[1][2][3] Kaufman is founder and director of the Center for Human Potential and has taught courses at Columbia, NYU, the University of Pennsylvania, and elsewhere.

from Carnegie Mellon University, where he double majored in psychology and human-computer interaction, and where he was Herbert A. Simon's last research assistant and a student of Randy Pausch.

[5] After Cambridge, Kaufman earned his Ph.D. in cognitive psychology from Yale University where he was mentored by Robert Sternberg, Jeremy R. Gray, and Jerome L.

A key assumption of the theory is that abilities are not static entities but are constantly changing throughout the life span as the person continually engages with controlled and spontaneous modes of thought.

[16][17] The concept of "tragic optimism" in the phrase coined by the existential-humanistic psychologist and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl, has been suggested by Kaufman as a healthy antidote to toxic positivity.