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Positive Therapy

A Meta-Theory for Positive Psychological Practice

  • Price: $35.95 $32.35
  • Paperback: 208 pages
  • Also available in Hardback
  • Published: July 2006
  • ISBN: 978-1-58391-773-2
  • Publisher: Routledge

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Positive psychology emphasises the need to understand the positive side of human experience, as well as understanding and ameliorating psychopathology and distress. Positive Therapy explores the relevance of positive psychology to therapy.

Stephen Joseph and P. Alex Linley argue that therapy is not so much about what you do as how you do it, emphasising the influence of the views we hold about human nature on our approach to therapy, and the importance of the relationship between therapist and client over the technique of the therapist. They consider the full range of positive therapies and illustrate the application of the approach in relation to their own work in the field of posttraumatic stress and posttraumatic growth. Finally, they discuss how positive therapy focuses our attention on the social and political context of our work as therapists.

This book is essential reading for all psychotherapists, counsellors, social workers, coaches and psychologists interested in investigating how they engage with clients, and the implications of this engagement for their practice.

Table of Contents

The Positive Psychology Movement and Positive Therapy. Positive Psychology, Fundamental Assumptions, and Values. The Organismic Valuing Process and Person-centred Theories. Client-centred Therapy and Positive Therapies. Therapeutic Process and Positive Psychological Techniques. From Psychopathology to Well-being. Adaptation to Threatening Events: A Positive Psychology Approach. Conclusions: Reflections, Context, and Future

Reviews

"….The effort to develop good therapeutic innovations from the positive psychology research is a potentially important aim, and Joseph and Linley have commendably begun to tackle this task."

- Michael F. Steger, in PsycCritiques, Contemporary Psychology: APA Review of Books

Author Biography

Stephen Joseph is Professor of Psychology, Health and Social Care in the Department of Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Nottingham. His research interests are in understanding how people cope with trauma and adversity and more broadly in positive psychology and its applications. He is also a senior practitioner member of the British Psychological Society's Register of Psychologists who specialise in psychotherapy.

P. Alex Linley is a lecturer in Psychology at the University of Leicester. He is interested in positive psychology and its applications, especially in relation to psychological strengths, and serves as the Director of the Centre for Applied Positive Psychology (CAPP).