Introducing ‘holistic psychology’ for life qualities: A theoretical model for consideration

Positive psychology has attracted extensive interests from educators, researchers, and organizations. Many would recognize the work of Martin Seligman (e.g., Seligman, 2010) and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (e.g.,Csíkszentmihályi, 2014b). In its summarized form, positive psychology is concerned with a person's state of flourishing, his/her perceived sense of resilience and inner virtues, and a desire to have positive outlooks in life. Positive psychology is significant, forming the basis for other research inquiries – for example, the advancement of the theory of optimization (Fraillon, 2004; Phan, Ngu and Yeung, 2019b). Considering this evidence, we develop and offer an alternative theoretical model for discussion, which we termed as ‘holistic psychology’. Holistic psychology, the main focus of this theoretical-conceptual article, is significant for its emphasis on the existence of life experiences, which may exist on a continuous spectrum without distinction between negativity and positivity. This testament, we contend, reflects the importance of inclusiveness and that one could consider maladaptive and negative life experiences (e.g., school disengagement) as sources of vitality, motivating and governing a person to seek for improvement, resulting in a state of flourishing. Our conceptualization in this sense is philosophical, grounded in the main premise of optimization (Fraillon, 2004; Phan et al., 2019b) in which we propose a key tenet for consideration – namely, the ‘transformation’ of negative life experiences into a source of ‘energy’ (i.e., denoted as E) for subsequent enactment. In detail for discussion, our proposed model of holistic psychology consists of four major stages: (i) personal reflection, (ii) the sub-process of transformation, (iii) enactment of energy, and (iv) arousal and sustaining an improved state of functioning.