ABSTRACT
Subjective wellbeing involves a person’s positive cognitive (thinking) and affective (feeling) evaluations of their life. This includes a sense of optimism and life satisfaction together with feelings of pleasure and happiness. It includes both hedonic perspectives, that of maximising pleasure and minimising pain, and eudemonic perspectives, involving self-realisation and attaining meaning in life. Both are relevant to good quality of life and feelings of wellbeing. This chapter explores characteristics of positive life events, including those stabilising and enhancing to a person’s life in relation to wellbeing. It demonstrates how these characteristics can be added to the conceptual model to help people understand what underpins positive life events and how they impact the four underlying psychological needs of attachment, security, identity and achievement to increase wellbeing. An attachment approach combined with psychodynamic principles is utilised in Mentalisation-Based Therapy.
