow up in a neighborhood that puts them at risk, the effective prevention is not remedial. Rather, it consists of identifying and amplifying the 6 PART I. INTRODUCTORY AND HISTORICAL mental well-being on the body; and reorienting psychology to its two neglected missions, mak- ing normal people stronger and more produc- tive, as well as making high human potential actual. Positive Therapy I am going to venture a radical proposition about why psychotherapy works as well as it does. I am going to suggest that positive psy- chology, albeit intuitive and inchoate, is a major effective ingredient in therapy as it is now done; if it is recognized and honed, it will become an even more effective approach to psychotherapy. But before doing so, it is necessary to say what I believe about “speciﬁc” ingredients in therapy. I believe there are some clear speciﬁcs in psy- chotherapy. Among them are Applied tension for blood and injury phobia Penile squeeze for premature ejaculation Cognitive therapy for panic Relaxation for phobia Exposure for obsessive-compulsive disorder Behavior therapy for enuresis (My book What You Can Change and What You Can’t documents the speciﬁcs and reviews the relevant literature.) But speciﬁcity of technique to disorder is far from the whole story. There are three serious anomalies on which present speciﬁcity theories of the effectiveness of psychotherapy stub their toes. First, effect- iveness studies (ﬁeld studies of real-world deliv- ery), as opposed to laboratory efﬁcacy studies of psychotherapy, show a substantially larger ben- eﬁt of psychotherapy. In the Consumer Reports study, for example, over 90% of respondents reported substantial beneﬁts, as opposed to about 65% in efﬁcacy studies of speciﬁc psy- chotherapies (Seligman, 1995, 1996). Second, when one active treatment is compared with an- other active treatment, speciﬁcity tends to dis- appear or becomes quite a small effect. Lester Luborsky’s corpus and the National Collabora- tive Study of Depression are examples. The lack of robust speciﬁcity also is apparent in much of the drug literature. Methodologists argue end- lessly over ﬂaws in such outcome studies, but they cannot hatchet away the general lack of speciﬁcity. The fact is that almost no psycho- therapy technique that I can think of (with the CHAPTER damage-healing techniques. Among strengths built in psychotherapy are Courage Interpersonal skill Rationality Insight Optimism Honesty Perseverance Realism Capacity for pleasure Putting troubles into perspective Future-mindedness Finding purpose Assume for a moment that the buffering effects of strength-building strategies have a larger ef- fect than the speciﬁc “healing” ingredients that have been discovered. If this is true, the rela- tively small speciﬁcity found when different ac- tive therapies and different drugs are compared and the massive placebo effects both follow. One illustrative deep strategy is “narration.” I believe that telling the stories of our lives, making sense of what otherwise seems chaotic, distilling and discovering a trajectory in our lives, and viewing our lives with a sense of agency rather than victimhood are all power- fully positive (Csikszentmihalyi, 1993). I be- lieve that all competent psychotherapy forces such narration, and this buffers against mental disorder in just the same way hope does. Notice, however, that narration is not a primary subject of research on therapy process, that we do not have categories of narration, that we do not train our students to better facilitate narration, that we do not reimburse practitioners for it. The use of positive psychology in psycho- therapy exposes a fundamental blind spot in outcome research: The search for empirically validated therapies (EVTs) has in its present form handcuffed us by focusing only on vali- dating the speciﬁc techniques that repair dam- age and that map uniquely into DSM-IV cate- gories. The parallel emphasis in managed care organizations on delivering only brief treat- ments directed solely at healing damage may rob patients of the very best weapons in the arsenal of therapy—making our patients stronger human beings. That by working in the medical model and looking solely for the salves to heal the wounds, we have misplaced much of our science and much of our training. That by embracing the disease model of psychotherapy, 8 PART I. INTRODUCTORY AND HISTORICAL existence, and if they are present, any amount of objective obstacles can be faced with equa- nimity, and even joy. Camus wrote that the foremost question of philosophy is why one should not commit suicide. One cannot answer that question just by curing depression; there must be positive reasons for living as well. There also are historical reasons for psychol- ogy’s negative focus. When cultures face mili- tary threat, shortages of goods, poverty, or in- stability, they may most naturally be concerned with defense and damage control. Cultures may turn their attention to creativity, virtue, and the highest qualities in life only when they are sta- ble, prosperous, and at peace. Athens during the 5th century b.c., Florence of the 15th century, and England in the Victorian era are examples of cultures that focused on positive qualities. Athenian philosophy focused on the human vir- tues: What is good action and good character? What makes life most worthwhile? Democracy was born during this era. Florence chose become the most important military power in Europe but to invest its surplus in torian England afﬁrmed honor, discipline, duty as important human virtues. I am not suggesting that our culture now erect an aesthetic monument. Rather, lieve that our nation—wealthy, at stable—provides a similar world historical portunity. We can choose to create a monument—a science that takes as its task the understanding of what makes living. Such an endeavor will move the whole of social science away from its negative The prevailing social sciences tend to view the authentic forces governing human behavior as self-interest, aggressiveness, territoriality, class conﬂict, and the like. Such a science, even at its best, is by necessity incomplete. Even if utopi- anly successful, it would then have to proceed to ask how humanity can achieve what is best in life. I predict that in this new century psychology will come to understand and build those factors that allow individuals, ties, and societies to ﬂourish. Such a science will not need to start afresh. It requires for the most part just a refocusing of scientiﬁc energy. In the 50 years since psychology and psychiatry be- came healing disciplines, they have developed a highly useful and transferable science of mental illness. They have developed a taxonomy, as well as reliable and valid ways of measuring such fuzzy concepts as schizophrenia, anger, CHAPTER Peterson, C. (2000). The future of optimism. American Psychologist, 55, 44–55. Schwartz, B. (2000). Self-determination: The tyr- anny of freedom. American Psychologist, 55, 79–88. Seligman, M. (1991). Learned optimism. NY: Knopf. Seligman, M. (1994). What you can change and what you can’t. New York: Knopf. Seligman, M. E. P. (1995). The effectiveness of psychotherapy: The Consumer Reports study. American Psychologist, 50, 965–974. Seligman, M. E. P. (1996). Science as an ally of practice. American Psychologist, 51, 1072–1079. Seligman, M., & Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2000). Pos- itive psychology: An introduction. American Psychologist, 55, 5–14. This page intentionally left blank II Identifying Strengths This page intentionally left blank 2 Stopping the “Madness” Positive Psychology and the Deconstruct of the Illness Ideology and the DSM James E. Maddux The ancient roots of the term clinical psychol- ogy continue to inﬂuence our thinking about the discipline long after these roots have been forgotten. Clinic derives from the Greek kli- nike, or “medical practice at the sickbed,” and psychology derives from the Greek psyche, meaning “soul” or “mind” (Webster’s Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary, 1976). How little things have changed since the time of Hippoc- rates. Although few clinical psychologists today literally practice at the bedsides of their pa- tients, too many of its practitioners (“clini- cians”) and most of the public still view clinical psychology as a kind of “medical practice” for people with “sick souls” or “sick minds.” It is time to change clinical psychology’s view of it- self and the way it is viewed by the public. Positive psychology, as represented in this handbook, provides a long-overdue opportunity for making this change. How Clinical Psychology Became “Pathological” The short history of clinical psychology sug- gests, however, that any such change will not 14 PART II. IDENTIFYING STRENGTHS psychiatrists trained in medicine and psycho- analysis. Second, after World War II (1946), the Veterans Administration (VA) was founded and soon joined the American Psychological Asso- ciation in developing training centers and stan- dards for clinical psychologists. Because these early centers were located in VA hospitals, the training of clinical psychologists continued to occur primarily in psychiatric settings. Third, the National Institute of Mental Health was founded in 1947, and “thousands of psycholo- gists found out that they could make a living treating mental illness” (Seligman & Csik- szentmihalyi, 2000, p. 6). By the 1950s, therefore, clinical psychologists had come “to see themselves as part of a mere subﬁeld of the health professions” (Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2000, p. 6). By this time, the practice of clinical psychology was characterized by four basic assumptions about its scope and about the nature of psychological adjustment and maladjustment (Barone, Maddux, & Sny- der, 1997). First, clinical psychology is con- cerned with psychopathology—deviant, abnor- mal, and maladaptive behavioral and emotional conditions. Second, psychopathology, clinical problems, and clinical populations differ in kind, not just in degree, from normal problems in liv- ing, nonclinical problems and nonclinical pop- ulations. Third, psychological disorders are analogous to biological or medical diseases and reside somewhere inside the individual. Fourth, the clinician’s task is to identify (diagnose) the disorder (disease) inside the person (patient) and to prescribe an intervention (treatment) that will eliminate (cure) the internal disorder (dis- ease). Clinical Psychology Today: The Illness Ideology and the DSM Once clinical psychology became “pathologi- zed,” there was no turning back. Albee (2000) suggests that “the uncritical acceptance of the medical model, the organic explanation of men- tal disorders, with psychiatric hegemony, med- ical concepts, and language” (p. 247), was the “fatal ﬂaw” of the standards for clinical psy- chology training that were established at the 1950 Boulder Conference. He argues that this fatal ﬂaw “has distorted and damaged the de- velopment of clinical psychology ever since” (p. 247). Indeed, things have changed little since 1950. These basic assumptions about clinical CHAPTER 2. DECONSTRUCTION been “more heavily invested in intricate theo- ries of failure than in theories of success” (Ban- dura, 1998, p. 3). They need to acknowledge that “much of the best work that they already do in the counseling room is to amplify strengths rather than repair the weaknesses of their clients” (Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2000). Building a more positive clinical psychology will be impossible without abandoning the lan- guage of the illness ideology and adopting a lan- guage from positive psychology that offers a new way of thinking about human behavior. In this new language, ineffective patterns of be- haviors, cognitions, and emotions are problems in living, not disorders or diseases. These prob- lems in living are located not inside individuals but in the interactions between the individual and other people, including the culture at large. People seeking assistance in enhancing the qual- ity of their lives are clients or students, not patients. Professionals who specialize in facili- tating psychological health are teachers, coun- selors, consultants, coaches, or even social activ- ists, not clinicians or doctors. Strategies and techniques for enhancing the quality of lives are educational, relational, social, and political in- terventions, not medical treatments. Finally, the facilities to which people will go for assistance with problems in living are centers, schools, or resorts, not clinics or hospitals. Such assistance might even take place in community centers, public and private schools, churches, and peo- ple’s homes rather than in specialized facilities. Efforts to change our language and our ide- ology will meet with resistance. Perhaps mary barrier to abandoning the language illness ideology and adopting the language of positive psychology is that the illness is enshrined in the most powerful book in psy- chiatry and clinical psychology—the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or, more simply, the DSM. First published in the early 1950s (American Psychiatric Association [APA], 1952) and now in either its fourth or sixth edition (APA, 2000) (depending on whether or not one counts the revisions of the third and fourth editions as “editions”), the DSM provides the organizational structure for virtually every textbook and course on abnor- mal psychology and psychopathology for un- dergraduate and graduate students, as well as almost every professional book on the assess- ment and treatment of psychological problems. So revered is the DSM that in many clinical 16 PART II. IDENTIFYING STRENGTHS the evolution of the DSM were constructed through the implicit and explicit collaborations of theorists, researchers, professionals, their cli- ents, and the culture in which all are embedded. For this reason, “mental disorder” and the nu- merous diagnostic categories of the DSM were not “discovered” in the same manner that an archaeologist discovers a buried artifact or a medical researcher discovers a virus. Instead, they were invented. By describing mental dis- orders as inventions, however, I do not mean that they are “myths” (Szasz, 1974) or that the distress of people who are labeled as mentally disordered is not real. Instead, I mean that these disorders do not “exist” and “have properties” in the same manner that artifacts and viruses do. For these reasons, a taxonomy of mental disorders such as the DSM “does not simply describe and classify characteristics of groups of individuals, but... actively constructs a version of both normal and abnormal... which is then applied to individuals who end up being classi- ﬁed as normal or abnormal” (Parker, Georgaca, Harper, McLaughlin, & Stowell-Smith, 1995, p. 93). The illness ideology’s conception of “mental disorder” and the various speciﬁc DSM catego- ries of mental disorders are not reﬂections and mappings of psychological facts about people. Instead, they are social artifacts that serve the same sociocultural goals as our constructions of race, gender, social class, and sexual