Although each of the three spheres (Self, Intimacy and Achievement) is fundamental to the experience of well-being or happiness, the central and most difficult challenge for adults is the struggle to become and remain close in a close interdepenent relationship.

Our capacity to love grows with us.  As an adult, the most interdependent and meaningful human relationship is the couple.  As this relationship has an intellectual, emotional and physical dimension it has the potential for the greatest level of human intimacy. Conversely when this adult relationship fails, disappoints or is lost altogether, it becomes the most important source of stress, pain or suffering.

Find Love, Marriage Intimacy, a Happy Close Relationship

To love a man or woman in a couple relationship is not easy.  It encompasses the capacity and willingness to give and receive acceptance, dependence, commitment, concern, affection, love, companionship, sensual pleasures and sexual excitement.  After the initial stages of ‘infatuated love’ or ‘passive fusional love,’ relationships require effort.  An individual will encounter defenses or stress symptoms in oneself (anxiety, anger, physical symptoms, depression or sometimes psychosis) and in one’s partner as he or she becomes far closer in the nine elements of intimacy (love definition).

When defenses are too strong, a breakthrough in intimacy may require the help of a third party.  To achieve a closer relationship than ever before, one has to be open to a new experience of intimacy that goes beyond our traditional experience of passive love.

New Love Definition

Intimacy or closeness goes far beyond understanding better marriage communication.  It is not just how you communicate in a close intimate relationship, but what you communicate that is important (see love definition).  To understand our fear of rejection or getting hurt in close intimate relationships is not enough.  We must overcome our defenses (anxiety, anger, physical symptoms, depression or psychosis) provoked by increasing levels of intimacy.  It is only after breaking through in all nine elements of intimacy at a far greater level than our previous best, that inner transformation and a release from stressful symptoms occurs.

The experience of breakthrough intimacy is life changing.  It does far more than save marriages.  Intimacy is central to an individual’s quest for inner well-being (peace, friendliness, physical health, happiness and mastery).   For this reason, in Lifetrack therapy breakthrough intimacy is an integral part of marriage or family therapy, as well as a fundamental experience in all individual therapy with adults.

Intimacy: Largest Impact on Human Psyche

Dr. Ishizuka has found that regardless of the problem (self, intimacy or achievement), working on the intimacy sphere (a close intimate relationship) creates the largest impact on the human psyche.

Even if the problem arises in the self sphere (being in touch, at peace and in control of the self) or the achievement sphere (difficult job, work goals, the desire for work first, the compulsive need for weekend work, loss of a job), intensive work on human intimacy can create a breakthrough in all three spheres of one’s life.

Intimacy Increases Self and Achievement More than Direct Work on Achievement Sphere

In fact, despite the many reasons people come to see a psychiatrist (they are as varied as your imagination will allow you to suppose), Dr. Ishizuka has found that working intensively and almost exclusively on the intimacy sphere produces the most dramatic and long-term change–particularly on a person’s sense of self and achievement.  To examine the four stages of transformation through intimacy and its effect on self and achievement read Stages of Inner Transformation.

There is something about human intimacy at a much higher level that has a profound healing effect.  This baffling phenomena convinced Dr. Ishizuka that a close loving relationship is the critical factor in experiencing individual happiness and optimal adjustment.

Self and Achievement must Catch up to Rising Intimacy

Although intimacy is an important lever for fundamental personality change, alone it is not sufficient to sustain internal adjustment.  A sense of self and achievement must catch up with a high level of intimacy for well-being to be experienced and maintained.

Breakthrough Intimacy Eliminates Symptoms

Breakthrough intimacy (closeness beyond a previous best) eliminates symptoms by making them unnecessary.  This is done by repeatedly focusing on improving closeness until defenses such as anxiety, anger, physical symptoms, depression or psychosis disappear altogether.

To succeed one must help both individuals in the couple, regardless of the person who initially sought help.  Breakthrough intimacy consists of getting the couple several times closer than their previous best (or when they were happiest).

