scholarly journals The Future of Positive Psychology and Disability

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael L. Wehmeyer
Keyword(s):  
Positive Psychology ◽  
Well Being ◽  
The Past ◽  
Strength Based ◽  
Human Functioning ◽  
People With Disability ◽  
History Of ◽  
Knowledge And Practice ◽  
Disability Research

For much of the history of the application of psychology to disability, the research and clinical focus of the field was deficits-oriented: documenting what people with disability could not do, proposing theories of why they could not do these things, creating measures to assess this incapacity and incompetence, and building interventions and treatments predicated on disease and pathology. It has been only in the last few decades that conceptualizations of disability allowed for consideration of strengths and positive attributes along with the presence of disability and only in the past two decades that a positive psychology of disability has emerged. This article will briefly summarize the factors that led to the emergence of a focus on the positive psychology of disability and a strength-based approach in the field, examine the state of knowledge and practice as it pertains to the positive psychology of disability, and will examine challenges that serve as barriers to progress in this area and opportunities for advancement. Among these is examining how “optimal human functioning” can be understood in ways that includes, and not excludes, people with disability. The importance of shifting the disability research and practice focus to emphasize flourishing, well-being, and self-determination of and for people with disability will be discussed, as well as the necessity for the field of positive psychology to more aggressively reach out to include people with disability among those populations whom the field values and includes.

Positive Psychology: Past, Present, and Future

2009 ◽  
pp. 6-12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ed Diener
Keyword(s):  
Positive Psychology ◽  
Good Life ◽  
Well Being ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Human Functioning ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Individual

This chapter briefly reviews the history of positive psychology, and the endeavor by scientists to answer the classic question posed by philosophers: What is the good life? One piece of evidence for the growth of positive psychology is the proliferation of measures to assess concepts such as happiness, well-being, and virtue. The chapter briefly reviews the importance of C. R. Snyder to the field of positive psychology. Several critiques of positive psychology are discussed. One valid critique is that there is too much emphasis within positive psychology on the individual, and too little focus on positive societies, institutions, and situations. We can profit from considering the various critiques because they will help us to improve the field. Positive psychology has important strengths, such as the number of young scholars and practitioners who are entering the field. The Handbook of Positive Psychology is an outstanding resource for all those who are working in this discipline, and also for others outside of the area, to gain broad knowledge of the important developments that are occurring in our understanding of positive human functioning.

Positive Psychology and Humanistic Psychology: Evil Twins, Sibling Rivals, Distant Cousins, or Something Else?

2017 ◽  
Vol 58 (3) ◽  
pp. 262-283 ◽  
Author(s):  
Grant J. Rich
Keyword(s):  
Mixed Methods ◽  
Positive Psychology ◽  
Mixed Methods Research ◽  
Quantitative Methods ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Humanistic Psychology ◽  
The Past ◽  
Positivity Ratio ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Relationship

This article builds on earlier work by Rich in the Journal of Humanistic Psychology on relations between positive psychology and humanistic psychology and examines both developments and challenges over the past 15 years, including discussion of leading critics of positive psychology such as Brown, Friedman, Held, Kagan, Waterman, and Wong. The discipline of positive psychology is contextualized with respect to the history of psychology in general, and humanistic psychology in particular, and several notable examples of well-being research are examined critically, including work by Fredrickson on the positivity ratio, and mixed-methods research by anthropologists. The article explores some limitations of the use of quantitative methods in positive psychology, notes some advantages of the use of qualitative methods for positive psychology, and discusses issues regarding the relationship between positive psychology and humanistic psychology, including how, whether, if, and when scholars from the two disciplines could collaborate in meaningful and effective ways.

