The Joyful Life: An Existential-Humanistic Approach to Positive Psychology in the Time of a Pandemic

Abstract

In the midst of a global pandemic, psychology has a duty to identify dispositional or character traits that can be cultivated in citizens in order to create resiliency in the face of profound losses, suffering and distress. Dispositional joy holds some promise as such a trait that could be especially important for well-being during the current pandemic and its consequences. The concept of the Joyful Life may operate as bridge between positive psychology and humanistic, existential, and spiritual views of the good life, by integrating hedonic, prudential, eudaimonic and chaironic visions of the good life. Previous phenomenological research on state joy suggests that momentary states of joy may have features that overlap with happiness but go beyond mere hedonic interests, and point to the experience of a life oriented toward virtue and a sense of the transcendent or the sacred. However, qualitative research on the Joyful Life, or dispositional joy, is sorely lacking. This study utilized a dialogical phenomenological analysis to conduct a group-based analysis of 17 volunteer students, who produced 51 autobiographical narrative descriptions of the joyful life. The dialogical analyses were assisted by integration of the Imagery in Movement Method, which incorporated expressive drawing and psychodrama as an aid to explicate implicit themes in the experiences of the participants. The analyses yielded ten invariant themes found across the autobiographical narrative descriptions: Being broken, being grounded, being centered, breaking open, being uplifted, being supertemporal, being open to the mystery, being grateful, opening up and out, and being together. The descriptions of a Joyful Life were consistent with a meaning orientation to happiness, due to their emphasis on the cultivation of virtue in the service of a higher calling, the realization of which was felt to be a gift or blessing. The discussion examines implications for future research, including the current relevance of a joyful disposition during a global pandemic. Due to the joyful disposition’s tendency to transform suffering and tragedy into meaning, and its theme of an orientation to prosocial motivations, the Joyful Life may occupy a central place in the study of resiliency and personal growth in response to personal and collective trauma such as COVID-19.

Existential reflection and morality

“…This aligns with existential-phenomenological and existential positive psychology's conceptions of the good life as involving mainly eudaimonic and chaironic "happiness, " and a "meaning orientation" to human flourishing (Wong, 2012;Robbins, 2021). More specifically, Robbins (2021) cites extensive empirical research associating this form of existential joy to indicators of wellbeing, such as psychological wellbeing, psychological need satisfaction and self-actualization, resilience and hardiness, and mindfulness (Robbins, 2021: 6-10).…”

“…In this final section, we will show that the awakening of Husserl's (2001) active ego (Gallagher, 2012 higher-order sense of agency) that expressively explicates its lived experience, and which we have shown to be involved during the distinctly aesthetic form of reading engagement captured by Expressive Enactment (ASQ-EE), as well as its existential and moral outcomes, have been associated with beneficial health effects within existential psychotherapy (e.g., Yalom, 1980) and the burgeoning field of existential positive psychology (Wong, 2012;Bretherton, 2015;Robbins, 2021;Wong et al, 2021). What on the surface may seem like an unlikely union between existentialism (existential psychotherapies) and positive psychology, which Wong et al (2021) refer to as positive psychology 2.0 (PP2.0), places emphasis on the importance of grappling with existential issues and anxiety for human flourishing.…”

Existential Suffering in Palliative Care: An Existential Positive Psychology Perspective

“…Such mature happiness can be best represented by the central point of intersections of all possible human dimensions both horizontally and vertically. Thus, we can have a sense of joy in all kinds of situations, regardless of our race, religion, or social-economic status [25,26].…”

Existential Suffering in Palliative Care: An Existential Positive Psychology Perspective

“…Towards advancing age and death, we resort to spiritual development and selftranscendence to compensate for losses in physical and mental vitality (Reed, 2018;Wong, 1989). Wong et al (in press) sums up the paradoxical truth of finding meaning in life and death through self-transcendence: "Living well and dying well involve enhancing one's sense of self, one's relationships with others, and one's understanding of the transcendent, the spiritual, the supernatural….…”