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Home , Positive psychology

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Positive , Positive Prevention, and Positive

Martin E. P. Seligman

Positive Psychology mindedness, high talent, and . At the group level it is about the civic and the Psychology after World War II became a science institutions that move individuals toward better largely devoted to healing. It concentrated on citizenship: responsibility, nurturance, altruism, repairing damage using a disease model of hu- civility, moderation, tolerance, and work ethic man functioning. This almost exclusive atten- (Gillham & Seligman, 1999; Seligman & Csik- tion to neglected the idea of a fulfilled szentmihalyi, 2000). individual and a thriving community, and it ne- The notion of a positive psychology move- glected the possibility that building strength is ment began at a moment in time a few months the most potent weapon in the arsenal of ther- after I had been elected president of the Amer- apy. The aim of positive psychology is to cata- ican Psychological Association. It took place in lyze a change in psychology from a preoccu- my garden while I was weeding with my 5- pation only with repairing the worst things in year-old daughter, Nikki. I have to confess that life to also building the best qualities in life. To even though I write books about children, I’m redress the previous imbalance, we must bring really not all that good with them. I am - the building of strength to the forefront in the oriented and time-urgent, and when I am weed- treatment and prevention of mental illness. ing in the garden, I am actually trying to get The field of positive psychology at the sub- the weeding done. Nikki, however, was throw- jective level is about positive subjective ex- ing weeds into the air and dancing around. I perience: well-being and satisfaction (past); yelled at her. She walked away, came back, and flow, joy, the sensual , and said, “Daddy, I want to talk to you.” (present); and constructive about the “Yes, Nikki?” future—, , and faith. At the in- “Daddy, do you remember before my fifth dividual level it is about positive personal birthday? From the time I was three to the time traits—the capacity for and vocation, cour- Iwasfive,Iwasawhiner.Iwhinedeveryday. age, interpersonal skill, aesthetic sensibility, When I turned five, I decided not to whine any- perseverance, , originality, future- more. That was the hardest thing I’ve ever

3 4 PART I. INTRODUCTORY AND HISTORICAL OVERVIEW done. And if I can stop whining, you can stop making the lives of all people better and nur- being such a grouch.” turing genius—were all but forgotten. It was This was for me an epiphany, nothing less. I not only the subject matter that altered with learned something about Nikki, something funding but also the currency of the theories about raising kids, something about myself, and underpinning how we viewed ourselves. Psy- agreatdealaboutmyprofession.First,Ireal- chology came to see itself as a mere subfield of ized that raising Nikki was not about correcting the health professions, and it became a victim- whining. Nikki did that herself. Rather, I real- ology. We saw human beings as passive foci: ized that raising Nikki was about taking this stimuli came on and elicited responses (what an marvelous skill—I call it “seeing into the extraordinarily passive word). External rein- soul”—and amplifying it, nurturing it, helping forcements weakened or strengthened re- her to lead her life around it to buffer against sponses, or drives, tissue needs, or . her weaknesses and the storms of life. Raising Conflicts from childhood pushed each of us children, I realized, is more than fixing what is around. wrong with them. It is about identifying and Psychology’s empirical focus then shifted to nurturing their strongest qualities, what they assessing and curing individual suffering. There own and are best at, and helping them find has been an explosion in research on psycho- niches in which they can best live out these pos- logical disorders and the negative effects of en- itive qualities. vironmental stressors such as parental divorce, As for my own life, Nikki hit the nail right death, and physical and sexual abuse. Practi- on the head. I was a grouch. I had spent 50 tioners went about treating mental illness years mostly enduring wet weather in my soul, within the disease-patient framework of repair- and the last 10 years being a nimbus cloud in a ing damage: damaged habits, damaged drives, household of sunshine. Any good fortune I had damaged childhood, and damaged brains. was probably not due to my grouchiness but in The message of the positive psychology spite of it. In that moment, I resolved to change. movement is to remind our field that