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Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive…
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Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfillment (edition 2002)

by Martin E. P. Seligman (Author), John Dossett (Reader)

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1,1961616,296 (3.69)3
An Aristotelian approach to psychology

The basic idea behind positive psychology is that, rather than solely treating mental disease and alleviating negative symptoms, the field of psychology should focus on defining mental health in positive terms and promoting positive emotions, character traits, and social institutions. But Seligman is even more ambitious than that: in the introduction, he writes that he seeks to overthrow what he calls the "rotten-to-the-core dogma", the oldest manifestation of which is the doctrine of original sin but which was dragged by Freud into twentieth-century secular psychology, which has since tended to regard happiness or any positive emotion as inauthentic.

This completely sold me on the book, and while it's far from perfect (I would take exception with Seligman on a number of points), it's general approach is very good. To a large extent, it's explicitly Aristotelian, and Seligman even argues for virtue ethics in the form of identifying and cultivating what he calls "signature strengths". He also draws on a lot of interesting recent research, including some of his own. His earlier book Learned Optimism and the more recent Flourish are also well worth reading.

http://www.amazon.com/review/R2Y0D3VC04WDNS ( )
  AshRyan | Apr 25, 2015 |
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  archivomorero | Jun 25, 2022 |
This book resonated with me. Below are a few notes that I made while reading it.

"We find that both the depressed people who walk into our clinic and people need help us by unsolvable problems display passivity, become slower to learn, and are sadder and more anxious than people who are not depressed or are our control subjects." (Page 22)

"10 years into our work on learned helplessness I changed my mind about what was going on in our experiments. It all stems from some embarrassing findings that I keep hoping we'll go away. ... 1 out of 3 never give up, no matter what we do. Moreover, one out of eight is helpless to begin with - it does not take any experience with uncontrollability at all to make them give up. At first, I try to sweep this under the rug, but after a decade of consistent variability, the time arrives for taking it seriously." (Page 23)

"I found that teaching 10 year old children the skills of optimistic thinking and action cut their rate of depression in half when they go through puberty." (Page 27)

"What progress there has been in the prevention of mental illness comes from recognizing and nurturing a set of strengths, competencies and virtues in young people - such as future-mindedness, hope, interpersonal skills, courage, the capacity for flow, faith, and work ethic. The exercise of these strengths ten buffers against the tribulations that put people at risk for mental illness." (Page 27)

From Page 37 we learn that depressed people make more accurate assessment than happy people. And in Page 38 we find that happy people people make better decisions under most circumstances. In a later chapter we learn that pessimists make better lawyers.

"These "very happy" people differed markedly from average people and from unhappy people in one principal way: a rich and fulfilling social life. The very happy people spend the least time alone (and the most time socializing), and they were rated highest on good relationships by themselves and by their friends." (Page 42)

Happiness_enduring_level = Set_range Circumstances Voluntary_controlled_factors

Voluntarily controlled factors are covered in chapters 5, 6, & 7

"... roughly 50% of almost every personalty trait turns out to be attributable to genetic inheritance." (Page 47)

Chapter 5 Satisfaction About the Past

"Positive emotions can be about the past, the present, or the future. The positive emotions about the future include optimism, hope, faith and trust. Those about the present include joy, ecstasy, calm, pleasure, and (most importantly) flow; these emotions are what most people usually mean when they casually - but much too narrowly - talk about "happiness". The positive emotions about the past include satisfaction, contentment, fulfillment, pride, and serenity." (Page 62)

In talking about forgiveness:

As the saying goes: (Page 80)
If you want to be happy…
… For an hour, take a nap.
… For a day, go fishing.
… For a month, get married.
… For a year, get an inheritance.
… For a lifetime, help someone.

"Shortly after New Year's Day, Seligman does an evaluation taking about half an hour where he evaluates the following areas. Someone else might have different categories." (This is Chapter 5 - Satisfaction About the Past) (Page 82)
- Love
- Profession
- Finances
- Play
- Friends
- Health
- Generativity
- Overall
- Trajectory: Evaluate year-to-year changes and their course across a decade.

