Differences and Similarities Between Positive and Traditional Psychology - Paper Example

Introduction

Humans have tendencies of having mental dysfunctions caused by daily activities and ambitions. Emotions make the necessary central component controls of people's lives determining the interpersonal and intrapersonal relations that people often attain based on how good they are to regulate them, which range from the bearing of violence, developing morality, change of attitude, stress levels and enhanced psychological improvements. Despite the role of emotions in people's life, there is little knowledge about the controls with much assertion placed on the character traits of the person depending on the time and situation in which an individual has a placement at emotional state. In an attempt to overcome the situation, psychologists of the past and present modern world developed notions to help the emotionally overwhelmed individuals overcome their condition. The early approach includes the traditional psychology that dwelt much with the negatives, through finding the distorted feelings and thought in the mind of a person and modifying them to produce a better person from them. On the other hand, the positive psychology proposed by Seligman became most acceptable approach since it focuses on the positives in an individual's life through the exploration of things that produce happiness, the well-being of mind, improve self-esteem and confidence as well as satisfaction in a person. As the aim of this essay, positive and traditional psychologies have some similarities as well as differences, and both of them contain specific focuses alongside distinctive evolution in the past decade.

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Similarities between Positive and Traditional Psychology

To begin with, the similarities that occur between the traditional and the modern psychological approaches of mental illness intervention are that all are evidence-based. In which, under both methods, the psychotherapist must identify the existence of symptoms of mental dysfunctions such as despair, over/ underbody activity, anxiety, disturbed minds, fatigue, concentration problems, poor job performance, and not limited to relationship failures at home and workplaces. Upon the realization of such symptoms, a necessary psychological technique is selected to help the victim rejuvenate and lead a normal life (Gable & Haidt, 2015). However, the tradition approach tries to solve using the negative symptoms as evidence directly, establishing a solution according to the depth of the problem. Here, a therapist aids the victim on how to cope up with the mental emotions to ensure that they reduce beyond the optimal levels. On the contrary, the widely accepted modern approach identifies the probable positives in the victim's life and cultivates them for the betterment of one's life to reassure a state of well-being, self-compassion, gratitude, and hope for a normal life (Vasilev, 2014). In the end, both approaches provide a solution, though the tradition approached lacked acceptance since it reduces the negatives symptoms without finding a productive aspect in one's life that can reinstate the emotional wellness thus, providing a reason as to why has to live for tomorrow. In the end, the Seligman approach has overpowered the traditional method in therapeutic clinics.

Differences between Positive and Traditional Psychology

Although among scholars the existence of the modern psychology meant to supplement on the traditional psychology, the two approaches have shown differences in their application and intervention. For the traditional approach, its mainly applies for pessimistic clients who believe that bad lack accompanies their life and perceive it to be their destiny and they can do nothing to change about it (Csikszentmihalyi, 2016). The approach makes life to be a one-dimensional thing without the provision of a circumstance which one might succeed. Indeed, the approach might imprison one in the bonds of poverty when they have a chance to change their financial background. Furthermore, pessimistic people made with the traditional approach effortlessly give up and get discouraged for they assume their failure is an inborn trait. On the contrary, the Seligman approach tries to teach its victims to be optimistic of the second chance despite failure. The primary goal of the approach is to remind mentally traumatized individuals that that dreams can be achieved when you set periodically achievable goals and by the acquisition of skills necessary in the perseverance of hard to be achieved goals. The skills required for optimist people ranges from hard work, commitment, focus, and motivation. As a result, the positive psychology comes as a benefit to distressed people giving gratitude on as to why you should keep on pushing instead of just sitting and waiting for your end since you're a failure. In addition to this, optimist tends to utilize study and research more than pessimists to find an alternative in life and sustain themselves (Gable &Haidt, 2015). For example, a person motivated with a positive psychologist may decide to venture in a new field after failure in another career without possession of the feeling of jealousness with previous job counterparts. Finding an alternative to what you can do to achieve your ambitions is positive.

