The EVEsians all had the opportunity to familiarize themselves with positive psychology, in particular through the interventions of the internationally renowned speaker Tal Ben-Shahar.
To share with as many people as possible the lessons of this current of personal development that is on the rise, the editorial staff of the EVE web magazine reviews its history, its fundamentals, its applications and its criticism.
1998 : official birth certificate of a discipline rooted in Aristotle
Bringing psychology into " the real world "
Washington, October 1998. At the 107th Annual Meeting of the American Psychological Association, the President of the institution, Martin Seligman, announced the birth of a new field of psychic, mental and behavioral sciences: positive psychology.
The discourse is incriminating against all approaches to psychology which, according to him, have so far focused too much on suffering and mental illness and have forgotten to take an interest in the well-being and happiness of everyone. He also criticizes " classical " psychologists for being too theoretical, too abstract, too intellectual, and advocates a more concrete practice, providing " tips " to implement in one's everyday life. He wants to bring psychology into the " real world ".
New under the sun ?
Teeth grind in the room. The most cultured among those who are disturbed by Seligman's discourse let it be known that he did not invent anything: Aristotle had already developed a hygiene of happiness in antiquity. Didn't Spinoza write about the superpowers of joy ? Isn't it to Peale that we owe the concept of " positive thinking" and to Emile Coué the theorization of its self-suggestive effects allowing everyone to see the glass half full ? Haven't the Japanese been practicing ikigai for a while ? And the behaviorists who have been working since the beginning of the twentieth century with very concrete therapeutic methods, can we really call them shrinks far from the field?
Giving a framework to the " positive " approach
It is precisely because all this exists, is known in a more or less in-depth way by one or the other and that each one cooks the " positive attitude " a little in his own way that Seligman wants to structure the current : to give it a framework, methods, a code of ethics...
First, we must define the object of positive psychology: it will be the science of what makes life worth living.
Secondly, it is necessary to establish a scope of research : from the place of emotions to the effects of empathy , including the drivers of motivation and commitment, the drivers of hope and optimism, the challenges of the quest for meaning and self-learning through experience, the means of gaining in efficiency and impact In its communication, positive psychology is interested in everything that can allow the individual to live in inner harmony and to maintain quality relationships with his environment.
Thirdly, we have to set methods. Positive psychology classically calls on clinical feedback, but also on neuroscience (to illustrate what happens in a brain when it is crossed by emotions, for example) or economics (with a rather marked utilitarian prism when it is necessary, for example, to promote empathy as a tool for understanding others useful for discerning their interests, its needs or flaws).
Clearing up confusion with " positive thinking"
The pots and pans of " positive thinking "
While it is busy defining itself, positive psychology will have to face a controversy over its supposed links with the very controversial notion of " positive thinking". The concept coined in 1952 by the Reform pastor Norman Peale, whose reputation has been tarnished by his unfortunate aggressive stance towards American Catholics (and especially President Kennedy), has a bad reputation in the humanities community.
The idea of " positive thinking" is criticized for maintaining the denial of suffering to the point of endangering the psychological integrity of individuals who have suffered trauma. There is concern about a depoliticization of the analysis of collective situations when everything would be referred to the responsibility of each individual to see things on the bright side (with the deleterious effects of the " magical thoughts " that go with it). We are alarmed by the risk of exploiting the principle of auto-suggestion in sectarian excesses. Or simply, we despise the esoteric blah blah without any scientific basis of Pastor Peale.
Positive psychology distances itself from " positive thinking" and establishes its methodological framework
The positive psychology movement must stand out to ensure its credibility. The FAQ on the website of the Positive Psychology Center of the University of Pennsylvania, the " official " organ of Seligman and his followers, clarifies in three points :
1/ Positive psychology is based on scientific work.
2/ Positive thinking is useful for making one's own happiness but negative thoughts also have their place in working on oneself and positive psychology prefers to talk about optimism in the ability to transform oneself than about the Coué method to convince oneself of anything and everything at any price.
3/ Positive psychology does not intend to replace traditional psychology but to add a brick to the corpus of approaches and methods available to strengthen individual and collective well-being.
The Positive Psychology Method in Three Pillars
Once peace has been signed with the opponents who would have wanted to disqualify the new current from the outset, we can get back to work to develop its theories and methods.
The 3 Paths to Authentic Happiness
In 2002, Seligman constructed a Venn diagram that located authentic happiness at the crossroads of three paths of self-knowledge :
- The " pleasant life " which covers everything that causes the individual pleasure, joy and a feeling of well-being.
- The " good life " in which everything that stems from social satisfactions and participation in a collective, or even in the way the world works, is classified.
- The " meaningful life " which must be understood as what gives meaning to one's life, in particular by focusing on one's true priorities.
If you can identify these three points of your personality and align them, then simple happiness is within reach.
The PERMA
In 2011, Seligman enriched the model by proposing PERMA, an acronym for :
- Positive Emotions: In addition to the feeling of well-being and joy, excitement, pride, gratitude and other emotions that warm the body and mind are added.
- Commitment: the initial " good life " includes the need to mobilize for causes, to contribute to progress.
- Relationships: the association with others is established as a means of getting to know oneself better at the same time as in a space-time of conviviality conducive to accumulating new positive emotions.
- Meaning: meaning allows us to question the why in all circumstances, and consequently, to start by challenging the question before looking for the answer.
