Publisher description: Positive Psychology focuses on strengths rather than weaknesses, asserting that happiness is not the result of good genes or luck. Seligman teaches readers that happiness can be cultivated by identifying and using many of the strengths and traits that they already possess -- including kindness, originality, humor, optimism, and generosity. By frequently calling upon their "signature strengths" in all the crucial realms of life, readers will not only develop natural buffers against misfortune and the experience of negative emotion, they will move their lives up to a new, more positive plane. Drawing on groundbreaking psychological research, Seligman shows how Positive Psychology is shifting the profession's paradigm away from its narrow-minded focus on pathology, victimology, and mental illness to positive emotion, virtue and strength, and positive institutions. Seligman provides the Signature Strengths Survey along with a variety of brief tests that can be used to measure how much positive emotion readers experience, in order to help determine what their highest strengths are.

pt. 1.1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. pt. 2. 8. 9. pt. 3. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. Positive emotion -- Positive feeling and positive character -- How psychology lost its way and I found mine -- Why bother to be happy? -- Can you make yourself lastingly happier? -- Satisfaction about the past -- Optimism about the future -- Happiness in the present -- Strength and virtue -- Renewing strength and virtue -- Your signature strengths -- In the mansions of life -- Work and personal satisfaction -- Love -- Raising children -- Reprise and summary -- Meaning and purpose. pt. 1. Positive emotion -- 1. Positive feeling and positive character -- 2. How psychology lost its way and I found mine -- 3. Why bother to be happy? -- 4. Can you make yourself lastingly happier? -- 5. Satisfaction about the past -- 6. Optimism about the future -- 7. Happiness in the present -- pt. 2. Strength and virtue -- 8. Renewing strength and virtue -- 9. Your signature strengths -- pt. 3. In the mansions of life -- 10. Work and personal satisfaction -- 11. Love -- 12. Raising children -- 13. Reprise and summary -- 14. Meaning and purpose.