Critical Happiness Studies 2019036878, 2019036879, 9781138304437, 9780203730119

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Critical Happiness Studies

This volume draws together the work of a diverse range of thinkers and researchers to address the question of happiness critically, using a wide variety of theoretical and empirical methodologies. Broadening the discussion beyond what might be considered highly individual and insular conceptualizations of happiness, often based on purely positivist approaches to the subject, authors raise questions about the nature of individual and collective anxieties that might underpin the current emphasis on happiness and the ideological or governmental ends that may be served by the framing of happiness in psychology and economics. With attention to how individuals understand and pursue happiness in their daily lives, Critical Happiness Studies highlights different theoretical paradigms that demonstrate the role of power in producing specific conceptualizations of happiness and, consequently, how they frame individual self-understanding or subjectivities and (re)shape political problems. The collection makes available critical, theoretical, and methodological resources for addressing a powerful set of cultural, political, and scientific discourses that have loomed large since the closing decade of the 20th century. As a call for the establishment of a body of work in critical happiness studies, this book will appeal to scholars across the social sciences and humanities interested in the age-old problem of happiness. Nicholas Hill is an early career researcher located at RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia. His PhD thesis examined the intersection of happiness and suffering in contemporary life. His wider research focuses on emotions and contemporary life, therapeutic and self-help culture, and experiences of health and illness, particularly mental health. Svend Brinkmann is professor of psychology and qualitative methods and codirector of the Center for Qualitative Studies at Aalborg University, Denmark. He is the author of Qualitative Inquiry in Everyday Life, Qualitative Interviewing and Psychology as a Moral Science, and Diagnostic Cultures and the coauthor of InterViews (Third Edition): Learning the Craft of Qualitative Research Interviewing. Anders Petersen is associate professor of sociology at Aalborg University, Denmark and coeditor of Imaginative Methodologies: Creativity, Poetics and Rhetoric in Social Research, The Social Pathologies of Contemporary Civilization and Late Modern Subjectivity and Its Discontents: Anxiety, Depression and Alzheimer’s Disease.

Critical Happiness Studies Edited by Nicholas Hill, Svend Brinkmann and Anders Petersen

First published 2020 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2020 selection and editorial matter, Nicholas Hill, Svend Brinkmann and Anders Petersen; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Nicholas Hill, Svend Brinkmann and Anders Petersen to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Hill, Nicholas (Sociologist), editor. | Brinkmann, Svend, editor. | Petersen, Anders, 1973– editor. Title: Critical happiness studies / [edited by] Nicholas Hill, Svend Brinkmann and Anders Petersen. Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2020. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2019036878 (print) | LCCN 2019036879 (ebook) | ISBN 9781138304437 (hardback) | ISBN 9780203730119 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Happiness. | Quality of life. Classification: LCC BF575.H27 C75 2020 (print) | LCC BF575.H27 (ebook) | DDC 302/.1—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019036878 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019036879 ISBN: 978-1-138-30443-7 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-203-73011-9 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by Apex CoVantage, LLC

Contents

Acknowledgementsvii Notes on contributorsviii

Critical happiness studies: an invitation

1

NICHOLAS HILL, SVEND BRINKMANN AND ANDERS PETERSEN

PART I

Fantastical happiness: an impossible ideal21   1 Happiness, a moralistic fantasy

23

CARL CEDERSTRÖM

  2 ‘Clap along if you feel like a room without a roof’: understanding the pursuit of happiness as ideology

35

ANDERS PETERSEN

  3 ‘The sickness unto health’: self-reification, self-love, and the critique of happiness in contemporary life

48

ALASTAIR MORGAN

PART II

The political and social effects of happiness

65

  4 Hijacking the language of functionality? In praise of ‘negative’ emotions against happiness

67

EDGAR CABANAS AND EVA ILLOUZ

vi  Contents   5 Happiness and the new politicization of subjectivity

83

GRANT DUNCAN

  6 Happiness: a societal ‘imperative’?

98

LAURA HYMAN

  7 ‘It’s the soul that needs the surgery’? The social life of (un)happiness

110

NICHOLAS HILL

PART III

Resources for critical happiness studies129   8 Living well and living right: aesthetic and ethical dimensions of happiness

131

SVEND BRINKMANN

  9 Sociology, biographical research, and the development of critical happiness studies

144

MARK CIESLIK

10 Drowning in liquidity: Zygmunt Bauman on happiness, ambivalence, and security

162

JORDAN MCKENZIE

11 Complicating the happy cure: psychoanalysis and the ends of analysis

177

COLIN WRIGHT

Index193

Acknowledgements

Writing about happiness is a difficult task with much at stake. As a subject it has loomed large in the Western academic canon requiring researchers to grapple with an unwieldly body of work. In the social imaginary and at an experiential level the task is much more challenging. How does one deal critically, productively and sensitively with a subject that is implicated in visions of the good life and gives forward direction to individual lives? Anders, Svend and Nicholas would like to thank our wonderful contributors who have judiciously set their minds to our request and produced excellent contributions on this topic. We hope that this edited collection serves as a basis for the establishment of critical happiness studies and a resource that researchers can draw on before they embark on their own critical happiness journey. We would also like to thank Neil Jordan, Alice Salt and the team at Routledge.

Contributors

Svend Brinkmann is professor of psychology in the Department of Communication and Psychology at the University of Aalborg, Denmark. His research is particularly concerned with philosophical, moral, and methodological issues in psychology and other human and social sciences. In recent years, he has been studying the impact of psychiatric diagnoses on individuals and society and is now investigating the current culture of grief. In addition, he frequently engages in public debate and has published a number of books for a broad audience, such as Stand Firm, Standpoints, and The Joy of Missing Out (all of which have been published by Polity Press). Edgar Cabanas has a PhD in psychology and is a research fellow at Universidad Camilo José Cela (co-financed by the Community of Madrid, Spain [2017T2/SOC-5414]). He has been a postdoctoral researcher (2014–2016) and an adjunct researcher (2016–2018) at the Center for the History of Emotions (Max Planck Institute for Human Development), in Berlin. He is the author of Manufacturing Happy Citizens: How the Industry and Science of Happiness Control our Lives (Polity), has co-written with Eva Illouz, and is the author of several scientific papers (Theory & Psychology, Culture & Psychology) and book chapters (Oxford University Press, Suhrkamp, Routledge). Carl Cederström is associate professor at Stockholm Business School, Stockholm University, and the author, most recently, of The Happiness Fantasy. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, The Atlantic and The Chronicle of Higher Education. Mark Cieslik is a sociologist at Northumbria University, Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK. Since the 1990s, he has conducted several biographical research projects on young people, learning, and literacy. He established the British Sociological Association Happiness Study Group in 2009 that organizes seminars and conferences into wellbeing research. His recent work involves qualitative biographical studies into happiness/wellbeing (The Happiness Riddle and the Quest for a Good Life, 2017). His current projects include an introductory text on qualitative approaches in happiness research (Researching Happiness: Qualitative, Biographical and Critical Perspectives, 2020), ethnographies into mindfulness, and a long-term qualitative study of wellbeing in the Netherlands.

Contributors ix Grant Duncan teaches political theory at the Albany (Auckland) campus of Massey University. His research concerns the relations between public institutions and subjective states, especially pain and happiness. His book The Problem of Political Trust appeared in 2019 (Routledge). Nicholas Hill is an early career researcher located at RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia. His PhD thesis examined the intersection of happiness and suffering in contemporary life. His research more broadly focuses on emotions and contemporary life, therapeutic and self-help culture, and experiences of health and illness, particularly mental health. His work has been published in The Journal of Mental Health, Qualitative Health Research, health, and International Journal of Law and Psychiatry. Laura Hyman is a senior lecturer in sociology at the University of Portsmouth, UK. She has undertaken qualitative research on how British people understand happiness, wellbeing and their emotional lives, and is the author of Happiness: Understandings, Narratives and Discourses (published by Palgrave Macmillan). She is currently researching happiness and emotional wellbeing among academic staff at UK universities. Eva Illouz’s research is in the sociology of emotions, culture and capitalism. She is the author of 12 books, translated into 19 languages. She is the recipient of the Annaliese Mayer Award for excellence in research from the Humboldt Association, and the EMET Prize in Israel. She currently holds a chair of excellence at the EHESS in Paris. She contributes regularly to Haaretz, Le Monde, and Die Zeit. Jordan McKenzie is a lecturer in sociology at the University of Wollongong. His research is informed by European social and critical theory, and these perspectives contribute to his current research in the sociology of emotion. In particular, Jordan’s work critically engages with the current cultural fascination with happiness and the good life in order to better understand how emotional experience reflects modernization and social change. His most recent books are Deconstructing Happiness: Critical Sociology and the Good Life (2016) and Emotions in Late Modernity (2019). Alastair Morgan is a senior lecturer in mental health, School of Health Sciences, University of Manchester. His research interests are in Critical Theory (particularly the first generation of the Frankfurt School and the philosophy of T.W. Adorno), philosophy of psychiatry, critical neuroscience, critical medical humanities, ethics and values in mental health and qualitative research methods. He has written three books, published several contributions to edited books and published widely in peer reviewed journals. Anders Petersen is associate professor of sociology at Aalborg University, Denmark. He has published extensively on topics such as diagnostic culture, social pathologies, social critique, qualitative research and social theory. In recent years he has studied the current culture of grief.

x  Contributors Colin Wright is associate professor of critical theory in the Department of Cultural, Media and Visual Studies at the University of Nottingham, UK. He directs the Centre for Critical Theory there, and also convenes the MA in critical theory and cultural studies. His research interests are in French critical theory and continental philosophy, but particularly Lacanian psychoanalysis. Articles in these areas have appeared in journals such as Theory & Event, Paragraph, Culture, Theory & Critique, and The Lacanian Review and Health, Culture & Society. Book publications include Post-Conflict Cultures: Rituals of Representation (2006), Psychoanalysis (2008), Badiou in Jamaica: The Politics of Conflict (2013) and most recently a collection co-edited with Diana Caine, Perversion Now! (2017). As well as being an academic, he is a Lacanian psychoanalyst with a private practice in Nottingham and a member of the London Society of the New Lacanian School.

Critical happiness studies An invitation Nicholas Hill, Svend Brinkmann and Anders Petersen

‘No red rose in all my garden!’ he cried, and his beautiful eyes filled with tears. ‘Ah, on what little things does happiness depend! I have read all that the wise men have written, and all the secrets of philosophy are mine, yet for want of a red rose is my life made wretched.’ —Oscar Wilde (2018 [1888]: 58)

The admonition to be happy, voiced in concert by the scientifically epicurean sanitorium-director and the highly strung propaganda chiefs of the entertainment industry, have about them the fury of the father berating his children for not rushing joyously downstairs when he comes home irritable from his office. —Theodor W. Adorno (2005 [1951]: 62–63)

The General Assembly of the United Nations in its resolution 66/281 of 12 July 2012 proclaimed 20 March the International Day of Happiness, recognising the relevance of happiness and wellbeing as universal goals and aspirations in the lives of human beings around the world and the importance of their recognition in public policy objectives. —United Nations (2012)

Introduction There is an increasing sense that we ought to be happy. But, as the lament of Oscar Wilde’s young student demonstrates, happiness can be elusive and fickle. The words of ‘wise men’ and ‘all the secrets of philosophy’ cannot protect us from the unhappiness and wretchedness we feel when our personal desires and ambitions are thwarted. Yet in the closing decades of the 20th century and opening decades of the 21st century, we are witnessing a rapid growth in happiness studies, driven by the sub-disciplines of positive psychology and happiness economics but also the disciplines of anthropology, medicine, neuroscience, politics, and sociology, among others. These disciplines purport to have discovered the secrets of happiness. Techniques and practices aimed at improving individual and collective wellbeing are now promoted widely through what William Davies (2015) terms ‘the

