I'm trying to broaden the scope of positive psychology well beyond the smiley face. Happiness is just one-fifth of what human beings choose to do.
Martin SeligmanRead
The dirty little secret of both clinical psychology and biological psychiatry is that they have completely given up on the notion of cure.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote suggests that both clinical psychology and biological psychiatry have abandoned the pursuit of curing mental illnesses.
Martin Seligman highlights a concerning trend in the fields of clinical psychology and biological psychiatry, where the focus has shifted away from finding cures for mental illnesses. Instead, these disciplines may have settled into managing symptoms rather than striving for complete recovery, which raises important questions about the effectiveness and goals of mental health care.
Themes
Mental HealthPsychologyCureTreatmentSymptoms
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about modern mental health practices, this quote can illustrate how the focus on symptom management may overlook the individual's potential for recovery.
More from Martin Seligman
All quotes βOne of my worries about America is the epidemic of depression we've been in. One of the possibilities about that is that the 'I' gets bigger and bigger, and the 'we' gets smaller and smaller.
Martin SeligmanRead
The belief that we can rely on shortcuts to happiness, joy, rapture, comfort, and ecstasy, rather than be entitled to these feelings by the exercise of personal strengths and virtues, leads to legions of people who, in the middle of great wealth, are starving spiritually.
Martin SeligmanRead
I believe psychology has done very well in working out how to understand and treat disease. But I think that is literally half-baked. If all you do is work to fix problems, to alleviate suffering, then by definition you are working to get people to zero, to neutral.
Martin SeligmanRead
The good life is using your signature strengths every day to produce authentic happiness and abundant gratification.
Martin SeligmanRead
Perhaps the single most robust fact across many surveys is that married people are happier than anyone else.
Martin SeligmanRead
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Part of my evolution has been to learn how painful most people's childhoods are. They grow up not liking themselves, not loving themselves. Ask people if they were lovable the minute they were born, and watch them sit back and have to think about it. One lady said, 'I suppose so.' That's painful.
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Depression is rage spread thin.
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Everyone knows nowadays that people 'have complexes'. What is not so well known, though far more important theoretically, is that complexes can have us.
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