Coaching Practiced

Section 11 Positive Psychology Introduction

David Tee & Jonathan Passmore

In this section, we explore a series of papers based in the positive psychology tradition written by Jonathan Passmore and Lindsay Oades, two well-known writers in the field of positive psychology coaching. In this brief introduction, we will review the nature of positive psychology, its role in coaching and finally summarise the six chapters in this section.

Let us start by exploring what we mean by the terms ‘positive psychology’ (PP) and ‘positive psychology coaching’ (PPC). The term positive psychology is often associated with Martin Seligman, the president of the American Psychological Association (APA), in 1998. Seligman noted that the previous 100 years of psychology had been marked by a focus on dysfunction and deficit. Much had been written about clinical conditions, with classifications of dysfunction such as the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). DSM IV, published in 1994, listed 410 clinical disorders in a manual stretching over 886 pages, and the majority of psychologists at that time focused on clinical, counselling and health-related topics.

Seligman argued for a change in focus to acknowledge the importance of optimum function and peak performance. While the previous balance had been strongly towards deficit models, many other writers over the previous decades had drawn attention to these issues, from Albert Maslow’s (1943) hierarchy of needs, the person-centred ...