2  Nicholas Hill et al. happiness industry’. The rapid expansion of happiness and wellbeing research has resulted in the take-up of measures, practices, and techniques by governments and organizations, who benevolently offer them to citizens and employees: a modernday salve to the problems of contemporary life. Scientific interest in fostering the conditions of human flourishing can be traced to the Enlightenment, when attempts to render human suffering obsolete began in earnest. It was thought that the application of rational thought to human problems could foster the conditions necessary for human flourishing. Pascal Bruckner (2000: 29) poetically sums up the promise of the Enlightenment: it was viewed as a ‘messianic dawn, a new beginning of time that can transform this valley of tears into a valley of roses’. The promise of lasting fulfilment, meaning, and happiness offered by ‘scientific experts’ and packaged into publicly available and easily digested popular literature could be viewed as the fulfilment of the project of the Enlightenment. This collection, however, urges caution, arguing that the constitution of happiness and the role that it plays in human lives is far from settled. Given its complexity as a subject and object of concern, happiness, as the quotations that open this introduction illustrate, has been variously embraced, treated with suspicion and outright contempt, and wholeheartedly dismissed. In contrast to the adoption of happiness as an overarching good, Paul Ricoeur’s reflection on Aristotle’s adoption of happiness as the telos of human life, for example, is more circumspect. He questions whether ‘happiness [should] be seen as that which sets an end to desire’s headlong rush’ (1992: 174). Adorno (2005 [1951]: 62–63) is more critical, arguing that the ‘gospel of happiness’ is a technique of domination promoted by psychologists, psychiatrists, and the entertainment industry that is used strategically to dull the senses and obscure suffering from view. We are admonished when we do not take our ‘happy pills’. Adorno’s argument is reminiscent of Aldous Huxley’s (2007 [1932]) novel Brave New World, where people are expected to consume and pursue pleasure at every turn. Notwithstanding enduring questions regarding exactly what constitutes happiness – or its more measured cousin, wellbeing – and its role in individual and social lives, the nomination of March 20 as World Happiness Day in 2012 by the United Nations (UN) suggests that it is a universal desire. As scholars, we find ourselves asking, Why happiness? Why now? The aim of this collection is not to do away with happiness altogether. This would be churlish and counterproductive given the way happiness is implicated in worlds (Ahmed 2010). Our intention is to problematize the promotion of happiness as a scientifically backed ‘ideal’ that is achievable by adopting ‘good’ habits, making the ‘right’ choices, and through willpower. The aim rather is to question the institutionalization of happiness and wellbeing measures and practices. A secondary, but no less important, purpose of this volume is to explore and promote alternative visions of good and ethical lives and, where necessary, rescue happiness from overly simplistic and under-theorized formulations. The value of critique, we suggest, is not to be found in outright resistance. It is difficult to be against happiness, after all (Bauman 2008). This edited collection is offered as an invitation:

Critical happiness studies 3 an invitation to gather together different voices to examine and carefully treat a matter of great – yet ordinary – human concern. Intellectually and personally grappling with happiness is a difficult and complex task that contributors to this volume have admirably and insightfully set themselves to. The chapters variously document individual understandings and experiences of happiness and critique the fetishization of positivity, stigmatization of negativity, and reification of emotional life. They do this by examining how subjective life is increasingly entwined with strategies of government and commercial ends. Collectively, the chapters make available a range of theoretical and methodological resources for addressing a powerful set of cultural, political, and scientific discourses that have loomed large since the closing decade of the 20th century – that pivotal point Sara Ahmed (2010) usefully called the turn to happiness. In this introduction to the edited collection, we contextualize the contributions by sketching significant historical treatises on happiness, identify key events, and make some preliminary observations. We point to the way that social critique and resistance is evident in the turn to happiness and its historical precursors. Before providing an outline of the structure of the volume and details of each chapter, we conclude by reflecting on why the establishment of a critical happiness studies is needed at this historical juncture.

The tectonics of happiness The recognition of happiness as a universal and objectively measurable subjective state by no less an institution than the UN and its adoption as an overarching human goal contrasts with historical treatises that question its function, role, and even our ability to objectively determine exactly what it is (cf. McMahon 2006). The tectonic shifts evident historically in formulations of happiness continue to haunt and shape contemporary definitions. A UN website (UNRIC 2019) detailing how and why the organization adopted a ‘private and subjective’ experience as a ‘public and global’ goal hints at this complexity while reassuring the public of its simplicity. Included on the website is an image of a person whose facial expression could be described as somewhere between a hefty smile and a deep chuckle. The image works symbolically to illustrate the simplicity, grace, and desirability of the experience of this positive emotion. The definition of happiness offered, however, alludes to its enduring complexity and slipperiness as a subject: it is ‘a mental or emotional state of well-being characterized by positive or pleasant emotions ranging from contentment to intense joy’ (UNRIC 2019). It is this tension between the artfulness and simplicity of the presentations of happiness in popular and scientific discourses and its underlying complexity that animates criticism. The story of the ‘discovery’ of happiness cannot be told without reference to the therapeutic turn, arguably one of the dominant cultural forms of the 20th and 21st centuries (cf. Illouz 2008; Madsen 2014; Wright 2011). Psychology, psychiatry, and to a lesser extent medicine generated a vocabulary of self, emotion, desire, pathology, and despair. Indeed, the terminology in the definition of happiness offered by the UN refers to diverse aspects of subjective experience – cognitive,

4  Nicholas Hill et al. emotional, and psychological – that do not fit easily together. The emphasis on mental and emotional states points to the role of psychology, psychiatry, and medicine in constructing normative ideas of what constitutes an ideal subjective state and, by extension, the subject. While there has been an enduring emphasis on positivity and happiness in therapeutic and self-help culture, it has largely been through the prism of pathology and disorder. The ‘new science of happiness’ claims to move psychology and psychiatry beyond what is purported to be a mistaken emphasis on disorder and rescue happiness from the clutches of the unscientific self-help and New Age industries (Diener and Biswas-Diener 2008; Peterson and Seligman 2004; Seligman 2011). The different approaches and the diversity of terminology in happiness studies suggest that the cultural and historical baggage of a concept like happiness is far from settled. Take Aristotle’s (2004) distinction between forms of happiness, for example. While happiness is the telos of human life, according to his philosophical treatise, he posited important qualitative differences between forms. For Aristotle (2004), pleasure or good feeling, what he termed hedonia, was a slavish form of happiness. In contrast, the term eudaimonia was described as a higher, ‘god-like’ form of happiness situated in individual conduct and self-realization. In this formulation, happiness was to be found in a life of contemplation and one’s conduct in the polis. Significantly, eudaimonia was linked to social conditions – that particular and exclusionary form of democracy practised at the time. This distinction between higher and lower forms of happiness has resulted in different foci and emphases in contemporary theorizations and research. Furthermore, these differences ask different questions of government officials and offer distinct solutions (Etzioni 2016). What role should the state play in the happiness of its citizens? This question has been summed up by Hannah Arendt (2018 [1960]): Is the role of governments to enable the production of a public happiness by facilitating the participation of citizens in government affairs? Or is the role of government to protect the interests of individuals so that they can pursue pleasure in their own time and in their own way? Happiness is tied to action in the first question, what she termed public happiness. In the second, it is to be pursued outside of public life, in leisure time, what she referred to as a private happiness. Whether happiness is viewed as a private experience to be pursued in one’s leisure time or by participating in public life results in different definitions of happiness traceable to Aristotle’s (2004) distinction between eudaimonia and hedonia. The inclusion of diverse and opposing emotions in the UN definition outlined earlier – from contentment to intense joy (UN 2019) – reveals the unsettled nature of exactly what constitutes happiness, where it might be found, and how we might examine it as an object of research. Jordan McKenzie (2016: 49), for example, defines contentment as a ‘mode of self-understanding’ that is to be found in a larger social context that shapes the production of self and the subject’s affective evaluation of their place in the world. In contrast, Adam Potkay (2007) defines joy as a transcendent and ephemeral emotional state that erodes the boundary between self and other, one that is more closely associated with a state of grace. Colebrook (2007/2008: 93) notes this tension, arguing that we live with the tension of two

Critical happiness studies 5 modes of narrative happiness: ‘a happiness that maintains itself through time in the form of continuity and recognition, and a happiness that releases itself from all worldly recognition and identified being in order to become nothing other than a pure law unto itself’. These opposing narratives pose specific problems for measuring and understanding happiness. The ‘science’ of happiness: measuring up The work of Jeremy Bentham, a key figure in utilitarianism (1969 [1789]), is central to the development of happiness measures (cf. Layard 2005; Duncan 2013; Wright 2013). Bentham asserted that human conduct is governed by two sovereign masters: the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain. His philosophy was based on a hedonic understanding of happiness. The point of government, he argues, is to produce the greatest happiness for the greatest number. There are many iterations of utilitarianism, but it remains a central governing principle within national and international governance frameworks. Bentham had a keen interest in developing scientific tools to measure happiness, but his attempts to do so were largely unsuccessful. The ability to measure happiness remained limited up until the second half of the 20th century, when psychologists and economists began working feverishly to develop tools that could capture what hitherto had been an elusive research subject (Davies 2015). In contrast to popular representations of positive psychology and happiness economics, there is a reluctance to explicitly identify happiness in social scientific research. Research has instead tended to focus on the concepts of psychological wellbeing and subjective wellbeing, which are linked to Aristotle’s (2004) distinction between hedonia and eudaimonia. Hedonic measurements are sometimes referred to as subjective wellbeing, and are said to have three components: a high level of positive affect; a low level of negative effect; and a high degree of satisfaction with one’s overall life (Deci and Ryan 2008; Kahneman, Diener, and Schwarz 1999; Ryan and Deci 2001). Up until the 1980s, hedonic measures predominated within this research. Eudaimonic measures are purported to take a broader understanding by focusing on people’s lives holistically, and are termed psychological wellbeing (Ryff 1989; Ryff and Singer 2008; Waterman 2013). Ryff (1989), for instance, identifies six dimensions to psychological wellbeing: self-acceptance, positive relations with others, personal growth, purpose in life, environmental mastery, and autonomy. Other researchers have focused on self-determination (Ryan and Deci 2001) and personal expressiveness (Waterman 2013). There is considerable overlap in practice between subjective wellbeing and psychological wellbeing (Deci and Ryan 2008; Ryan and Deci 2001). Each approach rests largely on survey-based methods but also experience sampling and diary methods (Thin 2012; Zevnik 2014a, 2014b). Methodologically, these rely on people’s perception of how they feel, in the form of selfreporting (Bartram 2012; Davies 2015), and here the distinction between positive and negative emotions is secure, with little room available in these conceptualizations for understanding experiences of complex and contradictory emotions

6  Nicholas Hill et al. (Ahmed 2010; Segal 2017). There is an unshakeable faith in happiness, with few questions regarding its relative importance in people’s lives. Perhaps more significantly, claims of the apparent universalism of happiness are undermined by research that has demonstrated the cultural and historical particularity of the idea. The roots of positive psychology and therapeutic culture have been traced to a Protestant form of Christianity evident in North America that promotes a kind of ‘positive individualism’ (Becker and Marecek 2008; Cabanas and Sanchez Gonzalez 2012; Moskowitz 2001). To move beyond the fallibility of self-reports and avoid accusations of historical and cultural relativism, there have been attempts to establish more ‘accurate’ neuroscientific happiness measures (Davies 2015; Hare and Vincent 2016; Zevnik 2014b). In spite of the existence of different research approaches and diverse terminology, there is little reflection on whether happiness is even a ‘thing’ that can be objectively discovered and isolated from everyday experience. Given the unsettled nature of the debate over exactly what constitutes happiness, the whole enterprise may rest on an ‘axiomatic error’: ‘the search for an eternal, unchanging, all-encompassing definition of happiness [may involve an] epistemological fallacy that happiness “has” a kind of essence that can be rendered conceptually’ (Jugureanu, Hughes, and Hughes 2014). We could say, following Thomas Kuhn’s (1996 [1962]) formulation of how new scientific paradigms are generated, that the new science of happiness is simply immature and underdeveloped (Jugureanu et al. 2014). Yet it may be that the power of happiness as an ideal rests on a relatively nonspecific understanding of emotion (von Sheve 2018). Despite nagging questions and doubts, happiness is increasingly promoted as an asset, as central to good mental and physical health and the successful conduct of lives. The ‘science’ of happiness is central to the packaging and promotion of practices and techniques promoted by self-styled experts, with scientific evidence used as powerful and effective testimonials on the purported benefits of positive emotions. Indeed, an increasing amount of research identifies a causal link between happiness and people’s physical and mental health and their social success. Based on ‘scientific evidence’, Lyubomirsky, King, and Diener (2005: 801) claim that ‘those who experience a preponderance of positive emotions – tend to be successful and accomplished across multiple life domains’. Tugade, Fredrickson, and Barrett (2004: 1184) similarly suggest that the experience of positive emotions helps build resilience and coping skills, ‘buffering people against maladaptive health outcomes’. Research findings also suggest a positive correlation between happiness and better neuroendocrine regulation, improved immune function, lower cardiovascular risk, better sleep, and more adaptive neural circuitry (Ryff and Singer 2008). Diener and Biswas-Diener (2008) note that happiness is linked not only to better health but also to stronger social connections. These findings effectively construct happiness as a resource and opportunity. The promise of the new science of happiness has given birth to a whole host of actors who offer testimonials on the power of happiness and make available diverse techniques and practices that individuals can use to optimize their emotional and

Critical happiness studies 7 mental states. These are promoted widely. Despite the much-exalted scientific basis of happiness studies, the role of science is less clear in the promotion of happiness. In the happiness industry (Davies 2015) are psychologists, psychiatrists, and other therapeutically oriented actors, as well as economists, self-help practitioners, New Age gurus, and self-styled life coaches. Like the therapeutic turn that preceded it, scientific discourses of happiness have been taken up enthusiastically in popular culture and promoted widely (Illouz 2008; Madsen 2014; Wright 2011). As a result, there are now a large number of practices and techniques made available through evidence-based practices and more traditional self-help and New Age therapies. Happiness in this regime is presented as a promise, a choice, and, most significantly, an ideal. The promise of happiness is to be found in the perfectibility of emotional states and is constructed as an ongoing enterprise aimed at self-optimization (cf. Aubrecht 2013; Brinkmann 2017; Cederström and Spicer 2017). As Carl Cederström, a contributor to this volume, noted, along with his colleague in their book Desperately Seeking Self-Improvement: A Year Inside the Optimisation Movement, which amusingly and exhaustively details their year-long devotion to self-improvement (Cederström and Spicer 2017), a bewildering number of techniques are available for optimizing the self. In a less critical and more accommodating book, The happiness project: Or why I spent a year trying to sing in the morning, clean closets, fight right, read Aristotle and generally have more fun, Gretchin Rubin (2011) also notes the variety of techniques available to improve individual happiness. As an ongoing enterprise of self, happiness is constructed by ‘experts’ as an investment in the self, a commodity that can be transacted and exchanged through social interaction and good citizenship. We might, then, understand happiness as a new mode of self-government. Many of the contributions to this volume examine these ideas, demonstrating how happiness is constructed as a moral ideal that is penetrating ever-more deeply into the lives of individuals and society in spite of its elusiveness as an object and subject of research.

