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REVISITING CHARACTER STRENGTHS AND VIRTUES: A ROADMAP AND RESOURCE FOR RESEARCH Character Strengths and Virtues: A Handbook and Classification. Edited by C. Peterson & M. E. P. Seligman. American Psychological Association/Oxford University Press, Washington, DC, 2004. 800 pages. $75.00.
The mantra of positive psychology must be to develop the strengths and manage the weaknesses.
-Donald Clifton (2002, italics in original)
The sea change in the psychological study of human well-being is increasingly well established. Positive psychology, that nascent area of inquiry aimed at examining and advancing those psychological qualities that make life worthwhile (e.g., Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2000), continues to gather theoretical and empirical momentum. Naturally, this disciplinary course correction does not mean that psychologists, whether of an academic or practitioner bent, are apt to ignore the century or so of substantive focus on the negative side of human function and experience. The good in humanity, as it were, must be considered with-if only for balance-the bad. Still, it is clear that positive psychology is no mere fad, as the increasing number of new books (e.g., Aspinwall & Staudinger, 2003; Compton, 2005; Diener & Suh, 2000; Keyes & Haidt, 2003; Lopez & Snyder, 2003; Seligman, 2002; Snyder & Lopez, 2000) or a quick search of article listings in the PsycINFO database, attests.
The idea behind this book is simple, profound, and a bit daunting: To develop a classification of psychological strengths in order to "reclaim the study of character and...