Madhouse

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 347-363
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Tilley ◽  
Paul Christian ◽  
Susan Ledger ◽  
Jan Walmsley
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Learning Disability ◽  
Social History ◽  
Learning Difficulties ◽  
Historical Record ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
Immersive Theatre ◽  
Disability Research ◽  
History Of Institutions

Until the very end of the twentieth century the history of learning difficulties was subsumed into other histories, of psychiatry, of special education and, indeed, of disability. Initiatives to enable people with learning difficulties and their families to record their own histories and contribute to the historical record are both recent and powerful. Much of this work has been led or supported by The Open University’s Social History of Learning Disability Research (SHLD) group and its commitment to developing “inclusive history.” The article tells the story of the Madhouse Project in which actors with learning difficulties, stimulated by the story of historian activist Mabel Cooper and supported by the SHLD group, learned about and then offered their own interpretations of that history, including its present-day resonances. Through a museum exhibition they curated, and through an immersive theatre performance, the actors used the history of institutions to alert a wider public to the abuses of the past, and the continuing marginalization and exclusion of people with learning difficulties. This is an outstanding example of history’s potential to stimulate activism.

scholarly journals Psychocapital and Shangri-Las: How happiness became both a means and end to governmentality

2013 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 36-50 ◽  
Author(s):  
F. Mckay
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Subjective Well Being ◽  
The Past ◽  
Means And Ends ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Mental Well Being ◽  
Politics Of Happiness

In this paper a paradox is revealed in the politics of well-being over the means and ends of happiness. That paradox, in brief, is that although happiness is argued to be the ultimate end of all governmentality, in order to serve as that end, it first needs to be translated into a means for bolstering the economy, for only that way can a teleology of happiness gain a foothold in a world which prioritizes economic growth as an end in itself. To show this the paper gives a history of subjective well-being (SWB) research, and contrasts it with the politics of happiness in the UK, where SWB has in the past decade been translated into a discourse around the psychological wealth of the nation via the concepts of mental capital (MC) and mental well-being (MWB).

Understanding Empathy

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Changming Duan ◽  
Kristen Sager
Keyword(s):  
Biological Sciences ◽  
Social Justice ◽  
Positive Psychology ◽  
Past Century ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Societal Health

Empathy, one of the most studied and most multidisciplinary theoretical constructs, has garnered the attention of scholars from psychology as well as the social and biological sciences. The scholarship of empathy has developed significantly in the past century, with the most notable knowledge emerging in the areas of the neuroscience of empathy and the interplay between race/culture and empathy in recent decades. The positive psychology of empathy also continues to occupy researchers, as the links between empathy and individual and societal health abound. Future empathy research by socially and scholastically responsible scientists must overcome a long history of Euro-ethnocentric biases and integrate social justice into the understanding of this important construct. The scholarship and application of empathy will continue to be an important source of positivity for humans and for society as a whole.

scholarly journals The Under-Appreciated Rodent: Harbingers of Plague From the Middle Ages to the Twenty-First Century

2019 ◽  
Vol 50 (2) ◽  
pp. 171-185 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne Hardy
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Dna Analysis ◽  
First Century ◽  
Bubonic Plague ◽  
The Past ◽  
Black Rat ◽  
History Of ◽  
Ancient Dna Analysis ◽  
Long Term Trends

The history of the rat and the wider rodent family in relation to bubonic plague suggests multiple ways in which different research disciplines can contribute to the understanding of mortality, morbidity, and epidemics in the past: For instance, demographic approaches can can clarify long-term trends in, and disruptions to, patterns of mortality; the study of psychological responses to disease since 1850 can lend insights into past disease behaviors; and archaeological discoveries and the still-developing technology of ancient dna analysis can help in the determination of causes and effects. As the link between the black rat and bubonic plague shows, without the collaboration of interdisciplinary methods, our understanding would surely suffer. The history of plague and the Black Death encompasses far more than the involvement of rats, but the enduring sylvatic reservoirs of plague infection that the rats and their many rodent cousins constituted in the past, and still constitute, should not be blithely discounted.

Counseling Psychology's Commitment to Strengths: Rhetoric or Reality?

