Counseling Psychology and Optimal Human Functioning pptx

W.Bruce Walsh, Ohio State University Series Editor Leong • Career Development and Vocational Behavior of Racial and Ethnic Minorities Vondracek/Lerner/Schulenberg • Career Development:

and Optimal Human Functioning

W.Bruce Walsh, Ohio State University

Series Editor

Leong • Career Development and Vocational Behavior of Racial and Ethnic

Minorities

Vondracek/Lerner/Schulenberg • Career Development:

A Life-Span Developmental Approach

Walsh • Counseling Psychology and Optimal Human Functioning

Walsh/Osipow • Advances in Vocational Psychology, Vol 1: The Assessment

Counseling Psychology and Optimal Human

Functioning

Edited by

W.Bruce Walsh

Ohio State University

LAWRENCE ERLBAUM ASSOCIATES, PUBLISHERS

This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2008

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Counseling psychology and optimal human functioning/

edited by Bruce Walsh

p cm

Includes bibliographical references and index

ISBN 0-8058-3998-4 (alk paper)

1 Counseling I Walsh, W.Bruce, 1936–

BF637.C65 2003

158′.3–dc21

2002033867 CIP ISBN 1-4106-0920-0 Master e-book ISBN

Counseling Psychology and Optimal Human

The Healthy Personality

Susan Day and Patrick Rottinghaus

Individuality and Optimal Human Functioning:

Interests, Self-Efficacy, and Personality

Fred H.Borgen and Lori D.Lindley

Optimal Human Functioning From Cross-Cultural Perspectives:

Cultural Competence as an Organizing Framework

Frederick T.L.Leong and Paul T.P.Wong

123

6

Optimal Human Functioning in People of Color

in the United States

Derald Wing Sue and Madonna G.Constantine

151

7

Toward a Positive Psychotherapy: Focus on Human Strength Charles J.Gelso and Susan Woodhouse 171

8

Strength-Based Health Psychology: Counseling for

Total Human Health

Alex H.S.Harris and Carl E.Thoresen

197

9

Toward a Taxonomy of Human Strengths:

Career Counseling’s Contribution to Positive Psychology

Mark L.Savickas

227

10

Assessing Optimal Human Functioning

Patricia Frazier, Shigehiro Oishi, and Michael Steger

247

11

Fostering Human Strength Through Diversity and Public Policy:

A Counseling Psychologists’ Perspective

Rosie Phillips Bingham

275

12

Fulfilling Its Promise: Counseling Psychology’s Efforts to

Understand and Promote Optimal Human Functioning

Shane J.Lopez, Lisa M.Edwards, Jeana L.Magyar-Moe, Jennifer

Teramoto Pedrotti, and Jamie A.Ryder

293

Counseling Psychology and Optimal Human Functioning:

An Introduction

W.Bruce Walsh

Ohio State University

The aim of this volume is to focus on how counseling psychology fosters and builds optimal human strength and well-being Counseling psychology in some form has always been a vital part of promoting good health and preventing mental, physical, and social disorders The chapters in this book show how counseling psychology plays a major role in helping people make changes at home, work, and in the community in ways that prevent disease risk and

strengthen personal and social resources The chapter titles are as follows: “The Healthy Personality”; “Fostering Exceptional Development in Intellectually Talented Populations”; Individuality and Optimal Functioning in Interests, Self- Efficacy, and Personality”; “Person-Environment Psychology and Well- Being”; “Optimal Human Functioning From Cross-Cultural Perspectives”;

“Optimal Human Functioning in People of Color in the United States”;

“Toward a Positive Psychotherapy: Focus on Human Strength”; Based Health Psychology Counseling for Total Human Health”; Toward a Taxonomy of Human Strengths: Career Counseling’s Contribution to Positive Psychology”; “Assessing Optimal Human Functioning”; and “Fostering Human Strength Through Diversity and Public Policy”: The final chapter “A Counseling Psychologist’s Perspective” summarizes, integrates, and comments

“Strength-on the c“Strength-ontents of counseling psychology and optimal human functi“Strength-oning

Chapter 1, by Day and Rottinghaus, provides a perspective on the healthy personality These authors note that defining a healthy personality is a value-driven effort and may apply judgments too broadly In particular, healthy personality may be significantly different across the globe and within subcultures It is in this context that the authors attempt to look at characteristics that underpin how mentally healthy individuals respond to expectations and demands, and they suggest that there is some commonality in the underpinning Chapter 2, by Achter and Lubinski, focuses on the evolution of theory, empirical knowledge, and practice on the optimal development of exceptional-intellectual abilities These authors present concepts and empirical support for ways to facilitate socially valued achievement and personal fulfillment among intellectually talented persons They note that the critical starting point is early identification Multidimensional, above-level ability and preference assessment can, and probably should, occur by early adolescents to adequately respond to precocious intellectual abilities with developmentally appropriate educational opportunities They point out that this kind of information can be invaluable for guiding talented youth toward avenues leading to rewarding and socially valued lives

In chapter 3, Borgen and Lindley emphasize that for years counseling psychology has led in identifying human strengths in normal people pursuing typical life goals, such as school and work Three major domains of individuality that counseling psychology has emphasized are interests, self-efficacy, and personality Researchers, as noted by the authors, have increasingly shown the important and incremental role of these dimensions in explaining life choices and adjustments Accumulating evidence is showing that assessment that combines interests, self-efficacy, and personality will better describe the person’s individual strengths and better inform important life choices Broad assessment measures are useful for efficiently describing broad goals Borgen and Lindley note that more specific assessment measures have additional advantages They increase the probability of identifying distinctive strengths and they add to the validity of assessment for specific choices In sum, these authors note that counseling psychology approaches assessment as the task

of helping people generate good options, choices, and possibilities

Chapter 4, by Walsh, reviews selected theories of person-environment psychology that have implications for individual satisfaction and well-being Interactional psychology is defined as the scientific investigation of a complex

interplay of situations and persons in determining behavior Well-being is

defined in terms of the degree to which a person is fully func-tioning and doing what is worth doing Self-realization, personal growth, and development are important dimensions of this definition It is in this context that five theoretical frameworks are reviewed with an emphasis on the implications for psychological well-being Each theory discussed has stimulated some meaningful research that has implications for satisfaction and well-being