orienta- tion—that of maintaining and expanding the power of certain individuals and institutions and maintaining social order, as deﬁned by those in power (Beall, 1993; Parker et al., 1995; Rosen- blum & Travis, 1996). Like these other social constructions, our concepts of psychological normality and abnormality are tied ultimately to social values—in particular, the values of so- ciety’s most powerful individuals, groups, and institutions—and the contextual rules for be- havior derived from these values (Becker, 1963; Parker et al., 1995; Rosenblum & Travis, 1996). As McNamee and Gergen (1992) state: “The mental health profession is not politically, mor- ally, or valuationally neutral. Their practices typically operate to sustain certain values, po- litical arrangements, and hierarchies or privi- lege” (p. 2). Thus, the debate over the deﬁnition of “mental disorder,” the struggle over who gets to deﬁne it, and the continual revisions of the DSM are not searches for truth. Rather, they are debates over the deﬁnition of a set of CHAPTER 2. DECONSTRUCTION stating that “psychopathology is as much pa- thology of the social world as pathology of the mind or body” (p. 578). With each revision, the DSM has had more to say about how people should live their lives and about what makes life worth living. The number of pages has increased from 86 in 1952 to almost 900 in 1994, and the number of men- tal disorders has increased from 106 to 297. As the boundaries of “mental disorder” have ex- panded with each DSM revision, life has become increasingly pathologized, and the sheer num- bers of people with diagnosable mental disor- ders has continued to grow. Moreover, we men- tal health professionals have not been content to label only obviously and blatantly dysfunc- tional patterns of behaving, thinking, and feel- ing as “mental disorders.” Instead, we gradually have been pathologizing almost every conceiv- able human problem in living. Consider some of the “mental disorders” found in the DSM-IV. Premenstrual emotional change is now premenstrual dysphoric disorder. Cigarette smokers have nicotine dependence. If you drink large quantities of coffee, you may develop caffeine intoxication or caffeine-induced sleep disorder. Being drunk is alcohol intoxica- tion. If you have “a preoccupation with a defect in appearance” that causes “signiﬁcant distress or impairment in... functioning” (p. 466), you have a body dysmorphic disorder. A child whose academic achievement is “substantially below that expected for age, schooling, and level of intelligence” (p. 46) has a learning disorder. Toddlers who throw tantrums have oppositional deﬁant disorder. Even sibling relational prob- lems, the bane of parents everywhere, have found a place in DSM-IV, although not yet as an ofﬁcial mental disorder. Human sexual behavior comes in such vari- ety that determining what is “normal” and “adaptive” is a daunting task. Nonetheless, sex- ual behavior has been ripe for pathologization in the DSM-IV. Not wanting sex often enough is hypoactive sexual desire disorder. Not want- ing sex at all is sexual aversion disorder. Having sex but not having orgasms or having them too late or too soon is considered an orgasmic dis- order. Failure (for men) to maintain “an ade- quate erection... that causes marked distress or interpersonal difﬁculty” (p. 504) is a male erec- tile disorder. Failure (for women) to attain or maintain “an adequate lubrication or swelling response of sexual excitement” (p. 502) accom- 18 PART II. IDENTIFYING STRENGTHS sionals view their diagnostic terms and the power that such terms exert over both profes- sional and client, a better term for this process may be the deiﬁcation of the disorder. We are fast approaching the point at which everything that human beings think, feel, do, and desire that is not perfectly logical, adaptive, or efﬁcient will be labeled a mental disorder. Not only does each new category of mental dis- order trivialize the suffering of people with se- vere psychological difﬁculties, but each new cat- egory also becomes an opportunity for in- dividuals to evade moral and legal responsibility for their behavior (Resnek, 1997). It is time to stop the “madness.” The Intellectual Deconstruction of the DSM: An Examination of Faulty Assumptions The DSM and the illness ideology it represents remain powerful because they serve certain so- cial, political, and professional interests. Yet the DSM also has an intellectual foundation, albeit an erroneous one, that warrants our examina- tion. The developers of the DSM have made a number of assumptions about human behavior and how to understand it that do not hold up very well to logical scrutiny. Faulty Assumption I: Categories Are Facts About the World The basic assumption of the DSM is that a sys- tem of socially constructed categories is a set of facts about the world. At issue here is not the reliability of classiﬁcations in general or of the DSM in particular—that is, the degree to which we can deﬁne categories in a way that leads to consensus in the assignment of things to cate- gories. Instead, the issue is the validity of such categories. As noted previously, the validity of a classiﬁcation system refers not to the extent to which it provides an accurate “map” of re- ality but, instead, to the extent to which it serves the goals of those who developed it. For this reason, all systems of classiﬁcation are ar- bitrary. This is not to say that all classiﬁcations are capricious or thoughtless but that, as noted earlier, they are constructed to serve the goals of those who develop them. Alan Watts (1951) of Positive Buenos Aires Cape Town Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Mexico City Mumbai Nairobi Taipei Tokyo Toronto Warsaw companies in University Press University Press, Inc. York, New York 10016 of Oxford University Press of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, in any form or by any means, recording, or otherwise, of Oxford University Press. Data by C. R. Snyder and Shane J. Lopez. references and indexes. 3533–4 Happiness. 4. Optimism. II. Lopez, Shane J. 6.H212 2002 2001021584 7 9 8 6 4 2 States of America paper women who have written chapters for this handbook, as well as countless more inspired by their research, are courageously gathering data and testing hypotheses to help us learn more about an essential question that perhaps serves as the North Star for a positive psychology: What enables us to override our biological in- clinations to be selﬁsh and instead ﬁnd meaning, purpose, and value in nurturing and upholding the positive qualities of our human nature? In fact, I am more optimistic than ever that one day soon a group of scientists will publish ﬁndings that will advance humankind’s under- standing of a spiritual principle that has been at the core of my own life’s purpose: agape love. One of my favorite sayings is, “Love hoarded dwindles, but love given grows.” Love is more powerful than money; unlike money, the more love we give away, the more we have left. Per- haps, dear reader, you will be the researcher who studies a spiritual principle such as agape love scientiﬁcally or empirically. Wouldn’t all of hu- mankind beneﬁt from knowing more about this fundamental “law of life,” and many others? Finally, I am hopeful that as current and fu- ture researchers catch the vision of a positive psychology, and as foundations and govern- ments initiate programs to support this ground- breaking and beneﬁcial work, we will all forge ahead in a spirit of humility. We know so little, my friends, about the many gifts that God