Lesson 2: The Holistic Approach to Personhood


Attention


Learning Outcomes

Upon completion of this lesson's material, students will be able to:

  • Understand the history, usefulness and limitations of the DSM.
  • Define key features of wellbeing, life satisfaction, the positivity ratio and begin to consider daily interactions with others in a cognitive behavioral and thought, behavior, emotion cycle.
  • Examine psychology as a whole field and key concepts of its historical evolution.

Teaching

Read Part 1: Positive Emotion (Preface to p. 44)

So often, as clinicians, we wait for the next pathology to enter our office. The whirling sound of white noise extinguishes the heartbeat of the human suffering. Enter Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) code number 300.02, generalized anxiety disorder (G.A.D), as defined by symptoms and suffering, distress and the ever comprehensive 'interference with the patient's life and functioning.' Assessment of onset, clinical features, etiology, course, treatment, and differentials are all considered. Which benzodiazepine will ameliorate the distress? Next diagnosis, DSM code 296.89, BiPolar II disorder, as defined by hypomania and undulating cycles of depression: treatment, prognosis- what is next? The patient is objectified, pathologized, diagnosed and as if marked with poisonous ink on the wrist that one so often wants to slit, a code and categorization stains the skin of the individual who is lost in the illness ideology.

The concept of the whole person has been lost. Focus on strengths, happiness, and positive experiences is diminished by the oppressive weight of science and medical models of diagnosis and treatment with psychopharmaceuticals.  The talking cure remains a fiction, because it delves, but so infrequently returns the divers to the surface. Years of 'stuckness,' or treading water; worse yet, the possibility that the deprivation of air caused by the deep submersion into the past is ever-lasting and the patient, now victim, drowns in the facts of their experiences- the pains, horrors, tortures, burdens, and bruises that have created something broken and if lucky seeking wholeness, but often, shattered without knowledge of the fragmentation or ability to comprehend a different life. Left with inside scars, we present to the world as whole but feel more broken than anyone can see.

Inside Scars
Shooting stars awakened Souls to the magic dust sprinkled in the night
by villains disguising their faces with rage from years ago.
Eyes sewn shut and tongues cut out, blind and mute while the surgeon rips you open
to kill the cancer that was never even there.
Masks cover their faces, you know because you can feel.
Doctor, you should have used more to knock me out; because I felt the knife plunge into me.
I felt the blood drying on my lethargic skin.
Your potion kept me still, and kept me silent, but it did not make me numb.
I have inside scars. And I know why they are there.
Surgery is complete. You came through just fine. You're lucky you went through it;
now you will be stronger.
But, Doctor, the scars?
Oh, those. The knife was sharp, your skin so new. The scars will heal.
There will be no complications. You are cured.
But, Doctor, the scars.

 

How the worst moments in our lives make us who we are.

The Psychology of Time


Assessment

Lesson 2 Assignment

Given the reading assignment, write a 1000 word essay on what you believe Positive Psychology is and why you are taking this course. Include a title page and cite any references in APA format both in text and in the end in a "References" section.

Lesson 2 Discussion

Watch the TEDTalks in the lesson and consider the lesson teaching about pathology and pain. What are your thoughts about forging meaning and re-writing one's own story to reframe torture to triumph and how does it relate to time?