The basic premise of chapter 5, by Leong and Wong, is that there are many ways to be human, and that the cultural competence model is a useful theoretical framework for analyzing and understanding cross-cultural differences in optimal human functioning Leong and Wong begin with several important definitional issues and move on to compose a contingency model of cultural competence to analyze and understand optimal human functioning from a cross-cultural perspective This contingency model of cultural competence takes into account not only cultural value orientations, but also perspectives and domains These authors further include the dimensions of religious and existential orientations They point out that the Contingency model remains a working model and needs

to be further developed conceptually and tested empirically They also point out that the basic concepts of happiness, optimal functioning, and positive psychology vary from culture to culture and need to be clarified Their focus on value orientations represents only one of the promising alternatives In a closing section the authors discuss the counseling implications of the model

Chapter 6, by Sue and Constantine, focuses on optimal human functioning in people of color in the United States These authors note that definitions of optimal human functioning are culturally bound and often do not adequately address the values, experiences, and realities of people of color In understanding well-being among people of color, it is imperative to consider their social-political histories, experiences of racial discrimination, and cultural values and world views These authors note that it is also beneficial to understand well-being from various cultural lenses because these perspectives may provide mental health professionals with increased opportunities to understand individuals within their cultural contexts

In chapter 7, Gelso and Woodhouse discuss a number of ways that counselors and clinicians can incorporate a conceptualization of client’s strengths into what they say and do in therapy For example, they can explicitly comment on clients strengths, including strengths that emerge in the context of the counseling relationship Counselors and therapists can also reframe apparent weaknesses as strengths, or attend to strengths that are imbedded in defenses In addition, they note that supervisors of counselors and therapists can consciously engage in a parallel process of focusing on strengths in the supervision, just as therapist trainees are focusing on client strengths in the counseling and clinical hour In terms of a research agenda for positive psychology, these authors envision two general themes: the constructs that are studied and the effects of positive interventions on process and outcome

In chapter 8, Thoresen and Harris discuss how positive psychology constructs may be relevant to the work of health psychologists and health focused counseling psychologists These authors discuss the potential integration of positive and health psychology perspectives into a field that examines the development and interaction of positive psychology constructs, supportive social environments, health promoting behaviors, and optimal physiology They have

selected as examples three relevant areas of positive psychology in which theoretical developments, associated intervention strategies, as well as actual or emerging research programs exist: (a) forgiveness, (b) socially emotional support, and (c) spirituality

Chapter 9, by Savickas, discusses career counseling’s contribution to positive psychology For purposes of identifying the human strengths and the coping responses on which career intervention concentrates, Savickas has grouped the coping responses into six syndromes of attitudes, beliefs, and competencies: concern, control, conviction, competence, commitment, and connection In the chapter, he describes the coping responses that exercise each human strength According to Savickas, career education and counseling, through the exercise of vocational coping attitudes, beliefs, and competencies, focus on building human strengths

The purpose of chapter 10, by Frazier, Oishi, and Steger, is to describe specific measures counseling psychology researchers and practitioners use to assess various aspects of optimal human functioning, and to discuss some general assessment issues in this area These authors begin by describing various definitions of optimal functioning and their rationale for choosing specific domains to cover They, next, outline the criteria used to evaluate measures and then describe and critique assessment instruments in three domains in optimal functioning important for counseling psychologists: subjective well-being, meaning in life, and posttraumatic growth They conclude with some discussion

of broader issues to consider in the assessment of optimal functioning

Chapter 11, by Bingham, focuses on fostering optimal functioning through diversity and public policy She asks the question, “How will human beings live and thrive together” and proposes that part of the answer is in capitalizing on the world’s human diversity She strongly recommends that we support policies that foster human strength through diversity and in this context makes five recommendations: (a) go back to the basics on which counseling psychology was founded; (b) insist on a focus on culture, race, and ethnicity in all areas of psychology; (c) do the research and promote the scholarship; (d) influence policies which impact diversity; (e) revamp graduate education and training programs to include a distinct, yet integrative focus on diversity and public policy

Finally, chapter 12 by Lopez, Edwards, Magyar-Moe, Pedrotti, and Ryder summarizes, integrates, and identifies common themes for fostering well-being and optimal human functioning They discuss the chapters in this book in the context of the five major themes (intact personalities, individual assets and strengths, positive mental health, person-environment interactions, and educational and career development) that serve to unite the roles and tasks of counseling psychology (Gelso & Fretz, 2001) These authors also discuss the need to integrate knowledge in pursuit of the conditions that contribute to characterize optimal human functioning in different cultures To do this they

recommend increasing definitional clarity, toning down “turf talk,” professional collaboration, a scholarship of integration, and a broader view of knowing

REFERENCES

Gelso, C., & Fretz, B (2001), Counseling psychology (2nd ed.) Fort Worth:

Harcourt

The Healthy Personality

Susan X Day

Iowa State University University of Houston

Patrick Rottinghaus

Iowa State University

Wisdom is hard won in Ann Tyler’s novels, but when it arrives it is well

expressed: In Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant (1982), a thoughtful character

muses,

Everything comes down to time in the end—to the passing of time, to changing Ever thought of that? Anything that makes you happy or sad, isn’t it all based on minutes going by? Isn’t happiness expecting something time is going to bring you? Isn’t sadness wishing time back again? (p 256)

This time framework for “everything” will serve us in organizing our thoughts about what makes for a healthy personality We look at the question in terms of how you are oriented to the past, the present, and the future

First, we take up a few background matters One is definition of terms When

we speak of the healthy personality, our meaning overlaps with what many other

phrases denote: good mental health, optimal functioning, effective personality, and so forth The terminology is organized in Table 1.1 along with historical associations Some definitions from the past hold the charm of simplicity: When asked what a normal person should be able to do well, Freud reputedly said, “to love and to work” (Erikson, 1950, p 229)

