David Baxter PhD
Late Founder
Positive Psychology - It?s So Much More Than Happiness!
By Sherri Fisher
March 5, 2008
Positive Psychology Detractor Exorcised by Big Leap
In his new book Against Happiness: In Praise of Melancholia, Eric G. Wilson blends his experience as a sufferer of chronic sadness and as a scholar of the Romantic period and comes up with ?proof? that negative emotions and experience lead to creativity. That is quite a leap!! This current darling of the press suggests that misery is good?even desirable. After all, he is able to cite numerous examples of high artistic achievement produced by melancholy people. Who is Wilson? He is an English professor and Chair at Wake Forest University, and his message of misery may be compelling if incorrect.
Wilson mistakenly calls Positive Psychology ?a brand of psychotherapy.? There is Positive Psychotherapy
- researched and manualized - but it is not by any means what drives the field nor is this its only topic. Generally speaking, Positive Psychology is not meant to be a treatment for the mentally ill. Positive Psychology is about far more than happiness and getting more of it, and a close reading of Wilson?s own arguments suggests that he does not know much about Positive Psychology topics like hope or elevation, though they are likely relevant to his study of how misery supposedly yields the artistic geniuses he admires.
Why Praise Melancholia when it?s Positive Emotion at Work?
The Romantic poets, like many people who lived before antibiotics and modern medicine, faced daily miseries of death (the consumption Wilson references was common and had no cure) and sadness. Wilson calls happiness an ?addiction? and he misinterprets the poet Keats?s personal observation that ?gloom? was the cause of his inspiration as proof that it is good to be miserable. But that does not make it a negative emotion causation study. Keats? poetry seems to Wilson an example of what happens when one comes out of a cloud of wonderful darkness long enough to realize a flash of insight.
Or, maybe not.
I?d like to consider the possibility that Keats? response to a Grecian urn or a Nightingale was instead ?elevation? or even ?awe.? Positive Psychology researcher Jon Haidt (University of Virginia) says, ?I believe that powerful experiences of elevation can be peak experiences. Powerful moments of elevation sometimes seem to push a mental ?reset button,? wiping out feelings of cynicism and replacing them with feelings of hope, love, and optimism, and a sense of moral inspiration.? In addition, Keats is using his strengths when he closes with these immortal words:
Elevation could very well be the explanation for the down-and-out Handel?s 24-day run with little food or sleep while he composed his masterpiece ?The Messiah? after reading the words to a libretto which related the life of Jesus. Perhaps as well, he spent days in the flow state, a time of high concentration and initiative, working at the point where his talents and skills met his challenges, but not to the level of anxiety or the fear of failure. This may have been a state of pure joy for Handel while time slipped away and he was amazingly highly productive. Hallelujah!
And what about Van Gogh? He was probably bi-polar, so he is not exactly a paragon of desirable human experience, no matter his genius. Look at Starry Night and see darkness if you like, but it is the stars against that darkness on which the artist focused. Chronically depressed people, I would argue, are not producing works of great creativity because they are sad; instead they are producing them during times of relative lucidity (in this case, hypomania), while seeking the light in a dark world. They are choosing happiness by using art to help transcend pain. (By the way, Appreciation of Beauty is a transcendent strength).
Chronically happy people are less self-indulgent than depressed ones. They also regularly experience the more enduring aspects of happiness beyond pleasure: engagement, meaning and achievement of valued goals. So does this mean that chronically depressed people, when they experience engagement (flow), meaning and achievement, are?happy? And if so, is this a good thing?
In his LA Times article of February 17, 2008, Wilson says this: ?Melancholia, far from error or defect, is an almost miraculous invitation to rise above the contented status quo and imagine untapped possibilities? (italics mine). That sounds like part of a Positive Psychology practitioner?s mission statement. And, in an interesting use of a positive emotion, Wilson says, ?I?m offering hope to those millions who feel guilty for being downhearted.? He?s offering hope? It is an important sub-field of Positive Psychology.
It may be clever to rail against the ?Happiness Movement,? but be sure not to confuse that with Positive Psychology. You might even read studies for yourself rather than the books which claim to present findings to you.
Sonja Lyubomirsky has found that it is possible to increase happiness, but it is hard work. (PPND?s review of Lyubomirsky?s new book is here). That work is what many happiness detractors find unappealing about positive interventions. The question is, are the outcomes worth it? See for yourself: Lyubomirsky et al., Happiness Studies. Read numerous studies in their entirety plus four abstracts for papers in press. Also, see Lyubomirsky on YouTube:
Positive Psychology or Self-Help?
The recent backlash against the ?Happiness Movement?, as many journalists call it, presents a fine opportunity to note the differences between self-help and Positive Psychology. You may have noticed that what you read, hear or see in mass media seems to suggest that Positive Psychology is a general term for any ?you need to be happier? approach.
It isn?t.
By Sherri Fisher
March 5, 2008
Positive Psychology Detractor Exorcised by Big Leap
In his new book Against Happiness: In Praise of Melancholia, Eric G. Wilson blends his experience as a sufferer of chronic sadness and as a scholar of the Romantic period and comes up with ?proof? that negative emotions and experience lead to creativity. That is quite a leap!! This current darling of the press suggests that misery is good?even desirable. After all, he is able to cite numerous examples of high artistic achievement produced by melancholy people. Who is Wilson? He is an English professor and Chair at Wake Forest University, and his message of misery may be compelling if incorrect.
