Positive Psychology

From Sigmund on down, the history of psychology has largely focused on psychopathology. Put differently, if there is some “average,” some baseline, human subjective experience, psychology has largely focused on helping those below average achieve the baseline (again, in some cases). Happily (pun intended), Martin Seligman and others in the 70s and 80s started asking, instead, why some folks are consistently above the baseline, and what can be done to take normal folks and help them to amplify the positivity of their experience. The plethora of research that has followed has produced a reliable and well-replicated body of simple activities and changes in habit that meaningfully increase the happiness of both the psychologically struggling as well as those “normal” folks among us.