Success entails helping the couple overcome symptoms on both sides, to attain a much higher level of intimacy where defenses such as anxiety, anger, physical symptoms, depression or psychosis become unnecessary.  Symptom elimination of anxiety, anger, physical symptoms, depression or psychosis is a by-product of a successful Lifetrack therapy, but it is neither its goal nor the criteria by which it measures its result.

Copyright © 2010 Lifetrack Corporation

Visit http://www.PositiveMentalHealthFoundation.com to understand individuals at their best, happiest, and most creative form.  Link to us to promote health and happiness.

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The intimacy sphere extends one’s thoughts, feelings, and actions beyond the self to become close to another human being.

Different types of intimate relationships such as that with a parent, spouse, significant other, children, friend(s), God or the universe bolsters the psyche.

A Close Interdependent Intimate Relationship

There are many forms of intimacy.  A couple relationship, however, enables human beings to experience fullest union of personality, in all three dimensions of human intimacy – Intellectual/Social, Emotional, and Physical/Sexual.  It is for this reason, that in Lifetrack therapy, Dr. Yukio Ishizuka focuses on marriage intimacy or the development of an equivalent close couple relationship.

Through breakthrough intimacy, he facilitates a transformation of personality to encompass larger, intimacy, achievement and self spheres.  This initial breakthrough in the intimacy sphere influences profoundly the Achievement and Self sphere.

Each of the three spheres influences the others.  No sphere exists in isolation.

Love Definition, Closeness Definition, Intimacy Definition

Love is an over-used word.  In the context of an adult couple relationship love means different things to different people.  In the Lifetrack model we use the word intimacy or closeness.  We refer to such intimacy in the couple relationship because such intimacy has the potential for the greatest level of emotional, physical and intellectual-social in human relationships.

Intellectual-Social: How close you are in the intellectual-social dimension

Accept:  Your willingness and ability to accept your partner
Depend: Your willingness and ability to trust and depend upon your partner
Let Depend:  Your willingness and ability to let your partner depend on you

Emotional:  How close you are in the emotional dimension

Concern: Your thoughtfulness and concern over your partner’s wellbeing
Affection:  Your willingness and ability to feel and express affection
Love:  Your willingness and ability to feel and express love

Physical-Sexual:  How close you are in the physical-sexual dimension

Togetherness: The extent to which you want to be (and enjoy being) together
Sensualness:  The extent to which you desire and enjoy touching, holding, kissing and caressing
Sexual Excitement: The extent to which you desire and enjoy giving and receiving sexual excitement

Closeness

Closeness is defined as all 3 dimensions of intimacy (intellectual-social, emotional, physical-sexual) or in all 9 elements: accept, depend, let depend, concern, affection, love, togetherness, sensualness and sexual-excitement.

Couples are asked to increase these nine elements of intimacy far beyond a previous best level of adjustment.  Those who arrive single in Lifetrack therapy are encouraged to find someone and are helped to become closer to that individual.

Copyright © 2010 Lifetrack Corporation

Visit http://www.PositiveMentalHealthFoundation.com to understand individuals at their best, happiest, and most creative form.  Link to us to promote health and happiness.

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The species “man,” can be defined not only in anatomical and physiological terms; its members share basic psychic qualities, the laws which govern their mental and emotional functioning, and the aims for a satisfactory solution of the problem of human existence.

It is true that our knowledge of man is still so incomplete that we cannot yet give a satisfactory definition of man in a psychological sense.  It is the task of the “science of man” to arrive eventually at a correct description of what deserves to be called human nature. — Erich Fromm (the Sane Society)

Thinking the Unthinkable : A refreshing life way

Can there really be a “science of man”?  How are we to know if psychic qualities really exist?  And, if they do, how might one come to know their nature – let alone how such psychic qualities are related and interact?