it has been But the broadest implication of Nikki’s lesson deformed. Psychology is not just the study of was about the science and practice of psychol- disease, weakness, and damage; it also is the ogy. Before World War II, psychology had study of strength and . Treatment is not three distinct missions: curing mental illness, just fixing what is wrong; it also is building making the lives of all people more productive what is right. Psychology is not just about ill- and fulfilling, and identifying and nurturing ness or health; it also is about work, education, high talent. Right after the war, two events— insight, love, growth, and . And in this both economic—changed the face of psychol- quest for what is best, positive psychology does ogy. In 1946, the Veterans Administration was not rely on wishful thinking, self-deception, or founded, and thousands of found hand waving; instead, it tries to adapt what is out that they could make a living treating men- best in the scientific method to the unique prob- tal illness. At that time the profession of clinical lems that human behavior presents in all its came into its own. In 1947, the Na- complexity. tional Institute of (which was based on the American Psychiatric Association’s disease model and is better described as the Na- Positive Prevention tional Institute of Mental Illness) was founded, and academics found out that they could get What foregrounds this approach is the issue of grants if their research was described as being prevention. In the last decade psychologists about pathology. have become concerned with prevention, and This arrangement brought many substantial this was the theme of the 1998 American Psy- benefits. There have been huge strides in the chological Association meeting in San Francisco. understanding of and therapy for mental illness: How can we prevent problems like At least 14 disorders, previously intractable, or substance abuse or schizophrenia in young have yielded their secrets to science and can people who are genetically vulnerable or who now be either cured or considerably relieved live in worlds that nurture these problems? (Seligman, 1994). But the downside was that the How can we prevent murderous schoolyard vi- other two fundamental missions of psychology— olence in children who have poor parental su- CHAPTER 1. POSITIVE PREVENTION AND POSITIVE THERAPY 5 pervision, a mean streak, and access to weapons? strengths that these teens already have. A teen- What we have learned over 50 years is that the ager who is future-minded, who is interperson- disease model does not move us closer to the ally skilled, who derives flow from sports, is not prevention of these serious problems. Indeed, at risk for substance abuse. If we wish to pre- the major strides in prevention have largely vent schizophrenia in a young person at genetic come from a perspective focused on systemati- risk, I would propose that the repairing of dam- cally building competency, not correcting weak- age is not going to work. Rather, I suggest that ness. ayoungpersonwholearnseffectiveinterper- We have discovered that there are human sonal skills, who has a strong work ethic, and strengths that act as buffers against mental ill- who has learned persistence under adversity is ness: , future-mindedness, optimism, in- at lessened risk for schizophrenia. terpersonal skill, faith, work ethic, hope, hon- This, then, is the general stance of positive esty, perseverance, the capacity for flow and psychology toward prevention. It claims that insight, to name several. Much of the task of there is a of buffers against psychopathol- prevention in this new century will be to create ogy: the positive human traits. The Nikki prin- ascienceofhumanstrengthwhosemissionwill ciple holds that by identifying, amplifying, and be to understand and learn how to foster these concentrating on these strengths in people at virtues in young people. risk, we will do effective prevention. Working My own work in prevention takes this ap- exclusively on personal weakness and on dam- proach and amplifies a skill that all individuals aged brains, and deifying the Diagnostic and possess but usually deploy in the wrong place. Statistical Manual (DSM), in contrast, has ren- The skill is called disputing (Beck, Rush, Shaw, dered science poorly equipped to do effective &Emery,1979),anditsuseisattheheartof prevention. We now need to call for massive “.” If an external person, who research on human strength and virtue. We is a rival for your job, accuses you falsely of need to develop a nosology of human strength— failing at your job and not deserving your po- the “UNDSM-I”, the opposite of DSM-IV.We sition, you will dispute him. You will marshal need to measure reliably and validly these all the evidence that you do your job very