Why Did Positive Psychology Emerge?
- Kristijan Musek Lešnik
- Nov 17, 2025
- 3 min read
Updated: 3 days ago
We usually think of psychology when something goes wrong—like calling a plumber only when pipes burst. Traditional psychology made life-changing progress treating distress, yet there remained a gap: when negative emotions lifted, many felt empty, not flourishing. Positive psychology answered with a preventive, strengths-based lens: cultivating hope, meaning, engagement, good relationships, and accomplishment can lead to better resilience and fewer people suffering.
When Do We Think About Psychology?
Think about when the words “psychologist” or “psychology” come to mind during school. Most often, it’s when we face problems — isn’t it?
We tend to see psychology as a profession that deals with difficulties, disorders, and distress — and psychologists as those who help us resolve them.
Just as we don’t think about plumbers when our pipes and taps work perfectly, we usually think about psychologists only when something goes wrong — when we feel anxious, depressed, stressed, or overwhelmed.
Beyond the Absence of Problems
Over the past century, psychology has made remarkable progress in helping people overcome distress and mental illness. But somewhere along the way, it overlooked an important truth: The absence of problems is not the highest goal psychology can achieve.
A life free from distress is not automatically a happy or fulfilled life.
Dr. Martin E. Seligman’s Realization
Dr. Martin E. Seligman — often regarded as the founder of modern positive psychology — shared how, as a therapist, he helped clients overcome anxiety, anger, and sadness.
He expected that, once freed from negative emotions, they would feel happy. To his surprise, many were left feeling merely empty. Struck by this realization, Seligman began to point out two major limitations of what he called traditional psychology:
It focused too heavily on treating and eliminating mental distress.
In doing so, it forgot to study and cultivate the positive aspects of human life.
A Preventive and Strength-Based Approach
Its core message is simple but powerful: It is just as important to strengthen the skills and inner resources that foster happiness, optimism, resilience, and well-being as it is to treat distress and disorder.
Integrating Both Sides of Psychology
Developing positive emotions, better relationships, engagement, and meaning requires a different approach from coping with anxiety, depression, or stress. Yet one is not more important than the other. Psychology can make its greatest contribution to human well-being when it integrates both perspectives — healing what’s broken and strengthening what’s best.
As Christopher Peterson beautifully put it: “Psychology should focus on both human weaknesses and strengths — striving not only to correct the worst things in life, but also to strengthen the best.”
Read more:
The Cliff Metaphor
Sir Simon Wessely, president of the British Psychiatric Association, once offered a memorable metaphor: “Problem-oriented psychology starts helping only after a person has fallen off a cliff — and then tries to put them back together again.”
This approach, he noted, has two major drawbacks:
It is difficult and painful to “put back together” someone who has already been “broken.”
Once a person has fallen, they are more likely to fall again.
“So,” he said, “in addition to focusing on curing problems and distress, we also need a strong emphasis on prevention and on building psychological strengths.”
© dr. Kristijan Musek Lešnik & GrowHumans.
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