Martin Seligman talks about psychology -- as a field of study and as it works one-on-one with each patient and each practitioner. As it moves beyond a focus on disease, what can modern psychology help us to become?
Ten years ago, when I was on an airplane and I introduced myself to my seatmate, and told them [I was a psychologist], they’d move away from me. … And now when I tell people what I do, they move toward me.” (Martin Seligman)
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Oct 5 2011: Does anyone know that Martin Seligman has since walked away from the concept of 'positive psychology'?
One has to remember that psychology is not a science; if doctors cut you open they will not find your ego. If there is a science of mental illness it is in neurology and not psychology. While Seligman was proud of the idea that psychology and psychiatry can actually claim that we can make miserable people less miserable, it has done little to address the root causes of these conditions when they do not have a biological cause. Its profitable model is to "treat" and not eradicate the illness.-
Oct 6 2011: Did he walked away from the concept of "positive psychology"? He just published a book about the his research on that concept (called "Flourish) in April 2011. Must have been a very recent change.-
Feb 2 2012: "...at a late afternoon plenary session on "The Future of Positive Psychology," featuring the patriarchs of the discipline, Martin Seligman and Ed Diener. Seligman got the audience's attention by starting off with the statement "I've decided my theory of positive psychology is completely wrong." Why? Because it's about happiness, which is "scientifically unwieldy."
Somehow, this problem could be corrected by throwing in the notions of "success" and "accomplishment"—which I couldn't help noting would put the positive psychologists on the same terrain as Norman Vincent Peale and any number of success gurus. With the addition of success, Seligman went on, one was talking no longer about positive psychology but about a "plural theory" embracing anthropology, political science, and economics, and this is what he would be moving on to—"positive social science."
Seligman's statement created understandable consternation within the audience of several hundred positive psychologists, graduate students, and coaches. It must have felt a bit like having one's father announce that he found his current family too narrow and limiting and would be moving on to a new one."
quoted from Barbara Ehrenlich's article that appeared in Psychotherapy Networker. She reports that Ed Diener, also added the following observation:
"Diener defended the phrase "positive psychology," saying, "It's a brand." Besides, he said, he "hates" the idea of positive social science, since social science includes sociology and sociology is "weak" and notoriously underfunded."
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- Oct 11 2011: I dont know if Martin Seligman walked away from positive psychology, I doubt it. In fact he is conducting a seminar about happiness in Santiago de Chile at the Chilean Positive Psychologist Institute (Enhancing People - Instituto Chileno de Psicología Positiva) on october 12th 2011.
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