Today i will talk to you about Martin Seligman´s speech in TED (2004). He is a psychologist, he founded the field of positive psychology in 2000. This is an approach to discover how make the people´s life happier. The title of his talk was : "The new era of positive psychology". He talked about the three aims of his field: developing the strengths of humans, building the best things in life, and making the  life of normal people fulfilling.

 

The main cuestión of this approach is: Can psychology actually make the people happier?. He answered "Yes". For this reason he makes scientific researchs to measurement human strengths, looking the causes of happiness and developing positive interventions to make people feel better.

 

He showed three positive interventions proven by his researchs: Design a "beautiful day", to write a testimony to a loved people and read it to him in a "gratitud visit", and make one altruistic act and one funny act, comparing its effect. This three interventions has an impact in the satisfaction with life.

 

Well, i selected this talk because i am interested to know the Seligman´s ideas. Of course i agree with him in his critic to the disease model in psychology (focused in illness and weakness), but i don´t share his point of view about therapy. In his concept, the therapist teach to others how to be happier, how to have a better life. It represent a high risk to transform all your patients in a "Mini Me", in other words, the patient finally has to imitate his therapist, and learn of him what happyness it´s about, and how to found her.

 

I prefer others points of view about human satisfactions and emotions, especially because they respect the particularity of everyone to decide how to be happy.

(If you are interested to view the video, clik here: http://www.ted.com/talks/martin_seligman_on_the_state_of_psychology.html)