2006 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 276-292 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lawrence H. Gerstein
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Positive Psychology ◽  
Program Development ◽  
Prevention Program ◽  
Cultural Factors ◽  
Strength Based ◽  
Human Functioning

A positive psychology framework is consistent with counseling psychology's historic claim of focusing on strengths and optimal human functioning. The major articles in this issue of The Counseling Psychologist introduced many innovative, provocative, pragmatic, and useful ideas, strategies, and models related to this framework. For the most part, these articles failed, however, to integrate cultural factors, developmental concepts and interventions, and other strategies (e.g., social justice, psycho-education, prevention, program development, consultation) in their discussion of paradigms grounded in positive psychology. The current author discusses this omission and critiques the positive psychology framework described in these articles. The author presents a few steps to overcome the obstacles hindering the genuine implementation of a strength-based, developmental paradigm of counseling as well.

scholarly journals Women's Institutes in Imperial Russia in the wording of the normative documents (1764 – early XX century): terms, typology, dates

2021 ◽  
pp. 110-129
Author(s):  
Varvara Vital'evna Ponomareva
Keyword(s):  
Normative Documents ◽  
The Past ◽  
Imperial Russia ◽  
Class Composition ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Russian Empire ◽  
First Time ◽  
Departmental Affiliation

The subject of this research is the foundation of women’s education system in the Russian Empire, namely of the Office of the Institutions of Empress Maria, which totaled up to three dozen by the early XX century. Actualization of the knowledge about the best examples of the Russian school in the past is determined by the fundamental importance of education in the context of ongoing modernization of the country. The topic of Women's institutes of Imperial Russia, which existed for over 150 years, is poorly studied. Despite the extensive source base, in the historical literature one can often come across improper names of the institutes, determination of their departmental affiliation, class composition of the students, as well as incorrect dating and topography. Using the historical-systemic and typological analysis, the author determines and clarifies the conceptual framework of the problematic as a necessary research toolset. The author's contribution to selected topic consists in discovery of a wide variety of sources, including those introduced into the scientific discourse for the first time, accurate names of the institutes and variations in the official documents and everyday practice., their renaming and the causes. The article also traces the dynamics of changes in the class and confessional composition of students since the establishment of the institutes until the beginning of the XX century. Subordination and departmental affiliation at different stages of the history of these institutes is clarified.

scholarly journals Height and the High Life: What Future for a Tall Story?

2006 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy Leunig ◽  
Hans-Joachim Voth
Keyword(s):  
Health Status ◽  
Family History ◽  
Social History ◽  
Economic History ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Standard Of Living ◽  
Reliable Indicator ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
Developed World

This chapter discusses height as a reliable indicator of health status and standard of living. It also suggests that mapping from height to other measures of well-being has attracted the attention of economic historians. The history of heights may prove to be a useful means by which economic historians can better explain the past. The first area is social history, and in particular family history, in the developed world. The second is the economic history of those countries or areas with limited amounts of other data.

scholarly journals Garść refleksji na temat przewidywania społeczno-gospodarczej przyszłości

2016 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 65
Author(s):  
Stanisława Bartosiewicz
Keyword(s):  
Well Being ◽  
The State ◽  
Economic Situation ◽  
Causal Relationships ◽  
Human Knowledge ◽  
The Past ◽  
Democratic State ◽  
History Of ◽  
Condition B

The reflections included in this paper show the imperfections of human knowledge when it comes to predicting the socio-economic situation of a modern democratic state, and their consequences resulting in that those who develop the forecast have to direct their attention to the following issues in their exploration:a)       list of important features characterizing well-being of the state and its citizens’ condition;b)      credibility of the information on the value of the selected characteristics (data);c)      adequate methods outlining the history of how those characteristics were shaped in the past (trends);d)     methods of shaping causal relationships between these characteristics;effective methods of forecasting socio-economic situation in future.

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