Cognitiva Review
This book is known as The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual Cognitiva Review of Mental Disorders DSM IV-TR (more commonly referred to as the DSM IV). The information in the DSM IV is arranged so that when people consult with a mental health professional that professional is able to look at the persons symptoms and match the symptoms with a disorder. For example if you have been feeling worthless and have not been able to find much pleasure in your life and have difficulty sleeping the mental health professional might tell you that you have the condition called Major Depression.
Dr. Seligman and his colleagues noticed that treating what is wrong with people or making them not anxious or not depressed did not increase positive emotion. It only made them less miserable. He and his colleagues reasoned that psychology could do better than that. They began a process of researching what characteristics could make people happy give their lives more meaningful and improve their ability to impact the world in powerfully positive ways.
A few years later they published their results in the book Character Strengths and Virtues A Handbook and Classification (more commonly referred to as The CSV). A new field of psychology called Positive Psychology emerged spawning new interventions to teach people skills that would put the acquisition of happiness and finding meaning in life help with the realm of personal control. No longer would people have to go to bed at night praying for a good day or hoping magic would bring a good day into their lives-they could make that good day happen with the tools of Positive Psychology.
