What would positive compassion-based psychology embrace?

At one level, I wholeheartedly agree with Professor Paul Gilbert (Your Voice, March issue). I do believe we need to be providing very clearly researched outcomes to support the tenets of the argument for improving the choices and decision-making of government of whatever hue they are. 

There are going to be many of us with direct and indirect knowledge of the impact of social policy and we have not brought together the various strands, except probably when we express disdain about yet another government action that directly impacts on people we serve.

However, we also need to be aware of the need to present analyses and 'conclusions' in ways that do not then get used by the right-wing elements of the press and society to decry and denigrate what results we obtain. To become identified with any particular party's political stance is likely to deny psychology's role in helping to formulate approaches to better outcomes.

No doubt there will be some within psychology who do not feel this would be a valuable aspect of the work of psychologists per se, yet I believe there is sufficient experience within the field to maintain a coherent stance (including counterarguments) that, perhaps, may alter the nature of any government's actions.

What I anticipate must be an immense taxonomy of issues and paradigms would in itself be something worth developing just to be clearer about what we envisage such a positive compassion-based psychology would embrace. Bring it on, I say, although I guess it will also generate a lot of polemics.

Jim Wood 
Retired Educational Psychologist