In case you haven’t heard yet, Positive Psychology is all the rage these days. The main idea is to shift the focus of psychology away from weaknesses and disease to focus on strength and potential. In a move that may be a sign of things to come, McLean Hospital in Boston is developing a Positive Psychology institute to bring more optimism and happiness to staff and patients.
Philip Levendusky , McLean’s senior vice president of new business development, said he predicts that positive psychology will follow the same path as cognitive behavioral therapy, a highly popular technique that helps patients catch themselves in counterproductive thinking and refashion their thoughts. When he helped bring cognitive behavioral therapy to McLean in the early 1970s, at first “people looked at me like I had three heads,” he said.
I think this is a pretty interesting idea, and if research continue to build and show results for this approach, then we may be seeing many more of these centers in hospitals across the country.
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Friday Flashback for January 18, 2008 - World of Psychology (1/18/2008)
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“Positive Psychology at McLean Hospital”
I read this article yesterday and am looking forward to hearing more about the program (and its results, as time passes), because I think:
- It’s an excellent idea!
- It focuses on happiness, rather than human behavior and emotion that is so often just portrayed as dysfunction.
People are a lot more complex and full of far more potential than what a lot of the dysfunction-focused theories tend to allow for. Positive psychology, the scientific study of optimal human functioning, is a nice new look at helping people improve their lives and happiness.
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Last reviewed: By John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on 15 Jan 2007
