Chapter 30 – A Cold of the Soul: Positive Psychology’s Neoliberal Cure

A psychological movement that emerged in the early 21st century focusing on human strengths, flourishing, and happiness, often framed in individualistic and empirically measurable terms.

A form of power described by Michel Foucault, where individuals are governed not through overt force but through internalised norms, especially those promoting self-optimisation, responsibility, and emotional regulation in line with market values.

Foucault’s term describing how power operates not only through institutions but through the shaping of subjectivities and everyday behaviours, making individuals responsible for their own self-governance.

A concept developed by Martin Seligman in the 1970s to explain how repeated failure can lead individuals (and animals) to give up trying; later reworked into the more empowering concept of ‘learned optimism’.

An acronym developed by Seligman to describe the five elements of well-being: Positive Emotion, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, and Accomplishment.

A concept introduced by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi describing a state of deep, enjoyable immersion in a task where time and self-consciousness seem to disappear.

The erasure or marginalisation of alternative knowledge systems, especially Indigenous and non-Western ways of knowing, through the dominance of Euro-American scientific paradigms.

A critique of oversimplified thinking that seeks single causes for complex problems, often linked to colonial systems that privilege singular narratives over plural, relational, or diverse explanations.

A Japanese phrase meaning ‘a cold of the soul’, developed in the 1990s as part of a marketing strategy to medicalise depression and promote pharmaceutical treatment in Japan.

Foucault’s phrase describing how people shape, monitor, and manage their own behaviours, emotions, and thoughts in accordance with cultural and institutional norms.

The regulation of emotion by social institutions, where particular emotional states (like positivity) are encouraged or enforced as moral obligations or forms of civic virtue.

Originally proposed by Maslow as the pinnacle of psychological development, now often co-opted in consumer culture as a commodified goal of lifestyle and wellness industries.

A national development philosophy adopted by Bhutan that attempts to measure well-being beyond GDP, though subject to critique for technocratic and depoliticised implementation.

Psychological interventions, often developed for military or corporate settings, designed to enhance individual coping and adaptation, sometimes criticised for shifting responsibility away from systemic conditions.