well. strengths. We need to do the appropriate lon- You will grind the accusations into dust. But if gitudinal studies and to understand you accuse yourself falsely of not deserving how these strengths grow (or are stunted; Vail- your job, which is just the content of the au- lant, 2000). We need to develop and test inter- tomatic of pessimists, you will not dis- ventions to build these strengths. pute it. If it issues from inside, we tend to be- We need to ask practitioners to recognize that lieve it. So in “learned optimism” training much of the best work they already do in the programs, we teach both children and to consulting room is to amplify their clients’ recognize their own catastrophic thinking and strengths rather than repair their weaknesses. to become skilled disputers (Peterson, 2000; Se- We need to emphasize that psychologists work- ligman, Reivich, Jaycox, & Gillham, 1995; Se- ing with families, schools, religious communi- ligman, Schulman, DeRubeis, & Hollon, 1999). ties, and corporations develop climates that fos- This training works, and once you learn it, it ter these strengths. The major psychological is a skill that is self-reinforcing. We have shown theories now undergird a new science of that learning optimism prevents depression and strength and resilience. No longer do the dom- in children and adults, roughly halving inant theories view the individual as a passive their incidence over the next 2 years. I mention vessel “responding” to “stimuli”; rather, indi- this work only in passing, however. It is in- viduals now are seen as decision makers, with tended to illustrate the Nikki principle: that choices, preferences, and the possibility of be- building a strength, in this case, optimism, and coming masterful, efficacious, or, in malignant teaching people when to use it, rather than re- circumstances, helpless and hopeless. Science pairing damage, effectively prevents depression and practice that relies on the positive psychol- and anxiety. Similarly, I believe that if we wish ogy worldview may have the direct effect of to prevent drug abuse in teenagers who grow preventing many of the major emotional dis- up in a neighborhood that puts them at risk, the orders. It also may have two side effects: mak- effective prevention is not remedial. Rather, it ing the lives of our clients physically healthier, consists of identifying and amplifying the given all we are learning about the effects of 6 PART I. INTRODUCTORY AND HISTORICAL OVERVIEW mental well-being on the body; and reorienting exceptions mentioned previously) shows big, psychology to its two neglected missions, mak- specific effects when it is compared with another ing normal people stronger and more produc- form of or drug, adequately ad- tive, as well as making high human potential ministered. Finally, add the seriously large “pla- actual. cebo” effect found in almost all studies of psy- chotherapy and of drugs. In the depression literature, a typical example, around 50% of pa- Positive Therapy tients will respond well to placebo drugs or . Effective specific drugs or therapies Iamgoingtoventurearadicalproposition usually add another 15% to this, and 75% of about why psychotherapy works as well as it the effects of antidepressant drugs can be ac- does. I am going to suggest that positive psy- counted for by their placebo nature (Kirsch & chology, albeit intuitive and inchoate, is a major Sapirstein, 1998). effective ingredient in therapy as it is now done; So why is psychotherapy so robustly effec- if it is recognized and honed, it will become an tive? Why is there so little specificity of psy- even more effective approach to psychotherapy. chotherapy techniques or specific drugs? Why But before doing so, it is necessary to say what is there such a huge placebo effect? Ibelieveabout“specific”ingredientsintherapy. Let me speculate on this pattern of questions. Ibelievetherearesomeclearspecificsinpsy- Many of the relevant ideas have been put for- chotherapy. Among them are ward under the derogatory misnomer nonspe- cifics. Iamgoingtorenametwoclassesofnon- • Applied tension for blood and injury phobia specifics as tactics and deep strategies.Among • Penile squeeze for premature ejaculation the tactics of good therapy are • Cognitive therapy for panic • Relaxation for phobia • • Exposure for obsessive-compulsive disorder • Authority figure • Behavior therapy for enuresis • Rapport • Paying for services (My book What You Can Change and What • Trust You Can’t [1994] documents the specifics and • Opening up reviews the relevant literature.) But specificity • Naming the problem of technique to disorder is far from the whole • Tricks of the trade (e.g., “Let’s pause here,” story. rather than “Let’s stop here”) There are three serious anomalies on which present