Positive psychology and adolescent mental health: false promise or true breakthrough?

Adolescence, Summer, 2004 by Thomas M. Kelley

Csikszentmihalyi also cites several supposed limits of flow. He states, for example, that youth may find flow in destructive, dysfunctional activities (e.g., violence, drug use), or become addicted to flow in functional activities (e.g., sports, watching television). While this certainly happens, HR asserts that this condition does not reflect a limit of flow. Instead, it reflects a limit in a youth's level of understanding the principles of HR. The reason that adolescents innocently become addicted to flow in any activity (positive or negative) is their limited recognition of the connection between their thinking and their personal experience. HR proposes that an insightful understanding of its three principles is all that youth need, and that they will naturally move toward more satisfying, fulfilling, virtuous lives as this understanding deepens.

The Unnecessary Learning of Optimism

Seligman's (1991) learned optimism is grounded primarily in the cognitive model of psychology. Compared to HR, Seligman and other cognitive proponents offer a limited definition of the way people form thought. The cognitive model assumes that external events directly impact people's senses, and that thought intervenes after this point. In other words, reality is seen by cognitive theorists as being presented to youth by their senses, after which their thinking determines their reaction to reality, based on the beliefs and assumptions in each youth's schema, or characteristic explanatory style (e.g., Buchanan & Seligman, 1995). Thus, according to Seligman's view, thought determines a youth's reaction to external reality. HR provides a more inclusive definition of thought--all mental activity. Thought, in the HR model, includes perceptions, feelings, insights, mental images, and all other products of mental activity. Thus, HR views thought as not only involved in the processing of sensory input, but in informing the senses, thereby defining young people's sensory data and determining their experienced reality.

Furthermore, Seligman, like other cognitive practitioners, holds the premise that a youth's schema, or mental representation system, is the appropriate focus for therapeutic intervention. This assumption provides a considerable workload for youngsters wanting to improve their mental health through learned optimism. First, a youth must process painful emotional reactions to outside events to determine whether or not they are responsive to "external reality." This memory processing further involves identifying and challenging the youth's assumptions and beliefs associated with these reactions. According to HR, such processing greatly increases the volume of young people's thinking, or the amount of time they spend in the analytical mode of thinking. In HR terms, Seligman's approach proposes a psychological life of overactive thinking as youth process their way through daily life experiences. HR, in contrast, does not require memory processing, only insightful shifts in understanding its three principles. According to HR, once youth move to higher levels of understanding and personal well-being, their perceptions automatically change across the board. Thus, HR treatment keeps youth living in free-flowing thinking as they realize, in the moment, the creation of personal experience via Mind, Thought, and Consciousness. Krot (2000) states: