Second Symposium on Positive Psychology in Heidelberg on July 10th 2011
300 people from all over Europe and various occupational groups (psychologists, psychotherapists, coaches, teachers, etc.) took part in the second symposium in Heidelberg. They all enjoyed a day of the latest and largely very practical information. At the same time all the challenging issues on luck were put forward.
Prof. Dr. Michael Eid amazed with the statistically proven fact that already 44% of German universities and colleges teach and research Positive psychology regularly … and counting.
Dr. Gunther Schmidt, showed how people can discover and use their skills and worked out parallels to the flow concept of positive psychology. Dr. Philip Streit described the design and implementation of the fourteen most important interventions of Positive Psychology and its application contexts. Simple, clear, immediately usable. Prof. Dr. Michael Frese introduced in a concept of the Positive Psychology of labour. The chief point is individual initiative and self-determination leading to well-being, motivation and high work efficiency of employees. Within this frame, the reflection of the negative things can have even motivating effects.
Ernst Fritz Schubert outlined his almost unbelievable range of experiences concerning a school subject “happiness”. Happiness is far more than just being "happy". It’s more like a comprehensive approach to wellbeing and positive, encouraging conditions for learning, focusing on key experiences and dignity.
Heiko Ernst, editor of "Psychology Today", examined "Potential happiness traps" like the usage-trap, the optimism-trap, the individualism-trap and the absoluteness-trap and conducted a discussion about the possibilities of positive psychology in a social context.
Shortly before the lunch break, Dr. Eckhart von Hirschhausen unexpectedly appeared and amused the audience with his satirical summary of the day.
Later in the afternoon Prof. Dr. Martin Seligman presented his new theory of well-being. The critizism of Heiko Ernst existed with good reason, the professor from Philadelphia conceded, but only related to the old theory of Happiness. The theory emphasizes five areas of well-being and happiness. PERMA: Positive emotions, engagement, relationship, Meaning, Accomplishment. This makes Positive Psychology a model - that psychologically speaking - is based on subjective and objective variables. Prof. Dr. Seligman reported on the many possible applications of positive psychology and outlined his vision of the 51%. He thinks with the aid of positive psychology 51% of the world's population could live under conditions of well-being by 2051.
Positive psychology has been deployed in the U.S. Army Soldier Training as the Comprehensive Fitness Programs (CIF). About a million servicemen were already at examined concerning their mental health and the possibilities to feel better and more than 10.000 were trained to become instuctors. In this way valuable data on the mental health of the population could be found.
Soon a first-PENN certified training in Applied Positive Psychology for German-speaking countries will be available. Contact Seligman Europe via www.seligmaneurope.com or This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it +4369916030040