Karl Menninger (1937) defined mental health in this way: “It is the ability to maintain an even temper, an alert intelligence, socially considerate behavior, and

a happy disposition” (p 1) Aristotle endorsed a Chinese-menu approach:

“virtue, practical wisdom, speculative wisdom, or a combination of these, or one

of them in more or less intimate association with pleasure” (Thomson, 1953, p 28) Sol Ginsburg (1963) settled for “simple criteria”: “the ability to hold a job, have a family, keep out of trouble with the law, and enjoy the usual opportunities for pleasure” (p 9) We find that we do not stray far from these eloquent dicta; we essay their exegesis Obviously, mental health is not merely the absence of mental illness, but some extra qualitative buoyancy that cannot be captured by one concept We try to present a set of interlocking concepts that form a network of definitions

Using words from the medical model at all has come under criticism, of

course White (1973) criticized our use of the metaphor of health in

psychological counseling The metaphor harms us when we accept the medical

model, which defines health as the opposite of illness, meaning that we make

errors such as elevating extroversion and sociability as signs of health, simply because they stand in such contrast to the social withdrawal we see in depressed

and schizophrenic people White would prefer terms such as self-actualization to

describe the highly functioning personality He also pointed out that a mere list

of qualities will not serve to define this personality, in that some components are bound to squeeze out others: “The person who tries to be a ‘jack-of-all-maturities’ may end as master of none, having failed to find what could be his greatest strengths and to recognize their incompatibility with other virtues”

(White, p 7) Jahoda (1958) pointed out two ways of defining mental health: (a)

as a trait or (b) as a state:

Take a strong man with a bad cold According to the first, he is healthy; according to the second, he is sick Both statements are justifiable and useful But utter confusion will result if either of these correct diagnoses is made in the wrong context, (p 8)

In the linear discourse of our essay here, a certain amount of listing and categorizing is inevitable, but we hope to suggest how distinct elements inform a dynamic structure

The second background matter is one of how counseling psychology is (and

has been) involved in defining healthy functioning In 1980, Watkins reviewed

historical distinctions between clinical and counseling psychology One of these was the influence of Carl Rogers (1961, 1980) in counseling: “The concepts of empathy, reflection, self-actualization, and the fully func-tioning person have come to be the watchwords of many counselors” (p 77) At the same time, Donald Super’s (1955) view of vocational development as a lifelong process,

rather than a limited phase, captured the imaginations of the same counselors Furthermore, Leona Tyler’s (1969) emphasis on individual development as a sequence of choices, “the psychology of possibilities,” provided a blueprint for counseling theory Rogers, Super’s, and Tyler’s stances still distinguish the field

of counseling psychology and combine to give our field a focus on the positive and constructive side of life These days, the broader world of psychologists

embraces a positive psychology movement (Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi,

2000), whose sometimes unacknowledged foundation lies in the philosophy of counseling psychology

In fact, though today’s positive psychologists often act as though they are christening a spanking new ocean liner, we notice that this boat has left the dock once or twice per decade for the last century or so William James at the turn of the last century; the Mental Hygiene movement of the early 1900s; post-Freudians like Menninger, Anna Freud, and Jung in the 1920s and 1930s; R.B Cattell and other personality psychologists in the 1940s; a raft of theorists in the 1950s, including Erikson, Super, and Allport; Jahoda, Tyler, Shostrum, Maslow, and Rogers in the 1960s and 1970s: all have investigated optimal states of being Just as regularly, psychologists have complained that the healthy personality is understudied Witness Gordon Allport in 1955, “We find today many studies of criminals, few of law-abiders; many of fear, few of courage; more on hostility than affiliation; much on the blindness in man, little on his vision; much on his past, little on his outreaching into the future” (p 18), fretting in harmony with Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi in 2000, “Our message is to remind our field that psychology is not just the study of pathology, weakness, and damage; it is also the study of strength and virtue” (p 7)

Why does the field of psychology apparently suffer such amnesia about the study of strength and virtue? Funding no doubt plays a role, and therefore politics does It may seem more pressing for society to find effective cures for alcoholism, focusing on the disorder, than to study drinkers who never become abusers or alcoholics who cure themselves (who, incidentally, compose the majority of cures [Vaillant, 1983]) It may also be the personalities of psychologists: As your family has no doubt pointed out, we are drawn to our field because we are crazy, not sane, and we are interested in craziness And let’s face it, the college abnormal psychology course turns on more students than the vocational psychology course does Pathology is just more exotic, and here the relationship between clinical and counseling psy-chology comes into play Because counseling psychologists are committed to helping basically normal persons, the enhancement of life quality is uniquely appropriate to our field, whereas treatment of mental illness is the focus of clinical psychologists (Foreman, 1966) As Super (1955) put it, clinical psychology has concerned itself with “the abnormalities even of normal persons,” whereas counseling concerns itself with “the normalities even of abnormal persons” (p 5) Clinical psychology is more dramatic than counseling psychology, has more status,

draws more funding, and gets more press; so the disappearing act of positive psychology may only be an artifact of counseling psychology’s offstage turf The third background point we make briefly and then return to in various parts of this chapter This is the point that defining healthy personality is a value-driven effort and may apply judgments too broadly (White, 1973) In particular, healthy personality may be drastically different across the globe and within subcultures For example, an American widow’s family is anxious about her if she is still deeply depressed 1 year after her husband’s death and apprehensive about her mental health if she stays inconsolable at the 2-year point A Greek widow’s family fully expects her to mourn deeply for at least 5 years, and worries about her mental health, as well as her morals, if she perks up sooner These are social expectations that no doubt affect the psychological states of the widows However, in this chapter, we try to look at characteristics that underpin how mentally healthy individuals respond to expectations and demands, and we believe that there is some commonality in the underpinning In support of this point of view, Cattell (1973) argued that differences among cultures may be negligible when defining the core of healthy personality:

“Intelligence, capacity to control impulses and to work for more remote gains, foresight, dependability in human relations, etc., are almost certainly requisites for adjustment, success, and survival in almost any fairly complex culture” (p 17) Thus, for example, the Greek and the American widow could both benefit from accurate understanding of social expectations; reasonable assessments of their own interests, capabilities, and limitations; good control over their behavior; and hope for the future

