Positive psychology: A Foucauldian critique.

Abstract

This article analyzes and critiques some of the “truth claims” of positive psychology by applying Foucault's concepts of power/knowledge, discipline, and governmentality. It illustrates how positive psychology deploys mechanisms to devalue, subjugate, and discredit humanistic psychology. It also illustrates how positive psychology privileges particular modes of functioning by classifying and categorizing character strengths and virtues, supporting a neo-liberal economic and political discourse. Last, it offers an alternative position to the prescriptive and constraining ideology of positive psychology. Such a position enables a meta-perspective and reflexivity that could sustain a flexible approach to understanding key issues like human happiness and well-being, as well as open the way for a more productive, rather than adversarial, dialogue, with humanistic psychology.