The idea, of course, that one might craft a specific remedy for a specific mind—a key for one particular lock—has always been the goal. We have spent a great deal of time using rather blunt instruments, attempting to fix the delicate workings of a person’s outlook with something akin to a mallet. The promise here is of something finer, a set of watchmaker’s tools for tinkering with the internal narrative, whether one is struggling against a vast, amorphous dread or simply the profound difficulty of getting out of bed on a Wednesday. A bespoke solution.
But then we arrive at the ‘tailored programs for groups,’ which sounds suspiciously like the same thing, only less so; a rack of tailored suits is not at all the same as a single, perfectly measured one.
One must picture the scene. The International Positive Psychology Association’s World Congress, which is quite the title, convened in Brisbane. One imagines the delegates, minds buzzing with complex human data and intervention strategies, stepping out of the air-conditioned halls and into the thick, living air of Australia, a place not known for its indifference.
And there was Norris, leading a workshop on this new methodology. One is left to wonder what such a workshop entails. Are there diagrams drawn on whiteboards? Is there group work, with strangers asked to reveal some minor, manageable vulnerability to one another for the sake of a practical demonstration? A rather alarming thought, that.
What is left unsaid, of course, is the nature of the findings themselves.
The actual cogs and gears of this new machine. We are told it enables design, but nothing of the design itself. Is it a method for understanding the precise, peculiar shape of one person’s loneliness, which might be quite different from another’s, the way no two knots are ever truly identical? Or how a group’s shared experience of, say, working for a year in a building with notoriously drafty windows, might require a different approach than a group that has collectively survived a terrible catering incident at a company retreat.
The application is dangled before us, gleaming and new. The mechanism remains a mystery.
Together, these findings enable the design of personalized interventions for individuals and tailored programs for groups facing challenging …
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