With three background issues distilled—the problem of definition, the role of counseling psychology, and the potential impact of differing cultures—we return

to time, the format of everything (according to Ann Tyler’s character) The Personal Orientation Inventory (POI; Shostrum, 1974) measures self-actualizing tendencies An unhealthy score on one of the POI’s two scales indicates that a person “lives primarily in the past, with guilt, regrets, and resentments, and/or in the future with Utopian goals, plans, expectations, predictions, and also with worry” (Hightower, 1988, p 528) Shostrum and many others, including Schneider (2001) in her discussion of realistic optimism, use this conceptualization as a handy framework for looking at the healthy personality:

in terms of orientation toward the past, present, and future

ORIENTATION TO THE PAST

The Child is father of the Man;

And I could wish my days to be

Bound each to each by natural piety

(Wordsworth, 1807/1974)

Erikson wrote, “To be adult means among other things to see one’s own life in continuous perspective, both in retrospect and prospect” (1958, pp 111–112)

To see our days bound together with ultimate goodness is not only a yearning of the Romantic poets, but all humanity Your life story is part of your personality

Of autobiographical narrative, McAdams (1999) wrote, “The past is selected and reconstructed such that it can be integrated with the perceived present and anticipated future” (p 482), resolving problems of unity and purpose in life and establishing an ego identity (for better or worse) The tone, themes, and imagery

of your story reflect the traits and dispositions of your personality, and the story changes as (or if) you transform yourself over the years McAdams analyzed the autobiographies of active, productive middle-aged people and contrasted them with autobiographies of more plodding folks People of high generativity in mid-life see their pasts as having made sense In particular, they perceive the bad things that have happened as eventually having good outcomes—strength coming from adversity, or a forced change of life opening up unexpected opportunities The stories of less generative people showed a flip-flop—in their life stories, good things inevitably go bad

This difference between the high-functioning people and the undistinguished

is not simply that better things have happened to the first group It has to do with how you look back on things Adler (1927) found that asking people their earliest childhood memories produced happy memories among the happy, sad among the sad, solitary among the solitary, social among the social, and so on

He believed that recollections reflect your style of life, your characteristic way

of behaving and feeling McAdams (1999) argued that each of us creates a life story that interprets the past from our present stance The healthy personality reframes negative past events in terms of positive outcomes

In Becoming: Basic Considerations for a Psychology of Personality, Allport

(1955) agreed with narrative’s potential:

The drama of human life can be written largely in terms of the friction engendered between earlier stages and later stages of development Becoming is the process of incorporating earlier stages into later: or when this is impossible, of handling the conflict between early and late stages as well as one can (p 28)

Schneider (2001) described giving past events “the benefit of the doubt,” that is, choosing a positive interpretation to past events or behavior, given that most events have a range of reasonable versions For example, a psychotherapist may realize that his mother’s terrifying emotional volatility taught him to become highly sensitive to others’ moods, something which now contributes to his success as a counselor He thus detraumatizes his past Similarly, we may look back on being poor during our college days with nostalgia (as simpler times), or

with gratitude (as having taught us to enjoy what we have), rather than remembering an era of misery

In an argument for realistic optimism, Schneider (2001) stated that “we have considerable latitude in deciding what significance we assign to events and what lessons we choose to learn from our experience” (p 253) In looking at our past,

“we can take advantage of the latitude in potential reasonable interpretations to select an interpretation that focuses on the positive aspects of the situation” (p 254) For example, inability to afford a prestigious private college after high school results in a young woman’s going to a state university In adulthood, she can choose to look back in anger, fantasizing about how much improved her life would be if she had headed East; or she can choose to emphasize her good fortune in the vivid and diverse social circle she found at State Schneider refers

to such a reframing of past events as “discovering a perspective that is simultaneously truthful and favorable” (p 254), even though many aspects were admittedly negative Unexpected pregnancies often illustrate the principle poignantly

Because we often make judgments about our situations in comparison with other ones, we can choose objects of comparison that enhance our satisfaction with our current state (Schneider, 2001) Thus, we might compare our work load with some other era’s when we had far more to do, rather than with the lifestyle

of a retired friend We also might pay attention to positive aspects of the present moment, appreciating being safe and warm in a pleas-ant environment while we are hard at work This is the type of focus that characterizes healthy personality and increases the likelihood of more positive events and interpretations:

“Realistically, having a good attitude is likely to pay off” (p 260)

Cognitive reframing also involves acceptance of the past rather than constant preoccupation with it, a preoccupation that many counselors call “being stuck.” Holman and Silver (1998) found that among incest survivors, Vietnam veterans, and firestorm survivors, people who were stuck in the past were significantly more psychologically distressed than those who were oriented to the future In all three groups, a future orientation was significantly associated with psychological well-being Holman and Silver grant that some processes of focusing on past experience, such as searching for meaning and working through, may be necessary in the face of trauma, but “if these initially adaptive coping strategies keep people focused on a distressing and seemingly unresolvable past, they appear to be detrimental for long-term adaptation” (p 1159) We would emphasize the “seemingly unresolvable” aspect here, meaning that the psychologically stuck people have not been able to cognitively reframe

or reinterpret the past into an integrated life story, weaving distressing events into a coherent timeline Another way of being stuck in (or by) the past is to negate or deny negative experiences, through suppression, repression, or motivated forgetting In this sense, the narrative has gaps and discontinuities that make the story feel inauthentic even to the storyteller

Finally, blame and shame, luck and talent, are balanced A highly functional adult looks at the past with some parts of the negative charged to others’ accounts and some to her own, and with some parts of the positive credited to the luck of the draw and others to her own efforts Judging the self too harshly (“Everything was my own fault.”) or too leniently (“Everyone was against me.”) are hallmarks of people not at peace with their past

Indeed, moderation has its merits when considering the past Instead of emphasizing Aristotle’s mean, perhaps the best possible realistic interpretation

of one’s situation is most fruitful Counseling psychologists strive to promote such healthy views through encouraging informed, yet positive views of past, present, and future

