Positive Psychology

Positive psychology is a recent branch of psychology whose purpose was summed up in 1998 by Martin Seligman and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi: "We believe that a psychology of positive human functioning will arise, which achieves a scientific understanding and effective interventions to build thriving individuals, families, and communities." Positive psychologists seek "to find and nurture genius and talent", and "to make normal life more fulfilling", rather than merely treating mental illness.

The branch intends to complement and focus, not to replace or ignore the rest of psychology. It does not seek to deny the importance of studying how things go wrong, but rather to emphasize the importance of using the scientific method to determine how things go right. This field brings attention to the possibility that focusing only on the disorder itself would result in only a partial understanding of a patient's condition.

Researchers in the field analyze things like states of pleasure or flow, values, strengths, virtues, talents, as well as the ways that they can be promoted by social systems and institutions. Positive psychologists are concerned with four topics: (1) positive experiences, (2) enduring psychological traits, (3) positive relationships and (4) positive institutions. Some thinkers, like Seligman, have attempted to collect the data into helpful theories (e.g. "P.E.R.M.A.", or The Handbook on Character Strengths and Virtues). Research from this branch of psychology has seen various practical applications.