Self-Esteem Research, Theory, and Practice Toward a Positive ...

234 SELF-ESTEEM RESEARCH, THEORY, AND PRACTICEApplied FocusFinally, its focus on treatment and prevention make it clear that positivisticpositive psychology is not envisioned as just another academic enterprise.Positive treatment involves concentrating on strengths, as well asdealing with weaknesses. This applied goal may be reached by incorporatingtraditional therapeutic techniques into a positive format. However,positivistic positive therapies also aim at developing and applying newapproaches such as the “well-being” therapy that is being developed byFava (1999) and others. In addition, new positive psychology emphasizesthe importance of prevention. Like most attempts at prevention, the newpositive psychology is concerned with helping to prevent problems at theindividual level through such things as parenting programs, school-basedprograms for children, and so forth. However, positivistic positive psychologysees long-term prevention as being just as important, if not moreso, given its ultimate goal of creating healthy societies. This view of preventioninvolves reshaping entire institutions along positive lines. Thehope is that by doing so, we create a virtuous cycle of subjective, individual,and social well-being. Hence, positivistic positive psychology is also apolitical, as well as a social and psychological, project.SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCESBETWEEN THE TWO POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGIESAt this point, it should be easy to identify the similarities between the twopositive psychologies. For example, both the new and the original positivepsychologies set their point of origin in the context of a mainstream psychologythat is characterized by an excessive focus on negative humanbehavior. In this case, the criticism of the disease model by positivisticpositive psychology is roughly equivalent to what Maslow and others inan earlier day said about the psychodynamic preoccupation with neurosis.Similarly, both approaches are concerned with the same three dimensionsin their views of positive psychology. For instance, what is meant by psychologicalwell-being in the positivistic positive approach is similar tovarious aspects of the self-actualizing individual or fully functioningperson of the humanistic approach, especially in terms of being open toexperience, living the good life, and so forth. Similarly, both psychologiestalk about the importance of researching and fostering positive individualcharacteristics and their development. In fact, when we examine thequotations of what each version of positive psychology wishes to focusupon that were cited earlier in the chapter, we find that they even mentionsome of the same positive qualities, namely, love, hope, and play.