has given to each and every human being. As the truly wise tell us, “How little we know, how eager to learn.” Radnor, Pennsylvania Sir John Templeton men and remarkable group of authors for their patience in this process. Their dedication to excel- lence can be seen in the chapters of this hand- book. In order to help readers in gaining a sense of the topics contained in each chapter, we have asked our expert authors to identify sources that provide excellent overviews of their areas. Therefore, in the reference section of each chap- ter, the authors have placed an asterisk in front of such key readings. We encourage our readers to use these background sources when more de- tailed descriptions of a topic are desired. Now, before you peruse the contributions of the outstanding scholars, consider the following this... Imagine a planet where the inhabitants are self-absorbed, hopeless, and ﬁlled with psycho- logical problems and weaknesses. Confusion, anxiety, fear, and hostility race through their minds. These creatures “communicate” with each other by lying, faking, torturing, ﬁghting, and killing. They hurt each other, and they hurt themselves. Of course, this imaginary planet is not far away—we call it Earth. Although these problems do exist, they are made to loom even larger because of the propensities of psychology and its sister disciplines to focus on the weak- nesses in humankind. Now let us imagine an- other planet where the inhabitants are caring, hopeful, and boundless in their psychological strengths. Their thoughts and feelings are clear, focused, and tranquil. These creatures commu- nicate by spending time talking and listening to each other. They are kind to each other and to themselves. Again, this imaginary, not-so-far- the fate of positive psychology. Although sci- ence certainly advances on the merits of partic- ular ideas and facts, it also is true that the suc- cess of a new theory rests, in part, upon its ability to gather supporters. On this point, this handbook may enable you to cast a more in- formed vote as to the enduring viability of pos- itive psychology. humankind. Lawrence, Kansas C. R. Snyder Shane J. Lopez PART III. EMOTION-FOCUSED APPROACHES 5 Subjective Well-Being: The Science of Happiness and Life Satisfaction, 63 ed diener richard e. lucas shigehiro oishi 6 Resilience in Development, 74 ann s. masten marie-gabrielle j. reed 7 The Concept of Flow, 89 jeanne nakamura mihaly csikszentmihalyi 8 Positive Affectivity: The Disposition to Experience Pleasurable Emotional States, 106 david watson 9 Positive Emotions, 120 barbara l. fredrickson 10 The Social Construction of Self- Esteem, 135 john p. hewitt 11 The Adaptive Potential of Coping Through Emotional Approach, 148 annette l. stanton anita parsa jennifer l. austenfeld 23 The Passion to Know: A Developmental Perspective, 313 michael schulman 24 Wisdom: Its Structure and Function in Regulating Successful Life Span Development, 327 paul b. baltes judith glück ute kunzmann PART V. SELF-BASED APPROACHES 25 Reality Negotiation, 351 raymond l. higgins 26 The Truth About Illusions: Authenticity and Positivity in Social Relationships, 366 william b. swann brett w. pelham 27 Authenticity, 382 susan harter 28 Uniqueness Seeking, 395 michael lynn c. r. snyder 29 Humility, 411 june price tangney PART VI. INTERPERSONAL APPROACHES 30 Relationship Connection: The Role of Minding in the Enhancement of Closeness, 423 john h. harvey brian g. pauwels susan zickmund 31 Compassion, 434 eric j. cassell 32 The Psychology of Forgiveness, 446 michael e. mccullough charlotte vanoyen witvliet 33 Gratitude and the Science of Positive Psychology, 459 robert a. emmons charles m. shelton CONTENTS xiii 43 Positive Responses to Loss: Perceiving Beneﬁts and Growth, 598 susan nolen-hoeksema christopher g. davis 44 The Pursuit of Meaningfulness in Life, 608 roy f. baumeister kathleen d. vohs 45 Humor, 619 herbert m. lefcourt 46 Meditation and Positive Psychology, 632 shauna l. shapiro gary e. r. schwartz craig santerre 47 Spirituality: Discovering and Conserving the Sacred, 646 kenneth i. pargament annette mahoney of PART IX. SPECIAL POPULATIONS AND SETTINGS 48 Positive Psychology for Children: Development, Prevention, and Promotion, 663 michael c. roberts keri j. brown rebecca j. johnson janette reinke 49 Aging Well: Outlook for the 21st Century, 676 gail m. williamson 50 Positive Growth Following Acquired Physical Disability, 687 timothy r. elliott monica kurylo patricia rivera 51 Putting Positive Psychology in a Multicultural Context, 700 shane j. lopez ellie c. prosser lisa m. edwards jeana l. magyar-moe jason e. neufeld heather n. rasmussen 55 The Future of Positive Psychology: A Declaration of Independence, 751 c. r. snyder shane j. lopez with contributions from Lisa Aspinwall Barbara L. Fredrickson Jon Haidt Dacher Keltner Christine Robitschek Michael Wehmeyer Amy Wrzesniewski Author Index, 769 Subject Index, 793 ogy and Human Development and Family Life, University of Kansas DAVID CARUSO , President, Work-Life Strate- gies, New Canaan, Connecticut CHARLES S. CARVER , Professor, Department of Psychology, University of Miami ERIC J. CASSELL , Clinical Professor of Public Health, Weill Medical College of Cornell University MIHALY CSIKSZENTMIHALYI , C. S. and C. J. Davidson Professor of Psychology, Peter Drucker School of Management, Claremont Graduate University CHRISTOPHER G. DAVIS , Associate Profes- sor, Department of Psychology, St. Francis Xavier University SALLY S. DICKERSON , Master’s Student, De- partment of Psychology, University of Cali- fornia, Los Angeles ED DIENER , Distinguished Professor, Depart- ment of Psychology, University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana RICHARD A. DIENSTBIER , Professor, Depart- ment of Psychology, University of Ne- braska, Lincoln LISA M. EDWARDS , Doctoral Student, Coun- seling Psychology Program, Department of Psychology and Research in Education, Uni- versity of Kansas xv Psychology and Human Development and Family Life, University of Kansas DACHER KELTNER , Associate Professor, De- partment of Psychology, University of Cali- fornia, Berkeley Da- COREY L. M. KEYES , Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology and the Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University LAURA COUSINO KLEIN , Department of Biobehavioral Health, Pennsylvania State University SAMUEL KNAPP , Director of Professional Af- fairs, Pennsylvania Psychological Associa- tion UTE KUNZMANN , Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin, Germany MONICA KURYLO , Rehabilitation Psycholo- gist, Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, University of Alabama– Birmingham Medical School ELLEN LANGER , Professor, Department of Psychology, Harvard University DOUG - GWI LEE , Doctoral Student, Counsel- ing Psychology Program, Department of Ed- ucational and Counseling Psychology, Uni- versity of Missouri–Columbia HERBERT M. LEFCOURT , Distinguished Pro- fessor Emeritus, Department of Psychology, University of Waterloo DAVID A. LISHNER , Doctoral Student, Social Psychology Program, Department of Psy- chology, University of Kansas EDWIN A. LOCKE , Dean’s Professor Emeritus of Leadership and Motivation, R. H. Smith School of Business, University of Maryland, College Park SHANE J. LOPEZ , Assistant Professor, Coun- seling Psychology Program, Department of Psychology and Research in Education, Uni- versity of Kansas RICHARD E. LUCAS , Assistant Professor, De- partment of Psychology, Michigan State University MICHAEL LYNN , Professor, School of Hotel Administration, Cornell University