ORIENTATION TOWARD THE PRESENT

We will assert that your goals are an intimate part of your behavior and feelings

in the present However, setting goals is the province of your orientation to the future, and we discuss it in the next section of this chapter For now, consider yourself in the present—today, this week, this month Today is a snapshot of your usual functioning, and this week is a prescient video of all the weeks in your future An evaluation of your mental-health status hinges on whether your point of view, focus, and activity is appropriate to your era of life

We look to Super (e.g., Super, Savickas, & Super, 1996) and to Erikson (1950) for life-span approaches to healthy existence Both of these theorists identified life stages that entail different challenges and require different strengths A school child’s task is to get along with peers, defer to authority, and learn material; we do not expect children to plan their own day, or to support their family financially D.H Lawrence’s story “The Rocking Horse Winner” (1932/1982) forcefully reminds us what happens when a family’s whole fortune depends on a child’s streak of good luck at the racetrack: The child is ridden to his grave The work of an adolescent is to find an identity and establish reciprocal relationships; we forgive their flickering and capricious personae The teenager Hamlet (Shakespeare, 1601/1970) is unable to decide on a course of action, even when commanded to wreak bloody revenge for his father’s murder His identity is not strong enough to bear the weight of the obligation

Of adolescents, we cannot expect either the resolve or reliability we desire in adult identity, or the tractability we encourage in children Adolescence is a time when cultural differences may come into play in defining mental health; In middle-class United States, the allowable period of identity exploration, romantic upheaval, and occupational indecision is protracted (say, until age 40!)

in comparison with cultures where parenthood and provisioning duties arrive earlier and more imperatively In these societies, the waywardness and general fecklessness of U.S teens would be considered antisocial rather than charming

In most of our adult life, we are called to love and to work Thomas Jefferson wrote, “It is neither wealth nor splendor, but tranquility and occupation, which give happiness” (qtd in Rather, 2001, p 71) (Jefferson, 1788) Little (1999) proposed a model of adult well-being, which he saw predicted by five features

of a person’s work (considering that vocational identity is, in his broader

terminology, a major personal project) To enhance well-being, the project must

possess the following:

Meaning (subjective value),

structure (manageability),

community (social approval and support),

efficacy (confidence of progress),

and low stress (relative freedom from conflict)

Consider your own jobs and projects from this point of view, and you will see why some have been so satisfying and others disappointing or frustrating Holland (1997) saw all of these features in relation to an individual’s personality (for example, what is meaningful and manageable to a happy dairy farmer contrasts sharply with what is meaningful and manageable to a happy theater critic) Holland believed that the important variable underlying occupational well-being was congruence, that is, a good fit between personality and the demands and rewards of the job

The same could be said for successful marriages and thriving friendships This notion of congruence is also central to Rogers’s person-centered approach

Rogers (1980) perceived a wish for intimacy as inherent in human potential;

Adler (1927) believed that social interest was the pinnacle of human goodness; Erikson (1950) listed love as a basic virtue, and included service to humanity as

a form of generativity The demands and rewards of connection with others are welcome to the healthy personality, both in the personal sphere of romantic love and the larger sphere of community Marie Jahoda (1958) asserted that the empathic person “treat the inner life of other people as a matter worthy of his concern and attention Implicitly, he is also expected to arrive at conclusions about others that are free from distortion” (p 52) In psychoanalytic terms, the empathic adult is not incapacitated by the narcissistic wound

Willie Loman, the tragic hero of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, is the

prototype of the failed adult personality: destitute in love and ridiculous at work, his final useful act is smashing up the car so his suicide looks accidental, and his family can collect insurance (Note that far from being limited to Western culture, the tragedy of Willie Loman has found huge popularity in theaters internationally and has probably been produced somewhere in the world every day since its opening in 1949 [Barnet, Berman, Burto, & Draya, 1997].)

The call to love and work in most senses continues through old age, albeit many times in forms different from the adult era In the United States, we have a

national problem among people who retire from the official workforce only to find themselves modern King Lears, displaced and superfluous The situation highlights the way our culture neglects existential issues of aging We don’t expect the elderly to do hard physical labor, to supervise a workforce, or to patiently endure the rigors of classroom learning and teaching The tasks of the elderly are less concrete, more transcendental—in fact, Allport (1955) asserted that a mark of positively advancing maturity was “the extent of one’s feeling of self-involvement in abstract ideals” (p 45) Jung (1931/1960) viewed the transition from the adult to the aged era as passing from a biological-social to a spiritual being; the life tasks of the elderly rest in reconciling opposites in the unconscious and understanding life stories Jung stands out among stage psychologists because he saw old age as a forward-moving as well as a backward-looking era Likewise, Baltes and Staudinger (2000) have developed a wisdom heuristic that delineates sophistication in six areas:

1 Strategies and goals involving the conduct and meaning of life;

2 limits of knowledge and uncertainties of the world;

3 excellence of judgment and advice;

4 knowledge with extraordinary scope, depth, and balance;

5 search for a perfect synergy of mind and character; and

6 balancing the good or well-being of oneself and that of others, (p 132) These psychologists argue that the wisdom heuristic would usefully be included

in our construction of a hierarchy of optimal human development Unlike physical strength and cognitive speed, wisdom is a target elders can still aim for fruitfully In the popular notion, we idealize the role of the elderly in giving advice and providing seasoned perspective for younger people Erikson (1950) named wisdom as the virtue stemming from the challenges of old age To what end? Of course, the ultimate gauntlet of the elderly—to face the inevitable and profess, “Death, be not proud, though some have called thee/Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so” (Donne, 1633/1974)

The Question of Happiness

Maslow (1969) wrote that self-actualized adults “have a feeling of belongingness and rootedness, they are satisfied in their love needs, have friends and feel loved and loveworthy, they have status and place in life and respect from other people, and they have a reasonable feeling of worth and self-respect” (p 35) (These blessings may come from different sources and carry different weights in different cultures; the list itself is cross-cultural.) We would expect that such a psychologically optimal state would produce a high overall level of subjective well-being, or happiness One definition of such a state says that on the balance, people with subjective well-being experience more positive affect than negative, across time and domains (Diener, 1984) In his review of

subjective well-being theory and research, Diener found evidence for two competing explanations In the bottom-up approach, a person develops a global tendency to see things positively when positive experiences accumulate in life