Happiness as resistance, as critique Despite significant – but uneven – improvements in life expectancy, living standards, and quality of life globally, it seems that we are not as happy as we might be expected to be (Ahmed 2010; Frawley 2015). Indeed, the pervasive sense of crisis driven by contemporary social processes, which threaten and undermine subjective life and social relations may increase the appeal of happiness. Peter Esaiasson and colleagues (2019) assert that citizens increasingly act as though they have signed a happiness contract with their government, punishing or rewarding governments based on their level of wellbeing. Davies (2018) notes that a pervasive nervousness resulting from climate change, financial crisis, and terrorism, among other modern-day maladies, marks contemporary democracies, displacing the space previously occupied by reason. The rise in populist political parties, he argues, is attributable to this nervousness and is evidenced by Brexit and the election of Donald Trump as president of United States of America.

8  Nicholas Hill et al. In this context, Binkley (2011: 376) caustically observes, happiness is put forward as an ‘elixir for all that ails modern life’. Indeed, the recent story of happiness cannot be told without reference to the backdrop of alienation and suffering that is said to pervade contemporary social life. According to Bryan Turner (2018), it is not possible to understand the modern secular regime of happiness without reference to two powerful narratives that attempt to explain the relationship between modernity and happiness. On the one hand, happiness is viewed as the promise of the Enlightenment’s emphasis on rationality. Yet on the other hand, modernity is viewed as a ‘disorienting and disturbing loss of meaning and purpose’ (2018: np). These changes have disturbed what Raymond Williams (1985: 130) terms structures of feeling: those ‘meanings and values as they are actively lived and felt’, where thought and feeling are collapsed together in practical consciousness. The alteration in these structures wrought by modern and late modern social processes have disturbed the practical consciousness of individuals, which, at the level of subjective life, has demanded emotional, psychological, and social accommodation to economic, political, and social changes (Brinkmann 2010; Sointu 2005). How, then, should we define contemporary society, in which the increasing sense that we ought to be happy thrives? For the past two centuries, sociologists have variously labelled contemporary society – and hence our particular epoch of modernity – as late modern society (Giddens 1991), hyper-modern society (Lipovetsky 2005), liquid modernity (Bauman 2000), and new modernity (Beck 1992), just to mention a few. These sociological diagnoses of the times have all tried to decipher the societal and structural transformations (sociocultural, normative, political, economic, etc.) that have paved the way for altering previous types of modernity to our present one. Although the analyses vary and scholars focus on different characteristics of contemporary society, they all agree, as a body of work, that our age is one of extended individualization. Ulrich Beck, for example, shows that individualization is producing a ‘new modernity’ by being the structural principle of socialization. As Beck writes, the individual becomes the reproduction unit of the social in the lifeworld (Beck 1992: 90). This, however, does not entail the complete dismantling of ties to overarching structures of society per se. On the contrary, according to Beck, individualization has to be understood as a process of societalization and hence not as the complete emancipation from societal standards and norms. In other words, individuals in contemporary society might have the possibility – and even a strong desire – to choose their own life path, but how they do so is always embedded in societal expectations. Through this analytical prism, we are able to see the claim that we ought to be happy and, further, that it is indeed ‘good’ for us, in the following manner. Happiness is presented as an individual endeavour that is formative of social interaction and, at the same time, a normative demand that supports the process of societalization. Thus, happiness can be understood as a socially supported possibility that is pursuable, and, simultaneously, as a demand and a necessity. To be a good and productive citizen requires working to maintain and optimize one’s happiness as a way of managing the precarity of the present moment. The institutionalization of happiness can be viewed as a shift from what Eve Sointu (2005) termed the body politic to the body personal. As an individual practice, happiness is depicted

Critical happiness studies 9 as a form of activity that is ‘relatively easy, generally pleasant, most definitely deserved, and without doubt “good” for the person’ (Sointu 2005: 260). To be found in the story of happiness, however, are key events that illustrate how capitalism is able to absorb critique and put it to work for its own ends, resulting in what Boltanski and Chiapello (2007) term a new spirit of capitalism. This new capitalism is purported to align with individual desires for self-­realization and freedom. Alex Callinicos’s (2006) attempt to reclaim the word transcendence in the Kantian sense is useful here. Transcendence, he notes, is defined as the ability to ‘climb over’, move ‘beyond’, or ‘surmount’. In the current neoliberal regime, whose underlying philosophy is aptly summed up by Foucault as ‘one always governs too much’ (2008: 319), happiness is offered as a way of unlocking human potential, which somehow neatly dovetails with the promise of liberal capitalist institutions (Callinicos 2006). The repackaging of happiness as a form of resistance and critique allows such institutions to present a more benevolent and caring face. Stories of resistance and critique are prominent in the historical precursors to the turn to happiness. Until the 1970s, economic indicators were the dominant measure of the Enlightenment’s promise of individual and societal progress. Research examining the link between national levels of happiness and income conducted by Gary Easterlin (1974) at the time challenged this orthodoxy, encapsulated in what is now referred to as the Easterlin paradox. He found that increases in income do correlate with higher levels of happiness in the short term. In the longer term, however, increases in income do not necessarily correlate with increased levels of happiness; rather, national levels plateau. In spite of some methodological questioning (Veenhoven and Hagerty 2006), these findings have been central to the development of happiness economics (cf. Layard 2005) and used to argue for alternative and more humane measures of societal progress. The development of the gross national happiness (GNH) index by the Kingdom of Bhutan in 1972 is also a story of resistance. In response to poorly received social changes accompanying the kingdom’s opening up to capitalism, King Jigme Singye Wangchuck nominated an alternative measure of progress, GNH, asserting that it was more important than gross domestic product (GDP).1 Delegates from the Kingdom of Bhutan offered GNH as an alternative measure of societal progress to the world through the UN in the 1990s, leading to the establishment of World Happiness Day and annual publication of the World Happiness Report (Helliwell et al. 2019). Resistance is also evident in the development of positive psychology. The discovery of happiness and wellbeing is presented as moving psychology and psychiatry beyond what was perceived as their traditional focus on pathology and suffering to what makes life worth living. The tenure of Martin Seligman, a central figure in positive psychology, as president of the World Psychological Association, is pivotal in this narrative. Upon accepting the presidency in 1998, Seligman (1999) declared, Fifty years of working in a medical model on personal weakness and on the damaged brain has left the mental health professions ill-equipped to do effective prevention. We need massive research on human strength and virtue. We

10  Nicholas Hill et al. need practitioners to recognize that much of the best work they do is amplifying the strengths rather than repairing their patients’ weaknesses. We need psychologists who work with families, schools, religious communities and corporations to emphasize their primary role of fostering strength. Seligman used his presidency to advocate a role for positive psychology in contributing to images of the good life. Somewhat counterintuitively, the period coextensive with the happiness turn has also been anointed the age of depression (Horwitz and Wakefield 2007). According to Horwitz and Wakefield’s thesis, the increase in depression diagnoses is the result of the pathologization of sadness by the psychiatric profession rather than an increase in actual experiences of depression. Indeed, Seligman, along with his colleague, published Character Strengths and Virtues: A Handbook and Classification (Peterson and Seligman 2004) as a direct challenge to key texts in the diagnosis and treatment of ‘mental disorder’ – the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders and the International Classification of Disease. The pathologization of ordinary sadness may be unwarranted, but what is left untouched by the new science of happiness is the reason for suffering in the first place. The appeal of happiness is that it grapples with two dominate narratives that detail the effects of modernity: happiness as crisis and happiness as promise (Turner 2018). The new science of happiness addresses both these narratives. According to Eva Moskowitz (2001), we now live with the ‘therapeutic gospel’ of happiness, which explains our present predicament and offers an individual path to salvation. The gospel has three tenets: 1 Happiness is our ‘supreme goal’. 2 Individual problems stem from psychological causes. 3 ‘The psychological problems that underlie our failures and unhappiness are in fact treatable’ (Moskowitz 2001: 2–3). The individual in this story is cast as both hero and villain. We should be wary of discourses that position individuals as masters of their destiny. An invitation to critique It is incumbent on us as critical scholars, we argue, to examine how the flexibility and adaptability of the current conceptualization of happiness neatly accommodates conditions of late or high modernity. Because these discourses penetrate so deeply into the self and society, we must interrogate such claims. Our call for the establishment of critical happiness studies should not be understood as a call to arms but rather an invitation to critique. We assert, following Foucault (1988: 154–155), that ‘practicing criticism is a matter of making facile gestures difficult’: the function and role of critical happiness studies, then, is to point out on ‘what kinds of assumptions, what kinds of familiar, unchallenged, unconsidered modes of thought the practices that we accept rest’ (1988: 154–155). However, we also

Critical happiness studies 11 wish to pave the way for the establishment of a critical happiness studies that presents a normative foundation of, say, the potential individual suffering generated by the contemporary societal ideology to be happy. The function of critical happiness studies is to question claims to legitimacy on the part of happiness researchers, draw attention to the potentially negative consequences of the social demand to be happy, and open the field to a greater variety of voices. Contributions to this volume call into question the peculiarly inanimate and robotic kind of happiness offered by ‘experts’. The final line of the song, ‘fitter, happier, more productive’, found on Radiohead’s breakout album OK Computer released in 1997 – a period coextensive with the happiness turn – poignantly sums up what is at stake here: Calm, fitter, healthier and more productive A pig in a cage on antibiotics The packaging of happiness as a modern cure to ailments of contemporary life risks reducing human lives to those of factory-farmed animals. Written at a different point in history to our own, the quotation from Adorno (2005 [1951]): 62–63) that opened this introduction also highlights and radicalizes the risks of present framings: ‘[T]here is a straight line of development between the gospel of happiness and the construction of camps of extermination so far off in Poland that each of our own country men can convince himself that he cannot hear the screams of pain’. The way we think about happiness has consequences for how we individually and collectively respond to suffering. Conceptions of happiness are central to the conduct of human lives, as contributions to this volume demonstrate. It is because of this that it is important to question and critique thin framings. The task, as we see it, is twofold. We must rescue critique from the happiness industry and by extension the neoliberal system that supports it. A critical body of work needs to consider the role that happiness plays in individual lives and understand how it is actively experienced and felt. Taking seriously the question of happiness has implications for our potential to experience that otherworldly emotion, joy, and makes possible the actual conditions for human flourishing. Critique, as Judith Butler (2009: 789) notes, has two functions: the first is ‘negative, a refusal; but the second function is invention’. By refusing individualistic framings we create space for new and different formulations of happiness. Following Bruno Latour (1999), we can say that happiness is a highly political and polemical rendering of a matter of human concern, what he describes as ‘matters of fact’. Matters of fact are objects removed from the world of social relations. In contrast, he argues, matters of concern are, following Martin Heidegger, a thing, an issue, or a gathering (Latour 1999: 233). We argue, following Latour, that happiness should be understood and treated as a matter of human concern in which people have invested much hope. The deep and extensive penetration of the happiness turn attests to this. To avoid pulling the rug out from under people, critical happiness studies must proceed carefully and sensitively by understanding how this ideal at this historical

12  Nicholas Hill et al. moment gathers together institutions, organizations, and people to maintain its existence (Latour 1999). Given the relative importance of happiness in people’s lives, we suggest that critical happiness studies should be viewed as an invitation: an invitation to gather together different and diverse voices and contribute to alternative, more caring and collective conceptualizations of happiness. In this spirit, we offer this edited collection as an invitation to critique.

