THE CONTOURS OF POSITIVE HUMAN HEALTH

The primary objectives of this article are (a) to put forth an explici t operational formulation of positive human health that goes beyond pr evailing ''absence of illness'' criteria; (b) to clarify that positive human health does not derive from extant medical considerations, whic h are not about wellness, but necessarily require a base in philosophi cal accounts of the ''goods'' in life; (c) to provoke a change of emph asis from strong tendencies to construe human health as exclusively ab out the mind or the body toward an integrated and positive spiral of m ind-body influences; (d) to delineate possible physiological substrate s of human flourishing and offer future directions for understanding t he biology of positive health; and (e) to discuss implications of posi tive health for diverse scientific agendas (e.g., stress, class and he alth, work and family life) and for practice in health fields (e.g., t raining, health examinations, psychotherapy, and wellness intervention programs).