In the top-down approach, a person with a sunny disposition sees a larger number of events as positive The top-down approach emphasizes your personality traits, whereas the bottom-up approach emphasizes your history and what you have learned to expect

Further puzzles about subjective well-being remain unsolved, especially conundrums about which direction happiness flows: for example, are happy people more active, goal-directed, and socially involved, or does being active, goal-directed and socially involved create happy people? Here in the United States, a satisfying love life and high self-esteem, similarly, are strongly linked

to happiness, but which comes first? Nonetheless, in predicting well-being, individual demographic variables like age, gender, income, and marital status all together account for only 10% to 15% of the variance in subjective well-being (Diener, 1984), leaving a large amount that might be explained by personality and its genesis

The concept of psychological health is neither singular nor constant, but an ephemeral process that yields life satisfaction through its pursuit A healthy personality does not live in continual happiness Sorrow is part of life for everyone, but as Frankl (1959/1984) put it, “Once an individual’s search for a meaning is successful, it not only renders him happy but also gives him the capability to cope with suffering” (p 163) Carver and Scheier (1999) also focused on the dynamic nature of the adult era: “The goal of developing a career isn’t just the goal of finally being ‘established.’ It’s the pathway of steps involved in getting there” (p 554), and Allport (1937) wrote, “It is the striving towards the known goal that confers unity, not the successful arrival” (p 350) Rogers believed that each individual has the natural proclivity to achieve self-actualization given the appropriate environment This formative tendency emphasizes dynamic growth toward wholeness We are always in the process of becoming a psychologically healthy person This evolving quality of aligning our real and ideal selves provides an excellent heuristic for explaining the healthy personality

ORIENTATION TO THE FUTURE

We have discussed mental health in terms of your adequacy for the demands of your era of life at the moment This present adequacy, though, is infused with your attitude toward the future—in particular, your level of optimism Optimism has such a baked-in quality that it is often considered a personality trait In fact,

it correlates moderately with Extraversion and Conscientiousness on personality inventories (Marshall, Wortman, Vickers, Kusulas, & Hervig, 1994) Good

things flow from optimism: Research has shown its association with physical health (Scheier & Carver, 1985; Peterson, Seligman, & Vaillant, 1988; Segerstrom, Taylor, Kemeny, & Fahey, 1998), success in political campaigns (Zullow, Oettingen, Peterson, & Seligman, 1988), adjustment to college (Aspinwall & Taylor, 1992), work productivity (Seligman & Schulman, 1986), and prevention of depression (Sweeney, Anderson, & Bailey, 1986), in addition

to other desirable characteristics such as happiness, achievement, and perseverance (Peterson, 2000) A positive view of the future allows individuals

to become more engaged in life itself, a critical component of psychological health

Let us investigate some of the ways that optimism operates Remember Little’s (1999) formula for optimal work: One of the five critical features was efficacy, or confidence of progress No matter how meaningful, manageable, and socially approved a project appears, if you are not fairly sure that you can make progress, you are stymied Self-efficacy, a belief that you are capable in a certain area, is essential for success (Bandura, 1986) Teachers of statistics will tell you that one of their major challenges is persuasion: convincing math-phobic students that they really can learn the material You have no doubt felt the surge of hope at the merest glimmer that you are, after all, going to be capable of driving in Houston, or making your computer and printer cooperate

with each other, or understanding Kierkegaard Adler, in Understanding Human Nature (1927) connected optimism with confidence and other virtues: “There is

the way of optimism, in which the child is confident of easily solving the problems which he meets…In his case we see the development of courage, openness, frankness, responsibility, industry, and the like” (p 25) The optimist, according to Adler, possesses a style that “considers the tasks of life eminently within his power” (p 25)

Feelings of competence inform a basic component of future orientation: setting goals William James (1890) emphasized the connection between our self-beliefs and life outcomes: “Our self-feeling in this world depends entirely

on what we back ourselves to be and do” (p 310) This relationship is central to

Bandura’s (1977) self-efficacy theory Lent, Brown, and Hackett (1994) highlighted the role of self-efficacy in their social cognitive career theory, which explains the process of interest development, choice, and persistence toward

career related goals In career counseling, we encourage clients to back

themselves to seek goals commensurate with their values, abilities, personality, and interests We often witness areas of self-doubt carrying the day, though For example, many people who love psychology reject the college major because of the statistics requirements Also, people often choose classes, majors, and jobs

not to pursue a goal but to avoid an activity they fear, like writing (e.g., Bennett

& Rhodes, 1988) Again, James (1892) resonates,

We desire to feel, to have, to do, all sorts of things which at the moment are not felt, had, or done If with the desire there goes a sense that

attainment is not possible, we simply wish; but if we believe that the end

is in our power, we will that the desired feeling, having, or doing shall be

real; and real it presently becomes, (p 415, emphasis added)

True to the roots of counseling psychology, White (1973) encouraged conceiving of each client in terms of their sense of competence, and their pursuit

of their individual interests In White’s definition, confident people whose interests (rather than their fears) organize their life patterns are the healthy ones Expectations of progress and success in personal projects (another way of saying

confidence) are robustly related to subjective well-being (Diener, 1984; Little,

1999) Confidence is also key in Carver and Scheier’s (1999) conception of effective coping, in that it provides impetus to make efforts toward a reasonable goal in spite of setbacks Heatherton and Nichols (1994), for example, found that people who successfully made positive life changes, in contrast with those who tried unsuccessfully, reported having more self-control in general and better outcome expectancies, in that the failed life changers were not as certain that change would produce meaningful relief from distress anyway