The Answer Not Freud (Freud psychoanalysis), but Einstein

Interestingly, the answer to this question may not come from Freud, but Einstein.  He wrote, “In our endeavor to understand reality we are somewhat like a man trying to understand the mechanism of a closed watch.  He sees the face and the moving hands, even hears it’s ticking, but he has no way of opening the case.  If he is ingenious, he may form some picture of a mechanism for all the things he observes, but he may never be quite sure his picture is the only one, which could explain his observations.  He will never be able to compare his picture with the mechanism and he cannot even imagine the possibility and meaning of such comparison.”

How We Make Sense of Reality

Einstein, by sharing this story of the watch, was describing the way the natural science of physics makes sense of reality.

He was well aware that despite that physicists may never discover exactly what was underneath the watch, there were still means to come closer to understanding it.

His predecessor, Newton, had done precisely that.  After stating a few postulates that most of the scientists in his time accepted, Newton attempted to show how the postulates could explain many of the things they observed.  To do so, however, he first had to define what it was he wanted to selectively observe or explain, and find a means or method to measure it (the latter was done by creating calculus).

A Science of Man

In much the same way as physicists must grapple with understanding what is under the watch without being able to see it, the challenge with developing a natural “science of man” could be the same.  The first step then is to do what physics and all natural sciences must courageously attempt: describe general phenomena, concepts or abstractions, which explain a wide variety of experiences.  In the case of a science of man those general concepts concern human psychological experience. This endeavor is likely to be a more difficult task than physics!

What are the Spheres of Psychological Existence?

While all attempts to understand the mind are imperfect, if one begins in the tradition of the natural sciences one must start by describing psychological phenomena that are abstract (and encompassing enough) that they hold true for most psychological experience.  These postulates need to encompass psychic qualities that when present determine the experience of well-being and health or when absent distress and illness.  If indeed there were such core psychic qualities, the laws of “which govern our mental and emotional functioning,” then it would follow that when we move in accordance with those laws well-being is the result.

Can the Same Spheres define health and illness?

Forces, including self-defeating thoughts, feelings and actions, can help us understand the causes of non-organic disease.  Naturally, assuming the very existence of psychological laws or of a better understanding of the structure of the human mind is to think the unthinkable.  Yet, no science is exempt from thinking the unthinkable – of asking of itself the very simple questions that only children dare ask.  These are the most dangerous questions, the ones that can shake the very foundations of any science.

Do the same assumptions hold for the body and mind?

Today, psychiatrists and psychologists need to be asking those questions.  As of yet, the medical field has focused its attention on developing a fairly consistent and increasingly accurate means to classify and measure illnesses, disease and disorders.  In this science of disease, mental illness is analogous to physical illness.  Whether one has cancer or depression, successful treatment demands the elimination of the disease, its reduction or containment.  To be healthy is not to be sick.

The Limits of a Medical Model based on the Body

This “medical model” has been helpful, yet it has a built-in limitation: it cannot explain the mind at its most healthy, creative and fullest potential.  In that sense it can not qualify as a natural science of man.  Too eager to establish a study of the mind as a science, psychiatrists never wondered whether the same assumptions hold for the body and mind.  To use Einstein’s analogy, while surgery, allowed the doctor to open up “the watch” and see whether they were right or wrong about what makes it tick, a science of the mind could not.  Psychiatrists had no idea if whether they were on the right track.  Although psychiatry has come a long way and helped many people, perhaps it should have evolved even further.

DSM useful, but too narrow to understand the Mind

Although pharmacological research has given the medical field increasingly effective and safer medications such as Prozac, the disease model has failed to prove that specific chemical changes in the brain is the cause or the cure for all mental illnesses.  What the field has now is a classification for disease that is helpful for the disbursement of medication, the labeling of “illnesses’” and insurance purposes.

The Death of the Disease Model?

Today this science based on disease is dying — not because it is wrong — but because it presents too narrow a worldview.  It does not attempt to do what all the natural sciences must: describe general phenomena, concepts or abstractions, which explain a wide variety of (human psychological) experiences.  To do so one must return to the challenge offered by Jahoda to develop a model of Positive Mental Health.

