Back in 2011, when the author and psychologist Martin Seligman announced, ‘I no longer think that positive psychology is about happiness’, the scientific community took a collective gasp. This was, after all, the father of modern positive psychology – an individual largely responsible for driving the ‘happiness movement’.
He continued, saying he now believed: ‘the gold standard for measuring wellbeing is flourishing, and that the goal of positive psychology is to increase flourishing’. In an unexpected plot twist, Seligman’s research at the time showed we’d been led astray by mere ‘happiology’.
