The psyche police used to interact with sub normal patients by trying to make them normal. More recently the interactions have been with super-normal people. The idea is to identify what makes the supers super and to encourage normal people to copy them. The new field is called positive psychology and the goal is that people should ‘flourish’
“Positive Psychology is the scientific study of the strengths that enable individuals and communities to thrive. The field is founded on the belief that people want to lead meaningful and fulfilling lives, to cultivate what is best within themselves, and to enhance their experiences of love, work, and play. http://www.positivepsychology.org/”
BUT - I am wary of the implied ‘nice’ Weltanschaung. There is a tendency to think that successful people are rational, reasonable planners with excellent project and time management skills, an MBA, and a fully functioning pre-frontal cortex.
BUT – human thinking is always linked to feelings and moods. The totally rational economic man is a myth. What we have instead is people driven by a rich mix of instincts, reflexes, intuitions and biases; and, amongst the more enlightened, a realisation that there is no fixed reality – everything changes
To get a feel for how I think at the moment I brainstormed 50 key topics and arranged them alphabetically. At another time in another mood the list would be different. Other people would have markedly different lists and they would also be flavoured by feelings and moods associated with particular times and places. The psyche police (positive branch) might care to construct profiles for people with different degrees of flourish.
Aid and development
Behavioural economics
Brain science
Changing minds
Confirmation bias
Cognitive dissonance
Consciousness
Consilience
Corporate culture
Cosmic zoom
Creativity
Depression
Doodles
Education = Changing minds
Enculturation
Enlightenment (east and west)
Evolution – gene, individual, groups
Evolutionary psychology
Executive functions
Existential crisis
Flourishing
Flow
Foraging
Free will v determinism
Globalisation
Happiness
Hegemony
Individual v group
Meme
Mindfulness
Mysticism
Myth and magic
Nature v nurture
No boundaries
Non-egoic
Plain language
Policy and politicians
Poverty
Pre-frontal cortex
Propaganda
Renunciation
Reality
Scanning (MRI etc)
Self actualisation (Maslow)
Social psychology
Spirituality
The unconscious
TFM thoughts, feelings and mood
Thinking fast and slow
Traditional, modern, post modern
More with reference to Seligman and flourishing:
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