We all want to be happy, and there are plenty of people telling us how it can be achieved. The positive psychology movement, indeed, has established happiness as a scientific concept within everyone's grasp. But is happiness really something we can actively aim for, or is it simply a by-product of how we live our lives more widely? Dr. Mick Power, Professor of Clinical Psychology and Director of Clinical Programmes at the National University of Singapore, provides a critical assessment of what happiness really means, and the evidence for how it can be increased. Arguing that negative emotions are as important to overall well-being as the sunnier sides of our disposition, the book examines many of the claims of the positive psychology movement, including the relationship between happiness and physical health, and argues that resilience, adaptability in the face of adversity, psychological flexibility, and a sense of generativity and creativity are far more achievable as life goals. This is a book which will fascinate anyone interested in positive psychology, or anyone who has ever questioned the plethora of publications suggesting that blissful happiness is ten easy steps away.

This fully updated third edition of the highly praised Cognition and Emotion provides a comprehensive overview of contemporary research on both normal emotional experience and the emotional disorders. The book provides a comprehensive review of the basic literature on cognition and emotion - it describes the historical background and philosophy of emotion, reviews the main theories of normal emotions and emotional disorders, and the research on the five basic emotions of fear, anger, sadness, anger, disgust and happiness. The authors provide a unique integration of two areas which are often treated separately: the main theories of normal emotions rarely address the issue of disordered emotions, and theories of emotional disorders (e.g. depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, and phobias) rarely discuss normal emotions. The book draws these separate strands together, introducing a theoretical framework that can be applied to both normal and disordered emotions. Cognition and Emotion provides both an advanced textbook for undergraduate and postgraduate courses in addition to a novel approach with a range of implications for clinical practice for work with the emotional disorders.

We all want to be happy, and there are plenty of people telling us how it can be achieved. The positive psychology movement, indeed, has established happiness as a scientific concept within everyone's grasp. But is happiness really something we can actively aim for, or is it simply a by-product of how we live our lives more widely? Dr. Mick Power, Professor of Clinical Psychology and Director of Clinical Programmes at the National University of Singapore, provides a critical assessment of what happiness really means, and the evidence for how it can be increased. Arguing that negative emotions are as important to overall well-being as the sunnier sides of our disposition, the book examines many of the claims of the positive psychology movement, including the relationship between happiness and physical health, and argues that resilience, adaptability in the face of adversity, psychological flexibility, and a sense of generativity and creativity are far more achievable as life goals. This is a book which will fascinate anyone interested in positive psychology, or anyone who has ever questioned the plethora of publications suggesting that blissful happiness is ten easy steps away.

This fully updated third edition of the highly praised Cognition and Emotion provides a comprehensive overview of contemporary research on both normal emotional experience and the emotional disorders. The book provides a comprehensive review of the basic literature on cognition and emotion - it describes the historical background and philosophy of emotion, reviews the main theories of normal emotions and emotional disorders, and the research on the five basic emotions of fear, anger, sadness, anger, disgust and happiness. The authors provide a unique integration of two areas which are often treated separately: the main theories of normal emotions rarely address the issue of disordered emotions, and theories of emotional disorders (e.g. depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, and phobias) rarely discuss normal emotions. The book draws these separate strands together, introducing a theoretical framework that can be applied to both normal and disordered emotions. Cognition and Emotion provides both an advanced textbook for undergraduate and postgraduate courses in addition to a novel approach with a range of implications for clinical practice for work with the emotional disorders.

'The recent publication of a new edition of the American Diagnostic and Statistical manual (DSM-5) highlighted the two contrary viewpoints that exist within the field of mental health. There are those who value such classification systems, seeing each revision of the DSM as a fine-tuning exercise, and there are those who are strongly opposed, seeing such exercises as fundamentally flawed. 'Madness Cracked' provides a fascinating introduction to the history of psychiatry and clinical psychology, looking at how these areas have attempted to classify the various problems and disorders that their practitioners have faced in everyday use. Within the book, Power argues that - like in other areas of science - progress can only be made if the classification systems that are used have a sound theoretical basis. In addition, he outlines a model derived from work on cognition and emotion showing how, with appropriate modifications, it could provide a theoretical basis for classification and diagnosis. Using extraordinary examples from the history of psychiatry and clinical psychology, along with fascinating case material, he shows how our current knowledge in psychology can be developed to provide the theoretical basis that the field needs. For anyone in the field of mental health, Madness Cracked is a thought-provoking and controversial new book.'