Introduction
Positive psychology refers to a broad subset of disciplinary interests, research programs, and areas of application, all of which share a common focus on the “positive” aspects of psychology. Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi (2000) – who are the field’s founders and main proponents – have argued as grounds for its inception that it is an important and necessary foil to what they characterize as the disproportionate focus on mental illness, dysfunction, and pathology in the history of the discipline of psychology. As remedy to this “negative” bias in the discipline, positive psychologists maintain that what is needed is a shift in research efforts towards understanding what kinds of factors contribute to well-being, happiness, and success. Some of its proponents go as far as claiming that this shift in focus – and the resulting success of positive psychology – will ultimately redefine the coordinates of the entire discipline of psychology (Seligman & Fowler, 2011). Critiques...
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Yen, J. (2014). Positive Psychology. In: Teo, T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Critical Psychology. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-5583-7_225
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