Part 1 – Fantastical happiness: an impossible ideal Carl Cederström’s chapter ‘Happiness, a moralistic fantasy’ opens the volume by highlighting the historical specificity of our contemporary understanding of happiness and neatly sets out the problem. Drawing on the psychoanalytic concept of fantasy, Cederström argues that happiness is not a private matter; rather, it is shaped socially and has evolved historically. As a fantasy, happiness organizes our experience of the good life and, most importantly, shifts our attention away from unpleasantness, he argues. It is therefore a moralistic fantasy. Moving deftly through Western history, Cederström highlights how the meaning and role of happiness in different historical epochs is contingent on culture and has an ‘unmistakable’ moral quality. In the happiness fantasy of the present historical moment, three moral ideals are evident: ‘authenticity’, ‘enjoyment’, and ‘work’. Cederström then illustrates how these ideals are traceable to a particular brand of psychoanalysis promoted by Wilhelm Reich in the 1950s, the countercultural movements of the 1960s, and the rise of the corporation in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. By revealing these links, Cederström points to the individualism and ambivalence inherent in contemporary framings of happiness, and he suggests that we need a new, and different, fantasy. In the following chapter, ‘ “Clap along if you feel like a room without a roof”: Understanding the pursuit of happiness as ideology’, Anders Petersen concentrates on the contemporary historical moment and examines the conflation of happiness with freedom. He demonstrates the analytic value of combining both Marxist and culturalist conceptions of ideology to highlight the integrative and distortive aspects of the contemporary pursuit of happiness. The happiness ideology, Petersen argues, is central to the performance society, where we, as individuals, are continuously judged on our performance. To be seen to be free means pursuing happiness at every moment and every turn. Here the future is pregnant with possibility and is potentially (and hopefully) free from unhappiness. Yet moments of happiness are situated in time. There are, then, perpetually new and different forms of happiness in the future that one must pursue. It is in this way that happiness colonizes our future, Petersen asserts. To be hopeful about the future, one must have confidence in the destination: a belief that may be in short supply in a world of precarity. Yet Petersen powerfully reveals how we are propelled forward anyway, because to reject happiness means rejecting freedom in the contemporary zeitgeist. Alastair Morgan’s chapter ‘ “The sickness unto health”: Self-reification, selflove, and the critique of happiness in contemporary life’ concludes Part 1 by

Critical happiness studies 13 defining a concept of happiness and defending it against the formulations offered by positive psychology. Morgan conceptualizes happiness as having three elements: a concentration on an object other than the self; something that can arrive only by chance; and the action of reflection, which ‘destroys the experience of happiness’. He then defends his conceptualization of happiness against contemporary discourses of happiness, where it is constructed as a ‘daily practice of selffashioning’. Morgan draws attention to the tensions and contradictions in such a formulation and argues that it results in a particular form of self-reification that objectifies interior life. This move, he argues, results in a ‘hyperalert, hyperreflexive search’ that makes happiness impossible. The impossibility of this promise, Morgan concludes, may have the opposite effect, producing instead a peculiar form of pathology or sickness.

Part 2 – The political and social effects of happiness Edgar Cabanas and Eva Illouz’s chapter, ‘Hijacking the language of functionality? In praise of “negative” emotions against happiness’, opens this section by examining how positive psychology conceptualizes emotion. They argue that positive psychology is producing a new emotional hierarchy through a simplistic dichotomization of emotions by marking them as either positive or negative. Positive emotions are associated with optimal functioning in positive psychological discourses, whereas negative emotions are viewed as maladaptive. Through this distinction, Cabanas and Illouz reveal how positive psychology is reformulating normative notions of personhood. Despite the limitations and critiques of this new paradigm, they highlight the way positive psychology has been taken up and promoted by organizations and institutions, leading to a powerful happiness imperative. Cabanas and Illouz caution against this demand, suggesting that a more-complex theorization of emotion highlights how positive emotions can indeed have bad implications and, importantly, that negative emotions may lead to positive individual, political, and social change. They conclude by asserting that there is no a priori function that can be attributed to specific emotions, and further, by understanding that all emotions are central to any examination of social and political incentives that mobilize individuals. Focusing on positive emotions to the exclusion of negative ones misses this important point. Grant Duncan’s chapter, ‘Happiness and the new politicization of subjectivity’, follows by further exploring the science of happiness and examining the way subjectivity has become the subject of politics and governance. In contrast to historical economic and psychological research methods that attempted to measure subjectivity through patterns of choice and behaviour, the new science of happiness measures happiness by asking people how they feel/felt and by invoking neuroscience. In this way, happiness is naturalized. Despite the illogical assumptions of this move, where ‘sense data’ is conflated with the ‘evaluation’ of feelings, happiness, he argues, has become the subject of moralization and politicization. In contrast to Aristotle’s claim that humans are a living animal with the capacity for cooperative

14  Nicholas Hill et al. and therefore political existence, happiness is located at the pre-political level. It is in this way, Duncan asserts, that positive psychology objectifies subjective life and joins forces with happiness economics to produce a new form of biopower that purports to maximize and unleash the creative and productive capacities of individuals. Asking citizens how happy they are also asks them to consider whether they measure up. Such a question, Duncan concludes, is also an injunction to be happy, which neatly aligns with the neoliberal logic of consumption and flexible labour. Laura Hyman’s chapter, ‘Happiness: A societal imperative’? then examines the important ways that we are called upon to do happiness and looks at differences between the North American and British contexts. While emotions are central to social performance, happiness is more complicated, she argues. It is understood not only as an emotion but also as an aspect of selfhood. New forms of self-care developed through therapeutic and self-help discourses are producing new ways of doing happiness. Psychotherapeutic practices, self-help books, and apps, among others, have created a powerful new imperative to happiness. Hyman notes that while this imperative is observable internationally, there are important cultural differences. She illustrates this by drawing on examples from an empirical study conducted in the UK that explored people’s understandings and experiences of happiness. Her empirical work suggests that important differences exist between North American and British contexts. Her work suggests that cultural and social dynamics shape how people engage with (and even resist) the happiness imperative. While happiness occupies an important place in contemporary society, Hyman suggests that it might be better to attend to negativity, because it is by doing so that we might be better disposed to recognizing and addressing instances of injustice. Nicholas Hill’s chapter, ‘ “It’s the soul that needs the surgery”? The social life of (un)happiness’, concludes this section by exploring the social implications of the duty to be happy. Through an analysis of people’s accounts of participating in therapeutic and self-help practices, he identifies the emergence of new patterns of emotional performance that are reshaping social life. Increasing emphasis is placed on mastering and controlling emotions in an attempt to preserve one’s identity and avoid social ostracization. Self-containment is prioritized because of the way happiness and unhappiness travel and ‘infect’ other bodies. There are limits to individual framings, he suggests, because of the value of social relationships. Therapeutic and self-help discourses, Hill argues, introduce a tension between self and others and between self and world. The self must be preserved in terms of cultivating happiness and wellbeing in order to be able to fulfil one’s social obligations and responsibilities. Simultaneously, however, happiness and wellbeing are to be found within and derived from personal relationships and social interactions. If we reduce relationships and interactions with others and the world at large to a simple formula of happiness and wellbeing, we risk, Hill contends, undermining the meaning, value, and stability offered by the social world. It is important, he concludes, to recognize the meaning and value of social relationships for their own sake rather than simply focus on their affective qualities. In this way, we can promote a more-stable way of meaningfully securing the self in an insecure world.

Critical happiness studies 15

Part 3 – Resources for critical happiness studies Svend Brinkmann’s chapter, which opens Part 3, borrows its title, ‘Living well and living right: Aesthetic and ethical dimensions of happiness’ from Thomas Nagel’s exploration of subjective and objective perspectives of the world. Brinkmann attempts to liberate happiness from experienced-based theories (expressed through measures of subjective wellbeing) by reconnecting happiness with ‘worldly events and processes’. He develops a methodological approach that attends to both sides of happiness, what Søren Kierkegaard defined as the ethical and the aesthetic, or living right and living well. The trouble with subjectivist accounts of happiness, Brinkmann’s argues, is their focus on feeling instead of meaning. What are often under-acknowledged in any account of happiness, including critical ones, he contends, are normative prescriptions. This normative element is not articulated in scientific discourses, where understandings of happiness are often defined subjectively. Brinkmann counters by arguing that the self is never simply a bundle of feelings and desires. It is also grounded in a world of ‘ethical bindings and commitments’. Brinkmann maps out a conceptual space that brings subjectivist understandings of happiness into dialogue with ethical accounts. In doing so, he rescues happiness from purely aesthetic or subjective understandings, which risk supporting problematic ideologies and, perhaps most importantly, fostering greater unhappiness. Mark Cieslik’s contribution, ‘Sociology, biographical research, and the development of critical happiness studies’, asks us to stop and consider the role that happiness and wellbeing plays in people’s lives. He highlights the limitations of research methods that rely on relatively simplistic survey methods and related critiques of therapeutic and self-help framings of happiness and wellbeing. Cieslik outlines an alternative approach that treats happiness and wellbeing as subjective and biographical phenomena. Accordingly, he advocates a critical standpoint that moves beyond ‘cultural criticism’, to one that attends to how happiness and wellbeing are actually lived and understood – that is, in their empirical complexity and messiness. To bolster his argument, Cieslik draws on empirical qualitative data from a study that he conducted examining people’s experiences of wellbeing. Using Pierre Bourdieu’s concepts of habitus, field, and capital, he argues that happiness is not something that can be easily measured. His work suggests that it is more productive to focus on understanding happiness and wellbeing as social and cultural processes that are grounded in social relationships and biography. Moments of biographical disruption, he concludes, are central to individual understandings of happiness because they demand that people reflect on their wellbeing and think about what resources and opportunities are available to them by virtue of their social position. In ‘Drowning in liquidity: Zygmunt Bauman on happiness, ambivalence, and security’, Jordan McKenzie explores the potential of Bauman’s work for critical happiness research. Central to Bauman’s oeuvre is an emphasis on the emotional consequences of modernity. McKenzie first draws attention to Bauman’s observation that modern pursuits of happiness are based on the principle of rationality.

16  Nicholas Hill et al. This principle tends to have the opposite effect by reducing emotionality to productivity thereby reshaping love and human relationships. Bauman, McKenzie points out, identified the penultimate limit of rationalization by highlighting how the pursuit of happiness and freedom by Nazi Germany resulted in the Holocaust. McKenzie notes Bauman’s observation that security has been sacrificed by equating happiness with freedom. The shift from a tightly structured society to a liquid society that Bauman illustrates is useful, McKenzie argues, because it highlights the way the contemporary emphasis on flexibility and adaptability obscures the cultural, economic, and political factors that shape and limit opportunities. This demands the constant preparation and performance of self. The danger inherent in this shift is the failure and humiliation of not being able to enact one’s freedom and happiness effectively. Bauman’s work, McKenzie asserts, makes it possible to identify the limits of the modern project of happiness and, in important ways, lays the ground work for a public discussion about how society ought to function. Colin Wright’s chapter, ‘Complicating the happy cure: Psychoanalysis and the ends of analysis’, concludes this volume by returning us to Jacques Lacan and the idea of happiness as fantasy. He argues that the turn to happiness and related critiques are based on a misreading of Freud and the rise of a specifically American version of psychoanalysis called ego-psychology, what Lacan referred to as the other psychoanalysis, and the emphasis on cure. Critiques of happiness science, Wright argues, emphasize ego-psychology and therefore tend to focus on the production of a hollow (yet happy) subject, which undermines the affective attachments and sociality that locate individuals in the world. The ideal of a conflict-free ego to be achieved through therapy and self-help made sense in the American cultural context with its emphasis on self-esteem and self-help, Wright notes. But drawing on Lacan, he argues that the ego is ‘entirely imaginary’ and located in an external Other. It is for this reason alone that the Other is central to normative understandings and frameworks. Attempts to strengthen or cure the ego necessarily results in further conflict, frustration, and failure, what Lacan refers to as the ‘new symptoms’. Wright concludes by arguing for a return to the roots of psychoanalysis – that is, its function as a clinical practice. By focusing on the articulation of one’s suffering, intersubjective psychoanalysis offers us a way out of the ‘imaginary labyrinth of happiness’.

