Positive Psychotherapy (PPT), founded by Dr. Nossrat Peseschkian, a Persian Bahá'í who has lived in Europe for many years, assumes the functional capacities of the unconscious to be 'basic capacities.' PPT makes a distinction between actual capacities and basic capacities. The basic capacities are the capacity to love and the capacity to know. These basic capacities are comprehensive categories underpinning primary and secondary capacities. Based upon Bahá'í teachings, this therapy accepts belief as an implicit aspect of healthy psychological functioning. Moreover, contents of the unconscious in PPT are the conflicts between capacities, and undifferentiated and undeveloped actual capacities.

Peseschkian's approach to therapy is inherently and systematically integrative, along the lines of being cross-cultural, multidisciplinary, therapeutically, and psychologically intertheoretic. This article presents some basic premises of PPT: the use of stories; having a positive starting point; basic and actual capacities; five-stage therapeutic model; as well as mentioning other aspects of PPT and a case study. PPT is well suited to therapists advocating integrative psychotherapy as demonstrated by empirical research.

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