ABSTRACT
In his inaugural speech as President of the American Psychological Association, Martin Seligman lamented the strong negative bias in psychological research and practice. Before World War II, the field of psychology was believed to have three goals: healing mental illness, helping healthy people become happier and more productive, and actualizing human potential. However, when the war ended, it left many people psychologically scarred and in great need of psychological treatment. Resources and energy followed suit, leading to an out-of-proportion emphasis on containing the damage and fixing weaknesses within a ‘disease model’. Human strengths, and even the proactive prevention of mental illness, were for the most part ignored and went underfunded (Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi, 2000).
