Iris Marie Bloom on personal growth ideas in Positive Psychology
In her article Nature and Nocturnal Themes in Positive Psychology, Iris Marie Bloom [Positive Psychology News Daily] relates some of the personal development values in this new orientation of psychology.
She notes, “Norman Doidge’s research, practice, and writing focuses on neuroplasticity. Every thought we think, every feeling we feel, and every action we take actually helps to shape and re-shape the physical structure of our brains, the birth and death of new synaptic connections and neural pathways.” ….
“Both Freud and Jung understood deeply the relationship of what we now call neuroplasticity to the nocturnal language of dreams. According to Doidge, some dreams ’show our brains in the process of plastic change, altering hitherto buried, emotionally meaningful memories’ (p. 238). …
“Jung claimed that ‘the collective unconscious is common to all; it is the foundation of what the ancients called the “sympathy of all things.‒ (p. 138). While this language may sound romantic to us now, I believe that the experience of positive affect, including the strong positive ‘flooding’ of joy and love, is available to even those who may have felt that life has passed them by…”
[Image from The brain that changes itself: Stories of personal triumph from the frontiers of brain science, by Norman Doidge.]