JAMES E. MADDUX , Professor and Associate Chair for Graduate Studies, Department of Psychology, George Mason University CONTRIBUTORS xvii JAMES W. PENNEBAKER , Professor, Depart- ment of Psychology, University of Texas CHRISTOPHER PETERSON , Professor of Psy- chology and Arthur F. Thurnau Professor, Clinical Psychology Program, University of Michigan ELLIE C. PROSSER , Doctoral Student, Coun- seling Psychology Program, Department of Psychology and Research in Education, Uni- versity of Kansas KEVIN L. RAND , Doctoral Student, Clinical Psychology Program, Department of Psy- chology, University of Kansas HEATHER N. RASMUSSEN , Doctoral Student, Counseling Psychology Program, Depart- ment of Psychology and Research in Educa- tion, University of Kansas MARIE - GABRIELLE J. REED , Research Assis- tant, Institute of Child Development, Uni- versity of Minnesota JANNETTE REINKE , Doctoral Student, Clinical Child Psychology, Departments of Psychol- ogy and Human Development and Family Life, University of Kansas PATRICIA RIVERA , Postdoctoral Fellow, De- partment of Physical Medicine and Rehabili- tation, University of Alabama–Birmingham Medical School MICHAEL C. ROBERTS , Professor and Direc- tor, Clinical Child Psychology Program, University of Kansas CHRISTINE ROBITSCHEK , Associate Profes- sor, Counseling Psychology Program, De- partment of Psychology, Texas Tech Uni- versity CAROL D. RYFF , Director, Institute on Aging and Professor of Psychology, Department of Psychology, University of Wisconsin, Madi- son PETER SALOVEY , Professor of Psychology and of Epidemiology and Public Health, De- partment of Psychology, Yale University CRAIG SANTERRE , Doctoral Student, Clinical Psychology Program, Department of Psy- chology, University of Arizona MICHAEL F. SCHEIER , Professor, Department of Psychology, Carnegie-Mellon University SIR JOHN TEMPLETON , Founder of Temple- ton Foundation, Radnor Pennsylvania HOWARD TENNEN , Professor, Department of Psychiatry, University of Connecticut Health Center SUZANNE C. THOMPSON , Professor, Depart- ment of Psychology, Pomona College JO - ANN TSANG , Postdoctoral Fellow, Depart- ment of Psychology, Southern Methodist University NICK TURNER , Doctoral Student, Institute of Work Psychology, The University of Shef- ﬁeld KATHLEEN D. VOHS , Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Psychology, Case Western Reserve University DAVID WATSON , Professor, Department of Psychology, University of Iowa MICHAEL WEHMEYER , Courtesy Associate Professor, Special Education Department, University of Kansas GAIL M. WILLIAMSON , Professor and Chair, Life-Span Developmental Psychology, De- partment of Psychology, University of Georgia CHARLOTTE VANOYEN WITVLIET , Associate Professor, Department of Psychology, Hope College BEATRICE A. WRIGHT , Professor Emerita, University of Kansas AMY WRZESNIEWSKI , Assistant Professor, Department of Management and Organiza- tional Behavior, New York University ANTHEA ZACHARATOS , Doctoral Student, School of Business, Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada SUSAN ZICKMUND , Assistant Professor, De- partment of Internal Medicine, University of Iowa College of Medicine LISA M. PYTLIK ZILLIG , Doctoral Student, Clinical Psychology Program, Department of Psychology, University of Nebraska Prevention, mindedness, high talent, and wisdom. At the group level it is about the civic virtues and the institutions that move individuals toward better citizenship: responsibility, nurturance, altruism, civility, moderation, tolerance, and work ethic (Gillham & Seligman, 1999; Seligman & Csik- szentmihalyi, 2000). The notion of a positive psychology move- ment began at a moment in time a few months after I had been elected president of the Amer- ican Psychological Association. It took place in my garden while I was weeding with my 5- year-old daughter, Nikki. I have to confess that even though I write books about children, I’m really not all that good with them. I am goal- oriented and time-urgent, and when I am weed- ing in the garden, I am actually trying to get the weeding done. Nikki, however, was throw- ing weeds into the air and dancing around. I yelled at her. She walked away, came back, and said, “Daddy, I want to talk to you.” “Yes, Nikki?” “Daddy, do you remember before my ﬁfth birthday? From the time I was three to the time I was ﬁve, I was a whiner. I whined every day. When I turned ﬁve, I decided not to whine any- more. That was the hardest thing I’ve ever 3 OVERVIEW making the lives of all people better and nur- turing genius—were all but forgotten. It was not only the subject matter that altered with funding but also the currency of the theories underpinning how we viewed ourselves. Psy- chology came to see itself as a mere subﬁeld of the health professions, and it became a victim- ology. We saw human beings as passive foci: stimuli came on and elicited responses (what an extraordinarily passive word). External rein- forcements weakened or strengthened re- sponses, or drives, tissue needs, or instincts. Conﬂicts from childhood pushed each of us around. Psychology’s empirical focus then shifted to assessing and curing individual suffering. There has been an explosion in research on psycho- logical disorders and the negative effects of en- vironmental stressors such as parental divorce, death, and physical and sexual abuse. Practi- tioners went about treating mental illness within the disease-patient framework of repair- ing damage: damaged habits, damaged drives, damaged childhood, and damaged brains. The message of the positive psychology movement is to remind our ﬁeld that it has been deformed. Psychology is not just the study of disease, weakness, and damage; it also is the study of strength and virtue. Treatment is not just ﬁxing what is wrong; it also is building what is right. Psychology is not just about ill- ness or health; it also is about work, education, insight, love, growth, and play. And in this quest for what is best, positive psychology does not rely on wishful thinking, self-deception, or hand waving; instead, it tries to adapt what is best in the scientiﬁc method to the unique prob- lems that human behavior presents in all its complexity. ’s Positive Prevention was founded, What foregrounds this approach is the issue of prevention. In the last decade psychologists have become concerned with prevention, and this was the theme of the 1998 American Psy- chological Association meeting in San Francisco. How can we prevent problems like depression or substance abuse or schizophrenia in young people who are genetically vulnerable or who live in worlds that nurture these problems? How can we prevent murderous schoolyard vi- olence in children who have poor parental su- 1. POSITIVE PREVENTION AND POSITIVE THERAPY 5 strengths that these teens already have. A teen- ager who is future-minded, who is interperson- ally skilled, who derives ﬂow from sports, is not at risk for substance abuse. If we wish to pre- vent schizophrenia in a young person at genetic risk, I would propose that the repairing of dam- age is not going to work. Rather, I suggest that a young person who learns effective interper- sonal skills, who has a strong work ethic, and who has learned persistence under adversity is at lessened risk for schizophrenia. This, then, is the general stance of positive psychology toward prevention. It claims that there is a set of buffers against psychopathol- ogy: the positive human traits. The Nikki prin- ciple holds that by identifying, amplifying, and concentrating on these strengths in people at risk, we will do effective