True Happiness

Abstract

Questions about how to live life better and how to be happier guide the work of many psycholo-gists. Positive psychology, which emerged with the happiness formula that it presented to the psychology literature at the end of the century, the aspects of positive human experience and scientifically positive human functioning, is trying to provide answers to these questions with the work Authentic Happiness written by Martin Seligman as a comprehensive introduction to the field. The work, which is a large labor crop, is 454 pages and consists of three basic parts. In the work, the author makes it a priority for a person to create situations that make his life worth living, in order to give a person a meaningful life, he first deals with positive and negative emotions, how to balance negatively oriented expansionist information about mental illnesses with positive emotions consisting of joy, flow, contentment, peace, hope and ecstasy. It exam-ines the issues of understanding and increasing the positive emotions that lead a person to true happiness, virtues and how to develop the character forces that are the ways to achieve virtues for a good life. The author, who has a value-oriented approach throughout the work, frequently includes scales and surveys in the work. With the work, it is seen that the scope of psychological science has been expanded, treatment methods have been redefined, concepts such as value, emotion, will, abandoned to philosophy and theology have been reconciled with psychology again, the causes of diseases have been based on different causes and a new perspective has been given to a person in many areas of life. However, the question mark on whether the work is an alternative or a complement to mainstream psychology awaits to be answered.