The Lifetrack model of positive mental health described on this website is one such attempt (insights Lifetrack), but is certainly not the only model possible.  In this respect, all models are imperfect and wait further testing (objective subjective) by patients to be refined and improved.

Visit the Positive Mental Health Foundation to support a study of human beings at their best, happiest, and most creative form.  Link to us to promote health and happiness.

Copyright © 2010 Lifetrack Corporation

Read our section Happiness and Health, Criteria for Health Models (science of happiness), Happiness Defined? Quantified?  (cycle of life),  Happier? (fear of the unknown),  Why Positive Mental Health Works (objective subjective), Insights (life purpose), and Applications (international behavior).

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Dr. Yukio Ishizuka was born in 1938 in Hakodate, Japan.  He experienced WWII as a child and grew up during the American occupation.  It was a time of cross-fertilization of ideas of East and West.

In 1961, he entered Keio Medical School in Tokyo, where he taught himself English and founded the Japan International Medical Student Association (JIMSA) with the support of Dr. Taro Takemi—the long-standing President of the Japanese Medical Association and a well-respected physician and nuclear physicist.  Upon his graduation from Keio, Ishizuka informed Dr. Takemi of his plans to pursue post-graduate training in the United States.  “You should not return to Japan,” advised Dr. Takemi.  Yukio Ishizuka understood that he was being set free.

In 1965, the young graduate left Japan to complete a rotating internship at Jefferson Medical College Hospital in Philadelphia.  The following year, he was one of 25 physicians accepted for residency in psychiatry at the Massachusetts Mental Health Center of Harvard Medical School.  Elated, Dr. Ishizuka took a trip to Europe on a two-week discount ticket, spending much of his savings in the process.  During this trip he fell in love with a French woman, Colette, who would follow him to the US several months later, marry him, and inspire much of his work.

Towards the end of his residency in Boston, Harvard Professors Elvin Semrad and David Riesman encouraged Dr. Ishizuka to undergo further training in psycho-analysis.  Dr. Ishizuka briefly considered going to Mexico City to study under Erich Fromm.  Unconvinced, however, that psychoanalysis could enable people to become healthier and happier, he left psychiatry and was hired by McKinsey, and international business consulting firm.  After several years of consulting for McKinsey in Paris, Amsterdam, Toronto, and New York, he did mergers and acquisitions.  It was during his fourth year of mergers that one of his work colleagues became depressed.  Dr. Ishizuka’s rewarding experience helping his friend led him to return to the field of psychiatry in 1976.

Having been taught to approach complex problems as a whole by defining and measuring ‘objectives’ critical for organizational survival and success, he returned to his own field eager to understand the existing criteria for positive mental health.  Instead, he found a growing list of mental diseases and disorders (Diagnostic Statistic Manual of Psychiatry).  Whether one suffered from anxiety or depression, successful psychiatric treatment demanded the elimination, reduction, or containment of disease.  To be healthy is not to be sick.  There was little if anything on positive mental health, well-being, and happiness.

At that time, Dr. Ishizuka remembered the work of the American psychologist Maria Jahoda, who in 1958 published “Current Concepts of Positive Mental Health.”  The monograph introduced guidelines for the evaluation of models of positive psychology.  Unfortunately, in 1976 little work had followed.  No model of positive psychological health was developed or tested with patients.  It was his mentor, Dr. Jack R. Ewalt, the man who was in charge of the study by Jahoda, who pushed him and others not to give up on health.  As Chairman of the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, Dr. Ewalt continued to challenge his students to question prevailing medical doctrine and conceptions on health by learning directly from patients, rather than using their own words to define and treat illness.