Note 1 A huge number of national and international indices have measured the happiness and wellbeing of populations (cf. Gallup Share Care Wellbeing Index 2019; OECD 2018; ONS 2018).

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Critical happiness studies 19 Rubin, G. (2011): The Happiness Project: Or Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle and Generally Have More Fun. London: HarperCollins Publishers. Ryan, R. & Deci, E. (2001): ‘On Happiness and Human Potentials: A Review of Research on Hedonic and Eudaimonic Well-Being’. Annual Review of Psychology, 52: 141–166. Ryff, C. (1989): ‘Happiness Is Everything, or Is it? Explorations on the Meaning of Psychological Well-Being’. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 57(6): 1069–1081. Ryff, C. & Singer, B. (2008): ‘Know Thyself and Become What You Are: A Eudaimonic Approach to Psychological Wellbeing’. Journal of Happiness Studies, 9: 13–39. Segal, L. (2017): Radical Happiness: Moments of Collective Joy. London: Verso. Seligman, M. (1999): ‘Building Human Strength: Psychology’s Forgotten Mission’. American Psychologist, 54: 559–562. Seligman, M. (2011): Flourish: A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Wellbeing. Sydney: Atria. Sointu, E. (2005): ‘The Rise of an Ideal: Tracing Changing Discourses of Wellbeing’. The Sociological Review, 53(2): 255–274. Thin, N. (2012): Social Happiness: Theory Into Policy and Practice. Bristol: The Policy Press. Tugade, M., Fredrickson, B. & Barrett, L. (2004): ‘Psychological Resilience and Positive Emotional Granularity: Examining the Benefits of Positive Emotions on Coping and Health’. Journal of Personality, 72(6): 1161–1190. Turner, B. (2018): ‘(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction: Happiness and Successful Societies’. Sociology, 54(3): 279–293. United Nations. (2012): ‘Resolution Adopted by the General Assembly on 28 June 2012’. Retrieved from www.un.org/en/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=%20A/RES/66/281. UNRIC. (2019): ‘Happiness’. Retrieved from www.unric.org/en/happiness/27709-the-unand-happiness. Veenhoven, R. & Hagerty, M. (2006): ‘Rising Happiness in Nations 1946–2004: A Reply to Easterlin’. Social Indicators Research, 79(3): 421–436. von Sheve (2018): ‘A Social Relational Account of Affect’. European Journal of Social Theory, 21(1): 39–59. Waterman, A. (2013): ‘The Humanistic Psychology-Positive Psychology Divide: Contrasts in Philosophical Foundations’. American Psychologists, 68(3): 124–133. Wilde, O. (2018 [1888]): ‘The Nightingale and the Rose’. In The Happy Prince and Other Stories. London: Puffin Classics. Williams, R. (1985): Marxism and Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wright, C. (2013): ‘Against Flourishing: Wellbeing as Biopolitics, and the Psychoanalytic Alternative’. Health, Culture and Society, 5(1): 20–35. Wright, K. (2011): The Rise of the Therapeutic Society: Psychological Knowledge & the Contradictions of Cultural Change. Washington, DC: New Academia Publishing. Zevnik, L. (2014a): Critical Perspectives in Happiness Research: The Birth of Modern Happiness. London: Springer. Zevnik, L. (2014b): ‘The Discussion About the Universality of Happiness and the Promise of Neuroscience’. Cultura, 11(1): 7–28.

Part I

Fantastical happiness An impossible ideal

1 Happiness, a moralistic fantasy Carl Cederström

What we talk about when we talk about happiness Whenever we talk about happiness, we always seem to be talking about something else. Samuel Johnson, the British 18th-century poet, claimed that happiness could not be found in the present moment, but only when we could fully forget about ourselves. When his biographer, James Boswell, pressed him on this issue, Johnson replied, ‘Never, but when he is drunk’ (McMahon 2006). But for Johnson’s contemporary, the French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, happiness was not to be found in brief moments of alcohol-induced intoxication but in a lasting state of perfect wholeness. In 1765, at the age of 53, Rousseau spent two months on the Swiss island of Saint-Pierre, where on most days he would go out in a small boat, pull in the oars, lie down flat, and drift aimlessly. He would later describe these months as the happiest time of his life. ‘I would have been content to live all my life in this way’, he wrote in Reveries of a Solitary Walker, ‘without a moment’s desire for any other state’ (Rosseau 1979: 81–83). The Beatles offered in their 1968 hit, ‘Happiness Is a Warm Gun’, a more cryptic metaphor of happiness, comparing it with a warm gun. According to John Lennon, he had come across these words in a magazine and thought them fantastically insane. But different as they are, these accounts make no sense to me. I should confess at the outset that I don’t have my own private ‘theory’ of happiness, which I think truer and deeper than any other. It is true that I enjoy a little drink now and then, like Samuel Johnson, but I would hesitate to call it happiness. I can also appreciate the calm and the sea, like Rousseau, although, if I had a choice, I would much rather sit erect in the boat and, that way, avoid falling asleep and, hours later, waking up shipwrecked, oars gone, facing a looming storm. The supposedly happy feeling coming from a warm gun never enticed me either, much to the dismay of the father, who has made repeated and heart-breaking attempts to pull me into hunting, paying for expensive courses I would never attend, and literally placing guns in my hands. All to no avail. There are, of course, more reasonable theories of happiness. I recently met a journalist who had done a television documentary on the subject. She described that one of the most revelatory moments was when she met an older woman who

24  Carl Cederström had found her own formula of happiness. It was both simple and reasonable. All you needed was someone to love, something to do, and something to hope for. And sure enough, compared to a warm gun, aimless boat-drifting, and bingedrinking, I agree: this formula sounds perfectly reasonable. It is so reasonable, it turns out, that when I arrived home to google the phrase, it was variously attributed to Elvis Presley, Immanuel Kant, Alexander Chalmers, and Rita Mae Brown, all of whom would make for interesting dinner company, but none of whom, it turned out, had uttered these words. They were, I later found, those of the lesser known George Washington Burnap, a 19th-century American cleric. If you feel bored one day and cannot think of anything better to do, then I can recommend spending it on Internet, browsing through the infinite catalogue of happiness catchphrases. I’m sure you will find your own favourite, which you can print out and frame. I have a bent for the more sardonic ones, such as Adorno’s ‘Happiness is obsolete; uneconomic’. I also like this one, by the satirical writer Ambrose Bierce: ‘Happiness: an agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery of another’. Or this one, by Aldous Huxley, ‘There is something curiously boring about someone else’s happiness’. We don’t learn much from this exercise, of course, except the obvious fact that happiness can be defined in any way we like and that when we talk about happiness, we seem to be talking about all sorts of different things. And we may also learn, just from contemplating the sheer number of websites dedicated to collecting and organizing happiness quotes, that we are no doubt obsessed with happiness. But we don’t really need the Internet for that, since today we are reminded at all times, in all places, both online and offline, that presumably nothing is more important than happiness. The basic argument I want to set out here is that happiness is a fantasy. To be clear, this is not to say that happiness is a delusional whim, like a belief in flying saucers or extra-terrestrial life, although, to be sure, some conceptions of happiness may be just about that bizarre, such as that of a recent advertisement suggesting that happiness is like a ‘cheese sandwich’ (McMahon 2006). No, to say that happiness is a fantasy is simply to draw attention to how happiness organizes our experience of the good life. Because, fantasy is not so much opposed to reality as it is an essential way to give meaning to reality – our reality – as we like to make sense of it. Fantasy, as the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan once claimed, constitutes desire, which means that without its intervention, our desires would helplessly meander about with no sense of aim or direction. All of this means that fantasies are necessary to us. They help us make sense of things and articulate what we think we like. And just like our desires, they are formed in relation to others. They are not, as it were, an altogether private matter. They are shaped socially and have evolved historically. It is through these fantasies that we can imagine the good, the harmonious, the beautiful – life as we want it to be (Zizek 1998). It is not very strange, then, that fantasies are invariably dogmatic, self-righteous, and moralistic. While fantasies help to construct a coherent narrative about the world, in which I  am conferred with a specific place and purpose, they also

Happiness, a moralistic fantasy 25 obfuscate all sorts of problematic things, such as the existence of others and what we may perceive as their annoying otherness. In justifying my way of life – as the good and normal way of doing things – fantasies divert our attention from otherwise unpleasant realizations, such as the potential conflict between my way of life and someone else’s. Or worse, fantasy turns the other into my enemy, a figure posing an imminent threat to my own happiness. This, too, is a crucial insight of psychoanalysis. Fantasy does not just present narratives of the beautiful and the harmonious. It simultaneously envisions the bad, the grotesque, the unwanted – all of that which we fear may get in our way, threaten our existence, undermine our way of life. And it is in this way that fantasies help reinforce our moral convictions. We like to picture an impeccably happy world, free from all troubling elements, one that is based on a notion of the good, only to visualize, in the next instance, how this same world, if not properly protected against the bad, may be brought to ruins, leaving us in chaos and despair. Fantasy adds, we may say, a passionate and emotional edge to morality. So when we talk about happiness, we seem to be talking about fantasies, more specifically moralistic fantasies, which set out a template for the good life. This claim may appear as strange and untenable when applied to specific conceptual statements about what happiness is or isn’t. But it makes all the more sense when we look at happiness historically. It then becomes clear that whatever we consider to be a happy life today, in the rich West, is something altogether different from what it was thought to be in the past, in times such as ancient Greece.

A brief history of happiness fantasies In Darrin M. McMahon’s wonderfully rich and erudite Happiness: A History, we learn that when happiness was first contemplated, in Herodotus’s History, it was closely bound up with the notion of fortune. The Greek word eudaimonia – from eu (good) daimon (god, spirit, demon) – meant that to be happy was to be lucky (2006: 3). It meant that you were fortunate enough to have the gods on your side, looking out for you. In a world with imminent threats and constant dangers, that was something you no doubt needed. To believe oneself happy was not just delusional but dangerous, Herodotus warned his readers. He used as his example the wealthy King Croesus, who arrogantly declared to the sage Solon that he, the king, was the happiest man in the world. Soon after, as punishment for his hubristic exclamations, Croesus’s son was killed and then his kingdom brought to ruins. And just as Croesus was about to get killed, it dawned on him that what Solon had tried to explain was that he, Croesus, could not have been the happiest man in the world, because no one could be fully happy when alive. Only the dead could be that happy. ‘No one who lives is happy’, Croesus now realized (McMahon 2006: 7). He screamed this realization out loud, in desperation, and then, just as he thought it was all over, the gods accepted his apology and calmed down. He was saved. It is not hard to decipher the moral message in this story: don’t be so foolish as to think that happiness is in your own personal control, because that would upset

26  Carl Cederström the gods. As a human, the Greeks thought, you have to be wise enough to understand that happiness is not a choice that you can make, as positive psychologists like to say these days. It is a fortune, handed over to you by the gods, but only if you have shown yourself worthy of it. Real happiness, however, was only for the dead – and the gods, of course. Complete happiness was beyond the immediate reach of us, humans, and could be experienced only after one’s earthly life had come to an end, provided of course one had lived well. Then, as now, happiness was a fantasy. The main difference was that they knew it. About a century after Herodotus recorded this story, Aristotle developed his own version of eudaimonia, in The Nicomachean Ethics. While he concentrated on character formation and the range of virtues that humans should aspire to acquire in their pursuit of happiness, he nevertheless emphasized the claim made by Herodotus: complete happiness was not within the reach of humans. As a human, it was your duty to live as well as you could, and that implied cultivating virtues such as ‘magnificence, moderation, gentleness, modesty, friendliness, and righteous indignation’ (McMahon 2006: 48). But the ethical life was not enough to attain happiness. To do so, you had to rise above your own self – to break out of the ordinary condition of being human – and live a life of contemplation. This was, as Jonathan Lear (2002: 48) perceptively puts it, Aristotle’s fantasy of happiness: a fantasy of happiness, beyond ordinary life, as it was experienced by the gods. For those who were so ethically virtuous as to be worthy, a short glimpse of this happy life of contemplation immediately understood how far they, as humans, were from achieving the complete and eternal happiness of the gods (Lear 2002: 50). The idea of complete happiness, as found in the contemplative life, was a fantasy from which most people were necessarily excluded. Yet as Lear points out, it ‘is a powerful organizing fantasy – one that tends to hide its fantastic status’ (2002: 48). This means that although happiness was ultimately impossible to achieve within the limits of ordinary human life, it was nevertheless inscribed into social life as something desirable and worth pursuing. Consequently, and by hiding its fantastic status, this fantasy of happiness came to give shape and meaning to people’s lives. We should not forget that happiness, as something ultimately inaccessible to humans, continued as a basic assumption all the way up to the Enlightenment. It was not until then, in the 17th and 18th centuries, that, as McMahon describes, ‘considerable numbers of men and women were first introduced to the novel prospect that they could be happy – that they should be happy – in this life’ (2006: 12). Granted, both the Epicureans and Stoics had emphasized humankind’s ability to be happy, and it is perhaps possible to see in some of their advice a precursor to a modern notion of happiness. Yet we must not forget that the Greeks stressed that happiness was not so much a question of agency, determined by the assumed willpower of the individual, as it was a question of being on good terms with the gods. The happiness fantasy of the Epicureans was a life governed by pleasure. Hence, it is not entirely weird that they have been mistaken for hedonists. But nothing could be further from the truth. Epicurus preached a strict regulation of desires, to the point of effacing them altogether. He argued that a good life – the