Techniques for increasing optimism about the future (in chapter 6 - optimism about the future)
- Adversity: What is the event?
- Belief: What negative self talk is going on in my head?
- Consequences: What are the consequences I am imagining will happen?
- Disputation: Reorient my thinking by evaluating: Evidence, Alternatives, Implications (decatastrophize), Usefulness (is the belief destructive)
- Energization:

"To our surprise, almost every single one of these traditions flung across 3000 years and the entire face of the earth endorsed six virtues:
- Wisdom and knowledge
- Courage
- Love and humanity
- Justice
- Temperance
- Spirituality and transcendence"
(Page 132-133)

"Finally comes romantic love - the idealization of another, idealizing their strengths and virtues and downplaying their shortcomings. Marriage is unique as the arrangement that gives us all three kinds of love under the same umbrella, and it is this property that makes marriage so successful." (Page 187 188)

"Women who have stable sexual relationships ovulate more regularly, and they continue ovulating into middle age, reaching menopause later than women in unstable relations. ... Among the most surprising outcomes... Are the findings that the children of stable marriages mature more slowly in sexual terms, they have more positive attitudes toward potential mates, and are more interested in long-term relationships than are the children of divorce." (Page 188)

"... I did something I don't recommend to you: I read through all the major marriage manuals. This is a depressing task for a positive psychologist, since they are almost entirely about how to make a bad marriage more tolerable. The manuals are peopled by physically abusive men, grudge-collecting women, and vicious mothers in law, all caught up in a balance of recriminations with an escalating spiral of blame." (Page 195-196)

"The best four in my opinion are Reconcilable Differences by Andrew Christiansen and Neil Jacobson, the Relationship Cure by John Gottman with Joan DeClaire, The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work by John Gottman with Nan Silver, and Fighting for Your Marriage by Howard Marckman, Scott Stanley, and Susan Blumberg." (Page 196)

I liked this book so much that ignoring my huge "to-read" queue, I bought and started reading a subsequent book of his: [b:Flourish: A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-Being|9744812|Flourish A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-Being|Martin E.P. Seligman|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1401636912s/9744812.jpg|14633967] ( )
  bread2u | Jul 1, 2020 |
I'd known about Seligmman's work for quite some time. I first started taking questionnaires at his website back in 2008. The fact that three years later, I still haven't taken them all, should be a pretty good indicator that I've never been converted to a true believer. But I do keep coming back, so there are aspects of his work that I find interesting.

This book and the test center at his website are really tie-ins to each other. It was because my results kept saying "for more information, see the book," that I finally read the book. And while the book includes at least basic versions of all the tests, the book constantly refers you to the website to take the tests there. The website is nice in that it keeps track of all your results for you and records when you took each test.

I should back up. The intention of this book is to be a sort of handbook to the relatively new science of positive psychology. Of course, as you may have gathered from my review so far, it comes across as more of a guidebook to the current tests and surveys of the positive psychology movement. Which is, I suppose, a good place to start from, but I found myself wishing Seligman went a little further with it. Instead, each section introduced the concept behind some test, talked about why it was important, gave the test, discussed why certain answers were indicators of important behaviors/attitudes, and discussed the results. A few tips were given for "improvement" in that category, and then on to the next test!

Okay, so really, that only comprises the first half of the book. In the second half, Seligman deals with the concept of "signature strengths," which I am very interested in and was the tipping point for me to seek out the book in the first place. A group of researchers examined many of the cultures and religions of the world and came up with a list of 24 virtues or strengths that had near-universal appreciation. Their theory is, rather than dwelling on the virtues we are weakest in, true gratification and fulfillment comes from arranging our lives in such a way that we are using our signature strengths as much as possible.

This idea really appeals to me, and the last section of the book had some lovely suggestions on recognizing and supporting the strengths of our spouse and our children. There was some lip service given to using your strengths at work, but the "how" to do this seemed to be left a little vague.

The very last section on meaning and purpose was utterly fascinating as it referenced Asimov's "The Last Question," and fed directly into the future-focused theology I seem to be building into. Seligman and I have some philosophical differences that I found mildly irritating during a few points of the book, but this theory as a conclusion for the book was a very validating moment that greatly upped the chances that I'll pick up another work by Seligman in the future. ( )
  greeniezona | Dec 6, 2017 |
I loved this so much, I bought a copy. ( )
  JennysBookBag.com | Sep 28, 2016 |
An Aristotelian approach to psychology

The basic idea behind positive psychology is that, rather than solely treating mental disease and alleviating negative symptoms, the field of psychology should focus on defining mental health in positive terms and promoting positive emotions, character traits, and social institutions. But Seligman is even more ambitious than that: in the introduction, he writes that he seeks to overthrow what he calls the "rotten-to-the-core dogma", the oldest manifestation of which is the doctrine of original sin but which was dragged by Freud into twentieth-century secular psychology, which has since tended to regard happiness or any positive emotion as inauthentic.