prevention. Working exclusively on personal weakness and on dam- aged brains, and deifying the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM), in contrast, has ren- dered science poorly equipped to do effective prevention. We now need to call for massive research on human strength and virtue. We need to develop a nosology of human strength— the “UNDSM-I”, the opposite of DSM-IV. We need to measure reliably and validly these strengths. We need to do the appropriate lon- gitudinal studies and experiments to understand how these strengths grow (or are stunted; Vail- lant, 2000). We need to develop and test inter- ventions to build these strengths. We need to ask practitioners to recognize that much of the best work they already do in the consulting room is to amplify their clients’ strengths rather than repair their weaknesses. We need to emphasize that psychologists work- ing with families, schools, religious communi- ties, and corporations develop climates that fos- ter these strengths. The major psychological theories now undergird a new science of strength and resilience. No longer do the dom- inant theories view the individual as a passive vessel “responding” to “stimuli”; rather, indi- viduals now are seen as decision makers, with choices, preferences, and the possibility of be- coming masterful, efﬁcacious, or, in malignant circumstances, helpless and hopeless. Science and practice that relies on the positive psychol- ogy worldview may have the direct effect of preventing many of the major emotional dis- orders. It also may have two side effects: mak- ing the lives of our clients physically healthier, given all we are learning about the effects of OVERVIEW exceptions mentioned previously) shows big, speciﬁc effects when it is compared with another form of psychotherapy or drug, adequately ad- ministered. Finally, add the seriously large “pla- cebo” effect found in almost all studies of psy- chotherapy and of drugs. In the depression literature, a typical example, around 50% of pa- tients will respond well to placebo drugs or therapies. Effective speciﬁc drugs or therapies usually add another 15% to this, and 75% of the effects of antidepressant drugs can be ac- counted for by their placebo nature (Kirsch & Sapirstein, 1998). So why is psychotherapy so robustly effec- tive? Why is there so little speciﬁcity of psy- chotherapy techniques or speciﬁc drugs? Why is there such a huge placebo effect? Let me speculate on this pattern of questions. Many of the relevant ideas have been put for- ward under the derogatory misnomer nonspe- ciﬁcs. I am going to rename two classes of non- speciﬁcs as tactics and deep strategies. Among the tactics of good therapy are Attention Authority ﬁgure Rapport Paying for services Trust Opening up Naming the problem Tricks of the trade (e.g., “Let’s pause here,” rather than “Let’s stop here”) The deep strategies are not mysteries. Good therapists almost always use them, but they do not have names, they are not studied, and, locked into the disease model, we do not train our students to use them to better advantage. I believe that the deep strategies are all tech- niques of positive psychology and that they can be the subject of large-scale science and of the invention of new techniques that maximize them. One major strategy is instilling hope (Snyder, Ilardi, Michael, & Cheavens, 2000). But I am not going to discuss this one now, as it is often discussed elsewhere in the literature on placebo, on explanatory style and hopeless- ness, and on demoralization (Seligman, 1994). Another is the “building of buffering strengths,” or the Nikki principle. I believe that it is a common strategy among almost all com- petent psychotherapists to ﬁrst identify and then help their patients build a large variety of strengths, rather than just to deliver speciﬁc 1. POSITIVE PREVENTION AND POSITIVE THERAPY 7 the we have lost our birthright as psychologists, a birthright that embraces both healing what is weak and nurturing what is strong. Conclusions Let me end this introduction to the Handbook of Positive Psychology with a prediction about the science and practice of psychology in the 21st century. I believe that a psychology of pos- itive human functioning will arise that achieves a scientiﬁc understanding and effective inter- ventions to build thriving individuals, families, and communities. You may think that it is pure fantasy, that psychology will never look beyond the victim, the underdog, and the remedial. But I want to suggest that the time is ﬁnally right. I well rec- ognize that positive psychology is not a new idea. It has many distinguished ancestors (e.g., Allport, 1961; Maslow, 1971). But they some- how failed to attract a cumulative and empirical body of research to ground their ideas. Why did they not? And why has psychology been so focused on the negative? Why has it adopted the premise—without a shred of evi- dence—that negative motivations are authentic and positive emotions are derivative? There are several possible explanations. Negative emo- tions and experiences may be more urgent and therefore override positive ones. This would make evolutionary sense. Because negative emotions often reﬂect immediate problems or objective dangers, they should be powerful enough to force us to stop, increase vigilance, reﬂect on our behavior, and change our actions if necessary. (Of course, in some dangerous sit- uations, it will be most adaptive to respond without taking a great deal of time to reﬂect.) In contrast, when we are adapting well to the world, no such alarm is needed. Experiences that promote happiness often seem to pass ef- fortlessly. So, on one level, psychology’s focus on the negative may reﬂect differences in the survival value of negative versus positive emo- tions. But perhaps we are oblivious to the survival value of positive emotions precisely because they are so important. Like the ﬁsh that is un- aware of the water in which it swims, we take for granted a certain amount of hope, love, en- joyment, and trust because these are the very conditions that allow us to go on living (Myers, 2000). They are the fundamental conditions of OVERVIEW and depression. They have developed sophisti- cated methods—both experimental and longi- tudinal—for understanding the causal pathways that lead to such undesirable outcomes. Most important, they have developed pharmacological and psychological interventions that have moved many of the mental disorders from “un- treatable” to “highly treatable” and, in a couple of cases, “curable.” These same methods, and in many cases the same laboratories and the next two generations of scientists, with a slight shift of emphasis and funding, will be used to measure, understand, and build those char- acteristics that make life most worth living. As a side effect of studying positive human traits, science will learn how to better treat and prevent mental, as well as some physical, ill- nesses. As a main effect, we will learn how to build the qualities that help individuals and communities not just endure and survive but also ﬂourish. not to beauty. Vic- Acknowledgment This research was sup- and ported by grants MH19604 and MH52270 from the National Institute of Mental Health. should Please send reprint requests to Dr. M. E. P Se- I be- ligman, Department of Psychology, University peace, and of Pennsylvania, 3815 Walnut Street, Phila- op- delphia, PA 19104, or e-mail (seligman@psych. scientiﬁc upenn.edu). This chapter draws heavily on Se- primary ligman and Csikszentmihalyi (2000). life worth bias. References Allport, G. W. (1961). Pattern and growth in per- sonality. New York: Holt, Rinehart, & Winston. Beck, A., Rush, J., Shaw, B., & Emery, G. (1979). Cognitive therapy. New York: Guilford. Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1993). The evolving self. New York: HarperCollins. Gillham, J. E., & Seligman, M. E. P. (1999). Foot- positive steps on the road to positive psychology. Be- haviour Research and Therapy, 37, S163–S173. communi- Kirsch, I., & Sapirstein, G. (1998). Listening to Prozac but hearing placebo: A meta-analysis of antidepressant medication. Prevention & Treat- ment, 1, Article 0002a, posted June 26, 1998. http://journals.apa.org/prevention/volume1. Maslow, A. (1971). The farthest reaches of human nature. New York: Viking. Myers, D. G. (2000). The funds, friends, and faith of happy people. American Psychologist, 55, 56– 67. 1. POSITIVE PREVENTION AND POSITIVE THERAPY 9 Seligman, M. E. P., Reivich, K., Jaycox, L., & Gill- ham, J. (1995). The optimistic child. New York: Houghton Mifﬂin. Seligman, M. E. P., Schulman, P., DeRubeis, R. J., & Hollon, S. D. (1999). The prevention of de- pression and anxiety. Prevention and Treat- ment, 2. http://journals.apa.org/prevention/ Snyder, C., Ilardi, S., Michael, S., & Cheavens, J. (2000). Hope theory: Updating a common pro- cess for psychological change. In C. R. Snyder & R. E. Ingram (Eds.), Handbook of psycholog- ical change: Psychotherapy processes and prac- tices for the 21st century (pp. 128–153). New York: Wiley. Vaillant, G. (2000). The mature defenses: Ante- cedents of joy. American Psychologist, 55, 89– 98. ion come easily. The ﬁeld began with the founding of the ﬁrst “psychological clinic” in 1896 at the University of Pennsylvania by Lightner Witmer (Reisman, 1991). Witmer and the other early clinical psychologists worked primarily with children who had learning or school problems— not with “patients” with “mental disorders” (Reisman, 1991; Routh, 2000). Thus, they were inﬂuenced more by psychometric theory and its attendant emphasis on careful measurement than by psychoanalytic theory and its emphasis on psychopathology. Following Freud’s visit to Clark University in 1909, however, psycho- analysis and its derivatives soon came to dom- inate not only psychiatry but also clinical psy- chology (Barone, Maddux, & Snyder, 1997; Korchin, 1976). Several other factors encouraged clinical psy- chologists to devote their attention to psycho- pathology and to view people through the lens of the disease model. First, although clinical psychologists’ academic training took place in universities, their practitioner training occurred primarily in psychiatric hospitals and clinics (Morrow, 1946, cited in Routh, 2000). In these settings, clinical psychologists worked primarily as psychodiagnosticians under the direction of 13 psychology and psychological health described previously continue to serve as implicit guides to clinical psychologists’ activities. In addition, the language of clinical psychology remains the language of medicine and pathology—what may be called the language of the illness ide- ology. Terms such as symptom, disorder, pa- thology, illness, diagnosis, treatment, doctor, patient, clinic, clinical, and clinician are all con- sistent with the four assumptions noted previ- ously. These terms emphasize abnormality over normality, maladjustment over adjustment, and sickness over health. They promote the dichot- omy between normal and abnormal behaviors, clinical and nonclinical problems, and clinical and nonclinical populations. They situate the lo- cus of human adjustment and maladjustment inside the person rather than in the person’s interactions with the environment or in socio- cultural values and sociocultural forces such as prejudice and oppression. Finally, these terms portray the people who are seeking help as pas- sive victims of intrapsychic and biological forces beyond their direct control who therefore should be the passive recipients of an expert’s “care and cure.” This illness ideology and its medicalizing and pathologizing language are in- consistent with positive psychology’s view that “psychology is not just a branch of medicine concerned with illness or health; it is much larger. It is about work, education, insight, love, growth, and play” (Seligman & Csikszentmi- halyi, 2000, p. 7). This pathology-oriented and medically ori- ented clinical psychology has outlived its use- fulness. Decades ago the ﬁeld of medicine began to shift its emphasis from the treatment of ill- ness to the prevention of illness and later from the prevention of illness to the enhancement of health (Snyder, Feldman, Taylor, Schroeder, & Adams, 2000). Health psychologists acknowl- edged this shift over two decades ago (e.g., Stone, Cohen, & Adler, 1979) and have been inﬂuential ever since in facilitating it. Clinical psychology needs to make a similar shift, or it will soon ﬁnd itself struggling for identity and purpose, much as psychiatry has for the last two or three decades (Wilson, 1993). The way to modernize is not to move even closer to pathology-focused psychiatry but to move closer to mainstream psychology, with its focus on understanding human behavior in the broader sense, and to join the positive psychol- ogy movement to build a more positive clinical psychology. Clinical psychologists always have OF THE ILLNESS IDEOLOGY AND THE DSM 15 programs (including mine), students are re- quired to memorize parts of it line by line, as if it were a book of mathematical formulae or a sacred text. The DSM’s categorizing and pathologizing of human experience is the antithesis of positive psychology. Although most of the previously noted assumptions of the illness ideology are explicitly disavowed in the DSM-IV’s introduc- tion (APA, 1994), practically every word thereafter is inconsistent with this disavowal. For example, in the DSM-IV (APA, 1994), “mental disorder” is deﬁned as “a clinically sig- niﬁcant behavioral or psychological syndrome or pattern that occurs in an individual” (p. xxi, emphasis added), and numerous common prob- lems in living are viewed as “mental disorders.” So steeped in the illness ideology is the DSM- IV that afﬁliation, anticipation, altruism, and humor are described as “defense mechanisms” (p. 752). As long as clinical psychology worships at this icon of the illness ideology, change toward an ideology emphasizing human strengths will be impossible. What is needed, therefore, is a kind of iconoclasm, and the icon in need of shat- tering is the DSM. This iconoclasm would be ﬁgurative, not literal. Its goal is not DSM’s de- struction but its deconstruction—an examina- tion of the social forces that serve as its power base and of the implicit intellectual assumptions that provide it with a pseudoscientiﬁc legiti- macy. This deconstruction will be the ﬁrst stage of a reconstruction of our view of human be- havior and problems in living. the pri- of the The Social Deconstruction of the DSM ideology As with all icons, powerful sociocultural, polit- ical, professional, and economic forces built the illness ideology and the DSM and continue to sustain them. Thus, to begin this iconoclasm, we must realize that our conceptions of psycho- logical normality and abnormality, along with our speciﬁc diagnostic labels and categories, are not facts about people but social constructions— abstract concepts that were developed collabor- atively by the members of society (individuals and institutions) over time and that represent a shared view of the world. As Widiger and Trull (1991) have said, the DSM “is not a scientiﬁc document.... It is a social