Ewa DOBIALA & Peter WINKLER

Abstract

‘Positive psychotherapy’ (Seligman, Rashid & Parks, 2006) is an upcoming new approach and spreading into different branches of psychiatry, psychology and psychotherapy. It evolved from Seligman’s Positive Psychology interventions. Both of these terms are used fairly interchangeably in the world of ‘Positive Psychology’ by researchers working in the field of divisions and aspects of Clinical Psychology. The terminology of “Positive Psychotherapy” is also known in a different context as an intervention founded by Nossrat Peseschkian in 1977: thus this term designates two significantly different approaches.

In other words, it can be stated that one single term has been used for two different methods. Efforts have been made by the World Association of Positive Psychotherapy (WAPP) towards the clinical branch of Positive Psychology to convince them to use a different term for their application in psychotherapy in order to have a better differentiation, since the term Positive Psychotherapy has been used for decades by Peseschkian’s approach. However, no agreement has been achieved.