Positive Psychology

Positive psychology is the science of optimal functioning. It studies happiness, well-being, engagement or flow states, personal strengths and virtues, wisdom and creativity. It seeks to discover how to help individuals and groups flourish and thrive.

The movement's main founder, Martin Seligman, saw that psychology had been overly focused on pathology: what makes people depressed, anxious etc. and how to relieve these conditions. He hoped to rebalance psychology by asking what conditions lead to flourishing.

Positive psychology is much more than positive thinking. Seligman saw three main aspects of flourishing:

• Accessing positive emotions such as gratitude, hope and inspiration on a regular basis.
• Engagement with life, or regularly accessing states of flow or absorption.
• Living a meaningful life - in the service of higher values or something beyond oneself.

Positive Psychotherapy

In psychotherapy the emphasis needs to be on how to create positive well-being, rather than how to get rid of negative states.

Positive psychology's on-going research programme has established a set of evidence-based methods and tools for building positive emotion, engagement and meaning.