This form of adjustment reflects Nietzsche’s “herd personality.” As Dąbrowski used to say, “To be adjusted to a sick society is to be sick.” Good behaviour for the wrong reasons. A robotic acceptance and conformity to one’s social and cultural mores without any deep reflection or modifications based upon one’s own personality characteristics. Positive adjustment allows one’s higher sense of self to guide behavior and how one treats others in society. Adjustment to what ought to be, to one’s personality ideal, a mastery of oneself and conformity to what one believes one ought to do in life. He proposed two types of adjustment and two types of maladjustment. This approach to defining personality complicates the traditional binary assessment categories of being either adjusted or maladjusted.ĭąbrowski created a new model of adjustment that considers the wider variance of a positive approach and creates a more subtle and nuanced approach to adjustment. Dąbrowski emphasized a self-aware and self-chosen personality, including a unique hierarchy of values, aims, and goals based upon one’s essential characteristics and one’s creation of a personality ideal for oneself. In the positive approach, however, personality is defined by the presence of autonomy, uniqueness, authenticity, and psychological growth (often construed as self-actualization), and by the ability to master one’s environment.
In the traditional model, one is either adjusted (conforms) or maladjusted (does not conform). The healthy personality is traditionally defined by adjustment to one’s social and cultural norms (how well one fits in) and, in today’s world, being happy by being able to satisfy one’s basic needs in culturally acceptable ways. In the last INPM newsletter, I introduced Kazimierz Dąbrowski and briefly reviewed the positive psychology approach he used in defining mental health. 11th Biennial International Meaning Conference 2021.Newsletter: Positive Living in Difficult Times.Existential Positive Psychology Bulletin.Research Institute on Flourishing and Suffering (RIFS).Existential Positive Psychology (PP 2.0).
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