PSY 6160 - Applied Positive Psychology

Positive psychology (PP) is the scientific study of optimal human functioning to help people flourish. This Applied PP course is a foundation course to help students not only understand the research on the core themes of positive psychology, but also equip students with the helpful positive interventions in various area areas of professional psychology, such as clinical, health, education, organization and community. Both PP and applied PP courses are in great demand all over the world, because of their broad appeal to students and helping professionals (i.e., counsellors, psychologists, coaches, doctors, social workers, educations, and human resources managers.). PP is the 21st century in much the say way humanistic-existential psychology (HE) was in the 70s. Both appeal to individuals who aspire to promote the well-being in themselves, their clients, and society; both seek to develop a strength-based practice in helping professionals. What makes this course unique is that it has moved from the initial positive psychology narrow focus on positive emotions, positive traits and positive institutions (Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2000) to positive psychology 2.0 (Kashdan & Biswas-Diener, 2014; Wong, 2011) which focuses the totality of the person and the positive potentials in both positive and negative conditions. Another distinctive of this course is that it integrates the best from PP and HP to help people become authentic and fully functioning individuals (Wong, 2010b, in press-b). Advocating a holistic approach towards research, it recommends the triangulation of scientific research findings, time-tested wisdom, and personal experiences as the basis for truths. In sum, this course has the flexibility to meet the career needs and aspirations of individual students through the choice of special projects. 3 credit(s)

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