One of the books I have is 50 Psychology Ideas You Really Need to Know by Adrian Furnham. I don’t agree with all his choices but I love the book because it includes several persons that I was unfamiliar with. One of the 50 ideas was about a favorite topic of mine—positive psychology. I was equally delighted to find it one of the topics on Alltop.com.

For some background in positive psychology, I love the timeline that Furnham gives at the bottom of the page for each section. The time line he chose is: 1969—The Structure of Psychological Well Being by N.M. Bradburn. 1987;

The Psychology of Happiness by Michael Argyle; 1998—Official founding date of Positive Psychology; 1999—First Break All the Rules by Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman; and Authentic Happiness by Dr. Martin Seligman, the director of the University of Pennsylvania Positive Psychology Center.  An invitation to participate in positive psychology offers several current research studies.

In an excerpt from 50 Psychology Ideas, Furnham writes “ Positive psychology is the study of factors and processes that lead to positive emotions, virtuous behaviors and optimal performance in individuals and groups. Although a few, mainly “self psychologists’, were always interested in health, adjustment and peak performance, the study of happiness was thought to be unimportant, even trivial. This probably still remains true: for every 100 serious psychology books and papers there exist 99 on depression; there is only one on happiness. But we have known for 50 years that happiness is not the opposite of unhappiness they are quite unrelated to each other.”