Customer Reviews
A book that shows happiness should not just be your goal, but your duty... - By: Stuart Moses, 23 Jan 2007 
I was drawn to this book having read the chapter about itin Tom Butler-Bowdon's 50 Psychology Classics. I had never heard of 'positive psychology' before, but its aims - to increase the happiness of 'normal' people, rather than cure the psychoses of 'ill' people - has definite appeal.
Authentic Happiness suggests that happiness should not just be a goalin itself merely because it makes us feel good - but also that it has an evolutionary advantage. I've long been aware of the wayin which as negative mood can aid evaluation of a situation, but I'd never thought that when we are happy we would have the advantages of creating an expansive, tolerant & creative mindset. In short these positive feelings maximise the social, intellectual & physical benefits life has to offer.
But how do we achieve such happiness? As ever, that's the million dollar question. One of the answers is through optimum experiences which Mihaly Csikzentmihalyi calls 'flow'. Indeed it is one of Seligman's characteristic flourishes he relates the storyin which he rescues Csikzentmihalyi. Make no mistake, there's a lot of information to digestin Authentic Happiness, indeed I'm looking forward to re-reading it to get even more out of it. Yet while it is academically thorough, Seligman adds personal touches which make the book much more easy to digest.
The later stages of the book will be of particular interest if you have children. Fittingly Seligman has a optimistic view of human nature. He has his own ideas of how we can achieve transcendence & how we can all partin the evolution of the human race, but you'll have to read "Authentic Happiness" to find out what these are.
I can't say I agreed with everything that Seligman had to say - & I'm not really one that enjoys filling out questionnaires, though if you are you'll bein form heaven here - but this is one of the books I find myself recommending to other people & can see myself returning to again & again.
Positive Psychology - By: J. Chambers, 11 Oct 2006 I attended a Positive Psychology conference some years ago, & Martin Seligman was one of the speakers. He founded the movement of Positive Psychology & opened up my mind to the power of the brainin relearning thought patterns & behaviourin order to start achieving the life that I always dreamed of. He is an incredible & inspiring man. Buy his books.
Could I be happy, more often? - By: David Miskimin, 12 Feb 2006 Self confessed pessimist Professor Martin Seligman has over 50 years of “…mostly wet weather beingin his soul.” He wants to share his discovery that happiness is within the readers’ power & not the result of good luck or genes.
He introduces ‘Positive Psychology’. The concept has three themes & associated written tests (many may be taken on-line):
* Positive emotion - its effect on satisfaction with the past, optimism about the future & happinessin the present
* Strengths & virtues, and
* How the reader’s increased insight might be deployedin work, love, parenting & personal satisfaction
Seligman tells how his five-year-old daughter argued if she could stop whining - so could he! He then read a paper on how positive emotion generates greater creativityin fulfilling aspirations. Seligman realised “…a positive mood... bouys... (so) detect not what is wrong, but what is right”, reminiscent of Kurt Wrights work.
Seligman develops a Happiness formula, H=S+C+V:
* ‘H’ - enduring level of happiness
* 'S' - set range, effectively our genetic predisposition
* 'C' - circumstances, a factor potentially affecting us most, but not the casein practice.
* ‘V’ – Voluntary Variables, the most crucial factor relating positive emotion with the past, present or future.
Gratitude & forgiveness are key factors affecting our opinion of, & satisfaction with, the past. An exercise is described where undergraduates expressed gratitude to an invited guest for affecting something importantin their lives. The examples are powerful. Seligman doesn't pretend we can forget or suppress bad memories. He describes how forgiving allows a victim to free themselves from the past, facilitating the possibility of greater life satisfaction.
The degree to which we believe events are temporary or permanent significantly affects our expectation about the future. Although I learned my outlook was at least a little optimistic, Seligman comments such an appraisal might come at the expense of being less realistic! He recommends the ‘ABCDE’ model for when we are accusing ourselves of some perceived failing or deficiency. The approach is to dispute & then dismantle negative self-talk. The reader is offered a seven day ‘ABCDE’ template, so that adverse inner dialogue can be recognised, recorded & disabled.
For present happiness, the author defines two states:
* "The pleasures… have clear sensory & strong emotional components…” They can be bodily e.g. touch, sight, sound, smell or taste
* The gratifications include any of the above, however the distinctions are they "…last longer, involve quite a lot of thinking & interpretation, do not habituate easily & are undergirded by our strengths & virtues…These are activities not necessarily accompanied by feelings at all".
