2.2 Peterson’s Theory

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Do curso por University of Pennsylvania

Positive Psychology Specialization Project: Design Your Life for Well-being

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University of Pennsylvania

Positive Psychology Specialization Project: Design Your Life for Well-being

197 ratings

Curso 5 de 5 em Specialization Foundations of Positive Psychology

You are encouraged to take the first four courses of the Foundations of Positive Psychology Specialization before starting this course and completing the Specialization Project. This course, taught by Dr. Martin E.P. Seligman brings all the key concepts from the first four courses to practice as you develop and test a new positive intervention for an audience of your choice. You identify opportunities in your daily life to increase the wellbeing by using knowledge you developed in the first four courses of the Specialization. In this final project, you evaluate the efficacy of a positive intervention based on subjective and objective measures. Then, you compare how empirical and non-empirically-based positive interventions can be applied to influence a person's wellbeing. Lastly, you reflect on how the fundamental elements of research methods are important in the everyday application of positive psychology. After completing all five courses, learners earn a certificate signed by Dr. Martin E.P. Seligman, Dr. James Pawelski, Dr. Angela Duckworth, Dr. Claire Robertson-Kraft and Dr. Karen Reivich.

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Peterson Theory on Psychological Mental Illness as defined as an Excess, an Absence, or an Opposite of a Character Strength rather than by the Presence or Absence of a Symptom in the DSM

Module 2 presents Chris Peterson's unfinished theory on mental illness. Specifically his belief that the absence of strengths, the excess of strengths, and the opposite of strengths might define 72 conditions of character weakness, and that these shortcomings might be a better framework than the DSM which uses a checklist of symptoms.

2.1 Module 2 Overview1:26

2.2 Peterson’s Theory6:07

2.3 Assessment of Peterson’s 24 Absence and Opposite of Strengths4:18

Conheça os instrutores

Martin E.P. Seligman, Ph.D.
Zellerbach Family Professor of Psychology & Director, Positive Psychology Center
Positive Psychology Center

Chris Peterson was brilliant.

Both he and I were clinical psychologists,

and we both dealt with the mental illnesses,

did research on them, and we treated them,

but we never liked the classification of mental illnesses.

So in Chris's masterwork,

the incomplete theory that you will be working on in your capstone,

Chris had two simple ideas.

The first is that DSM,

the psychiatric classification of the mental illnesses,

doesn't give us the real mental illnesses.

The second is that the 24 strengths that Chris and I

outlined form the basis of the real mental illnesses.

The strengths aren't the mental illnesses,

but their absence or their opposite and

sometimes their excess are the real mental illnesses.

Let me explain this to you.

The way mental illness is diagnosed by

the American Psychiatric Association in DSM is through a list of symptoms.

So, for a person to be diagnosed with a specific disorder,

some number of symptoms have to be there for two weeks or longer.

So take depression, for example.

So, we diagnose depression when five out of

the following nine symptoms occur for two weeks or more: depressed mood,

diminished interest or pleasure,

significant weight loss, insomnia,

retardation motorically, fatigue, feelings of worthlessness,

lowered ability to think or concentrate,

and recurrent thoughts of death and suicide.

While diagnosis by symptoms is a virtue for diagnostic reliability,

one investigator will make the same diagnosis as another.

It's not a virtue for the understanding of what's going on in mental illness.

Just an example is smallpox.

Before the 19th century,

smallpox was a cluster of symptoms.

Smallpox is on the face,

on the body, fever and death,

but the crucial move in understanding smallpox came

about when Edward Jenner did immunization in the 19th century,

and a germ theory of smallpox as the cause was articulated and confirmed.

And in fact, the presence of the variola virus

became the necessary condition for the correct diagnosis.

And that meant that some of the cases that had the cluster of symptoms were not smallpox,

and that others that didn't show the symptoms like

smallpox is on the face proved to be smallpox.

DSM's categories, at least Chris and I thought this,

are mere collections of symptoms.

The modern DSM rejected the Freudian theory,

which was a theory of mental illness,

but it threw the baby out with the bathwater.

What was missing was an underlying theory of the mental illnesses,

something more scientifically plausible than the Freudian theory.

Chris and I believe that he had discovered such a theory,

and he bequeathed it to us in the table that

you have which is the skeleton of the theory.

Study this table carefully because this is the very heart of your exercise.

The theory, if you look at the table, it's Aristotelian.

It says health is the golden mean,

and it claims that psychological health is the key.

It's the presence of strengths,

and the real psychopathologies are the absent,

the opposite, or even sometimes the excess of the strengths.

In the table, you'll find the approximations of what each absence,

excess, and opposite might be.

So some of these seem quite right.

So, for example, look at the strength of forgiveness.

Its opposite is vengefulness,

its absence is mercilessness,

and its excess, by the way, is over-permissiveness.

Whatever. The strength of kindness works, as well.

Its opposite is cruelty,

its absence is indifference,

and its excess is over-intrusiveness.

Hope, similarly.

Its opposite is despair,

its absence present-mindedness, and its excess is over-optimism.

So those work. But if you look,

some of the others don't work very well.

For example, bravery, the opposite is cowardice,

and many of the DSM anxieties disorders fit that.

Its excess is foolhardiness and that also seems like a real psychopathology,

but its absence is not really captured by fright.

For fairness, its opposite,

maybe prejudice is right,

but its absence of fairness doesn't quite seem to be partisanship,

and its excess is not detachment.

So, one demanding thing that you will help to achieve will be to fill out the table.

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