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Promoting Resilience and Well-being with Wisdom and Wisdom Therapy

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Increasing Psychological Well-being in Clinical and Educational Settings

Part of the book series: Cross-Cultural Advancements in Positive Psychology ((CAPP,volume 8))

Abstract

Life is full of burdens and problems. If there is no unambiguous solution, wisdom is a psychological capacity to “solve unsolvable problems” in life. There is a large body of research showing that wisdom is given to everybody, is an important resilience factor, is associated with well-being, and can be described, similar to assertiveness, as a multidimensional psychological capacity. Constituents are change of perspective, empathy, perception and acceptance of emotions, serenity and humor, factual knowledge and procedural knowledge, contextualism, value relativism, uncertainty acceptance, long-term perspective, self distance and relativation of oneself, relativation of aspiration. Wisdom can be learned and trained. Wisdom psychotherapy is a structured approach to help patients with severe and prolonged adjustment disorders.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Research Group Psychosomatic Rehabilitation, Charité University Medicine, Berlin, Germany

    Michael Linden

  2. Department of Behavioural and Psychosomatic Medicine, Rehabilitation Center Seehof, Lichterfelder Allee 55, 14513, Teltow/Berlin, Germany

    Michael Linden

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  1. Michael Linden
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Correspondence to Michael Linden .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy

    Giovanni Andrea Fava

  2. Department of Psychology, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy

    Chiara Ruini

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Linden, M. (2014). Promoting Resilience and Well-being with Wisdom and Wisdom Therapy. In: Fava, G., Ruini, C. (eds) Increasing Psychological Well-being in Clinical and Educational Settings. Cross-Cultural Advancements in Positive Psychology, vol 8. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-8669-0_5

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