This completely sold me on the book, and while it's far from perfect (I would take exception with Seligman on a number of points), it's general approach is very good. To a large extent, it's explicitly Aristotelian, and Seligman even argues for virtue ethics in the form of identifying and cultivating what he calls "signature strengths". He also draws on a lot of interesting recent research, including some of his own. His earlier book Learned Optimism and the more recent Flourish are also well worth reading.

http://www.amazon.com/review/R2Y0D3VC04WDNS ( )
  AshRyan | Apr 25, 2015 |
Interesting -- researching happiness is something unexpected. I hear that these techniques are gaining some traction in the classroom, but less so in the workplace -- though I heard about this at work. See http://www.authentichappiness.com ( )
  tintinintibet | Apr 18, 2011 |
Truly inspiting book - I wuld like to think this book will continue to develope- the use of the internet to authenticate and assist in the research is differnt and I hope will continue to give results that can be use dby the world. I enjoyed the book and the concepts involved.
  Brumby18 | Dec 21, 2009 |
Brilliant. Potentially life changing. ( )
  snarkhunt | Jun 29, 2009 |
(First reviewed at Blogcritics at http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/03/29/214744.php)

Martin Seligman, has become the principal advocate of Positive Psychology. In 1998 he took on what he describes as a mission of creating a scientific movement for Positive psychology. In 2002 Simon & Schuster published his self-help book "Authentic Happiness", which is subtitled "Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize your Potential for Lasting Fulfillment".

It is written in a congenial, conversational style, and it is full of personal anecdotes and stories. There are tests in the book and at the companion web site for readers to assess their positive and negative affect, happiness, personal strengths and personality traits. There are rules for happy living. There are platitudes and inspirational lessons. It reads just like any average self-help book by any earnest and cheerful psychologist, but it is much better than most of the books on the market. It is well-grounded in empirical research and moral philosophy and it has some useful advice about responding to success and failure and maintaining balance and perspective.

Dr. Seligman explains his tests and his rules in some detail by reference to various academic work, and he seems to be using those parts of the book to explain and promote positive psychology. He strongly believes that psychology is a scientific pursuit as well as a therapeutic process. He only hints at some of the profession's challenges and problems. Psychology tries to be a learned profession, with high educational and professional standards. It is however subject to strong economic forces. It is unpopular with insurers and HMO's and there is increasing competition from all kinds of counsellors and therapists - many of whom have not had an expensive education - willing to indulge clients who expect a meaningful and emotional course of therapy. He mentions popular psychology indirectly a few times, noting that the American public has become attuned to the idea that therapy should be intense and emotional and produce strong feelings.

He presents Positive psychology as a new idea, although it seems more accurately to be and effort to reform humanistic psychology into a more solid and less fluffy notion. The terminology of humanism has become somewhat controversial, and has no promotional traction. Like humanistic psychology, popular psychology surveys the way people report their emotions and tries to generalize into a system of moral rules. Like humanistic psychology, the system brings into play classical philosophical ideals of right living and modern existential philosophy. Dr. Seligman generally presents himself as a rational and scientific thinker, and avoids emotionalism. However he believes that emotions are real, and that psychology's role is to help people live with them.

Positive psychology presents nicely to people sensitized to the power of positive thinking in business and advertising. It plays very well with people who like to dream about unlocking their human potential for bliss. Its emphasis on optimism, happiness, religions and spirituality will play well with fans of popular psychology and eclectic spirituality, although Dr. Seligman is essentially hostile to many trends in popular psychology. On the other hand, its emphasis on religion, character and the virtues will appeal to social conservatives. Dr. Seligman walks an intellectual high wire through this book, and it's quite a show. He talks like a pc liberal academic - which he is - but he comes back repeatedly to some classical moral ideas.

Dr. Seligman spends several pages on the history of academic and clinical psychology in American since World War II. He sees it as a counselling profession that became tied to a disease-and-cure model of mental illness, which has paid too little attention to the helping people to be happy. He suggests that it has reached its useful limits and needs to focus itself on helping people feel better by being better, stronger, more virtuous people.