specificity theories of the effectiveness The deep strategies are not mysteries. Good of psychotherapy stub their toes. First, effect- therapists almost always use them, but they do iveness studies (field studies of real-world deliv- not have names, they are not studied, and, ery), as opposed to laboratory efficacy studies of locked into the disease model, we do not train psychotherapy, show a substantially larger ben- our students to use them to better advantage. I efit of psychotherapy. In the Consumer Reports believe that the deep strategies are all tech- study, for example, over 90% of respondents niques of positive psychology and that they can reported substantial benefits, as opposed to be the subject of large-scale science and of the about 65% in efficacy studies of specific psy- invention of new techniques that maximize chotherapies (Seligman, 1995, 1996). Second, them. One major strategy is instilling hope when one active treatment is compared with an- (Snyder, Ilardi, Michael, & Cheavens, 2000). other active treatment, specificity tends to dis- But I am not going to discuss this one now, as appear or becomes quite a small effect. Lester it is often discussed elsewhere in the literature Luborsky’s corpus and the National Collabora- on placebo, on explanatory style and hopeless- tive Study of Depression are examples. The lack ness, and on demoralization (Seligman, 1994). of robust specificity also is apparent in much of Another is the “building of buffering the drug literature. Methodologists argue end- strengths,” or the Nikki principle. I believe that lessly over flaws in such outcome studies, but it is a common strategy among almost all com- they cannot hatchet away the general lack of petent psychotherapists to first identify and specificity. The fact is that almost no psycho- then help their patients build a large variety of therapy technique that I can think of (with the strengths, rather than just to deliver specific CHAPTER 1. POSITIVE PREVENTION AND POSITIVE THERAPY 7 damage-healing techniques. Among the we have lost our birthright as psychologists, a strengths built in psychotherapy are birthright that embraces both healing what is weak and nurturing what is strong. • Courage • Interpersonal skill • Rationality Conclusions • Insight • Optimism Let me end this introduction to the Handbook • Honesty of Positive Psychology with a prediction about • Perseverance the science and practice of psychology in the • Realism 21st century. I believe that a psychology of pos- • Capacity for itive human functioning will arise that achieves • Putting troubles into perspective ascientificunderstandingandeffectiveinter- • Future-mindedness ventions to build thriving individuals, families, • Finding purpose and communities. You may think that it is pure fantasy, that Assume for a moment that the buffering effects psychology will never look beyond the victim, of strength-building strategies have a larger ef- the underdog, and the remedial. But I want to fect than the specific “healing” ingredients that suggest that the time is finally right. I well rec- have been discovered. If this is true, the rela- ognize that positive psychology is not a new tively small specificity found when different ac- idea. It has many distinguished ancestors (e.g., tive therapies and different drugs are compared Allport, 1961; Maslow, 1971). But they some- and the massive placebo effects both follow. how failed to attract a cumulative and empirical One illustrative deep strategy is “narration.” body of research to ground their ideas. Ibelievethattellingthestoriesofourlives, Why did they not? And why has psychology making sense of what otherwise seems chaotic, been so focused on the negative? Why has it distilling and discovering a trajectory in our adopted the premise—without a shred of evi- lives, and viewing our lives with a sense of dence—that negative are authentic agency rather than victimhood are all power- and positive are derivative? There are fully positive (Csikszentmihalyi, 1993). I be- several possible explanations. Negative emo- lieve that all competent psychotherapy forces tions and experiences may be more urgent and such narration, and this buffers against mental therefore override positive ones. This would disorder in just the same way hope does. Notice, make evolutionary sense. Because negative however, that narration is not a primary subject emotions often reflect immediate problems or of research on therapy process, that we do not objective dangers, they should be powerful have categories of narration, that we do not enough to force us to stop, increase vigilance, train our students to better facilitate narration, reflect on our behavior, and change our actions that we do not reimburse practitioners for it. if necessary. (Of course, in some