Happiness, a moralistic fantasy 27 morally preferred life – should be devoted only to the simplest and modest forms of pleasures. We should not, Epicurus warned in his Letter to Menoeceus, seek pleasure in ‘one drinking party after another or of sexual intercourse with women and boys or of the sea food and other delicacies afforded by a luxurious table’ (2012: 160). All you needed, Epicurus thought, was food enough to appease your hunger and the company of good friends that you could engage in conversation. Famously, he claimed to need nothing more than a barley cake and some water. The Stoics went even further in their asceticism. They gave no elevated status to pleasure, arguing that a person had the capacity to be happy no matter how daunting and painful the circumstances of life might be. Even when facing death, one could be happy. Much later, Christianity, as preached and practised throughout the Middle Ages, shunned pleasure altogether and regarded pain as the more useful path to if not a happy life then a sort of divine union in the afterlife. That desired state could not be attained in life on earth, but only as a gift from God, in heaven. The Renaissance brought happiness from heaven back to earth, but again, it was not until the Enlightenment that it became a right – something that each and every person was assumed capable of pursuing and ultimately attaining. Interestingly, it was Marquis de Sade who now became a vocal advocate of happiness, as a right to pleasure: ‘Renounce the idea of another world; there is none. But do not renounce the pleasure of being happy and of making for happiness in this one’ (McMahon 2006: 232). This brief history reveals three crucial aspects of happiness. First, it is contingent on the culture in which it emerges. Second, it has an unmistakable moral quality. Three, it is closely bound up with a fantasy of the perfectly harmonious life, free from all troubles, whether such existence is believed to be found on earth or in heaven.

Happiness today In trying to capture something of the spirit of today’s dominant happiness fantasy, I focus on three ideals in particular, all of which are now, in the present moment, morally endorsed: authenticity, enjoyment, and work. Of course, they are not the only ideals that may be incorporated into our present-day fantasies of happiness. They are, however, central in many of the expressions of happiness that we find today, not least in positive psychology and other self-help books, with popular titles including Authentic Happiness, The Art of Happiness at Work, and Happiness by Design: Finding Pleasure and Purpose in Everyday Life. Concentrating on these three ideals – of authenticity, enjoyment, and work – also helps us see the dramatic contrast between our present happiness fantasies and those endorsed in the past. Authenticity Take Christianity as it was taught in large parts of Europe during the Middle Ages. Contrary to the message found there and then, according to which we should

28  Carl Cederström abandon ourselves to achieve divine union, we are now asked to pursue union with ourselves. To be happy in a time when we prize authenticity and narcissism, we need to express our true inner self, get in touch with our deeper feelings, and follow the path set by ourselves. As the philosopher Charles Taylor (1991) has argued, to be authentic has become a moral ideal, through which you can demonstrate your ability to seriously shoulder your responsibility as a unique and idiosyncratic individual. ‘There is a certain way of being human that is my way’, he writes in Ethics of Authenticity: I am called upon to live my life in this way, and not in imitation of anyone else’s. But this gives a new importance to being true to myself. If I am not, I miss the point of my life, I miss what being human is for me. (1991: 29) Enjoyment We are also far from the Epicureans, who preached moderation. Today, in a time of what Eva Illouz has called emotional capitalism (2007), we are asked to fully express our positive emotions, whether they are real or not. We are asked to optimize our enjoyment, whether through food, sex, and other forms of pleasureinducing activities, or other activities, such as running, CrossFit, or yoga. ‘The cultural, if not moral, justification of capitalism’, Daniel Bell wrote already in 1976, ‘has become hedonism, the idea of pleasure as a way of life’ (1976: 21–22). And now, a few decades down the line, we seem to have constructed what Todd McGowan has called a society of commanded enjoyment, where the moral obligation is not to deny our desires but to find ways to express and satisfy them. The ‘moral calling’ of living my life my way could be traced back to numerous sources, whether Rousseau, the Jena romantics, or the American transcendentalists, such as Ralph Waldo Emerson or Henry David Thoreau. But more relevant to our present investigation, where authenticity and enjoyment are brought into one, is the psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich. Having made a strong impression on Freud with his unconventional take on the libido theory, Reich was introduced in the 1920s as the youngest member to Freud’s inner circle. Only a few years later, however, as his theories and practices took a more eccentric and sexual turn, he became widely unpopular with his fellow analysts, pushed to the fringes of the community, and eventually, following a few more years of controversy, he was expelled from the psychoanalytic society. What makes Reich interesting to our story is that in articulating a distinct notion of happiness, he combined the moralistic imperative of being authentic with that of sexual pleasure. It was a fantasy of happiness beyond sexual repression. More specifically, it was an outspokenly moralistic fantasy, because what determined whether you were healthy, Reich argued, was your ability to reach what he called full orgasm. Failing to do so was an indication that you were ill. When Reich died in 1957, he was an outcast. He had gone from being a hailed analyst in Vienna in the 1920s to a permanent outlaw, kicked out of not just the

Happiness, a moralistic fantasy 29 psychoanalytic establishment in the 1930s but also several countries (mostly Scandinavian) and then, as an old and slightly mad man, imprisoned in the United States for promoting and selling his home-produced orgone accumulator, a life-sized wooden box with metal interior, designed to enhance a person’s orgastic abilities. The box was later parodied and immortalized as the Orgasmatron in Woody Allen’s Sleepers. At the heart of the dispute between Freud and Reich was their respective notions of happiness. Freud was sceptical about the prospect of achieving happiness, writing, in Civilization and Its Discontents, ‘The programme of becoming happy, which the pleasure principle imposes on us, cannot be fulfilled’ (2004 [1930]). And yet we are trapped in the attempt to achieve happiness, Freud continues, which leads us down a range of different paths, none of which will turn out to give us what we really want. For Reich, however, happiness was possible. What prevented us from becoming authentic, happy, and sexually free was not ourselves but society. In Listen Little Man, published in 1945, Reich wrote, ‘For twenty-five years I’ve been speaking and writing in defense of your right to happiness in this world, condemning your inability to take what is your due’. According to Reich, the individual is their own master and is free to do what they want with their own life. ‘No one is to blame for your slavery but yourself. No one else, I say’. When Reich died in prison in 1957, he was publicly scorned. But only a few years later, he became popular again. He came to embody a particular fantasy, a fantasy about happiness beyond repression. Happiness was possible. It was a choice that we could make. As the age of conformity came to an end in the early 1960s and the individual was no longer compelled to shoulder and act out predestined roles, Reich became the kind of cult figure that many searched for. His books were widely read among a new generation of young American bohemians from the 1940s onwards. He became a convenient symbol, hailed by countercultural figures such as William Burroughs, Fritz Perls, and Paul Goodman. In a time defined by social upheaval, political experimentation and existential confusion, Reich became a potent symbol for hope and transformation. In this way, Reich became central to the growing set of Californian bohemians and the countercultural movements that were beginning to take form. By the end of the 1960s, Reich’s name and ideas were evoked when young people from both sides of the Atlantic revolted against what they saw as oppressive state apparatuses. And when self-transformation training centres started to emerge in the 1960s, they were often based on Reich’s ideas. Over the next few decades, these centres became a growing mass phenomenon that would attract hundreds of thousands of people across the United States and elsewhere. The happiness fantasy that was sold in these places, and that thousands of people hoped to gain access to, was the fantasy of sexual and existential liberation, as Reich had expressed it a few decades earlier. When the corporation discovered happiness Unlike the work-shy Greeks of antiquity, we are assumed to find happiness through work and by being productive. We are required to curate our market value, manage ourselves as corporations, and live according to an entrepreneurial

30  Carl Cederström ethos. When no sin is greater than being unemployed and no vice more despised than laziness, happiness comes only to those who work hard, have the right attitude, and struggle for self-improvement. What today is seen as a greater moral achievement than to having fully immersed yourself in the market? As the social critic Renata Salecl (2010) reminds us, we are urged to recast our everyday life, including relations and parenthood, according to the instrumental logic of market efficiency. One way to understand how work went from being a barrier to happiness to a source of happiness is to go back to the latter part of the 1970s, at which point many of these training centres, inspired by Reich’s thought, began to develop a more commercial approach. People would go to these places and subject themselves to a range of experimental techniques, similar to those offered in the beginning of the 1960s, but now with the hope of becoming a better and more successful professional. At around this time, in the mid 1970s, the human potential movement, with its original focus on self-transformation, became more corporate in form. Self-actualization was not just an end in itself; it was also an effective means to becoming materially richer and professionally more successful – in short, better attuned to the market. In the 1980s and 1990s, as corporations started to discover the power of culture, they turned to the human potential movement for inspiration. As they realized that this was an unprecedented opportunity to make employees more committed to work, large corporations started to integrate catchphrases about human potentiality into their corporate cultures and, in some cases, even use these expressions when formulating their core visions and mission statements. This may seem an ironic turn of events. When the fantasy of happiness emerged in the 1960s counterculture, it did so in opposition to corporations and social institutions. But then, in the 1970s, as this fantasy became sold to large parts of the rapidly growing middle classes, it no longer had a distinct political orientation. And then, in the 1980s, corporations slowly began to take note, exploring more unconventional ideas, including New Age. As The Wall Street Journal reported in 1987, ‘Dozens of major U.S. companies – including Ford Motor Co, Proctor & Gamble Co, TRW Inc., Polaroid Corp., and Pacific Telesis Group Inc. – are spending millions of dollars on so-called New Age workshops’. Interesting here is that when companies started to engage more promiscuously with New Age movements, adopting and subsequently co-opting the vocabulary of human transformation and individual freedom, they became more appealing to bands of freethinking individuals who had previously shunned corporate powers like the plague. ‘In the Sixties these people would have slit their wrists before walking into any institution of corporate America’, Harriet Rubin, business books editor at Doubleday, explained in an interview from the early 1990s: ‘Now corporations are seen as a sort of living laboratory for their ideas’ (Rose 1990). In the same article, published in Fortune in 1990, Frank Rose described the emergence of a new age of business, where business leaders had replaced their obsession with numbers with a more open-minded vision about human potential. Rose (1990) describes how Levi Strauss & Co, among other corporations, had tuned themselves into this new frequency. Chairman Robert Haas had just

Happiness, a moralistic fantasy 31 announced his vision of the corporation, a kind of global enterprise consisting of creative people who ‘are able to tap their fullest potential’. Meanwhile, managers should no longer act as paternal authority figures. Instead, he explained, they should act as ‘coaches, facilitators, and role models’ (Rose 1990). As a fashion company, Levi Strauss had to be receptive to new trends. Or better still, they had to attract the creative types who are setting the new trends. Levi Strauss was not alone in subjecting themselves to these forms of extreme makeovers. Microsoft adopted an almost identical mantra in their vision: ‘To enable people and business throughout the world to realize their full potential’ (Bains et al. 2007). Reading happiness discursively, as I’ve attempted here, helps expose its historical and political contingency. When observing the moral values underlying our present-day happiness fantasies – be authentic, enjoy yourself, cultivate your market value – it becomes clear that not only are they different from the values endorsed in previous eras but they could also be different in the future. Some corporations have been successful in exploiting the language of happiness to normalize insecurity and low-wage labour. Some politicians have been successful in exploiting happiness to promote a class war from above, rehearsing the mantra of positive thinking, suggesting that poor people ultimately have themselves to blame for their financial situation. It is in combatting pernicious examples like these, where happiness is used to facilitate exploitation, that we need to recall the contingent nature of happiness, evoke its history, and remember that its meaning can be changed.

