Tuesday 7th February 2006

Transcription of Madeline J. Watson presentation during Fall 2005 Dharma and Psychotherapy seminar.

I want to address a current trend in the psychological literature which is a move away from an investigation and amelioration of a negative mental state toward the question of how we might attain a positive mental state and achieve individual happiness. This trend is referred to as the practice of ‘Positive’ psychology.

Although the psychotherapist’s couch and endless hours of counselling may lead to an understanding of why a person is unhappy and reveal some of the traumas of childhood which have influenced adult behaviour, it has been shown that it does not necessarily follow that this will solve all their problems and that they will subsequently lead a happy and fulfilled life. As Csikszentmihalyi has pointed out: ‘It (the psychotherapist’s couch) had the unfortunate result of providing a false sense of security to people who believed that by exorcising some childhood trauma they would live happily ever after. The self, alas, is more cunning and complicated than that’. (Csikszentmihalyi, 1997).

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		POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY AND THE DHARMA : Transcription of Madeline J. Watson presentation during Fall 2005 Dharma and Psychotherapy seminar. PDF - 162.8 kb