Abstract
M.A.
For many decades now the emphasis within psychology, psychiatry and related
human science fields has been on disease, disorder and deficit. This has been
referred to as the disease model (Lampropoulas, 2001) or vulnerability/deficit model
(Ickovics & Park, 1998).
In recent times the stirrings of an alternative way of viewing human beings and
human functioning is emerging. This new world-view may be referred to as positive
psychology (Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2000). Positive psychology offers a way of
viewing people that emphasises the positive in respect of health - both mental and
physical - in as much as individuals, inter-personal functioning and groups are
concerned. Positive psychology thus serves as an antidote to the traditional
emphasis on pathology and deficits. Ickovics and Park (1998) suggest that this
change in focus from illness to health represent nothing less than a paradigmatic shift
in theoretical psychological thinking.
Several authors (Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2000; Strümpfer, 1995; Lightsey,
1996) make reference to diverse aspects of human beings that are thought to
function as psychological or, resistance, resources. Typically these resistance
resources are thought to help protect the individual against the effects of stressors in
life and to have positive consequences for the individual in terms of physical and
other areas of health (Antonovsky, 1979). It is this writer’s contention that both the
constructs of interest in this study, optimism and meaning in life, are just such
resistance resources and therefore readily belong to the new, affirming vision of man
represented by positive psychology.
This study will add to the empirical data needed to support the emerging science of
strength and resilience, thereby assisting to divert psychology from it’s historical
obsession with disease and malaise. Another of the more general aims of this study
is to contribute towards the field of salutogenesis by adding new constructs to the
existing framework of GRRs and to further understand these constructs. It will also
help in encouraging the attitudinal shift that will be necessary to reorient the discipline
back to its neglected missions of “making normal people stronger and more
productive and making high human potential actual” (Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi,
2000, p. 8).
The more specific aim of the study is to investigate the existence of, and nature of,
the relationship between two variables, optimism and meaning in life.
The results of the study indicate that a high positive correlation does indeed exist
between the two constructs of interest, optimism and meaning in life.
In conclusion, the value of having and maintaining both meaning in life and optimism
in life was supported. This and future research into human strengths and
psychological resources, as identified by Antonovsky (1979, 1987), Lightsey (1996),
and others, serves to deepen and expand our understanding of the roles played by
these vitally supportive and succourative factors in human functioning and well-being.