Stress reduction through joy of life. The salutogenesis model by Aaron Antonovsky

Seminar paper from the year 2003 in the subject Psychology - Work, Business, Organisational and Economic Psychology, grade: 1, Karlsruhe University of Education, language: English, abstract: Typically, a person is not preoccupied with his/her health until getting sick. The state of wellbeing is so natural for most of us, that it barely enters the level of our consciousness. Consequently it is not surprising, that there is by far more literature about diseases, their symptoms and the course of a disease, than about the subject of health. Does the term 'symptoms of health' exist at all? Aaron Antonovsky did focus on the interesting subject of how an individual can stay healthy. He developed the model of salutogenesis, which he put in contrast to pathogenesis. Despite of his criticism of the latter concept used by the medical community, it was important for him to stress, that salutogenesis was supposed to serve as an addition to and not a replacement for pathogenesis. This model is presented here. At the end, I will discuss the subject of joy of life.