Part IIIA Dialogue Between Positive and Existential Psychology:

Exploring Connections

The growing scientific attention to the construction of meaning within the psycho-logical landscape, and especially within the two significant frameworks of positive and existential psychology, provides a fertile ground for a fruitful dialogue. Based on each unique contribution to the understanding of core essences of meaning, the following chapters explore potential tensions, relationships, and connections. Such conceptual bridge may enrich and contribute to a more comprehensive and mean-ingful discussion of meaning.

The first chapter “Extending the contexts of existence: Benefits of meaning-guided living” by Dmitry Leontiev, delves into the complexity and uniqueness of meaning as a pivotal dimension in psychological explanation, while bridging theo-retical insights from existential (as well as humanistic) psychology with empiri-cal ones from positive psychology. Attending to the notion of context as central, Leontiev demonstrates the essence of meaning as a reference to broader superor-dinate contexts. Leontiev further discusses his multiregulation personality model to demonstrate that the distinctiveness of meaning as guiding principal for human behavior lies in the freedom and choice it provides.

In their chapter, “Ultimate concerns from existential and positive psychologi-cal perspectives,” John Jurica, Jenni Barenz, Yerin Shim, Kirsten Graham, and Michael F. Steger bring together the two perspectives, epistemological and empiri-cal, to address existential questions of being-in-the-world. By exploring unique contributions as well as points of encounter, differences as well as similarities, the authors show how positive and existential psychology can complement each other and facilitate mutual learning in attempts to address human ultimate concerns of life: meaning and meaninglessness, freedom and responsibility, relationships and isolation, and death and suffering.

Next, the chapter “Narrative coherence and disruption: Negotiating between positive and existential psychology” by Chad Hammond, Ulrich Teucher, and Rita Hamoline, reviews the approaches of positive and existential psychology from the viewpoint of life narratives, suggesting that each perspective typically nor-malizes an essentially different set of life narratives. Positive psychology empha-sizes stories of “redemption,” thus presenting a “neater” and more stable notion of

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meaning, whereas existential psychology tends to foster stories of “tragedy” and articulate a disrupted or unsettled notion of meaning. The authors call for an inte-grated view that takes into account the various and complex human life narratives and contexts from both perspectives to further enrich and broaden the notion of meaning; a claim demonstrated through a case study analysis.

Paul T. P. Wong’s chapter, “Viktor Frankl’s meaning-seeking model and posi-tive psychology” presents a comprehensive attempt to bridge positive psychology and humanistic-existential psychology, especially logotherapy, to benefit future in-depth exploration and application of meaning as central to human existence. Specifically, Wong explores major differences between the two perspectives and illuminates how basic premises of logotherapy can be adopted to create a testa-ble meaning-seeking model. The model, which takes into account philosophical insights together with rigorous scientific research, is presented as part of an overall design to develop a general meaning management theory of integration between different conceptualizations of meaning.

In their chapter, “Positive psychology, existential psychology, and the pre-sumption of egoism,” Edwin E. Gantt and Jeffrey L. Thayne provide an in-depth consideration of the underlying premises in positive and existential psychology. Following an exploration of some central tensions between the two approaches, the authors proceed to show that beneath such conceptual and practical differ-ences, both approaches also manifest deep similarity in placing the autonomous self as the primary focus of study and explanation, thus displaying a commitment to an egoistic depiction of human nature.

The chapter, “Anxiety and the approach of idealistic meaning,” by Mike Prentice and Ian McGregor advocates the integration of methodological pluralism to explore human meaning as a whole. The chapter explores historical, methodological, and epistemological differences between the fields of humanistic-existential and positive psychology, suggesting that integrative rapprochement is possible through scientific method that benefits from both “existential” richness and diverse “objective” empirical methods. To illustrate such integrative endeavor, the authors discuss their own research on Reactive Approach Motivation (RAM) model of anxiety and meaning using multi-ple empirical and experimental methods.

The chapter, “Positive and existential psychological approaches to the expe-rience of Meaning in Life” by Jinhyung Kim, Elizabeth Seto, William E. Davis and Joshua A. Hicks, explores central divergence between the two perspectives of positive and experimental existential psychology as they distinctively attempt to address fundamental questions of meaning. Carefully examining variables that contribute to a sense of meaninglessness (promoted by existential psychologists) as well as variables that augment meaningfulness (promoted by positive psycholo-gists), the authors draw attention to the different and complementary aspects of meaning held by the two perspectives.