Conclusion Whenever I hear the word happiness, whether it appears in conversation with friends or I accidentally stumble upon it in a magazine, I seem to be hearing something else: a moralistic message about the good life. I often think about a specific passage from Sarah Ahmed’s (2010) The Promise of Happiness. In it, she tells the story of a young girl and her father, who when finding out his daughter is queer begs her to change her mind because he wants her ‘to be happy’. Surely, you cannot be happy as a queer, her father thinks. And he is not alone in thinking that. Or how else would we explain that, as Ahmed points out, marital status is often used as an indicator of whether or not we’re happy? Does this not suggest that happiness exists only within the safe and comfortable domain of bourgeois respectability? Not long ago, I was phoned by a public survey company who wanted to find out about my gambling habits. They asked a barrage of questions: did I have a steady job, had I been in a fight recently, did I drink too much, was I in debt, did I have children, did I use illicit drugs? And then, at the end of the survey, I was asked, ‘on a scale from one to ten, how happy are you?’ I laughed as I heard the question and then explained that since everyone seems to be answering 7 when asked this kind of question in surveys, I too should probably say 7. The interviewer then did something unexpected: he asked if maybe I shouldn’t say 8 instead. ‘Well, OK, 8 then’, I said.

32  Carl Cederström After we hung up, I felt stupid. I felt as if I had just been tricked into contributing to yet another fantasy about what happiness is: a moralistic fantasy of the good life. Through my set of answers, I had revealed that I was an unbearably restrained and untroubled middle-class man who never gambles, has a steady income, and does not commit any serious crimes. So of course, I had to be happy. I could see the future headlines: ‘Study finds gamblers are less happy!’ And maybe that’s true. Maybe gamblers are unhappier than most. In fact, that would not be strange at all, because if we define happiness as our ability to successfully conform to the moral ideals endorsed today, as they are thought to constitute a good and happy life, then gamblers must indeed be unhappy. They are unhappy in the same way that queers and angry feminists are unhappy. Just like unmarried fat people must be unhappy. Not to mention smokers and those with generally bad attitudes, who are also very unhappy. The problem is not just that they are fat and smoke and gamble and fail to be positive. The problem is much more fundamental: they have failed to be happy. As happiness itself has become a command, unhappiness has turned into a moral offence. This ideology of happiness, which Pascal Bruckner (2000) in his Perpetual Euphoria locates to the second half of the 20th century, entails two simultaneous imperatives: ‘on the one hand, we have to make the most of our lives; on the other, we have to be sorry and punish ourselves if we don’t succeed in doing so’. It is the story of this ideology that I have tried to describe here, as it began to take shape in a particular version of psychoanalysis, epitomized in the work of Reich, and was then diffused into all forms of different domains, picked up by leftist bohemians, countercultural youngsters, anti-capitalist protesters, the human potential movement, humanistic psychotherapy, psychiatry, the pharmaceutical industry, right-wing politicians, business gurus, and human resource executives – to name just a few. What started off in the 1950s and 1960s as a vision of happiness, on the basis of free sex, liberation, and authenticity, was in the 1970s transformed into a narcissistic project of self-actualization, promoted by a new band of corporate self-help gurus, in the 1980s and 1990s integrated into human resource management practices, and finally in more recent years used to maintain what I would call a nihilistic doctrine of happiness, employed to normalize precariousness and exploitation, whereby we are expected to enjoy our own exploitation and be authentic in our precariousness. It is my hope that once we learn to recognize this happiness fantasy, we should also be able to leave it behind. It is a fantasy that has gone from bad to worse. It was originally devised to envisage a new world, beyond conformity and boredom; then used to legitimize the pursuit of self-actualization; then incorporated into the world of management to make people more committed to work; and then finally used to normalize inequality and self-exploitation. When Americans and their European cousins immersed themselves in their own egos in the 1970s, seeking to explore their inner depths, they did so against the background of a new social climate, defined by financial and psychological security. When they were told in self-development seminars that there were no victims in the world, they were morally authorized to ignore the suffering of others. Free from guilt or shame,

Happiness, a moralistic fantasy 33 they could continue their pursuit of individual happiness, spending their time and money on finding new sources of enjoyment and new ways to express their authenticity. But the social and political backdrop has changed since then: from affluence and abundance, to austerity and precariousness. So when unemployed graduates, with growing levels of student debts, are now told by coaches that there are no victims, they are not so much instructed to carry on as normal but instead expected to internalize the message of unrelenting positivity and ask themselves what they, as strong-willed individuals with positive attitudes, can do to construct their own opportunities. This is a fantasy of happiness that is not just stupid, as Lacan may have said, but cruel. It is cruel because, in our failure to be authentically happy, we are, as Bruckner (2000) put it, asked to be sorry and punish ourselves. This fantasy of happiness, as it makes itself present today, with its punitive demands of authenticity and commanded enjoyment, is perhaps best to abandon. It has been almost a century since this fantasy began to take form, through people like Wilhelm Reich. And it has been about half a century since it became part of a cynical project of capitalist nihilism. So it is about time. And that is my simple proposition: this fantasy of happiness, as it appears now, in a time of neoliberal extremism, is not worth preserving. It needs to be ditched. I think that it is in psychoanalysis, however outdated it may seem to many, that we may find a way forward. In a time like ours, defined by commanded enjoyment and compulsory authenticity, we would do well to listen more carefully to the insights of Freud, and also Lacan, because it is here, in their radical propositions of what it means to be human, that we find a viable alternative to the conservative happiness fantasy that dominates today. Contrary to therapism, the point with psychoanalysis is not to become happier, or stronger, or more potent. It is not about becoming more authentic or learning how to maximize enjoyment. It is not about self-mastery and the desire to become whole and harmonious. The point with psychoanalysis is not betterment. It is about truth – the truth about our desires and how they are articulated in fantasy. I am not suggesting that we should all recline on an analyst’s couch and find out about our personal desires. What psychoanalysis, in the form of a theory or philosophy, can help us achieve is a better understanding of this fantasy. As Jonathan Lear writes about the Aristotelian fantasy of happiness, ‘The real issue is what motivations get organized and expressed by the fantasy’ (2002: 48–49). I suggest that the motivations that get organized and expressed in the current happiness fantasy are the motivations of selfishness, self-actualization, and competition, at the expense of solidarity and a sense of the collective. Sure, psychoanalytic theory will not automatically improve the fate of the millions of precarious workers who are continually abused in the name of happiness, and it is unlikely to stop the grotesque divide between the rich and the poor. Yet it may help suspend the language used to normalize these issues. In complicating the question of happiness, and opposing the doctrine of positivity, it may help us think anew the question of how to live – and, to that end, construct novel, and hopefully better, fantasies.

34  Carl Cederström

References Ahmed, S. (2010): The Promise of Happiness. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Bains, G., Bains, K., Anciano, D., Anderson, J., Bains, R., Encombe, J., Garner, C., Javitch, M., Kinley, N., Pelunsky, C., Robinson, R. & Rowe, K. (2007): Meaning Inc. London: Profile Books. Bell, D. (1976): The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism. New York, NY: Basic Books. Bruckner, P. (2000): Perpetual Euphoria: On the Duty to Be Happy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Epicurus. (2012): ‘Letter to Menoeceus’. In The Art of Happiness. New York, NY: Penguin Books. Freud, S. (2004 [1930]): Civilisation and Its Discontents. New York, NY: Penguin Books. Illouz, E. (2007): Cold Intimacies: The Making of Emotional Capitalism. Cambridge: Polity Press. Lear, J. (2002): Happiness, Death, and the Remainder of Life: The Tanner Lectures on Human Values. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. McMahon, D. (2006): Happiness: A History. New York, NY: Atlantic Monthly Press. Rose, F. (1990): ‘A New Age for Business’. Fortune Magazine. New York, NY: Time Inc. Rosseau, J-J. (1979): Reveries of a Solitary Walker. New York, NY: Penguin Books. Salecl, R. (2010): The Tyranny of Choice. London: Profile Books. Taylor, C. (1991): The Ethics of Authenticity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Zizek, S. (1998): ‘Seven Veils of Fantasy’. In D. Nobus (ed.), Key Concepts of Lacanian Psychoanalysis. Montreal: Rebus Press.

2 ‘Clap along if you feel like a room without a roof’ Understanding the pursuit of happiness as ideology Anders Petersen Introduction Why is it that the prevailing ideal of happiness – not only to many academic scholars but also to a wider public – presents itself as a significant problem in contemporary society? Although the main point of the discourse is encouraging and positive – be happy! – it is frequently criticized for being inflammatory, provocative, and even oppressive, leading to the exact opposite of its intentions, namely increasing unhappiness (cf. Bruckner 2000). Evidence of the skewed nature of the happiness ideal is sometimes presented by pointing to the societal discontent that bourgeoning rates of mental disorders such as depression, anxiety, and stress are manifestations of and to how ‘The lure of happiness will find a comfortable place in the buying and selling of medication to alter mood’ (McMahon 2007: 479). Yet the demand to be happy is a problem not only for those who are unhappy, suffer from mental malaise, or try to medicate themselves into happiness. In fact, one can argue the opposite. As Sam Binkley claims in his Happiness as Enterprise: An Essay on Neoliberal Life, Happiness is a problem for those who do not have a problem: it operates not as an abnormality one discovers within oneself through techniques of introspection and self-assessment in the closed spaces of clinics and asylums, but as a potential to be exercised in the open spaces and otherwise healthy moments of everyday life. (Binkley 2014: 18) Sociologically speaking, Binkley points at something pivotal. It is not happiness per se that is interesting. The most widespread notions of happiness – that it refers to an individual experience, feeling, emotion, instance, and so on – does not qualify as something of sociological interest.1 It is rather, as the late Zygmunt Bauman has persuasively argued, the opposite of a social fact in the Durkheimian sense. What makes happiness a phenomenon worthy of sociological interest, then, is what Binkley refers to as the ‘potential to be exercised’ and which Bauman describes – in an interview with Michal Hviid Jacobsen – in the following manner: It is the pursuit of happiness, and particularly the selection of objects on which that pursuit is targeted and whose appropriation/consumption is expected to

36  Anders Petersen be and consequently experienced/described as the moment of happiness, that deserves to be categorized as social facts calling for and receiving sociologists’ attention. (Bauman in Jacobsen 2014: 87–88) In this chapter, I will show how analytically fruitful it is to understand happiness – the potential that people need to pursue and are expected to work hard to materialize and objectify – as an ideology. I will argue that a significant part of the problem with the current ideology of happiness is that its internalization is presented as an individual endeavour whose successful implementation relies on personal capabilities of controlling socio-structurally supported norms and social rules that are in fact uncontainable. Thus, the ideology of happiness informs us about important aspects of what it entails to be a human being in the late modern society of performance.2 The main title of this chapter is taken from Pharrell Williams’s popular and contagious song from 2014, ‘Happy’. The song struck a chord with a huge audience, and a lot of people clapped along and joined Williams’s message. Williams’s call to understand oneself as ‘a room without a roof’ refers to the contemporary ideal of addressing oneself and one’s options in life as unlimited. The sky is the limit, so to speak. The second line of the chorus reveals the profound nature of this ideal: ‘Clap along if you feel like happiness is the truth’. The truth of the happiness ideology, I will argue, resides in the concept of freedom it reflects: one is only free when embracing the absence of individual limitations, thereby tolerating, controlling, and living without constraints. The position I defend in this chapter is that the development of the happiness ideology is supported and driven by particular social norms and rules that have emerged with the onset of late modern performance society. In justifying this thesis, I should like to proceed in five sections. I shall, in the first section, give an account of what I mean by happiness ideology. Ideology is, of course, a heavily loaded concept imbued with theoretical and empirical connotations, hence necessitating a definition that I can apply in this context. In the second section, I shall explain the societal context in which the happiness ideology can spread, which is followed by the third section in which I dissect the social norms and rules one can perceive as supporting the overall happiness ideology. Then, in the fourth section, I will elucidate some of the problematic aspects of the happiness ideology, focusing on the strains and tensions it places on people in contemporary late modern performance society. In the fifth section, I will make some concluding remarks and propose new research questions that I believe should be addressed.

