An Introduction to Positive Emotion and Psychopathology

This book sets out to provide a comprehensive review of the nature of positive emotion and psychopathology in this book. It begins by introducing recent scientific and public interest in understanding positive emotional functioning, as well as the importance of understanding disturbances in positive valence systems for uncovering knowledge about etiology and maintenance of chronic and severe psychiatric disorders. The argument is that the field of clinical psychology has typically focused on the adaptive components of positive emotion in understanding mental illness, and that there remains increasing need and importance to study the mechanisms and contexts by which positive emotional processes may also lead to maladaptive psychological processes and outcomes across disorders. This chapter concludes with proposing a transdiagnostic and comprehensive framework toward identifying, studying, and treating positive emotional disturbance.