Dr. Ishizuka, drawing both on the East and the West, his experience in psychiatry, and most importantly, his patients, developed a science of health.  That paradigm incorporates both an understanding of the mind in distress and optimal well-being.  Over the years, he used and tested the model with different nationalities and people from all walks of life.  Rather than examining stress, disease, and illnesses, Ishizuka asks different questions of his field: What is the objective of therapy?  What does it mean to be well? How do we measure wellbeing as a part of a cycle of life?

The model of human personality and experience that he developed incorporates man’s search for self, the need for intimacy and the quest for achievement.  It also incorporates peak positive and negative experiences and an understanding of physical health.  The tripod model has withstood the demanding criteria put forth by the American psychologist Maria Jahoda in 1958 on “Current Concepts of Positive Mental Health” for the creation of new models of health defined in positive terms.  Dr. Ishizuka’s work helps us to build health far beyond a previous best level of health, happiness and optimal adjustment.  Working to overcome a fear of the unknown, he has defined and quantified the subjective nature of wellbeing and one working model of positive mental health and human personality (objective subjective).

Dr. Ishizuka’s has been using, refining, and testing the model of positive mental health with over 2000 patients in the last 35 years of his daily practice.  With a good sense of humor, a great sense of balance, and over 40,000 session hours examining millions of graphs on health and happiness, he has fine tuned a science of health and well-being.  His approach on healthy human beings has been presented to numerous fields including economic man, war/crisis/health, national health, Japan and organizations.

Today through his busy private practice, he continues the work that Dr. Ewalt incited him and other residents to undertake.  He hopes that insights that arose during Lifetrack therapy can contribute to each person’s life purpose ; the experience of much higher levels of self, intimacy and meaningful achievement.   Through this website and future books he hopes to share with other psychiatrists, psychologists, practitioners, academics, and most importantly the general public.

Dr. Yukio Ishizuka graduated from Keio University Medical School, Tokyo, Japan in 1964.  He completed his residency in Psychiatry at Mass Mental Health Center, Harvard Medical School in 1969.  He is the founder of Japan International Medical Students Association (JIMSA), which received the coveted Japanese Health Culture Award in 2007 by the Minister of Japanese Health at the Japanese Imperial Palace. Happily Married for 44 years with three children, he is also a member of the Salmagundi Club of N.Y. as a resident artist.

Visit the Positive Mental Health Foundation to support a study of human beings at their best, happiest, and most creative form.  Link to us to promote health and happiness.

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A Science of Happiness and Health?

Wellness is not the absence of disease. It is the presence of something — the question is of what?

Certain basic psychological needs, when fulfilled, lead to greater happiness and success.  These basic psychological needs are just as important as the body’s need for food, water, and sex.  Failure to meet and balance them can lead one to experience a variety of stress symptoms, burnout or divorce.  After prolonged neglect of basic psychological needs, one may become physically sick, or experience signs of stress.  At that juncture, it is important to take action.

Health in Positive Terms

Even though our happiness depends on fulfilling basic psychological needs, we know very little about them.

Regrettably, many in the field of psychology and psychiatry still concentrate largely upon the diagnosis and cure of disease: stress symptoms or stress types (anxiety, anger, physical symptoms, depression and psychosis).

We have forgotten that the goal of psychology is to help individuals live healthier, happier lives, as well as identify genius and optimal adjustment in any one sphere of our lives.  The medical field has spent years defining sickness.  It has yet to define what it means to be well.

Defining Psychological Health

Dr. Yukio Ishizuka, a Harvard trained Japanese psychiatrist, however, took a different path.

Instead of focusing on disease and illness, he observed that despite the unique symptoms and backgrounds of his patients, the elements that determined their well-being or distress were strikingly predictable.

This lead to a hypothesis that there may be certain psychological spheres which when fulfilled built successful psychological health, and when unfulfilled or repeatedly neglected, caused stress symptoms and made one vulnerable to disease.

Basic Psychological Needs 

By 1975, Dr. Yukio Ishizuka hypothesized that these three basic psychological needs or spheres that determined psychological health were:  the search for self, the need for intimacy, and the quest for achievement.

The Three Spheres

These three spheres –Self, Intimacy, and Achievement — as defined by the Lifetrack model of Positive Mental Health remain broad enough to encompass nearly all psychological events.

None of the three spheres exist in isolation.  Together they dynamically interact to characterize a person’s personality.

Hence, Dr. Ishizuka’s definition of psychological health is also a personality definition of man’s aspirations in a psychological sense.

Self

Traditionally, the integrity of the Self refers to the entire personality of the individual.  The Lifetrack model defines Self more narrowly as the ability and willingness to be “in touch,” “at peace, ” and “in control, ” of one’s own thoughts, feelings and actions.  Such self-awareness distinguishes human beings from their achievements and from their close relationships.  To be “in touch,” “at peace,” and “in control” of self requires the capacity to recognize and accept both positives and negatives in life, integrating them into a balanced perspective.  It also includes the flexibility to initiate, modify, and control thoughts, feelings, and actions.  We can do this by observing our Self and remaining present in the given moment.

Intimacy

Intimacy requires us to extend our thoughts, feelings, and actions beyond the self and become close to another human being. Many different types of intimate relationships such as those with a parent, spouse, significant other, children, friends, God or the universe bolster the psyche. A couple relationship, however, enables human beings to experience fullest union of personality, in all three dimensions of human intimacy – Intellectual/Social, Emotional, and Physical/Sexual.  It is for this reason, that in Lifetrack therapy, the therapist will focus on marriage intimacy or the development of an equivalent close couple relationship.

Achievement

Achievement is the capacity to reach beyond the self through the productive, creative, and the constructive expression of one’s capacities. It is an indirect way of finding an intimate union or relationship with the world in which one lives. Behind one’s work, career, athletics, hobbies or other intellectual and productive activities is the desire not only to subsist, but also to find meaning and achieve value, acceptance, respect, admiration and deep down love by doing something difficult or meaningful.  A person who is either unable or unwilling to build a relationship with the world through his or her constructive capacities may turn in desperation to destruction – an attempt to be noticed and counted and freed from total insignificance by a forced relationship of dominance.

Positive Mental Health: Balance the Cycle of Life

Regardless of one’s willingness or natural ability, experiencing wellbeing in any one sphere of life requires presence, dedication and perseverance.

There are trade-offs.  There are moments when one sphere becomes dominant.

However, when a person continuously chooses one sphere over the others, efforts become counter-productive.  At the end of one’s life one may regret having leaned too much towards the self, having thrown oneself into a love relationship at any cost, or having been consumed by achievement.

Life Definition : Genius in All Spheres of Life

When balance is forgotten, a love of life is sacrificed.  If one only experiences peace, friendliness, physical well-being, happiness and mastery in one sphere of life, then all time spent in the others spheres feels ‘wasted.’   We are not present and this is a source of great pain and frustration.  To be a genius in inner well-being is to be a genius in all three spheres, to be fully present in our self, intimacy and achievement spheres.

Beyond Work, Love and Play?

Although these three spheres have long been the subject of poets, philosophers, intellectuals, and theologians, Dr. Ishizuka goes beyond saying that health is work, love and play.  He does so by defining a whole model of human personality based on these three psychological aspirations, a method to surpass our own previous best level of adjustment in each of the three spheres, and a means to put our setbacks and fear into perspective by observing the true nature of things (objective subjective), quantifying happiness and tracking our progress.  He does all of that with a great sense of balance, skill and humor.  Rather than pointing to one life way or cycle of life, he has defined spheres of psychological health that define inner health at any given moment.

Life Purpose: A Model of Health Combining East-West

“Everywhere I go, ” wrote Freud, “I find a poet has been there before me.”

We all can and should come up with insights on our own happiness and health.  The advantage of a model based on basic psychological needs that encompass insights from the East and West is that it helps us to better recognize, develop, and fulfill the limits and capabilities of the human psyche.

