Integrating psychopathology, positive psychology, and psychotherapy.

Reading the special issue of the American Psychologist (January 2000) on the contemporary, data-based movement of positive psychology was an uplifting experience in itself. Positive psychology seems to emerge as a renewed humanistic approach to the individual and collective potential for happiness, but this time it is strengthened by empirical data and adequate research methodologies. Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi's (January 2000) call for a shift from a disease-oriented science to a science of optimal functioning, well-being, and happiness provides psychology and related disciplines with a noble goal to pursue in the beginning of the new century. Indeed, what can be more positive, rewarding, and fulfilling than studying and facilitating people's happiness? However, transforming therapeutic psychology from a science based on the medical model to a science that emphasizes positive experience and prevention is easier said than done. Although Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi (2000) recognized the domination of the disease model in mental health, they suggested that because psychologists have now found treatments for the majority of psychological problems, they should start studying how to make people's lives even better. They proposed that psychologists could use the same research methods and even the same laboratories that have developed psychology and psychiatry as healing sciences during the past half century to focus on the study of positive psychology, with only a slight shift of emphasis and funding. Although certainly feasible, how easy or likely is that to happen? How can a long tradition of conceptualizing and treating people in psychopathological terms shift to the study of positive functioning? How do psychologists change not only their mind-set of focusing on the negative but also the pathology-based therapeutic practices that are currently empirically supported and embraced by third-party payers? How can psychologists convince the scientific and professional mental health establishment to make scarce monetary and human resources available to positive psychology research and practice? To achieve a major scientific shift to positive psychology (which could complement the dominant disease-oriented focus in mental health), psychologists should reconcile and merge the two foci; this could be best done by gradually infusing positive psychology into current models of psychopathology and treatment. To ease the integration and transition from a psychopathology-focused to a strength-focused approach in therapeutic psychology, programmatic research might be necessary; here are three possible areas of attention: