Thursday, May 14, 2009

Theories



www.caffection.com
This is an excerpt from our upcoming book, Appreciative Loving--a New Angle On An Old Idea, coming soon.

'Seeming nonsense as naming clouds can bond us in ways we haven't known since childhood. It’s all about trust. In a truly gratifying marriage we have the ability and even the impulse to act childlike, and there’s not a thing wrong with that. The chance to go back to the sandbox is very attractive at times. Appreciative Loving gives us permission to do that, and to rediscover the ease and simplicity of a time long ago when adult concerns weren’t such a burden.
The ability to let go of such burdens isn’t just one of many ways to create a more harmonious atmosphere in our marriage and family life, either. It can actually extend our lives, giving us more enjoyable years with our mates. Psychologists are discovering that a long-assumed theory is likely true, that happy married people live longer, and enjoy life more every day. Theorists such as Martin Seligman in Illinois, and George Vaillant at Harvard have created a sea change in the study and treatment of mental health by focusing on the various ways we humans find to be happy, instead of concentrating treatment options on our seeming drift into unhappiness and mental dis-ease. The latter, of course, is the hallmark of the mental health profession: how to ‘cure’ a patient’s misery and mental discomfort. This concentration on the negative, the dark side of human psychology has long been what distinguished the profession, partly because diagnoses were fundable, where studies of happy patients, inextricably, are not.'
Look for Appreciative Loving soon. We'll keep you posted.

No comments: