Positive Psychology

The term Positive Psychology was basically unknown five years ago. Today, there are numerous books, newspaper and magazine articles mentioning how you can be happier and live a meaningful life based on the scientific research findings from positive Psychology.

Positive psychology is a recent branch of psychology that "studies the strengths and virtues that enable individuals and communities to thrive". Positive psychology seek "to find and nurture genius and talent", and "to make normal life more fulfilling", not simply to treat mental illness.

Positive psychology area is more concerned with the sunnier side of psychology, which is the area of those people, who are happy and move with confidence, wherever they go and whatever they do. Positive psychology may shed more light on why some people behave in such a pleasing manner and how they have developed that trait. Ultimately, this intense study may help us to find a lasting cure for many of our negative psychological conditions and other eccentric behaviors.

Positive psychology often relies heavily on the principle of optimism, which is a cherished positive parameter of human excellence. There is remarkable evidence that optimistic people are usually happier and highly productive than ultra pessimists. Optimism can also be taught and learned by human beings. According to the new theory, there tends to be a positive flow of things in those people who are highly optimistic and cheerful. This flow is usually not checked in them, in any manner, at any time and thus this set of positive flow causes a person to be tougher mentally and psychologically.

Cognitive Psychology

The roots of cognitive psychology (the experimental study of how the mind works) can be traced to Wundt's interest in memory and language processes in Leipzig in 1879. Shortly after this, there was a spurt of interest in reading processes; this reached an apex around 1908. The equipment used then was somewhat archaic and very dissimilar to the more sophisticated and often computer based equipment of today.

Cognitive psychology is a discipline within psychology that investigates the internal mental processes of thought such as visual processing, memory, problem solving, or language. The main sources of evolutionary psychology are cognitive psychology, genetics, ethology, anthropology, biology, and zoology.

Cognitive psychology is radically different from previous psychological approaches in two key ways.

• It accepts the use of the scientific method, and generally rejects introspection as a valid method of investigation, unlike symbol-driven approaches such as Freudian psychology.

• It explicitly acknowledges the existence of internal mental states (such as belief, desire and motivation) unlike behaviorist psychology. Critics hold that the empiricism of cognitive psychology combined with the acceptance of internal mental states by cognitive psychology is contradictory.

The combination of this mode of neurology and cognitive psychology led to the development of cognitive neuropsychology. Possibly the first published paper in this field was by Marshall & Newcombe in 1973 who described three types of acquired dyslexia, and offered a reading model in flow chart form to interpret the deficit in terms of damage to specific components of the model. The use of a box and arrow approach has continued in other areas as well as reading.