This address will present belief in one’s causative power as the foundation of human motivation, aspiration, accomplishments, and well-being. Whatever other factors serve as guides and motivators, they are rooted in the core belief that one has the power to make changes in one’s functioning and life conditions.
EP09 Invited Address 07 – Advances in Positive Psychology – Martin Seligman, PhD
This address will present belief in one’s causative power as the foundation of human motivation, aspiration, accomplishments, and well-being. Whatever other factors serve as guides and motivators, they are rooted in the core belief that one has the power to make changes in one’s functioning and life conditions.
All children are born with the capacity to develop and use all of the aspects of the organism to live healthy, productive, joyful lives. We know that trauma interrupts the healthy development of the child. There are also some very basic developmental aspects that can further thwart healthy development. An understanding of these hindrances is the first step toward helping children heal.
Psychotherapy is at a turning point in the new millennium. We can now draw on the principles of a vast array of sciences, including that of neuroplasticity, to create new approaches to therapeutic interventions that are aimed in specific ways to alter the connections in the brain. Mindsight is the capacity to monitor and modify the internal world. As we help others, and ourselves, to focus attention in specific ways that promote neural integration – to stimulate the linkage of different regions to one another – we can create the fundamental changes in brain structure that underlie therapeutic improvement.Effective psychotherapy can use mindsight to focus attention in ways that promote neural integration and cultivate well-being in body, mind, and relationships.
Longitudinal research with newlyweds shows that 67% have a drop in marital satisfaction in the first three years of their baby’s life. Hostility between the partners increases, and the baby’s emotional, cognitive, and neurological development are all adversely affected. The Bringing Baby Home program, which will be described, is effective in preventing both these negative changes and post-partum depression.
The study of psychological trauma has been accompanied by an explosion of knowledge about how experience shapes the central nervous system and the formation of the self. The study of trauma has probably been the single most fertile area in developing a deeper understanding of the relationship among the emotional, cognitive, social, and biological forces that shape human development.
Dr. Houston will offer ways and means to profoundly make a difference for the betterment of people, communities, organizations and cultures worldwide. Drawing on her work in over 100 countries in training leaders in human development in the light of social change, she will offer liberating thought ways, as well as techniques of activating human and social potentials in sensory, psychological, mythic and symbolic, as well as, spiritual and integral levels of the human capacity. Together, these lead to enhanced abilities to creatively and effectively deal with present challenges. Dr. Houston will address the unique place that present movements in psychology have to offer in a world of radical shifts.
In this keynote address, the following topics will be covered: the development of cognitive therapy; applications to other psychiatric and medical conditions; the relationship of brain abnormalities to symptoms; the use of neuroimaging and cognitive therapy; and predictions of the future for cognitive therapy, and psychotherapy in general.
Most couples have at least one partner who withdraws. To bring about lasting change, withdrawers have to engage in the process of therapy and most importantly they must reengage in the relationship. Using video examples, this workshop focuses on how to engage withdrawers and help them reengage with their partners.