Marty Seligman Essay

I, Marty Seligman, am an American Psychologist. I was born on August 12 in 1942…yeah, I know I’m old. It’s just a sign of my wisdom! My first degree was a B.A. in Philosophy from Princeton, followed by a few Ph.D.s from various schools around the world. I learned a lot from the work of Abraham Maslow, who worked in humanistic psychology. I was drawn to the way he focused on people’s strengths. I started working in a similar vein, trying to find out the ways we can help ourselves be happy and keep ourselves that way as much as possible. I worked with Ed Diener and Mihaly Csiskzenmihalyi on how happiness keeps us healthier and functioning better. I have written 20 books on optimism, self help, and preventing depression. You may have heard of some of them- The Optimistic Child (1995), Learned Optimism (1991), Authentic Happiness (2002), and my most recent is Flourish (2011). My books are targeted at everyday people, not just with mental illnesses, to help them better understand what makes them happy. The idea is that they can strengthen themselves in the ways that they …show more content…
In my inauguration speech, I said that we, as psychologists, should put more focus toward what makes happy people happy. “The most important thing, the most general thing I learned, was that psychology was half-baked, literally half-baked.” I said in my speech. We had baked the part about mental illness. The other side’s unbaked, the side of strength, the side of what we’re good at.” The longer I have the privilege of working with people, within the APA and with clients, the more I realize: Psychology is much larger than curing mental illnesses or curing diseases. I think it’s about bringing out the best in people; it’s about positive institutions; it’s about strength of character. We can all strengthen ourselves, working with what makes us feel the