He criticizes Freudian and other psychodynamic theories of the emotions on several grounds. He thinks those theories aren't scientific or supported by evidence. He thinks the methodology of sifting memories of the past to find the source of present feelings is essentially negative and fruitless. It encourages people to dwell on their feelings instead of working to change how they feel, it tends to let people blame others, and it can create a sense of pessimism and hopelessness. In some cases it seems to reinforce the emotional problems. He feels that emotion and cognition work together, and that people probably have a limited emotional range, with some people being naturally more optimistic, pessimistic and emotionally charged. He also feels that people can adapt.

He suggests that cognitive psychology has helped to discredit Freudian theories, and that several techniques for maintaining positive emotion have come out of the cognitive approach. He is generally critical of behavioural, social and environmental ideas about happiness. He covers some of the research on emotions and happiness and the social factors that promote happiness - he suggests that money, health, age, education, race, climate and gender are not that important. The factors that are more important are social connections, romance or a good marriage, membership in a religious community - and optimistic beliefs about the self and the world, including religious beliefs.

He has three chapters on optimism and pessimism regarding the past, the future and the present. He says that people can help themselves be happy by not dwelling on past hurts and grievances, and by working to forgive past trespasses. He rejects positive thinking and happy self talk as basically useless in increasing happiness. He thinks that people should assess successes and setbacks realistically. What is important in reacting to a setback is to recognize that the failure is not pervasive or permanent, to reason through and around it, to adapt, and to react in a positive and resilient way. He says that depressed people interpret setbacks as pervasive and persistent, which handicaps them from responding and moving on.

In dealing with the present, he points out that people get used to pleasure and become desensitized. He suggests various strategies to help savour an experience and to ensure that good experiences hold their reward. He implicitly rejects the idea that we can find pleasure or happiness in seeing the latest movie with the best special effects or most tragic romantic entanglements or by shopping for the newest and the latest. Pleasure fades. He favours finding things you like and things that are good and useful, and holding on to them. He favours using the principles of Flow to find and hold the rewards of the moment and to be happy. He is against being absorbed in your feelings, or worrying about your self-esteem. He says self-absorbed thinking is a sign of depression.

He devotes a large part of the book to discussing character and virtue. His history of the rise and fall of these notions in American culture is probably shaky, but he has a useful chapter on cross-cultural research into behavioural attributes that are valued universally. He refers to the key strengths as wisdom, courage, love, justice, temperance and spirituality. He suggests that psychology's real work lies in identifying ways to help people achieve these strengths.

At the beginning of the book, positive psychology sounds like a lot of other systems to help people identify and fulfil their potential, but Dr. Seligman's emphasis is on working with real strengths that have a real connection to individual happiness and social justice. He really does go back to the ideas of the classical philosophers - living the examined life, enjoying the experiences of life in moderation, cultivating the virtues.

He has a few chapters on applying positive psychology in the workplace, in relationships, and in child care. These chapters are somewhat general, and tend to be more fluffy than they need to be. Dr. Seligman recognizes that religion is important, but he doesn't have much to say about it. He acknowledges the research that shows that religious people tend to be healthier and happier, and he recognizes that most people hold many kinds of beliefs on faith. He seems to have a hard time with the anti-intellectual tendencies of American fundamentalism. He seems to favour a personal and speculative approach to spirituality. He seems to reject the Freudian perspective that religion is necessarily a sign of emotional or intellectual weakness.

To some extent, he is engaging in myth-making or at least revisionist history about culture and ideas, for the sake of promoting his theory of Positive psychology. However the idea that there is more to psychology than validating feelings and blaming the world for problems is very appealing. The idea of that happiness lies in restraint, civility and virtuous behaviour is, coming from a modern psychologist, almost revolutionary. ( )
  BraveKelso | Oct 25, 2008 |
1942, Robert A. Fox Leadership Professor of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania.
Pros: clearly written; self-assessment questionnaires; practical guides
Cons: not very new (might be new when it was published); too much writing for a few points; not very insightful, close to pop psychology ( )
  sphinx | Jul 27, 2008 |
Offers much more depth and coherency than the previous campaigns for happiness through pleasure and self-esteem. ( )
1 vote jpsnow | Mar 9, 2008 |
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