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

Chapter 25Deconstructing the Illness Ideology and Constructing an Ideology of Human Strengths and Potential in Clinical Psychology

JAMES E. MADDUX AND SHANE J. LOPEZ

This chapter is concerned with the ways that clinical psychologists think about or conceive psychological illness and wellness, and especially how they conceive the difference between psychological wellness and illness. More specifically, it is concerned with how clinical psychologists traditionally have conceived the difference between psychological illness and wellness and how positive psychology suggests they should conceive this difference. Thus, the major purpose of this chapter is to challenge traditional conceptions of psychological wellness and illness and to offer a new conception based on positive psychology and a corresponding new vision of and mission for clinical psychology.

A conception of the difference between wellness and illness is not a theory of either wellness or illness (Wakefield, 1992). A conception of the difference between wellness and illness attempts to define these terms—to delineate which human experiences are to be considered “well” or “ill.” More specifically, a conception of “psychopathology” does not try to explain the psychological phenomena that are considered pathological, but instead tells us what psychological phenomena are considered pathological and thus need to be explained. A theory of psychopathology, however, is an attempt to explain those psychological phenomena and ...