document” (p. 111, emphasis added). The illness ideology and the conception of mental disorder that have guided abstractions and struggles for the personal, po- litical, and economic power that derives from the authority to deﬁne these abstractions and thus to determine what and whom society views as normal and abnormal. Medical philosopher Lawrie Resnek (1987) has demonstrated that even our deﬁnition of physical disease “is a normative or evaluative concept” (p. 211) because to call a condition a disease “is to judge that the person with that condition is less able to lead a good or worth- while life” (p. 211). If this is true of physical disease, it is certainly also true of psychological “disease.” Because they are social constructions that serve sociocultural goals and values, our notions of psychological normality-abnormality and health-illness are linked to our assumptions about how people should live their lives and about what makes life worth living. This truth is illustrated clearly in the American Psychiatric Association’s 1952 decision to include homosex- uality in the ﬁrst edition of the DSM and its 1973 decision to revoke homosexuality’s disease status (Kutchins & Kirk, 1997; Shorter, 1997). As stated by psychiatrist Mitchell Wilson (1993), “The homosexuality controversy seemed to show that psychiatric diagnoses were clearly wrapped up in social constructions of de- viance” (p. 404). This issue also was in the fore- front of the controversies over post-traumatic stress disorder, paraphilic rapism, and maso- chistic personality disorder (Kutchins & Kirk, 1997), as well as caffeine dependence, sexual compulsivity, low-intensity orgasm, sibling ri- valry, self-defeating personality, jet lag, patho- logical spending, and impaired sleep-related painful erections, all of which were proposed for inclusion in DSM-IV (Widiger & Trull, 1991). Others have argued convincingly that “schizo- phrenia” (Gilman, 1988), “addiction” (Peele, 1995), and “personality disorder” (Alarcon, Foulks, & Vakkur, 1998) also are socially con- structed categories rather than disease entities. Therefore, Widiger and Sankis (2000) missed the mark when they stated that “social and po- litical concerns might be hindering a recognition of a more realistic and accurate estimate of the true rate of psychopathology” (p. 379, emphasis added). A “true rate” of psychopathology does not exist apart from the social and political con- cerns involved in the construction of the deﬁ- nition of psychopathology in general and spe- ciﬁc psychopathologies in particular. Lopez and Guarnaccia (2000) got closer to the truth by OF THE ILLNESS IDEOLOGY AND THE DSM 17 panied by distress is female sexual arousal dis- order. Excessive masturbation used to be con- sidered a sign of a mental disorder (Gilman, 1988). Perhaps in DSM-V not masturbating at all, if accompanied by “marked distress or in- terpersonal difﬁculty,” will become a mental disorder (“autoerotic aversion disorder”). Most recently we have been inundated with media reports of epidemics of Internet addiction, road rage, and pathological stockmarket day trading. Discussions of these new disorders have turned up at scientiﬁc meetings and are likely to ﬁnd a home in the DSM-V if the media and mental health professions continue to collabo- rate in their construction, and if treating them and writing books about them becomes lucra- tive. The trend is clear. First we see a pattern of behaving, thinking, feeling, or desiring that de- viates from some ﬁctional social norm or ideal; or we identify a common complaint that, as expected, is displayed with greater frequency or severity by some people than others; or we decide that a certain behavior is undesir- able, inconvenient, or disruptive. We then give the pattern a medical-sounding name, pref- erably of Greek or Latin origin. Eventually, the new term may be reduced to an acronym, such as OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder), ADHD (attention-deﬁcit/hyperactive disorder), and BDD (body dysmorphic disorder). The new disorder then takes on a life of its own and be- comes a diseaselike entity. As news about “it” spreads, people begin thinking they have “it”; medical and mental health professionals begin diagnosing and treating “it”; and clinicians and clients begin demanding that health insurance policies cover the “treatment” of “it.” Over the years, my university has con- structed something called a “foreign-language learning disability.” Our training clinic gets ﬁve or six requests each year for evaluations of this “disorder,” usually from seniors seeking an ex- emption from the university’s foreign-language requirement. These referrals are usually prompted by a well-meaning foreign-language instructor and our center for student disability services. Of course, our psychology program has assisted in the construction of this “disor- der” by the mere act of accepting these referrals and, on occasion, ﬁnding “evidence” for this so- called disorder. Alan Ross (1980) referred to this process as the reiﬁcation of the disorder. In light of the awe with which mental health profes- answered by saying that it depends on whether you are a furrier or a butcher. How you choose to classify rabbits depends on what you want to do with them. Neither classiﬁcation system is more valid or “true” than the other. We can say the same of all classiﬁcation systems. They are not “valid” (true) or “invalid” (false). Instead, they are social constructions that are only more or less useful. Thus, we can evaluate the “valid- ity” of a system of representing reality only by evaluating its utility, and its utility can be eval- uated only in reference to a set of chosen goals, which in turn are based on values. Therefore, instead of asking, “How true is this system of classiﬁcation?” we have to ask, “What do we value? What goals do we want to accomplish? How well does this system help us accomplish them?” Thus, we cannot talk about “diagnostic validity and utility” (Nathan & Langenbucher, 1999, p. 88, emphasis added) as if they are dif- ferent constructs. They are one and the same. Most proponents of traditional classiﬁcation of psychological disorders justify their efforts with the assumption that “classiﬁcation is the heart of any science” (Barlow, 1991, p. 243). Categorical thinking is not the only means, however, for making sense of the world, al- though it is a characteristically Western means for doing so. Western thinkers always have ex- pended considerable energy and ingenuity di- viding the world into sets of separate “things,” dissecting reality into discrete categories and constructing either-or and black-or-white di- chotomies. Westerners seem to believe that the world is held together by the categories of hu- man thought (Watts, 1951) and that “making sense out of life is impossible unless the ﬂow of events can somehow be ﬁtted into a framework of rigid forms” (Watts, 1951, pp. 43–44). Un- fortunately, once we construct our categories, we see them as representing “things,” and we confuse them with the real world. We come to believe that, as Gregory Kimble (1995) said, “If there is a word for it, there must be a corre- sponding item of reality. If there are two words, there must be two realities and they must be different” (p. 70). What we fail to realize is that, as the philosopher Alan Watts (1966) said, “However much we divide, count, sort, or clas- sify [the world] into particular things and events, this is no more than a way of thinking about the world. It is never actually divid

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