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

Self-Esteem and Positive Psychology 235In addition, both views of positive psychology go well beyond afocus on the individual. Each of them points out a need to change groupbehavior; alter institutional values; and, in general, shift society in waysthat help people to move toward the “farther reaches of human nature,”to paraphrase the point with the title of one of Maslow’s (1971) morefamous works. Finally, both approaches understand human beings as, inessence, “good” rather than “evil,” and adaptive rather than fixed. Eachpsychology sees human problems as stemming from the imposition ofenvironmental or developmental factors that stunt a natural desire tofunction in a healthy way, not as a result of a lack of desire or ability.Accordingly, each vision of positive psychology aims at creating a nurturingenvironment that fosters development, in addition to helping thosewho already suffer from the lack of it. In some crucial ways, then, thenew positive psychology is not at all new.Indeed, positivistic positive psychology does make it clear that it is“not a new idea” and that it “has many distinguished ancestors” (Seligman& Csikszentmihalyi, 2000, p. 13), most of whom were associated withhumanistic or third force psychology and psychiatry. However, the newpositive psychology goes to great lengths to emphasize that there are fundamentaldifferences that clearly separate it from its predecessor, especiallyembracing the vision of psychology practiced within the traditional naturalisticparadigm and the superiority of its quantitative methods.Unfortunately, humanistic psychology did not attract much of a cumulativeempirical base, and it spawned myriad therapeutic self-helpmovements. In some of its incarnations, it emphasized the self andencouraged a self-centeredness that played down concerns for collectivewell-being. Further debate will determine whether this came aboutbecause Maslow and Rogers were ahead of the times, because theseflaws were inherent in their original vision, or because of overly enthusiasticfollowers. However one legacy of the humanism of the 1960s isprominently displayed in any large bookstore: The “psychology” sectioncontains at least 10 shelves on crystal healing, aromatherapy, andreaching the inner child for every shelf of books that tries to upholdsome scholarly standard. (Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2000, p. 7)Of course, the crucial word to keep in mind is “empirical,” because positivisticpositive psychology claims to differentiate itself from the originalpositive psychology by a commitment to traditional quantitative research.Humanistic positive psychology, by contrast, is characterized asbeing far too open methodologically, particularly in terms of emphasizingqualitative work. Thus, positivistic positive psychology maintains that itis important to stay with the naturalistic paradigm and its focus on observation,measurement, experimentation, and so forth. The hope is that