Positive Psychology classifies “just twenty-four strengths …The last time anyone bothered to count,in 1936, more than eighteen thousand wordsin English referred to traits.” Surprisingly, this ignores Cattell’s work, which subsequently identified 16.
Three criteria define strengths, they are:
* valuedin almost every culture
* valuedin their own right - not just a means to an end
* malleable
The author argues some of the twenty-four strengths are deeply characteristic, defining these as "Signature Strengths", believing "the highest successin living & the deepest emotional satisfaction comes from building & using your Signature Strengths".
Seligman contends these strengths fit six core virtues occurring across most cultures; Wisdom & knowledge, Courage, Love & humanity, Justice, Temperance, Spirituality & transcendence.
He adds, to live the ‘good life’ is about using your Signature Strengths everyday, but admits sometimes undertaking tasks he’s good at, yet which leave him feeling drained & less authentic. Myers Briggs knows we sometimes use our less preferred skills, without enjoying them.
80+ pages are devoted to answering the implied question "So now you know your strengths, what are you going to do with them"? In my view he is not a pioneerin this particular area.
Seligman highly rates Csikszentmihalyi, definer of ‘flow’, recognised by several features especially, a sense of time standing still & our sense of self vanishing.
Seligman says to increase flow:
* Identify your Signature Strengths
* Choose work that lets you use them every day
* Recraft your present work
* When employing, choose those with Signature Strengths to mesh with the work you give them
* As a manager, allow employees to recraft (within bounds) their work.
While Csikszentmihalyi calls the states attached to flow as ‘enjoyments’, Seligman prefers ‘gratifications’, it plays down the emotional aspects.
The narrative on love follows a familiar pattern; case studies, a questionnaire, vast cross-referencing, in-depth research & statistics. Seligman identifies what he regards as a most surprising outcome “… children of stable marriages are more interestedin long-term relationships than are the children of divorce” - I wasn’t surprised!
The Professor exudes dry humour - “I did something I don't recommend to you; I read …all the major marriage manuals. This is a depressing task for a positive psychologist…about how to make a bad marriage more tolerable.”
He suggests two summary love principles “You must not scrimp on the attention you pay to the person you love... (and) the quantity is crucial.”
I was intrigued with Mrs Seligman’s work on raising children, (especially as a parent & co-author of ‘The Coaching Parent’). In a self-effacing journey, she doesn't disappoint, providing at least eight techniques for building positive emotion. The ‘strengths test’ for children, similar to the adult version, can be used by any child aged about seven plus.
Concluding, the author invites us to live a ‘meaningful life’.
* The good life “…consistsin deriving (authentic) happiness by using your Signature Strengths every day”
* The “…meaningful life… uses these same strengths to forward knowledge, power or goodness… something much larger than you.”
This book contains detailed material, backed up with substance, multiple tests & well summarised chapters. It includes comprehensive end notes adding 300+ paragraphs of background information linked to related research material. I believe he achieves his purpose, & demonstrates exactly why happiness is within the readers’ power!
David Miskimin 2006
The New Wave of Humanistic Psychology - By: , 23 Apr 2003 The author, American psychologist Dr. Martin Seligman, is famous for his book Learned Optimism. And his new book, Authentic Happiness, is a useful addition with an especially good web site presenting personality tests. Not all psychologists, however, have agreed with, or found research support for, Dr. Seligman's theory of optimism. Some parts of this "Positive Psychology Movement" have been found to be too one-sided & unrealistic about optimism. The academic book about that more balanced research & theory is Optimism & Pessimism edited by Dr. Chang. That book has a chapter about constructive pessimism by Dr. Norem, the author of the Positive Power of Negative Thinking. Some psychologists say Dr. Seligman's theory of Positive Psychology is too much a 'one size fits all' model of healthy personality. Individual & cultural differences seem to be more important than Dr. Seligman implies -- his approach may be a bit too "American" & optimistic for some readers. The recent surge of research on Resiliencyin psychology indicates that individual differencesin personality are fundamental -- what helps me won't necessarily help you. Keeping an open mind while exploring psychological health seems to be the key. In any case, Dr. Seligman does present some of the answers for some of the people, & that alone is a very worthwhile contribution.
