While psychologists have studied topics like happiness, optimism, and other human strengths for decades, positive psychology wasn’t officially identified as a branch of psychology until 1998 when Martin Seligman was elected president of the American Psychological Association (APA). Seligman suggested that psychology had become too focused on mental illness. While this had brought about valuable treatments that enabled psychologists to treat a number of diseases and disorders that made people less unhappy. It meant that psychology was neglecting what was good about life—and what the average person could improve.
Seligman called for research into what makes normal people’s lives positive and fulfilling and suggested that the field should develop interventions that could make people happier. He stated that psychology should be just as concerned with nurturing (滋养) the good things in life as it was with healing the bad.
Seligman made positive psychology the theme of his term as APA president and used his role to popularize the word. From there the field took off. It received a great deal of attention from mainstream media outlets. Meanwhile, the first Positive Psychology summit was held in 1999, followed by the first International conference on Positive Psychology in 2002.
Interest in positive psychology has remained high ever since. In 2018, a quarter of the undergraduate students at Yale University enrolled in a course devoted to the subject of happiness. In 2019, 1,600 individuals attended the World Congress of Positive Psychology and research in the field has generated tens of thousands of academic papers.
Psychologist Christopher Peterson pointed out that positive psychology is meant to serve as an extension of the areas of psychology that focus on mental illness and human weakness. Positive psychologists don't wish to replace or abandon the study of human problems, they simply wish to add the study of what’s good in life to the field.
【小题1】What should positive psychology focus on according to Seligman?| A．Solving human problems. | B．Treating bad emotions. |
| C．Healing mental illnesses. | D．Helping develop good things. |
| A．Seligman’s effort in spreading it. | B．International conferences’ being held. |
| C．Attention from the media. | D．Further research in this field. |
| A．Ambiguous. | B．Doubtful. |
| C．Objective. | D．Critical. |
| A．The Limitation of Positive Psychology |
| B．Seligman, Father of Positive Psychology |
| C．Psychology: Past, Present and Possible Future |
| D．Positive Psychology: A New Subfield of Psychology |
