Positive psychology: autonomy and responsibility

We can insist on looking for a metaphor (or concept) to define our social organization, but inevitably we will have to ignore certain aspects of reality so as not to make it very porous. Bauman has proposed the liquid society, Beck the risk society, some the online society, others the globalized society or the uncertainty society. The truth is that most metaphors (or concepts) insist on the responsibility and autonomy of the subject. We can argue that it is an apparent freedom, that we cannot govern our life and that our personal work is a chimera. Without undermining the possibility of constructing a different story, since the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, Pindar's mandate "to become what you are" has accelerated. Thus, individualism can be one of the most fruitful veins to understand our western societies. On the other hand, organizations have understood that they are effective in terms of the individual (worker, official, or executive) autonomously and spontaneously feels identified with the objectives of the organization (even if they change constantly).

Without autonomy and responsibility there is no possibility of considering a positive psychology. The approaches of positive psychology coincide with what we could call a positive individualism. We can consider the following features:

• Self determination. The individual is the architect of his own destiny and must travel it in his own way, with relative independence from the success and happiness of others.
• Self-knowledge. It is not so much about a Socratic "know yourself" to be virtuous, rather it is a practical self-knowledge to get away from unhappiness.
• Self-improvement. It is about being more and better. We have to enhance our strengths, it is an interested knowledge.
• Self-accountability. The pursuit of happiness is a moral imperative. The only person responsible for successes and failures is the individual.
• Self-control. The thought has to serve us to channel our negative emotions.

Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi acknowledge that the rationale for positive psychology is eclectic. Some authors have questioned the objectivity and universality of the notion of happiness and well-being. The truth is that the thought of positive psychology is embedded in a certain historical moment and, therefore, it would be very daring to think that it expresses natural (species) dimensions. Positive psychology, as it has spread in the West, is based on a certain "type of human being."

In positive psychology, there is a clear challenge to "Interiority". Most of its precepts emphasize self-sufficiency, promoting a “mental” change that you can make that individuals refrain from the need to deal with social and organizational structures.

The insistence that the conquest of happiness concerns each one (his own responsibility for it) can lead us away from the possibility of critical thinking to transform the "status qua." In a way, positive psychology - especially with the proliferation of coaching in many organizations - is a very useful tool for consumer capitalism. The construction of individuality is forged in the community and, therefore, individuality is not an entity prior to its social construction.

Positive psychology, beyond the academic field, has become an object of consumption to adapt to "status qua". It seems that there is something specific to the species (natural, not historical) that pushes us to hold onto beliefs. When the great stories are liquefied - the divinity, the truth or the justice - the need arises to dive into ourselves, to “become what we are”. "The kind of human being" that underpins much of the popularized positive psychology is a be adapted to the conditions - who seeks happiness in his own "gaze", who refrains from constructing a "great story" about the order of events.

This article is merely informative, in Psychology-Online we do not have the power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.

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