A Psychological Perspective on Joy and Emotional Fulfillment

This book takes a unique psychological approach to understanding the powerful emotion of joy, and provides a framework within which the study of human joy and other related positive fulfillment experiences can fit in a meaningful schema. A key feature of this book is its development of an experiential phenomenology of joy, based on more than three hundred descriptions of joy experiences which were recounted by subjects in an empirical study executed by the author. Types of joy experiences are distinguished such as excited vs. serene joy, anticipatory vs. completed joy, and affiliative vs. individuated joy.