Skip to Main Content
Positive Psychology in Practice: Promoting Human Flourishing in Work, Health, Education, and Everyday Life, 2nd Edition
book

Positive Psychology in Practice: Promoting Human Flourishing in Work, Health, Education, and Everyday Life, 2nd Edition

by Stephen Joseph
March 2015
Beginner content levelBeginner
896 pages
37h 15m
English
Wiley
Content preview from Positive Psychology in Practice: Promoting Human Flourishing in Work, Health, Education, and Everyday Life, 2nd Edition

Chapter 5The Salutogenic Paradigm

SHIFRA SAGY, MONICA ERIKSSON AND ORNA BRAUN-LEWENSOHN

In the late 1970s, Aaron Antonovsky, who was a medical sociologist, raised a new question in his book Health, Stress, and Coping (Antonovsky, 1979). He proposed a new way to look at health and illness, not as a dichotomy but as a continuum—the salutogenic model. Much more than the answers he supplied, the real revolution in Antonovsky's way of thinking was manifested in the questions he posed. However, in posing the question of salutogenesis, Antonovsky actually detached himself from his own past research, as well as from almost everyone else's research at that time, which focused on the need to explain pathology. This led him to feel what he described as a “strong sense of isolation” (Antonovsky, 1987). We trust that in the 21st century, these feelings have been replaced by “a strong sense of belonging” to the growing positive psychology movement (Linley, Joseph, Harrington, & Wood, 2006). Although the salutogenic theory stems from the sociology of health, it has been at the leading edge of a range of academic movements emphasizing human strengths and not just weaknesses, human capacities and not just limits, well-being and not just illness (Mittelmark, 2008). In this chapter, we aim to connect salutogenesis—which literally means the origins of health—with the positive psychology movement.

We believe that the philosophical assumptions and the conceptual background of salutogenesis can deepen ...

Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.
Start your free trial

You might also like

The Social Psychology of Change Management

The Social Psychology of Change Management

Steven ten Have, John Rijsman, Wouter ten Have, Joris Westhof

Publisher Resources

ISBN: 9781118757253Purchase book