Setting congruent life goals at long range is not the only way optimism functions How you deal with stressful situations and daily hassles also provides

a useful context for defining healthy approaches to life People differ in the way they appraise and react to negative life events as well as anticipate future outcomes Lazarus (1984) defined coping as “constantly changing cognitive and behavioral efforts to manage specific and/or internal demands that are appraised

as taxing or exceeding the resources of the person” (p 141) Numerous studies have demonstrated the utility of two prominent types of coping: problem and emotion focused strategies (Snyder & Dinoff, 1999) Problem-focused coping involves active efforts to remove or diminish the source of the stress Emotion-focused coping involves managing affective reactions Which strategy or combination of strategies is best depends on the context, of course An unavoidable stressor, like facing heart surgery, requires that a person manage emotions A changeable situation, like having your computer break down, calls for a problem-focused strategy (probably backed up with some emotion modulation and foul-language management)

Watson, David, and Suls (1999) noted that basic dispositional tendencies, such as Neuroticism and Extraversion (in negative and positive directions, respectively) predict an individual’s choice of coping strategy and level of perceived distress Maladaptive coping strategies involve denial and stuckness Optimists use problem-focused coping, positive reframing, and acceptance of unavoidable reality Pessimists tend to disengage, to use denial and avoidant

coping Optimists even jump the gun and use preventive coping strategies to avoid future potential problems (Carver & Scheier, 1999) In Listening to

Prozac, Peter Kramer (1993) asserted that the last three people standing in any

very long line are depressed They are unable to think of an alternative plan What they lack is cognitive flexibility, a quality we sometimes see as the key

to the golden kingdom of psychological peace and plenty It is cognitive flexibility that allows you to find another computer to write on, wash the dog while the hard drive gets repaired, or even continue writing by hand! It is also cognitive flexibility that allows you to see the breakdown as somewhat positive because the dog needed washing badly, and you got a fresh perspective on your ideas from using pen and paper anyway, and the whole thing makes a funny story at happy hour As Aristotle said, “It is impossible for the entirely happy man to become miserable….The truly good and wise man, we are convinced, bears with dignity all that fortune sends him and invariably takes the most honourable line of conduct that is open to him in the circumstances” (Thomson,

1953, p 34)

The truth is that we never really know what is going to happen, and cognitive flexibility will be required Gelatt’s (1989) notion of “positive uncertainty” highlights this reality and exhorts us to stay calm in the face of chaos Traditional linear approaches to decision making are limited because of the future’s unpredictability, and according to Gelatt, we must embrace flexible and healthy attitudes toward inherent uncertainty Similarly, Mitchell, Levin, and Krumboltz’s (1999) “planned happenstance” emphasizes strategic openness to chance events, allowing us to capitalize on uncertainty Otherwise, we shall certainly be blindsided The young person who has mapped out his future in medicine at an early age, complete with choice of medical specialty and residency site, finds himself at the career counselor utterly bemused by a first-year B average in college A young woman groomed to fit her father’s footsteps

as an engineer and successful in her nontraditional major ends up desolate when she discovers that she abhors the setting and society of her chosen profession

An optimal outlook on the future frames unpredictable events as challenges

or opportunities rather than problems (Schneider, 2001) A friend of ours, facing

an unforeseen period of deprivation, told us, “This will be a chance to see what I’m made of,” suggesting that she intends to learn something from the experience Notice also the tone of openness to experience in our friend’s remark, another echo of the interrelatedness among conceptions of healthy personality A less optimal viewpoint might emphasize the suffering she dreads,

or the unfairness of the situation, or the perfidy of other people involved That viewpoint, arguably, would worsen the experience itself Called on to revenge his father’s murder, if Hamlet had said, “This will be a chance to see what I’m made of,” instead of “To be or not to be…,” we would have a much shorter play, and probably not a tragedy

Carver and Scheier’s (1981) behavioral self-regulatory model depicts multiple levels of concreteness and immediacy stacking up toward a superordinate goal At the bottom level are the small actions we take in the

present to work toward the goal, and subsequent levels represent intermediate goals on the way So, if a young man’s goal was to become a best-selling novelist, he might have “keep a daily journal of observations” on the bottom rung, and “succeed as a creative artist” on the top This fellow will obviously encounter many barriers If he is an optimist, he will persist toward the goal and have the cognitive flexibility to see many paths to it, so that one blocked path does not flummox him He can move to the next He is not dependent on the outcome of any single effort and can accept thwarted efforts with some equanimity (and indeed, rejection is a way of life for writers) He may come up against significant barriers—for example, a distaste for solitary work and an inability to schedule himself If these are intractable, he will take a look at his superordinate goal—“succeed as a creative artist”—and ask whether there is another way to define it, a way that is congruent with his personality He might look into the life of an editor at a publishing house, for example, where the work

is highly social and structured by the institution, and yet creative and lucrative Many of us have had to redefine success on our way there

The trick is to know when you need to persist and when you need to revamp the plan Career counselors are familiar with clients who maintain the fantasy of becoming doctors while barely making Cs in biology, and fertility clinics swarm with people who believe that parenthood is their only possible way to happiness But for the healthy personality, “Giving up is an indispensable part of self-regulation, because people need to be able to retrace their steps, back out of corners, free themselves to go elsewhere” (Carver & Scheier, 1999, p 566) Ongoing commitment to an unattainable goal, or one whose attainment will not yield the hoped-for results, drains a person’s zest for living Likewise, premature disengagement of effort from a challenging task interferes with the discovery of one’s true potential, thus limiting the attainability of optimal outcomes For example, an otherwise capable student who avoids working on his thesis because he questions his abilities will not produce his best scholarship Both of these ineffective approaches prevent individuals from discovering alternative, viable goals

How does a person know whether to persist or revamp? Leona Tyler (1969) said,

This requires that he know himself well enough so that he can assess the utility or value to him of each alternative, and that he understand his relationships to other people and to the world of ideas and action well enough to estimate the probability that a course of action he chooses will turn out well (p 159)

