In Buddhist philosophy, the first noble truth is that life is suffering because cravings for worldly happiness and ignorance of the impermanence of life are the major sources of suffering (Cowden, Counted, et al., 2021 Targ & Hurtak, 2006). The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the urgency with which we need to address universal existential suffering (Bland, 2020 Mayer, 2021) and recognize the perils of pursuing happiness while neglecting suffering (Wong, 2011 Zerwas & Ford, 2021). There is also a vast body of literature on the adverse effects of existential concerns, distress, and suffering (Wong & Yu, 2021 Yalom, 1980). This is not only a truism that has been the subject of much discourse during human history (Cowden, Davis, et al., 2021 Ho et al., 2022), but one with empirical support (Fowers et al., 2017 Gruber et al., 2011 Wong, 2019 Wong, Mayer, et al., 2021). It is not possible to live a life without experiencing some form of suffering.
#Paradigm shift psychology how to#
In this chapter, we advance a paradigm shift from traditional positive psychology by presenting an existential positive psychology vision that learning how to transform suffering is the beginning of sustainable wellbeing.
#Paradigm shift psychology professional#
This is an important consideration, as psychologists have a professional and moral obligation to address people’s suffering and help them find hope for a better future. In contrast, existential positive psychology is fundamentally concerned with the question of how to stay positive and live well even in the darkest of hours amid great tragedy (Wong, 2021 Wong, Mayer, et al., 2021). In response to these troubling circumstances, people may ask “How can we be happy in times like this?” Traditional positive psychology does not provide an adequate response to this question, because it is principally focused on “understanding how people rise from zero to positive eight” (Gable & Haidt, 2005, p. The recent Russia-Ukraine war threatens to become a global conflict, with wide-ranging implications around the world from financial stress caused by rises in the price of energy through to the loss of civilian loved ones who have been collateral damage in the war.
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has catastrophically awoken us to the fragility of modern society and the finitude of the human condition (Counted et al., 2021 Cowden, Rueger, et al., 2021), and its impacts on human life have been widespread and persistent (De Kock et al., 2022 Govender et al., 2020 Jacobi et al., 2022 Shiba et al., 2022a Wong, Arslan, et al., 2021).
Times and conditions have changed significantly since positive psychology emerged as a mainstream subfield of psychology in the early 2000s.
Keywords : existential positive psychology positive psychology self-transcendence suffering wellbeing Our chapter concludes with a brief discussion of some potential implications of existential positive psychology for research and interventions. We highlight some of the innovative ways in which existential positive psychology differs from traditional positive psychology and summarize self-transcendence as the thread that runs through the existential positive psychology paradigm. We explore the dialectical interaction between these poles of human experience, with a particular emphasis on the importance of embracing and transforming suffering for cultivating sustainable wellbeing. In this chapter, we propose a paradigm shift towards existential positive psychology, which integrates the dark (negative psychology) and the bright (positive psychology) sides of life to provide a more integrative and comprehensive model of wellbeing. Recent developments in positive psychology and wellbeing research highlight the tremendous capacity for individual wellbeing within the context of a cross-cultural, ecological, and complex model. Cowden, Claude-Hélène Mayer, & Victoria L. (This paper was co-authored with Richard G. *This is an unrevised version of the paper.
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