Hi,

There are several books o this subject. Here are some latest ones:

Edward C. Chang, The International Handbook of Positive Psychology: A Global Perspective on the Science of Positive Human Existence. Springer 2022

Michael L. Wehmeyer; Dana S. DunnThe Positive Psychology of Personal Factors: Implications for Understanding Disability. Lexington Books 2022

Hart, Rona; Positive Psychology.Taylor & Francis Group..2021

M. Joseph The Psychology of Quality of Life: Wellbeing and Positive Mental Health [83, 3 ed.] Springer 2021

Nicholas J. L. Brown,‎ Tim Lomas, The Routledge International Handbook of Critical Positive Psychology.

Kate Hefferon, Positive Psychology

We did something on psychological capital. I attach it in case it helps you: Positive psychology is rather new and came after the second world war. Martin Seligman is claimed to be the father of it but Abraham Maslow coined the term positive psychology. ED Diener created a model of subjective well-being.. Albert Bandura

presented a Self-Efficacy theory . Personally I think that Viktor E. Frankl was the most important with his logotherapy/existential analysis although he is not counted in positive psychology. I attach something that concerns Bandusra and Frankl also

.

All 3 papers are here on RG in case they do not open up.

Medical Students’ Specialty Preference Relative to Trait Emotional Intelligence and General Self-Efficacy

• June 2020
• Education in Medicine Journal 12(2):23-35
• DOI:10.21315/eimj2020.12.2.3

Miss B Pursues Death and Miss P Life in the Light of V. E. Frankl’s Existential Analysis/ Logotherapy

Article

Full-text available

• June 2015
• OMEGA--Journal of Death and Dying
• 📷Béatrice Marianne Ewalds-Kvist
• 📷Kim Lützén

Chinese Students’ Satisfaction with Life Relative to Psychological Capital and Mediated by Purpose in Life

Article

Full-text available

• February 2019
• Current Psychology
• 📷Rongwei Zhang
• 📷Béatrice Marianne Ewalds-Kvist
• 📷Dan Li
• 📷Jun Jiang

I agree totally with Beatrice as A. Maslow coined the term "Positive Psychology" and M. Seligman developed it in the prevention and maintenance of Mental Health. And yet, what I want to present here is the imprecise, insufficient, incomplete and unsatisfactory defense that Positive Psychology makes on its scientific approach as the flag that legitimates it.

PP claims to be scientific because it uses the experimental methodology being based therefore in what they defend to be realistic which is statistical management of variables; that is the quantitative methodology and analysis. This approach leaves aside the experiential and empirical data which is much more than just an anecdote invented by the people that have changed their lives by using more qualitative practices.

The human being is a whole and not a fragmented structure of pathologies (traditional approach to Psychology) and non pathological assets (Positive Psychology).

The limited vision of "deficiencies" on a suffering person doesn't help much in a permanent and real transformation toward liberation. Neither a "Lalaland approach" where the positive traits are seen as the way to walk the path of life, with the clear danger of finding the wolf in the middle of the forest and not knowing what to do. Even though I start to potentiate my patience or my resilience or my positive attitudes in general in that precise moment... the wolf is going to open his mouth and eat me up.

I find that yes, we've historically need a Positive Psychology that would equilibrate the balance of an extremely polarized approach toward treating negativities. The result is a pathologized society, as naming the "thing", creates the "thing" and we, psychologists, have given many words and full descriptions of how we, human beings make our life miserable. In the other hand doing the same with positive words and descriptions will create the Lalaland of fantasy, as the happiness and well being will be apparent with the ghost hidden in the closet or the dirt under the mat.

Therefore, only a real Integral Psychology (Ken Wilber) may undertake the reality of the human being in this earth in connection to Nature and Cosmos. We cannot avoid the wholeness of our abundant reality in the various levels of our existence, although yes we may blur it, forget it or bias it as we're so accustomed to do with the main stream "scientific Psychologies". When will we learn that "Sofia", the genuine wisdom, is integrated and that such integration (that is both, the negative and the positive) is the real, authentic and unique Science of Reality? Only then we may have the integral right to "treat" others.

For more information if you want to put the glasses on to REALLY see ALL: https://www.amazon.es/Integral-Vision-Introduction-Revolutionary-Everything/dp/1590304756

Thanks Raquel Torrent Guerrero and Béatrice Marianne Ewalds-Kvist for your cooperation and motivating information's. Thanks

I agree with this statement

My pleasure Sayed. I'm a passionate practitioner of Integral Psychology and Theory that's why it has been easy to present it like so.

If I understand your question correctly, you are looking for the turn in paradigm from a deficit approach to mental health to an assets approach to mental health. This shift happened before what we would call the Positive Psychology movement. However, you are correct that the origin of the timeline is often connected with the events of World War II and the shift from an agriculture-based society to an industrial-based society. What follows is the history of how we got from a deficit approach to psychology to the emergence of Vocational Counseling, which will lead to our current Psychological and Counseling paradigms).

The field of Psychology is a relatively young discipline; in the late 1800s, Psychology was accepted as a distinct academic discipline distinct from PHILOSOPHY. From there, historically, Psychology followed some paradigm shifts from Structuralism:

Focused on understanding the conscious experience through introspection (Wilhelm Wundt) Then to Functionalism:

Emphasized how mental activities help an organism adapt to its environment (William James)And then... maybe what you are looking for: the shift from a deficits approach was the emergence of HUMANISM: which emphasized personal control, intentionality, and a true predisposition for “good” as important for our self-concept and our behavior (Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers)

Next, if you are curious about how psychological CAPITAL came to be a construct and term, I would direct you to look at the origins of the SOCIOLOGICAL CONSTRUCT of "capital."

Whenever I teach about the origins of any "capital," before I get too in the weeds, I start with a nod to the field of Sociology because we wouldn't even be discussing "capital" if it wasn't rooted in the perspectives of Sociologist Bourdieu (1986) who defined the term social capital: the sum of social joint that individuals or groups have. Acquiring social capital requires the establishment, maintenance, and resource exchange of social joint (Bourdieu, 1986, pp.241-258).

Back to World war II, ...

at the same time, we see the emergence of VOCATIONAL COUNSELING (note we have an emergence of counseling as a distinct discipline from Psychology emerge). At this time, we have all these people who are no longer working on farms; how do we help them understand their skills strengths and abilities? We have these people who have returned from war trained by the government; how do we best put their skills and strengths to use? We have the emergence of public education with an aim of teaching and training a workforce; how do we help these students decide on a vocational path that is suited to their academic abilities and interests? Thus, CAREER (vocational) COUNSELING becomes the father of COUNSELING, which we now refer to as CLINICAL MENTAL HEALTH COUNSELING, which is defined differently for different reasons in the field of PSYCHOLOGY.

Soo... then we get to how does capital combine with positive psychology? Well, it seems like Luthans was trying to find a way to name what type of " capital was associated with MOTIVATION which is a construct researched in CAREER COUNSELING, MENTAL HEALTH COUNSELING, & POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY. Now we see industrial organization psychology emerging to study and define those traits of ideal workers, again full circle back to the field of career (vocational) counseling.

All that is the pre-context that leads up to pages 451 - 543 of Luthans (2007), where the writers continue to explore "Psychological Captial as a Distinctive Construct."