Wilson mistakenly calls Positive Psychology ?a brand of psychotherapy.? There is Positive Psychotherapy
- researched and manualized - but it is not by any means what drives the field nor is this its only topic. Generally speaking, Positive Psychology is not meant to be a treatment for the mentally ill. Positive Psychology is about far more than happiness and getting more of it, and a close reading of Wilson?s own arguments suggests that he does not know much about Positive Psychology topics like hope or elevation, though they are likely relevant to his study of how misery supposedly yields the artistic geniuses he admires.Why Praise Melancholia when it?s Positive Emotion at Work?
The Romantic poets, like many people who lived before antibiotics and modern medicine, faced daily miseries of death (the consumption Wilson references was common and had no cure) and sadness. Wilson calls happiness an ?addiction? and he misinterprets the poet Keats?s personal observation that ?gloom? was the cause of his inspiration as proof that it is good to be miserable. But that does not make it a negative emotion causation study. Keats? poetry seems to Wilson an example of what happens when one comes out of a cloud of wonderful darkness long enough to realize a flash of insight.
Or, maybe not.
I?d like to consider the possibility that Keats? response to a Grecian urn or a Nightingale was instead ?elevation? or even ?awe.? Positive Psychology researcher Jon Haidt (University of Virginia) says, ?I believe that powerful experiences of elevation can be peak experiences. Powerful moments of elevation sometimes seem to push a mental ?reset button,? wiping out feelings of cynicism and replacing them with feelings of hope, love, and optimism, and a sense of moral inspiration.? In addition, Keats is using his strengths when he closes with these immortal words:
?Beauty is truth, truth beauty,?that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.?
(For the uninitiated, Appreciation of Beauty and Excellence is a strength to which I relate.)Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.?
Elevation could very well be the explanation for the down-and-out Handel?s 24-day run with little food or sleep while he composed his masterpiece ?The Messiah? after reading the words to a libretto which related the life of Jesus. Perhaps as well, he spent days in the flow state, a time of high concentration and initiative, working at the point where his talents and skills met his challenges, but not to the level of anxiety or the fear of failure. This may have been a state of pure joy for Handel while time slipped away and he was amazingly highly productive. Hallelujah!
And what about Van Gogh? He was probably bi-polar, so he is not exactly a paragon of desirable human experience, no matter his genius. Look at Starry Night and see darkness if you like, but it is the stars against that darkness on which the artist focused. Chronically depressed people, I would argue, are not producing works of great creativity because they are sad; instead they are producing them during times of relative lucidity (in this case, hypomania), while seeking the light in a dark world. They are choosing happiness by using art to help transcend pain. (By the way, Appreciation of Beauty is a transcendent strength).
Chronically happy people are less self-indulgent than depressed ones. They also regularly experience the more enduring aspects of happiness beyond pleasure: engagement, meaning and achievement of valued goals. So does this mean that chronically depressed people, when they experience engagement (flow), meaning and achievement, are?happy? And if so, is this a good thing?
In his LA Times article of February 17, 2008, Wilson says this: ?Melancholia, far from error or defect, is an almost miraculous invitation to rise above the contented status quo and imagine untapped possibilities? (italics mine). That sounds like part of a Positive Psychology practitioner?s mission statement. And, in an interesting use of a positive emotion, Wilson says, ?I?m offering hope to those millions who feel guilty for being downhearted.? He?s offering hope? It is an important sub-field of Positive Psychology.
It may be clever to rail against the ?Happiness Movement,? but be sure not to confuse that with Positive Psychology. You might even read studies for yourself rather than the books which claim to present findings to you.
Sonja Lyubomirsky has found that it is possible to increase happiness, but it is hard work. (PPND?s review of Lyubomirsky?s new book is here). That work is what many happiness detractors find unappealing about positive interventions. The question is, are the outcomes worth it? See for yourself: Lyubomirsky et al., Happiness Studies. Read numerous studies in their entirety plus four abstracts for papers in press. Also, see Lyubomirsky on YouTube:
Positive Psychology or Self-Help?
The recent backlash against the ?Happiness Movement?, as many journalists call it, presents a fine opportunity to note the differences between self-help and Positive Psychology. You may have noticed that what you read, hear or see in mass media seems to suggest that Positive Psychology is a general term for any ?you need to be happier? approach.
It isn?t.
- Self-help is mostly based on folk-wisdom, or on an individual or small group of individuals? personal experiences. Some of these experiences may have been born of best-practices or a great revelation. Maybe the experiences can help you, too, so people are sharing. You may benefit and might even think that if a real person shares a personal experience that it is somehow more trustworthy than if a researcher who may not have ?suffered? the problem provides correlations between an activity or intervention and well-being. Sometimes a self-help approach becomes a phenomenon, like ?The Secret?, but this does not make it Positive Psychology no matter what you may have been led to believe.
- Positive Psychology is a science that?s research based, and no claims are made without the studies to back them up. If you have never read a ?real? study, see the links to several above. Don?t forget that Positive Psychology is about a lot more than happiness (aka subjective well-being and positive subjective experience), though those topics have received significant attention.
