Existential Therapy as Positive Psychology

Positive psychology is a field of psychology and social science research into what makes us flourish as communities and individuals. Imagine a scale of human challenges, divided into two parts: “minus-five to zero” and “zero to plus-five.” Throughout the twentieth century, psychotherapy has been focused on the first part: improvement in the minus range. To quote Freud, the aim was to “succeed in transforming […] hysterical misery into common unhappiness.”That’s to say, the goal was to cure mental illness and so bring you back to zero (it would seem that the Austrian notion of zero is “common unhappiness”). But what about the other spectrum, the positive side, where people become positively strong and wise and resilient? Where they create meaning and connection and flourishing? Where they create a good life? At the beginning of this century the then head of the American Psychological Society, Martin Seligman, challenged his colleagues to turn their lens on this side of life. 

​This minus range has been the focus of both psychological and social science research, and of the helping professions such as clinical psychology and of psychiatry - which diagnose and treat mental disorders. Positive Psychology represents a move into  broader view of life, as well as an older one. Anybody who has read the ancient Greeks, in particular Aristotle, will be struck by the resonance between the two fields. Positive Psychology is essentially a scientific variant of the older philosophical tradition of trying to understand human flourishing and then applying that knowledge to one’s own life. In philosophy this is called Eudaimonic ethics, where eudaimon is an ancient Greek word meaning “good spirit.” A happy soul.
 
Positive psychology has had its fair share of problems in terms of replication scandals, although these mistakes appear to have happened in good faith (albeit perhaps with a little hubris mixed in). Nonetheless, the power of empirical research has not only verified many things we thought we knew, but shattered some of our assumptions, and honed the details of much of our knowledge. It has given us more true, more detailed knowledge which we can apply to ourselves as individuals. As an example, we now know that will-power is less like a mental muscle, and more a skill in curating your context to make it easier to remain on track. And insofar as it is like a muscle, we now know that while exercising each day makes you stronger in the long-term, at the same time it reduces your will-power with respect to other things that day. We also now know, through experimental accidents, a lot more about the cognitive components of will-power, about how to craft a mindset and bodily sense of things which will keep you going in hardship.
 
Martin Seligman, whom I mentioned above, is the foremost researcher and writer in this field. If you read my post on Counselling for Well-being you will read about two kinds of well-being, eudaimonic and hedonic. Seligman instead discerned three kinds: the pleasant life, the engaged life, and the meaningful life. The pleasant life corresponds to the hedonic. The engaged life is one that is properly absorbed by activity and life. The meaningful life corresponds to Aristotle’s eudaimonic well-being. Seligman later revised his model to emphasise the relational aspect of life as opposed to the individualism which could be perceived in the original. This later model is called PERMA: positive emotions (the pleasant life, above), engagement (as per above), relationships with other people and communities, meaning (as per above), and accomplishment in the sense of doing well in the world (for example, making life work at the material level).
 
One way to think of Positive Psychology, consistent with my model at the beginning, is to think of the minus realm as largely the domain of clinical psychology and psychiatry. And to think of the positive range as the realm of personal growth counselling. This is like the difference between a GP and a personal trainer. Of course, most of the “minus” aspects of life have nothing to do with mental illness and psychologists. I am thinking of struggle with hardship and adversity. Positive Psychology has expanded to deal with these, with putting your best foot forward in hard times. This is where I am located as a counsellor. I am not interested in mental illness - that is the domain of clinical psychologists, who have spent years studying the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders and how to apply it. I, by contrast, have spent my years studying how we cope with hard times and make life good. Clinical psychologists are not better than personal growth counsellors, and personal growth counsellors are not better than clinical psychologists. We bring different kinds of expertise and deal with different domains of life. As I often say of my discipline: therapy is the art of living well.