Schema-inhibitors of Happiness and their Remediation

contribution to Positive Psychotherapy Jiri Kulka

ABSTRACT

The author describes his own concept of happiness, which he has derived from an original theory of personality. Personality structure consists of four subsystems: motivational, executive, egotic, and character. The definition of happiness as a synergic unity of joy, bliss, self-actualization, and meaning comes from the concept of saturation of these personality substructures. Further he focuses on factors which hinder life happiness and shows the possibility to implement schema therapy in the area of positive psychotherapy. Both therapeutic systems can be interconnected in the following manner; that is we can use schemas (Young et al.) to explain the origin of conflicts (Peseschkian).

KEY WORDS:  happiness;  structure of personality; motivational, executive, egotic, and character subsystem; joy, bliss, self-realization, sense/meaning; schema therapy; positive psychotherapy

INTRODUCTION

There are many possibilities of how to define psychotherapy. One of them is to qualify it as assisting people to strive towards life happiness. In this case we first need to comprehend what happiness is, and what it can denote for a person, in general.

In literature we find a number of attempts to psychologically define “happiness”. Its definition continues to evolve (see Veenhoven 2008: World Database of Happiness, or, for example Diener 2000,  Seligman, Csikszentmihályi 2000, Nakamura, Csikszentmihalyi 2002, Keyes, Haidt 2003, Seligman 2011).  We also highly value the theories of H. Gardner, M. Csikszentmihalyi and W. Damon (2001), M. E. P. Seligman (2002), L. G Aspinwall and U. M. Staudinger 2003, P. A. Linley and S. Joseph (2004), Ed. Diener (2008), Ch. Peterson and M. E. P. Seligman (2004), A. M. Wood and N. Tarriera (2010) et al. 

In the past 20 years we have developed our own theory of personality and happiness at the ARCANA institute. Personality and happiness form a relationship – experiences of happiness have an affinity towards the individual personality substructures. Our original results are quite similar to Seligman´s initial conception, but based on different premises, however.

Volume 3 Issue 1/2014 Full text