dangerous sit- The use of positive psychology in psycho- uations, it will be most adaptive to respond therapy exposes a fundamental blind spot in without taking a great deal of time to reflect.) outcome research: The search for empirically In contrast, when we are adapting well to the validated therapies (EVTs) has in its present world, no such alarm is needed. Experiences form handcuffed us by focusing only on vali- that promote happiness often seem to pass ef- dating the specific techniques that repair dam- fortlessly. So, on one level, psychology’s focus age and that map uniquely into DSM-IV cate- on the negative may reflect differences in the gories. The parallel emphasis in managed care survival of negative versus positive emo- organizations on delivering only brief treat- tions. ments directed solely at healing damage may But perhaps we are oblivious to the survival rob patients of the very best weapons in the value of positive emotions precisely because arsenal of therapy—making our patients they are so important. Like the fish that is un- stronger human beings. That by working in the aware of the water in which it swims, we take medical model and looking solely for the salves for granted a certain amount of hope, love, en- to heal the wounds, we have misplaced much of joyment, and trust because these are the very our science and much of our training. That by conditions that allow us to go on living (Myers, embracing the disease model of psychotherapy, 2000). They are the fundamental conditions of 8 PART I. INTRODUCTORY AND HISTORICAL OVERVIEW existence, and if they are present, any amount and depression. They have developed sophisti- of objective obstacles can be faced with equa- cated methods—both experimental and longi- nimity, and even joy. Camus wrote that the tudinal—for understanding the causal pathways foremost question of philosophy is why one that lead to such undesirable outcomes. Most should not commit suicide. One cannot answer important, they have developed pharmacological that question just by curing depression; there and psychological interventions that have must be positive reasons for living as well. moved many of the mental disorders from “un- There also are historical reasons for psychol- treatable” to “highly treatable” and, in a couple ogy’s negative focus. When cultures face mili- of cases, “curable.” These same methods, and tary threat, shortages of goods, poverty, or in- in many cases the same laboratories and the stability, they may most naturally be concerned next two generations of scientists, with a slight with defense and damage control. Cultures may shift of emphasis and funding, will be used to turn their attention to , virtue, and the measure, understand, and build those char- highest qualities in life only when they are sta- acteristics that make life most worth living. ble, prosperous, and at peace. Athens during the As a side effect of studying positive human 5th century b.c., Florence of the 15th century, traits, science will learn how to better treat and and England in the Victorian era are examples prevent mental, as well as some physical, ill- of cultures that focused on positive qualities. nesses. As a main effect, we will learn how to Athenian philosophy focused on the human vir- build the qualities that help individuals and tues: What is good action and good character? communities not just endure and survive but What makes life most worthwhile? Democracy also flourish. was born during this era. Florence chose not to become the most important military power in Europe but to invest its surplus in beauty. Vic- Acknowledgment This research was sup- torian England affirmed honor, discipline, and ported by grants MH19604 and MH52270 duty as important human virtues. from the National Institute of Mental Health. Iamnotsuggestingthatourcultureshould Please send reprint requests to Dr. M. E. P Se- now erect an aesthetic monument. Rather, I be- ligman, Department of Psychology, University lieve that our nation—wealthy, at peace, and of Pennsylvania, 3815 Walnut Street, Phila- stable—provides a similar world historical op- delphia, PA 19104, or e-mail (seligman@psych. portunity. We can choose to create a scientific upenn.edu). This chapter draws heavily on Se- monument—a science that takes as its primary ligman and Csikszentmihalyi (2000). task the understanding of what makes life worth living. Such an endeavor will move the whole of social science away from its negative bias. The prevailing social sciences tend to view the References authentic forces governing human behavior as self-interest, aggressiveness, territoriality, class Allport, G. W. (1961). Pattern and growth in per- conflict, and the like. Such a science, even at its sonality. 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