Foreword to Special Topic Section on the Interface of Positive Psychology with Rehabilitation Research and Practice

To hear adherents of positive psychology tell it, the advent of positive psychology can be traced back to 1998. At Martin E. P. Seligman’s Presidential Address to the American Psychological Association, he described a profession which ‘‘... largely neglected the latter two of (psychology’s) three pre-World War II missions: curing mental illness’’; helping all people to lead more productive and fulfilling lives; and identifying and nurturing high talent. Seligman resolved to use his APA presidency to initiate a shift in psychology’s focus toward a more positive psychology’’ [1]. Other historians have noted that positive psychology began well before 1998 and have given due credit to earlier contributors [2]. Few would question that the resurgence of interest and momentum in positive psychology is in full swing. Without detracting from the considerable achievements of our contemporaries, contributors to this special issue are mindful that positive psychologists have been active even dating back to World War I and its aftermath. The theoretical and applied contributions of Alfred Adler, Victor Frankl, Carl Rogers, Abraham Maslow, William Glasser and others are matters of record. Linley [1] noted as early as 1946–1947 that the Veterans Administration and the National Institute of Mental Health had configured psychology as a healing discipline based upon a disease model and illness ideology. But even then and ever since, large segments of counseling psychology in particular have consistently rejected the medical model and posited a more holistic approach. Their collective body of work merits close examination and revisionist history should not purge this foundation from our training or traditions. Indeed there exists today considerable evidence of its effectiveness; e.g., common factors research [3]. Regarding rehabilitation, as early as 1978 Warren Rule wrote about the applications of Adlerian lifestyle counseling with emphasis on the innately social nature of clients, consciousness, health and normality, purposeful behavior, self-perception, and competition [4]. Frankl and Rogers underscored active involvement of the client, capacity for growth, basic goodness of human nature, insight and change, independence and integration, focus upon the affective, client responsibility, counselor acceptance and tolerance and the uniqueness and wholeness of each individual. Glasser stressed achievement, meaning and purpose, personal responsibility and the need to love and be loved. Frankl observed that life affords both meaning and the freedom to pursue it under all circumstances. Maslow sought to document the characteristics of the ‘‘growing tip’’ of society and discovered universal needs which for some, if fulfilled, may lead to self-actualization. Each of these legends believed that psychology was misdirected in its obsession with psychopathology and contributed mightily to our current understanding of what constitutes mental health. Each rejected labelling and the stigmatization resulting from rigid psychiatric diagnoses. Each perceived mankind as inherently good and highly individualized in terms of personality. Their thinking did result in calls for action and lead to de-institutionalization which, although neither well planned nor executed, were advanced by Szaz, Wolfensberger, and others. Positive psychology was not as popular as it is in the new millennium, but its influence was enduring. In the context of a civil rights movement in the 50s and 60s there emerged a parallel movement in the broader disability community for self-determination and equal & Brian T. McMahon btmcmaho@vcu.edu