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Positive psychology is concerned with well-being rather than with disease, with how people flourish rather than how they become ill. Its ultimate aim is to make lives happier and healthier, and to help individuals realise the highest possible levels of human potential. In a much more limited way, that is also the aspiration of this book. You do not have to be an unhappy adult, or the parent of an unhappy child, to benefit from knowing more about the nature and causes of happiness.
What is the highest of all the goods that action can achieve? The great majority of mankind agree that it is happiness … but with regard to what happiness is, they differ.
ARISTOTLE (384–322 BC), The Nicomachean Ethics
During a visit to France many years ago, the former British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan asked Madame de Gaulle, wife of the French president, what she was most looking forward to when her hard-working husband retired. To Macmillan’s surprise and embarrassment, Madame de Gaulle replied, ‘A penis.’ Only later did it dawn on him that what she had actually said was ‘Happiness.’ Most of us recognise a penis when we see one, but we might feel less confident if asked to define happiness. Ask two parents what they mean by the word and you will get two different answers; ask two philosophers and you will probably get at least five.
Debating definitions is usually a tedious exercise beloved of pedants, but in this case it really does matter. After all, I have already suggested that happiness is the most important thing in life. On a practical level, implicit but faulty beliefs about the nature of happiness have a pervasive influence on almost every sphere of human activity, ranging from government economic policies to religion, from education to therapy, and from how we raise our children to how we conduct our daily lives. So, before burrowing into the causes of happiness and their practical implications, we should first decide what happiness is.
For a start, happiness is a distinct state in its own right, and not merely the absence of sadness or depression. You can be happy and sad at the same time, if you think about it. Imagine, for example, how you might feel (or felt) on your last day at school, or when your youngest child leaves home for college, or when you leave a job you have enjoyed for an even better one. Your feelings might be a complex mixture of pride, satisfaction, excitement, anxiety, sorrow and anticipation. Happiness is more than just the absence of unhappiness in much the same way that health is more than just the absence of disease.1
Happiness also means more than just feeling good in the here and now. Like any other fundamental aspect of human nature, happiness is too complex to reduce to a single dimension or a simple formula. So, what is it? Rather than dance round the issue, I will set out a definition that is as simple as I can make it, but which should nonetheless be recognisable to most scientists and philosophers who make a professional study of the subject. In short, happiness is a mental state composed of three distinct elements:
• Pleasure: the presence of pleasant, positive moods or emotions such as pleasure, contentment, joy, elation, ecstasy or affection.2
• Absence of displeasure: the absence of unpleasant, negative moods or emotions such as sadness, anxiety, fear, anger, guilt, envy or shame.
• Satisfaction: judging, on reflection, that you are satisfied with your life in general and with at least some specific aspects of your life (for example, your personal relationships, career or physical abilities).
Thus happiness is a combination of experiencing pleasure, not experiencing displeasure and being satisfied with your life. The relative proportions of pleasure, absence of displeasure and satisfaction can vary enormously, although you need at least a little of all three to be truly happy. Happiness therefore comes in many shapes, colours and flavours, comprising different combinations of satisfaction, pleasure and displeasure. Furthermore, any one combination of the three can be attained in many different ways: each person has their own unique blend as a result of their own unique life history and experiences.
Some psychologists and philosophers argue that there is a fourth dimension to happiness, which they variously refer to as ‘meaning’, ‘purpose’ or ‘virtue’. This embodies the sense that for a life to be truly happy it must have some deeper purpose or meaning beyond pleasure or satisfaction. For some people, this fourth dimension means religion (a subject we shall return to in chapter 6). However, the concept that true happiness requires a deeper purpose or meaning goes back at least as far as the philosophers of ancient Greece, for whom it did not necessarily have religious connotations.3 This is complex philosophical territory. Suffice it (I hope) to say that my threefold definition of happiness, and especially the element of satisfaction, is meant to be interpreted in the broadest possible sense, to encompass this fourth dimension. Great satisfaction, and hence great happiness, clearly can be derived from believing that your life has some deeper purpose or meaning, whatever that is.
The more straightforward distinction between pleasure and the absence of displeasure also has deep roots running back to ancient Greece. The philosopher Epicurus, among others, argued that avoiding pain and displeasure is a crucial element of happiness.4 The seventeenth-century poet John Dryden captured the thought in these lines: ‘For all the happiness mankind can gain / Is not in pleasure, but in rest from pain’. Early Buddhist teachings express a similar view when they advocate the avoidance of suffering, and depict the ultimate state of nirvana as one in which all suffering has ended.
Modern research has confirmed that pleasure and displeasure are distinct states, not just opposite ends of the same spectrum. Perhaps surprisingly, the amount of pleasure we experience is found to be relatively independent of how much displeasure we experience, at least when measured over reasonably long periods of time. You can have a lot, or a little, of one or both in your life. A heroin addict might have a life packed with intense pleasure and intense displeasure, whereas a routine-bound suburban drone might have little of either. Given a magic wand, you would probably choose to have a generous serving of pleasure, with occasional homeopathic doses of displeasure to heighten the contrast.
Pleasure and displeasure even have different brain mechanisms. A chemical messenger substance called dopamine is released by the brain in response to food, sex, drugs and other pleasurable stimuli, and for this reason dopamine is sometimes referred to as the brain’s ‘pleasure chemical’.5 Pleasure also stimulates the release in the brain of natural opiate substances called encephalins and endorphins. An imbalance in a different chemical messenger, called serotonin, plays a central role in unpleasant states such as anxiety and depression. Prozac and certain other antidepressant drugs work by inhibiting the re-uptake of serotonin in the brain and thereby boosting its level.
Pleasure and displeasure can become more closely intertwined in people suffering from severe depression. As well as experiencing intense displeasure, some depressives lose the capacity to feel pleasure – a condition known as anhedonia. They become unable to enjoy experiences that would normally raise their mood, which is one reason why it can be extremely difficult for them to emerge out of their depression.
Even more crucial to an understanding of happiness is the distinction between pleasure/displeasure and satisfaction. Pleasure and displeasure differ from satisfaction in two fundamental ways. First, pleasure and displeasure reflect how you feel, whereas satisfaction reflects how you think