Positive disintegration5/30/2023 ![]() Among those for whom positive psychology works, some specific techniques will work and others will not. This seems to neatly explain much of why people, after controlling for scams and bullshit, still have varying success with positive psychology.īut I think there is something left unexplained. Put another way, if you’re too busy surviving, you don’t have time for positive psychology and even if you did it’s not likely to help because it’s not your primary constraint. To this point, it seems likely that positive psychology only works for the sufficiently privileged because they uniquely have the luxury of being able to spend time and energy on self actualization. If all that holds some people back from believing in the usefulness of positive psychology is that its sometimes use in cons, then we can advise that they should, as always, practice epistemic hygiene and not confuse correlation for causation.īut even acknowledging the theoretical validity of positive psychology, some folks still object that its techniques don’t seem to work, at least not for themselves and not for their friends. Yet I and others have found tremendous value in our lives by looking at such topics as esteem, psychological development, and meaning through the lens of positive psychology. And although plenty of folks are working on evidence-based self-help and other scientific personal development methodologies, the guilt-by-association seems sufficient for some people to dismiss the field. From what I can surmise, they hold this view because of positive psychology’s association with self-help, life coaching, and leadership training - domains where rationalization can often pass for explanation and hucksters can operate as long as they are sufficiently charismatic. Some folks, however, take a negative view of positive psychology. People find this psychopathological approach useful as far as it goes, but it leaves out ways of using psychology in positive feedback loops to help people achieve more than normal. This attention to error and correction makes most of applied psychology a kind of negative feedback process aiming to normalize thoughts and behaviors within desired tolerances. That is, people generally go to see psychologists and psychiatrists because they or others are unhappy with how they are thinking or behaving. We encounter psychology in our lives mainly through dysfunction. ![]()
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