The Encyclopedia of Positive Psychology

摘要

"Positive psychology" - the study of optimal human functioning - began to be a buzzword in the late 1990s. It made, at the time, a refreshing change from so much of academic psychology, which had concentrated excessively on human weaknesses and mental abnormalities. Research on what is right with people was really needed to counterbalance an over-obsessive interest in what is wrong with them. There were (and are) innumerable tests and questionnaires designed to measure individual weaknesses, and too few, outside the narrow field of occupational psychology, designed to measure individual strengths and talents. From a handful of papers by Martin Seligman and his immediate colleagues, positive psychology has grown into a sizeable sub-discipline with its own journal and textbooks, an international association, and a whole string of Master's degree courses.