Another difference that exists between the two psychological approaches includes the approaches used by them to help the clients achieve their life goals. Although the approaches used in the positive psychological techniques assimilates those in traditional, the difference is that the past technique tries to exploit more strengths in the client without a means of an overhaul of their weaknesses. According to Maddux (2018), positive psychology would not change the methods and means of the intervention of traditional technique as it tries to combine the strength and weaknesses in the client. As it evidently appears, the positive approach helps in the full recovery of the mental dysfunctions of the client without the negligence of any facade of the trauma, since every person has its potentials and failures. The one-tier perspective of traditional psychology therapy places the clients at chances of reoccurrence of emotional disturbances as the weaknesses still exist in their life (Vasilev, 2014). In summary, the traditional approach uses a single skill of strength to deal with the problem whereas the positive utilizes the influence of one's strength and weakness to result in the satisfaction of the clients.

Moreover, the traditional approach to some extent focuses more on the client's distress compared to the positive psychology. The study has proven that the positive approach spends quiet a periodic time to establish factor that can take comfort in the patient's life reinstating mental wellbeing and physiological health feeling (Gable &Haidt, 2015). As highlighted in the positive intervention, a person administered to the techniques is left determine its destiny through a self-setting of goals where the analysis and focus on improvement of inter-personal relationship skills together with the identification of talent have been parts of focus of the method of assurance of positive life in clients. Equally, the traditional approach has failed to provide alternatives to its clients, but rather it dwells on how the clients overcome the challenge, without pinpointing on how the client will cope with life after the end of trauma. Besides, the positive approach has hinted that the emotional, mental, behavioral, and cognitive discomforts that its clients experience are as a result of poor interpersonal skills a person has in relating with other individual and not their inborn fault. Hence, it seeks to comfort the distresses with an external stimulus that can have avoidance in the future (Maddux, 2018). For the positive approach, it has shown kind of respect to trauma victims by referring to them as clients or rather students and not as patient to exclaim that emotional discomfort is a temporary condition and no sign of ill health. In summary, positive psychology facilitates the best facade in the rehabilitation of its clients in the most respectful way.

In addition to the improvement of virtues and abilities of its clients, the positive psychology implements characteristics that are socially and economically accepted and supported within families, community and organizational structure. Since the positive techniques claim the faults in the clients are from flaw relation of clients and other individuals, here, psychologists try to amend weak traits in the clients to ensure they begin a positive life with other members of the society. As denoted by Clonan (2014), positive ideologies require the consideration of the environment to improve the client's weak strengths. One of the focused environments by Clonan is the education in which psychiatrists target the school environment to act as a pivotal point to shape human development especially on an expectation of future goals reducing chances of mental discomfort for the failure of achievement of goals early enough in children. Here, the positive principle becomes a precautionary principle for children and teens warning them against being overwhelmed with big dreams. This is a coverage that's only found in the positive technique and not in tradition psychology. In the end, the positive technique becomes efficient in the prevention of bipolar conditions at an adult life of children in the future.

In the implementation process, a big difference between the positive and the traditional psychology is whereby modern psychology can easily be implemented in the childhood education program. In the school environment, an institution psychologist can be employed to provide direct services to distressed students, and together with teachers and management board, they can mold academic competition in school as well as monitor students' resiliency to stress (Csikszentmihalyi, 2016). With consideration of traditional therapy, it would be challenging to put it into practice based on the fact that each student has distinct weakness from others. Therefore, the emotion management of each student is impossible. We can only cultivate on their strength as a group as all are still young and ambitious of future success. In the end, this factor is one of those dimensions considered with Seligman and Patterson advocated for an approach that could prevent the risk-taking behavior among children.

The Evolution of Positive and Traditional Psychology in the Past Decade

Both fields of positive and traditional psychology have not evolved much in the last ten years since the concepts have existed for the past decades. The only change that has happened is that positive psychology has been put in action more than the traditional approach (Maddux, 2018). As an attempt of giving a brief theory of the two psychological concepts, the traditional approach marks the first technique to be used after the Second World War era. In this era, the therapeutic method was popularly used since governments financed psychological clinics to cater to the mental and emotional needs of veterans of war. The governments knew the essence of mental wellbeing, and effectiveness of mind, thus it deployed cash to aid the victims of war to resurge to a normal life as most of them had lost their friends, families, and even body parts (Gable &Haidt, 2015). These people were traumatized with the situations; hence the introduction of traditional psychology served to intervene in their situation as they deserved better mental health for effective parenting. However, in the early 1960 and 1970, Martin Seligman a person known to be the founder of positive concept did studies to develop what was referred to as 'learned helplessness...