Basically, she prescribes a wealth of accurate insight There is a common fancy that optimists have an unrealistic view of everything and are untrustworthy judges of situations Yet it seems that all the good things come to optimists,

whereas pessimists must console themselves with the dismal and limited probability that they are right In truth, recent research supports the idea that optimists adapt better to new situations because of their greater flexibility in seeking, processing, and acting upon information (Aspinwall & Brunhart, 1996; Aspinwall, Richter, & Hoffman, 2001) Optimists are even more likely to notice negative information than pessimists are, probably because the optimists believe they will be able to cope with whatever they find “In particular, optimists seem

to be more able than pessimists to vary their beliefs and behavior to match important features of the situation at hand” (Aspinwall et al., p 218) As Schneider (2001) pointed out, an optimistic interpretation of an event or forecast can be just as realistic as a pessimistic one, given the fuzzy nature of reality

Striving for Wisdom

The ultimate healthy view toward the future involves the acceptance of inevitable uncertainty and limitations of life while maintaining a hopeful concern for subsequent generations These ideas are reflected in Erikson’s final

psychosocial stages of generativity versus stagnation and integrity versus despair In spite of the deterioration of physical and mental faculties, we have

the potential (and need) to culminate in a generative state leading toward wisdom Such integrative understanding of the lifespan (Erikson, 1968) and enhanced functioning in cognitive pragmatics (Baltes & Staudinger, 2000), indicative of a wisdom, offer insights for subsequent generations Erikson

emphasized the responsibility to pass on strengths gained through the lifespan to

the next generation He wrote of the unique wisdom of the ages to be discovered and imparted by individuals while maintaining a detached understanding that this knowledge must ultimately serve to support future generations as they face the demands of their own era

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U.S government and summarized in Current Concepts of Positive Mental Health (1958), Marie Jahoda wrote, “There are, then, other good things in life,

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Fostering Exceptional Development

in Intellectually Talented Populations

Applied psychologists in general (Paterson, 1957; Viteles, 1932), and counseling psychologists more specifically (Dawis, 1992; Tyler, 1974, 1992; Williamson, 1965), have an impressive history of quantifying human abilities

and preference dimensions, and using this information to help people focus their development in directions that enhance life success and happiness These two concepts, success and happiness, go by other names—competence and fulfillment, satisfactoriness and satisfaction—and embody two of the most important classes of personal attributes studied in applied psychology: abilities and preferences, respectively For helping people select opportunities for positive development, abilities (capabilities) and preferences (motives) have received more applied-psychological attention than any others This two-part emphasis can be seen in the prefaces to two landmark publications: E.K

Strong’s (1943) Vocational interests of men and women, and Donald Super’s (1949) Appraising vocational fitness The application of knowledge regarding

these personal attributes to the field of talent development has played a major role in guiding the identification and nurture of intellectual precocity for nearly

100 years

This chapter concerns the exceptional development of intellectual talent and

is organized into two broad sections: historical and modern contributions First,

we provide a historical overview of the major people and ideas moving the scientific study of intellectual talent forward over the past 100 years Second, building on this, we review key empirical findings from recent decades in the context of implications for educational and counseling practice today Within this discussion, we summarize a theoretical model for organizing contemporary research Finally, we close with a summation of current knowledge and offer some future research directions The need for more scientific knowledge on truly exceptional forms of achievement, creativity, and lifelong learning is underscored This knowledge is likely to come from more complete understandings of the personal attributes characterizing intellectually precocious populations and the environmental provisions that catalyze their talents to full fruition

HISTORICAL OVERVIEW: APPLIED PSYCHOLOGY’S

CONTRIBUTIONS TO TALENT DEVELOPMENT

Several writers date the origins of systematic thinking about nurturing intellectual ability to Plato (trans 1945), sometime around 400 B.C., when in

The Republic, he advocated for early talent identification in order to con-serve

talent and educate future leaders It wasn’t until over 2000 years later, in the late 1800s, that standardized empirical methods for measuring intellectual functioning revolutionized the way such talent is identified Leta Hollingworth (1926), a widely recognized pioneer in the development and education of profound intellectual giftedness, credits Galton (1869) with first showing that intellectual ability follows a normal distribution However, not until the advent

of intelligence testing, with Binet and Simon (1905), did scientifically significant efforts to identify gifted children begin in earnest

For almost a century, applied psychologists have articulated the importance

of attending to the needs of persons of high intellectual capacity They have persevered through fluctuating social attitudes that have run the gamut from uninterested or antagonistic, to quite supportive during brief “crisis” periods (e.g., the Sputnik launch in 1957) Three common myths about the gifted have persisted throughout this time, and are still evident today: (a) the gifted can be anything they want to be in life, (b) they will find their own way to successful and satisfying careers without much assistance, and (c) they have so much already, it is elitist to give them more During a hopeful period early in the 20th century, O’Shea (1926) wistfully noted, in the editor’s introduction to

Hollingworth’s (1926) seminal work, Gifted Children: Their Nature and Nurture,

The present writer can easily recall the time when everyone thought that Bright’ children could look out for themselves—as a result of which opinion they were neglected, in the schools at any rate, in order that teachers might devote all their energies to the less able (p xii)

Unfortunately, nearly identical sentiments have required countervailing efforts over subsequent decades by scientists and practitioners working with intellectually talented populations (cf., Benbow & Stanley, 1996; Hobbs, 1951; Pressey, 1949, 1967; Stanley, 1974, 1996; Terman, 1954; Tyler, 1965, 1992; Williamson, 1965)

Throughout this chapter, we hope to review some of the arguments and empirical data that challenge these myths First, the intellectually gifted cannot necessarily be anything they want to be; rather, their unique combinations of specific abilities, interests, motivation, and environmental support make some paths of development more suitable than others Second, gifted children do not always find their own way; rather, they are more likely to achieve at exceptional levels when given appropriate educational and environmental opportunities, and are at risk for underachievement when not given such opportunities or when their unique abilities and preferences are not identified Third, and related to the previous two points, attending to the unique needs of the intellectually talented benefits not only talented students, but also society as a whole when these individuals grow up to apply their realized abilities toward the challenges and needs of the world,

A practical implication of the perpetuation of these myths is that educators, counselors, and policy makers have often disregarded the need for special attention or unique opportunities for this population, and instead have dedicated the bulk of attention and resources to those with identified deficits whose needs are perhaps more obvious Yet, like all special populations, the intellectually