Abstract

Psychologists led by Martin Seligman, a well-known researcher in the traditional negative approach (e.g., learned helplessness), toward the turn of 21st century, took inventory of their achievements under the disease model for over 50 years in the post – World War II era. Despite definite accomplishments in finding effective treatments for mental illness and dysfunctional behaviour, psychology has paid relatively very little attention to psychologically healthy individuals in terms of growth, development, self-actualization, and well-being. The call was made by Seligman and a few others (e.g., Mike Csikszentmihalyi, Ed Diener) for redirecting psychological research toward psychology’s two forgotten missions of helping psychologically healthy people become happier and more productive and actualizing their human potential. Positive psychology bases its conclusions on rigorous scientific methods rather than philosophy, rhetoric, anecdotes, conventional wisdom, gurus, or personal experience and opinion. It is noteworthy that the theory and research requirement of positive psychology was intended and indeed has differentiated it from the plethora of popular literature and the power of positive thinking over the years and much of positively oriented humanistic psychology, personal development, and the human potential movement.