By defining psychological health in positive terms and developing a means to quantify and track it, Dr. Yukio Ishizuka is contributing to a Science of Health.  In the last 35 years of his work on a model of positive mental health, over two thousand individuals have used his Lifetrack method to go beyond crisis and surpass a previous best level of psychological health.

Building Inner Health: A Life Way?

The experience of over 2000 individuals tracking daily their health in the three spheres of self (self definition), intimacy (love definition) and achievement (work definition) as well as their daily perception of their physical condition, positive peaks of well-being (peace, friendliness, physical well-being, happiness, and mastery) and negative peaks of stress (anxiety, anger, physical symptoms, depression and psychosis) has provided great insight into our desire for happiness and health, and to resistance against it.

Life Questions :  Find Love?  Work first?  Self esteem help?

Most of us do not build inner health.  We just deal with stress and problems as they arise.

The Lifetrack personality model attempts to understand how the three spheres of self, intimacy and achievement grow, interact and influence each other in our experience of health or distress.

The question then becomes what is the best way to achieve a greater sense of well-being (peace, friendliness, physical well-being, happiness, mastery)?

Should one first seek peace in self, the realization of achievement or fulfillment in intimacy?

The answer may depend on where we are in life and who can help us should we be overwhelmed.

Overcome Fear of the Unknown

Experience Positive Mental Health

To experience well-being (peace, friendliness, physical well-being, happiness and mastery) one may attempt to do so through any sphere.

Regardless of the sphere one approaches inner well-being, one has to struggle to overcome stress or fear in the form of anxiety, anger, physical-symptoms, depression or even psychosis.

Fear can be triggered from a difficult past or even be dormant in people who have had positive experiences.  They exist in all of us to differing degrees and can surface when we push beyond a previous best level of self, intimacy or achievement.

Reach Out, Overcome Fear, Recognize Stress Types, UseStress Techniques, Beyond ‘ I hate life ‘ to new Life Purpose

If you are overwhelmed, you may wish to reach out to loved ones or seek professional help.  There is nothing wrong with that.  Often it is the strongest who push themselves beyond areas where most would have given up.  Anyone can reach their threshold of stress if they push themselves too hard, and too long.  Each of us can experience the joy of building in the present, of living fully one’s sense of self, close relationships and meaningful achievement.

Opt in for more on A Science of Happiness and Health by the Positive Mental Health Foundation

Use the resources on our site to build, fortify, and develop each sphere of life (Self, Intimacy and Achievement) far beyond a previous best or optimal level.

Sign up for our monthly newsletter for more on happiness and health, conferences, events, new books and timely topics.   Join our blog to be updated on articles on happiness and health.

Personality Test : Tracking Happiness and Health using the Lifetrack Model of Positive Mental Health

For those wishing to track one’s own health and gain insights on one’s Personality or pattern of coping based on love, work and play, download (3MG) Lifetrack Therapy published in the Psychiatry Journal University of Ottawa, Vol 13, No. 4, 1988.  The article contains a summary of the positive mental health approach and a full definition sheet and room to track your inner health.  Criteria for a Science of Happiness and Positive Mental Health Models are provided by the reknown psychologist Jahoda.

You can use such definitions to rate your experience daily.

The Lifetrack model of Positive Mental Health and Lifetrack sheet can be used to take a global look at your inner health or to surpass a previous best level of self, intimacy and achievement.  Be aware as you rate yourself, you may experience resistance in the form of stress.  This is good stress.

The Study of Health and Happiness by the Positive Mental Health Foundation Site and Applications to Sciences

Whether you want to build psychological health in your own life, or understand how assumptions about healthy human beings can change other fields such as economics, join us.

We encourage individuals from all walks of life, including editors, journalists, writers, artists, scientists, housewives, academics, economists, psychologists and the general public to contribute to a deeper understanding of topics such as psychological health, happiness, and optimal adjustment.  Together we hope to better understand healthy human beings and build a new paradigm of personality based on health.

Copyright © 2010 Lifetrack Corporation

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