Introduction to Positive Psychology by William Compton, was a comprehensive, user friendly textbook that maps in out in detail the major landmarks of Positive Psychology, which center around the three elements of: Positive connections to others, positive individual traits and life regulation qualities (7). In writing this book it was very apparent that Compton was not trying to present himself as a personal authority who knew the answers. In the beginning of the book he qualifies the research presented by saying,
“Science cannot address in any ultimate or absolute sense what values a person must believe or practice in her or his life… What psychology can do is investigate the consequences of holding certain values…In addition, scientific methods can be applied to any cultural setting or in any society around the world to discover what values tend to enhance the quality of life.” (9) So in this sense it was very much a do-it-yourself book, that holds the reader responsible for deciding what was important and meaningful.
One of the things that I appreciated most about Compton’s synthesis was the in depth, historical picture of how positive psychology emerged as a social science.
In Chapter one, he premises the current field by distilling a wide variety of theories across the centuries all pretaining to the search for happiness. For me, it was particularly interesting to see that the ancient Greek philosophers- Socrates and Plato stressed the search for wisdom and self-knowledge beyond the realm of sensory perception. This seems to have corrallary echoes with Positive psychology’s slant 2000+ years later advocating against archetypal hedonism and for the cultivation of altruistic character traits as the basis of ones wellbeing. Then, in the Middle ages with the authoritarian influences of the church, much of the Western (Eurocentric) cosmology of happiness regressed into the belief that, “…true happiness as opposed to secular temporary pleasures, was delayed until after death and the resurrection into heaven” (17).
Skipping ahead to the 20th Century, it was also interesting to read and reflect on the notion that “positive psychology” was in many ways a monumental paradigm shift. Up until recently, “psychologists used to assume that, if a person could eliminate their negative emotions, then positive emotions would naturally take their place”(10). Compton went on to say that “simply decreasing a person’s degree of pessimism may have no major increase in whether a person feels happy or not. To increase positive mood a person has to increase optimism as well as decrease pessimism” (10). These passages impressed on me the notion that this active cultivation of positive affect was a revolutionary endeavor in the psychological mainstream.
In many ways, Introduction to Positive Psychology seemed to be the ideological mirror of Martin Seligman’s Authentic Happiness—stressing the familiar subjects of: Optimism, Altruistic values (generosity, caring compassion), Flow/Mindfulness and the positive emotional reinforcement in the context of relationships. Compton also includes a few new chapters dedicated “self-actualization” creativity and wisdom. In these chapters he borrows heavily from Humanist psychological perspectives and the work of Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers. Here it was interesting to note that although currently accepted psychotherapy practices scorn the Humanist perspective, Positive Psychology—as represented in this book—is readily accepting of notions of transcendence that were formulated during the 1970’s. In reading this book I often found myself getting lost amidst the oceanic composite of scientific studies and topic ranges. The result of which is that I sometimes got frustrated to in trying to read this text as a self-help book. It did not have the personal touch and personality that was evident in Seligman’s book. That being said, while I didn’t come away from this text with any shocking new insights, reading Introduction to Positive Psychology helped me to strengthen and reinforced my conceptual understanding of life transforming strategies for well-being.
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