Psychology is taking a positive turn - By: Coert Visser, 20 Mar 2003 = POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY =
Until recently psychology has mainly been working within a disease model: a strong emphasis has been placed on discovering deficitsin human behavior & finding ways to repair this damage. Psychologist hardly focused onin doing studies acquiring knowledge about healthy functioning & building strengths. In other words: they have focused solely on taking away something negative (the disfunctioning) instead of adding something positive (increasing mental & behavioral health). The result: psychologist know little about healthy & happy functioning. This situation has been changing now since the rise of positive psychology a few years ago. What is Positive Psychology? It is a new movementin psychology, originated by Martin Seligman & a few other prominent psychologists among whom Mihali Csikszentmihalyi (author of FLOW). It aims to be a psychological science about the best thingsin life. Main topics of study are: positive emotions, positive traits & positive institutions. This book, Authentic Happiness, is the first book on positive psychology. Seligman is its main spokesperson.
= HAPPINESS =
This book mainly deals with the phenomenon of happiness. According to Seligman your enduring level op happiness results from three factors: 1) your SET RANGE ( the basic biologically determined range within which your happiness normally will be), 2) the CIRCUMSTANCES OF YOUR LIFE (some conditions - like being married & livingin a democratic country- somehow seem to contribute to happiness, & 3) your VOLUNTARY CONTROL ( the things you can do to get your happiness to the upper part of your set range. Ok, then how to get this done? Before answering this question Seligman explains that happiness/positive emotion can refer to three domains: the PAST (satisfaction, contentment, fulfilment, pride & serenity), the PRESENT (joy, ecstasy, calm, zest, ebullience, pleasure & flow) & the FUTURE (optimism, hope faith, trust). Then the author comes up with suggestions to improve your happiness:
= HOW TO INCREASE YOUR HAPPINESS =
1) to be happier about your past, you need to: 1) let go of the false belief that your past negative experiences determine your present & future, 2) increase your gratitude about the good thingsin your past & 3) learn how to forgive past wrongs.
2) to be happierin your present, you need to distinguish between PLEASURES & GRATIFICATIONS. Pleasures are delights that have clear sensory & strong emotional components that require little if any thinking. Gratifications are flow-experiences. They are activities we very much like doing but that are not necessarily accompanied by any raw feelings at all. The gratifications last longer than the pleasures & they are undergirded by our strengths & virtues. The key to happinessin past & future liesin enhancing gratifications.
3) to be happier about your future, you need to change your explanatory stylein order to become more optimistic & hopeful (for an explanation read my review of Seligman's book LEARNED OPTIMISM).
= AUTHENTIC HAPPINESS BY USING YOUR STRENGTHS =
These explanations imply what Seligman means by AUTHENTIC HAPPINESS. He says we should not rely on shortcuts like television watching, chocolate eating, loveless sex, & buying things to feel happy. He explains that positive emotion alienated from the exercise of character leads to emptiness, to inauthenticity, & to depression. So we want to feel like we deserved our positive feelings. That's why Seligman says UTHENTIC HAPPINESS comes from identifying & cultivating your most fundamental strengths (so-called SIGNATURE STRENGTHS) & using them everydayin work, love, play, & parenting. This message reminds of the onein Csikszentmihalyi's FINDING FLOW (see my review).
= CORE VIRTUES AND STRENGTHS =
Psychology has devised a classification system (language) for describing abnormal behavior & mental diseases. But it lacked a language describing human effectiveness & sanity. That is why Seligman & a team of scholars researched sources from all kinds of cultures & timesin history & found that there is a strong convergencein what these traditions consider to be virtues & strengths. This led to the formulation of a classification system of virtues & strengths. SIX CORE VIRTUES: 1) Wisdom & knowledge, 2) courage, 3) Love & humanity, 4) Justice, 5) Temperance, 6) Spirituality & transcendence. Further they identified 24 strengths corresponding to these virtues. This book contains definitions of this taxonomy & some questionnaires for the reader to complete (the questionnaires can be found on the web too, by the way).
= CONCLUSION =
Some words about the form & style of the book. It is pleasantly written. Seligman writesin a rather personal & honest style which makes the book lively (for instance he exclaims on page 24: "I am a hideous example of my own theory.") I recommend this book to anyone interestedin psychology &in happiness (although it is not a self-help bookin the first place, I think). The book ends reflectively dealing with the relationship between positive emotions & win-win situations, & speculating that we may be on the threshold of an era of win-win games & good-felling. I enjoyed reading the book & I like positive psychology. It isin many ways reminiscent of humanistic psychology (which I always liked) but has a more scientific approach. I have a good hope it will be a success.
Coert Visser, www.m-cc.nl