The potential/pursuit of happiness as ideology Presenting a single and coherent definition of ideology is impossible. Rather, the concept lends itself to multiple definitions, consequently creating some confusion about what it actually entails. It is, however, possible to differentiate between two

The pursuit of happiness as ideology 37 distinct meanings of ideology, covering two traditions: one inspired by Marx/ Marxism, another by culturalist conceptions. In the Marxist tradition, ideology is defined as the sphere of representations, ideas, and conceptions versus the sphere of actual production, as the imaginary versus the real, as the way individuals ‘may appear in their own or other people’s representation’ versus the way ‘they really are, i.e., operate, produce materially’, and hence work under definite material limits, presuppositions, and ‘conditions independent of their will’. (Ricoeur 1976: 18) The quotations in this excerpt are from Marx’s The German Ideology. Of course, this is no random pick that Paul Ricoeur makes. By choosing so, he wishes to emphasize the elements of false consciousness, distorted representation, and oppression in this notion of ideology. When seen in this light, ideology is to be conceived as a form of superstructure that encompasses and surmounts everything else. Contrary to the Marxist conceptualization, culturalist conceptions perceive ideology in a more positive vein as infrastructure. That is, forms of social representations that are shared by a large number of people in a certain group (society) but are not individually oppressing per se (cf. Dumont 1977). Rather, ideology presents itself as a guideline – an infrastructure – that people, collectively, can tap into and use to steer their life. In short, the culturalist conception ‘stresses its group integration and identity preservation function’ (Chiapello 2003: 159). In 1999 Eve Chiapello, whom I just quoted, wrote a much-debated book with Luc Boltanski called The New Spirit of Capitalism (Boltanski and Chiapello 1999). In the book, they argue for the reconciliation – or synthesis – of the aforementioned conceptualizations of ideology in order to understand the specifics of the new spirit of capitalism. Drawing on the work of Paul Ricoeur (1976), Boltanski and Chiapello are able to present a more-nuanced concept of ideology that takes its productive and enabling force and its distortive functions into consideration. Hence, ideology presents itself as something that presents people with a variety of (collectively embedding) action possibilities and disables them through the blurring of viable alternatives. Where Boltanski and Chiapello (1999) use this analytical construction of ideology to develop their ground-breaking theory of the new spirit of capitalism, it is my intention to use this concept of ideology with reference to the contemporary pursuit of happiness, where everyone has to exercise their happiness potential and materialize it. Of course, my analysis cannot be as sophisticated as Boltanski and Chiapello’s, but I intend to illuminate how fruitful this analytical endeavour is. Let me explain. In contemporary late modern performance society, the pursuit of happiness and the exercise of one’s happiness potential are certainly producing integration – and hence accounting for a specific social order or logic that people tap into and (happily) identify with. The obvious downsides to happiness are hard to find. At the same time, however, the pursuit of happiness is distortive because the potential to exercise happiness has become a societal demand that everybody

38  Anders Petersen has to strive for if they wish to achieve professional and private success. In the next section, I shall lay out what supports this ideology.

From a society of discipline to the performance society In order to gain a more in-depth understanding of the happiness ideology, we need a deeper insight into the societal context in which it prevails. To achieve this, I will take my point of departure in explicating how our particular period in time differs from earlier epochs. In this chapter, I will thus focus on how the transformation from a society of discipline (the early 19th century until the late 1960s)3 to the society of performance, which we live in today (see Petersen 2016), has brought about new social norms and rules that people have to take into account. Perhaps Michel Foucault, in his Discipline and Punish (Foucault 1991), has made the most famous description of the society of discipline. The structuring aspects of the society portrayed by Foucault – panopticism, the organization and manufacturing of docile bodies, rigid institutional discipline, and so on – are in many ways fundamental to our understanding of what societal discipline entails. No doubt, Foucault’s characteristic is convincing. But it is also open to criticism of being one-sided. One might say that Foucault’s focus is on the distortive aspects of society while neglecting its integrative functions. Perhaps one should ask the question whether the society of discipline – how odd that may sound – also has an emancipatory side to it that people collectively relate to. Without using the concept of ideology, German sociologist Peter Wagner has argued that no societal epoch – or form of modernity, as he refers to – is truly accounted for by solely referring to its production of disciplinary mechanisms. History is, to put it popularly, more nuanced than that. Therefore, Wagner suggests, the analysis of societal epochs – and of the transformations between them – has to stand on an analytical platform that allows a more-nuanced picture to be taken into account. According to Wagner, then, the overall point of departure for such an endeavour must be that each historical epoch always has to be understood in terms of ongoing ambivalence between realized autonomy and discipline (Wagner 1994: 15). Here it is important to understand a central analytical prerequisite, namely that what constitutes discipline and autonomy varies according to the historical epoch in which they occur. More precisely, the social logics that are institutionally materializing themselves in every epoch differ. So rather than focusing on aspects of discipline only, the more potent question to ask is how the society of discipline also involves opportunities of realizing individual autonomy. In my opinion, we can gain insightful knowledge about this by approaching the literature of the epoch in question that deals explicitly – and implicitly – with how the overall organization of work is socially institutionalized. Here it makes good sense to turn to William H. Whyte’s classic The Organization Man from 1956. A central tenant of Whyte’s analysis is the emergence of a particular social ethic that can be said to be the moral foundation on which the society of discipline lays. Whyte explains: By social ethic I mean that contemporary body of thought which makes morally legitimate the pressures of society against the individual. Its major

The pursuit of happiness as ideology 39 prepositions are three: a belief in the group as the source of creativity; a belief in ‘belongingness’ as the ultimate need of the individual; and a belief in the application of science to achieve the belongingness. (Whyte 2002: 7) The social ethic that Whyte detects is comparable to the ‘other-directed’ character that David Reisman coined 50 years later, in The Lonely Crowd (Riesman 2001). Reisman and Whyte are talking about not only the emergence of a new social norm that relates itself to work but also the social proliferation of a broader social ethic: an ethic that is morally legitimated and supported by the overarching structures of society and one that people ought to live by. Note, however, that neither Reisman nor Whyte is particularly happy with the materialization of this social ethic. In fact, Whyte’s book can be seen as an enthusiastic attempt to scrutinize every little detail of this by pointing out its detrimental consequences. In Whyte’s terms, this overly bureaucratized manner that the organization of social life – and work in particular – has gained societal currency completely undermines the favoured ‘rugged’ individualism and thus hinders individuals from realizing their own kind of autonomy and individuality. In other words, it is distortive and an expression of excessive discipline. The genuine realization of people’s autonomy, Whyte believes, is possible only if they are freed from the straitjacket of this social ethic. Only then would the inner forces and freedom of each and every individual be liberated, something that would also be beneficial to firms and businesses and hence to the successful development of these (Whyte 2002: 16). In a book titled The New Individualists: The generation after the organisation man, American sociologists Paul Leinberger and Bruce Tucker empirically trace this development by interviewing exponents of the new individualists. Their informants have no desire to follow an ‘outer-directed’ social ethic; instead, they are preoccupied with being what the authors refer to as ‘man-made selves’ (Leinberger and Tucker 1991: 225). Human-made selves are driven by a firm belief in the dismantling of every structure or institution that – in any form or sense – prevents them from realizing their own self and hence their own version of the good life. More specifically, Leinberger and Tucker detect a desire in their informants to compose their life on the basis of its ‘artistic’ parts. This does not imply, however, that the informants refer to their ‘desires’ to be artists, musicians, or performers. But it means that all the informants have artistic dreams about ‘realizing their creative potential’ (Leinberger and Tucker 1991: 226). The realization of this creative potential is not restricted to specific life situations. Rather, it transgresses the boundaries of work, family, and leisure time. Furthermore, the social ethic of the human-made self addresses important issues of identifying oneself in relation with others – or, rather, seeing oneself as being different from other people: not to be a copycat. Now, this desire to be different from others is not a question of vanity. In fact, Leinberger and Tucker writes this ethic is ‘founded on a genuine moral i­mperative – the demand to express the authentic self’ (Leinberger and Tucker 1991: 12). In relation to understanding which social rules and norms the society of performance is founded on, Leinberger and Tucker’s (1991) research is essential. By stressing the aforementioned moral imperative, they do point us in the right

40  Anders Petersen direction. However, they do not go into much detail with defining what an authentic self really is and hence do not give us a thorough grasp of this moral imperative. Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor can help us here. He has, more than anyone else, described what the contemporary ethic of authenticity consists of. According to Taylor, being authentic entails following certain specific rules: There is a certain way of being human that is my way. I am called upon to live my life in this way, and not in imitation of anyone else’s. But this gives a new importance to being true to myself. If I am not, I miss the point of my life, I miss what being human is for me. (Taylor 1989: 28–29) Originality and being true to oneself are hence the hallmarks of authenticity, the realization of which one is called upon to achieve. Missing out on what being human is for me is a shame. Indeed, one could say that it is shameful. But why? Because the socio-structural conditions in the contemporary performance society are geared towards accompanying people to realize their autonomy in the guise of authenticity. Or so the story goes. To accept this story would, of course, be a blatant example of embroidering the truth. For example, it is hard to imagine that the pivotal concern of Pierre Bourdieu’s informants from his monumental study La Misère du Monde would be that of authenticity (Bourdieu 1993), at least in the manner I am discussing it here. The same goes for members of the new precariat class that Guy Standing has written so forcefully about (Standing 2012). But even with the aforementioned taken into consideration, it still seems as if the ideal of authenticity has acquired a distinctive pitch and force in contemporary society. Thus, Taylor seems to be on the right page when he says we are called to live our lives authentically. That, however, does not relieve us of asking pivotal questions: Who does the calling that convinces people to search for their authenticity? Is there a religious undertone supporting this prerogative? Or is it a secularized notion? Both might be the answer. But I am content with reflecting on the latter, because the calling to realize one’s authenticity not only is hovering over people’s heads like a cloud but has been transformed into an institutional demand. As Axel Honneth writes, at first hesitantly and subsequently on a massive scale, individuals were confronted with the expectation that they present themselves as being ‘flexible’ (to cite the contemporary jargon) and willing to develop themselves if they wished to achieve success in their profession or in society. (Honneth 2004: 472) The shift from the possibility of realizing one’s authenticity to an institutionalized demand is fundamental. It addresses the analytical point I would like to make, namely that realizing – or performing – one’s authenticity has become distortive and functions as a form of discipline in itself. When individuals in the performance society are expected to activate their authentic selves to satisfy institutional

The pursuit of happiness as ideology 41 demands, they are acting in accordance with societal norms and rules. They must perform authentically. This implies that the notion of the authentic self is stretched out: it is not only an individual matter but also a public raw material that can be worked up and moulded into fulfilling certain criteria of success. But as Honneth highlights, the content of these demands is not random but instead quite specific. Only by being flexible, one is able to achieve social and professional success. However, as I  have argued in my latest book (Petersen 2016), we cannot thoroughly grasp the institutionalized demands on this basis alone. Rather, we have to expand our understanding significantly. This implies a more detailed description of the performance society, one in which these demands are linked with the prevailing ideology of happiness.

The social norms and rules espousing the happiness ideology As shown, there is a strong link between authenticity and performance. But what is meant by performance? Performance is, of course, something one does. It is a form of action. One performs at work, in school, as a footballer, and so on. The important aspect of performance in the performance society is that one is equivalent with one’s performances. That is, one identifies oneself with one’s performances and is identified with them. The performances are the markers of identity that one is being judged for and with. We could use the work of Judith Butler (2005) to say that it is via our performances that we give an account of ourselves. Through the performances we make, we take stock of who we are. And through our performances, we show others who we are. Performances are thus to be perceived as the perpetual making of our curriculum vitae (CV) – an unending enterprise that we must undertake. What is more, these CVs are constantly examined – by ourselves and by others. And these exams never cease. We cannot allow our self to get stuck. Getting stuck has consequences: to stay put is to be left out and furthermore to be marginalized (see also Brinkmann 2017). Hence, to keep our authentic self in motion and develop, we have to perform constantly and nurture the accounts of who we are. This endeavour is backed by the ‘numbers’ and the content of the social norms and rules that one has to internalize to live authentically and hence pave the way for a successful life. Nowadays, not only is authenticity sugar-coated with demands to be flexible, but also one has to be adaptable, mobile, polyvalent, active, proactive, effective, positive, social, outgoing, and robust. Although the meaning of these norms, as I will return to later, might be blurry, their existence is tangible. Ordinary people, in their everyday life, are confronted with these and the demand to internalize them. Now, one does not necessarily have to embrace all of these demands, but the total neglect of some of these is the same as sentencing oneself to complete failure. The incentives to keep on incorporating these demands are thus quite powerful, and the enticements to perform accordingly are just as blatant. And this is important, because the internalization of these demands is projected outwardly via the performances that one makes. Perpetual performances, then, show that one is authentically adhering to the societal demands. It

42  Anders Petersen shows that one is able to decipher the overarching logic of the demands, namely that one should be in constant movement. It shows the desired and demanded development and progress. It makes sure that standing still is not an option. Resting on one’s laurels or taking a time-out is not possible in the performance society, because standing still in the performance society is, as I have illustrated, a mortal sin. It is a sin that endangers the social logic related to the ideal of performance, namely that one should not be constrained by any limitations. Rather, one should perceive oneself as ