Handbook of Positive Psychology

A wonderful book to learn more about how to cultivate a positive psychological approach to life.

I was visiting the Therapy Center at Lipscomb University and saw this on a desk. I flipped to a random page... to find my attention absorbed! Filled with rich and dense technical concepts, there is a lot to learn here that can aid with introspection, wisdom, and much more! I'm tempted to make this a lengthy review where I discuss my top 10 chapters/concepts to give me an excuse to review the relevant content and learn more effectively, but I'll skip the sake of brevity. I could barely put this book down! Binged it in a week or two. It's hard to do this book justice with a summary, especially since I'm unfamiliar with similar textbooks and want to write something other than an essay here. Another reviewer prefers "A Psychology of Human Strengths."Still, I found 'The Handbook of Positive Psychology' fascinating! It's nice to see a focus on strengths and humanity's potential, which is more than worthy of my attention. Amazon says the price is something like $5-6? Absurd! Those of you who are the sort to binge textbooks or have an interest in clinical psychology would enjoy either to learn about human nature/potential, if only as a reference manual. Enjoy!

This Handbook is important to me and other psychology professors because it was the first in print for the new 21st Century wave of the Positive Psychology Movement. I say 'important' even though one honestly must say that for a more balanced view in academic psychology, one also should read the books edited by Ed Chang which give fair and balanced coverage of individual differences in both optimism and pessimism, including 'defensive pessimism.' Now, just published a few days ago, there is a second positive psychology handbook available, "A Psychology of Human Strengths" edited by Aspinwall and Staudinger. Compared to the first handbook, the new one's 23 chapters by various leading psychologists (including Seligman) are not only, well, "newer" -- they also have a better scholarly balance. For example, the chapter by Cantor on "Constructive Cognition" discusses her work with Norem on constructive pessimism. And a third handbook-type volume entitled "Flourishing" is also forthcoming. Concerning this first 21st Century Handbook of Positive Psychology, it will remain an important book not only for being first, but also perhaps for being too extreme, in an unrealistic way that is already being improved by a more realistic approach to positive psychology.