Martin Peterson Seligm Evaluating Personal Psychological Strengths
1490 Words6 Pages
Positive Psychology Positive psychology is an emerging discipline that was introduced by Martin Peterson Seligman in 1998 when he was the president of the American Psychological Association. Seligman introduced this concept at a time when he was encouraging psychologists to remember the mission of the field of psychology is to nurture genius and develop human strength. This essay evaluates personal psychological strengths based on the results of VIA Classification of Strengths from Pennsylvania State University. Firstly, the paper examines the field of positive psychology in light of its emergence and development. Secondly, psychological strengths are discussed based on existing literature on positive psychology. Thirdly, personal psychological…show more content… He developed this orientation following initiatives to encourage psychologists to remember the mission of this discipline i.e. building human strength and developing genius. During this period, psychologists had largely omitted this mission, which created in a new focus in the field of psychology (Compton & Hoffman, 2012, p.1). Actually, psychology was largely shifting towards emphasis on the study of weakness and damage and treatment of what is broken. Seligman introduced the new concept by arguing that psychology also entails studying virtue and strength as well as developing what is best within an…show more content… One of the activities I will use to develop my personal psychological strengths is assimilative activities. This will involve establishing specific goals, performance standards, and desired projections in life and developing innovative ways to achieve them (Drucker, Csikszentmihalyi & Davidson, 2006, p.148). These assimilative activities will be based on personal and social concepts of the good life and include external rewards for motivation. Actually, I use rewards and punishment in order to motivate myself to achieve the goals of these assimilative activities. For instance, I will develop creative methods of exercising as part of promoting my health and well-being. This activity will be geared towards developing my strength of creativity and will incorporate rewards and punishment based on effectiveness of the