- Acccomplishment: the successes, however small, that each day brings must be a capital for continuous self-confidence-building .
The CSV
Seligman teamed up with Christopher Peterson to write the textbook Character Strengths and Virtues (CSV), which aims to be a counterpart to the psychiatrists' bible, the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders). The CSV scheme is based on 6 fundamental virtues that 24 character strengths can activate.
These 6 virtues are :
- Courage: it is the ability to doubt, but also to act in line with one's values.
- Justice: it is the spirit of citizenship, the will in action to contribute to something that goes beyond one's simple individual interests.
- Temperance: this is everything that has to do with self-control, with a form of relational ecology that wants us to worry about the impacts of our actions beyond the good intentions that preside over them.
- Transcendence: it is the ambition to achieve excellence, even in the field of interpersonal skills.
Everyone must identify their strengths and points of effort in these 6 fields of virtues : on the first, he/she will rely on to improve in the second.
The tremendous success of positive psychology, the supporting wall of " personal development"
The intellectual accessibility of positive psychology, at the same time as its background of optimism breaking with the ambient gloom of a period of economic and social crises , will allow it to meet with tremendous success with the general public. The works of Seligman and his many disciples sell like hotcakes in bookstores; coaching finds material to develop at high speed ; Speakers fill the conference rooms...
And with this triumph comes that of personal development, which has gone from being a " good woman's thing" to becoming the way forward for management and leadership, which must be invested in soft-skills in an increasingly fast-paced world, calling for ever more agility.
The critique of positive psychology: individualism, denial of social systems and the cult of performance in question
The criticism of positive psychology and that of personal development will therefore address the same questions : by relating progress to the individual's ability to progress, are we not sweeping under the carpet the dust of structural dysfunctions? With all that this implies in terms of suspicions about the possible connections of positive psychology with liberal and utilitarian doctrines that notify the value of everything from the point of view of performance.
Positive psychology, a disguised invitation to elitist individualism?
Eva Iliouz and Edgar Cabanas summarize all the criticism of the risk of individualism contained in the craze for positive psychology in their book Happycratie, published in 2018. Denouncing a two-tier accessibility of the right to happiness, when senior executives and managers benefit from advanced leadership training but the less privileged social classes must be content with the reliefs of an enjoined ideology of happiness, the authors. are alarmed by the fact that individuals are over-encouraged to feel good about their personal sneakers when the challenges of the current and future world would rather put on the agenda the urgency of reuniting collectives.
To this criticism, the defenders of positive psychology respond with a certain common sense that in order to meet the many and difficult challenges that await us, it is better to be able to count on solid people who know where to go and how to lead the way.
Positive psychology, a screen for structural dysfunctions?
Okay, other critics say, it's actually smarter to nurture balanced leadership than to have unstable and clueless pessimists at the helm. As long as these positive leaders don't get drunk on their own satisfaction with being themselves and keep in mind that not all the world's problems can be solved in the pursuit of happiness.
At the origin of this call for vigilance are the work of therapist Kirk Schneider, belonging to the school of existential-humanistic psychology, who questions Seligman and his followers about the Nazi regime or the Ku Klux Klan. We are not rewriting history, but what would a positive psychologist have said to avowed racists leading the project of massively structuring a supremacist world? By extension, what can positive psychology do in the face of the rise of populism? Would we reduce the Resistance fighters yesterday, the political opponents and whistleblowers today to killjoys?
Trapped in its law of the " challenge of the question before seeking the answer ", positive psychology admits that it cannot do without history, sociology, philosophy, political science and other approaches to psychology in order to give a reading of the world and to provide answers to the major problems that arise in it.
The cult of performance, a defect of positive psychology?
The third major criticism of positive psychology concerns its use for the benefit of performance optimization. Positioned as an axis of continuous improvement of the individual's efficiency at work, positive psychology values quality of life, well-being, respect for oneself and others, the spirit of justice and inclusion, happiness and the intimate quest for meaning as levers of productivity.
The most pragmatists ignore it: it doesn't matter how we come to care about people, as long as progress is made in the end. The most politicized are less confident : on the one hand, they emphasize, by relying on Bourdieu's writings, that the all-soft-skills contains a risk of aggravated social fracture (valued interpersonal skills are acquired more in the informal social environment than in organized structures such as schools or companies) and on the other hand warn of the growing power that the economic world would take by making people's intimate happiness its business... To the primary benefits of managers and shareholders.
Received as gloomy, this criticism is readily reduced to a backward-looking binary analysis of the class and power relations at work that the new forms of social relations, collective commitment (networks, spontaneous mobilizations, etc.) and the expectations expressed by employees (autonomy, work-life balance, valuing the spirit of initiative and entrepreneurship/intrapreneurship, etc.) would defeat.
In summary : positive psychology, yes, but not only...
What criticism is in fact contesting is not so much positive psychology per se as its erection, real or feared, to the rank of dogma in the field of interpersonal skills and its hegemony in discourses and policies concerning the transformation of working conditions.
Once we have considered the risk involved in any unequivocal approach, it is necessary to combine the undeniable contributions of positive psychology, starting with its pragmatism, with other ways of understanding the issues of economic and social transformations at work : anthropology, (psycho)sociology, law, political science, economics in all the diversity of its currents and all the other disciplines of the human and social sciences have their say. and their contribution to the building of tomorrow's work.
