The practice of poetry and the psychology of well-being

Abstract

In "Flourish," the psychologist Martin Seligman AQ1 proposed that psychological well-being consists of "PERMA: positive emotion, engagement, relationships, meaning, and accomplishment." Although the question of what constitutes flourishing or psychological well-being has been long debated among 10 scholars, the recent literature has suggested that a paradigmatic or prototypical case of psychological well-being would manifest most or all of the aforementioned PERMA factors. The recent literature on poetry therapy has also suggested that poetry practice may be utilized as "an effective therapeutic tool" for patients suffering from a variety of ailments so psychological well-being has been long debated among scholars, the recent literature has suggested that a paradigmatic or prototypical case of psychological well-being would manifest most or all of the aforementioned PERMA factors. The recent literature on poetry therapy has also suggested that poetry practice may be utilized as "an effective therapeutic tool" for patients suffering from a variety of ailments 30 (cf. Kempler, 2003 AQ4 ) so it seems plausible that practicing poetry can positively contribute to one flourishing with greater psychological well-being. However, recent studies on poetry therapy have not yet been reviewed and integrated under the PERMA framework from positive psychology to further explore and AQ3 explicate this

Positivity Ratio and Well-Being Among Teachers. The Mediating Role of Work Engagement

“…In order to experience more positive emotions, teachers might also benefit from specific interventions that might be drawn from positive psychology, such as mindfulness meditation, loving-kindness meditation (see, for review, Garland et al, 2010 ), interventions focused on work–family balance ( Crain et al, 2017 ), and cultivation of positive teacher–student relationships ( Cook et al, 2018 ). Moreover, teachers’ positive emotions and engagement could be cultivated through poetry, martial arts, and music, as these practices have been related to higher levels of flourishing and engagement ( Croom, 2012 , 2014 , 2015 ).…”

Expressive and creative writing in the therapeutic context: From the different concepts to the development of writing therapy programs

“…There is also a lack of studies that assess the benefits of creative literary writing besides poetry. As for poetry therapy, it has been used mainly with people with severe mental illness and its rehabilitation benefits are well documented (Houlding & Holland, 1988;Mazza & Hayton, 2013;Tamura, 2001), but it has been also used with non clinical populations (Croom, 2015). In both situations, individuals are stimulated to translate into symbolic texts their own feelings and experiences that are more difficult to express in current verbal language.…”

“…The benefits of poetry therapy in crisis intervention have been reported by Schwietert (2004), who verified that poetry helps to create a literal container where the various pieces of emotion can be held and, eventually, put back together again. Recently, Croom (2015) provided support for the claim that practicing poetry can positively contribute to one flourishing with greater psychological well-being by positively influencing their emotions, engagement or "flow" experiences, social relationships, sense of meaning or purpose in life, and personal accomplishments. However, besides poetry, we did not find any studies focusing solely on the benefits of other forms of creative literary writing, like fictional stories.…”

The importance of poetry, hip-hop, and philosophy for an enlisted aviator in the USAF (2000–2004) flying in support of Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom

“…So I read 335 books on the nature of knowledge and language, including for instance Meditations on First Philosophy by Rene Descartes (1641Descartes ( /1998 Whitman (1855) and Selected Poems by Emily Dickinson (1993). Importantly, my turn to poetry and philosophy was not idle or speculative, but urgent and necessary in order to psychologically flourish in the life-threatening conditions that I was facing (for further discussion on poetry and psychological well-being see also Croom, 2015). When I was 18 years old, for example, I had to medically evacuate an 18-year-345 old soldier in the US Army from out of the box to a better-equipped facility in Germany because he had received a gunshot wound to the head.…”

“…In On the Way to Language (1971a) Martin Heidegger -who is also "widely acknowledged to be one of the most original and important philosophers of the 20th Century" (Korab-Karpowicz, 2009)-writes of "poetry and 95 thought" that "each needs the other" (p. 70) and even suggested in Poetry, Language, Thought (1971b) Richter (2011) has argued that since "the history of concepts is the history of the creative, imaginative, rulebending/creating/breaking use of language […] it is the history of literature, poetry, or whatever else we might want to call linguistic art," and that consequently, "philosophy, rightly understood, is a kind of literature or, at least, continuous with 105 literature" (p. 257; for more on poetry and philosophy see also Croom, 2015;Heidegger, 1962Heidegger, , 1971Wittgenstein, 1953Wittgenstein, , 1972Wittgenstein, , 1980Wittgenstein, , 2001 AQ3 . Further, not only is philosophy often considered poetic, but often poetry is also considered philosophical.…”