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

Self-Esteem and Positive Psychology 237field over time. In addition to attracting mature researchers, teachers, andpractitioners, funding may also target projects that encourage youngerprofessionals. The long-term effect of this development may be a cadre ofbright, interested minds for the future. Many may teach or assume leadershippositions, both of which may help to extend positivistic positivepsychology from one generation to the next in a way that achieves thegoals of critical mass and influence.It is important to realize, of course, that pointing out these academicand economic processes is not meant as a criticism: It is simply the wayof science. In its day, humanistic psychology also enjoyed similar benefits.For example, Maslow and Rogers were both presidents of the APA, supportiveprofessional organizations and journals were created, and fundingfor behavioral research was more readily available than it is now. Theimportant difference is this: Positivistic positive psychology has one moreleg on which to stand. Where humanistic psychology takes issue withpsychology based on the paradigm of natural science, the new positivepsychology embraces this positivistic approach. In supporting logicalpositivism as its scientific foundation, the emerging positive psychology isless likely to encounter resistance that humanistic psychology enduredand continues to suffer from today.HUMANISTIC RESPONSEAlthough still alive, the humanistic approach to a positive study ofhuman behavior has not had the effect on psychology that its supportershad hoped to achieve in the early days of its conception. However, thosewho are within this perspective speak about the reasons for this situationin a different way. For example, positivistic positive psychology oftencontends that humanistic psychology stumbled because it “somehowfailed to attract a cumulative and empirical body of research to groundtheir ideas” (Seligman, 2002, p. 7). But Tom Greening, editor of the Journalof Humanistic Psychology, took issue with such thinking in a special editiondedicated to a humanistic response to positivistic positive psychology.When I first read Martin Seligman’s articles in the APA Monitorannouncing his advocacy of the study of positive human qualities andactions such as self-actualization, I was pleased to see the long-standingagenda of humanistic psychology getting mainstream APA attention.However, it soon became apparent the he was making no connectionswith and giving no credit to humanistic psychology. It was as if thefield did not exist, in spite of a four-decade history, countless publications,and a Division of Humanistic Psychology within APA itself.(Greening, 2001, p. 4)