Positive psychology, existential psychology, and the presumption of egoism

Abstract

Positive psychology and existential psychology are commonly thought to reflect radically different perspectives on the deep questions of human nature, what constitutes legitimate psychological inquiry, and the meaning of the good life. In this chapter, we identify and discuss three important ways in which positive psychology and existential psychology seem to differ. In particular, we examine positive psychology’s commitment to studying the conditions of happiness, its heavy reliance on traditional methods of empirical research, and its advocacy of a scientifically grounded “calculus of well-being,” whose prescriptive purpose is to actively bring about a greater measure of happiness and flourishing in people’s lives. By way of contrast, we also examine existential psychology’s notion that suffering has a central role in a life of genuine significance, its deep skepticism of the ability of traditional scientific approaches to adequately capture human subjectivity and meaning, and its rejection of any utopic vision of human flourishing that is grounded in hedonism and its ethical precepts. The main thrust of our analysis, however, is that beneath these significant conceptual and practical differences, both positive and existential psychologies share a thorough-going commitment to an egoistic depiction of human nature. That is, both approaches focus their conceptual efforts inward, looking to the self as the center of human action and relationships. In short, we argue that positive psychology and existential psychology have a crucial and often overlooked commonality at their core that is not merely a “papering-over” of essential differences, nor an attempt to superficially reconcile two radically different intellectual traditions. As such, both traditions are fundamentally inadequate for addressing human relationships in terms that do not reduce the relevance and value of others to an instrumental value to the self.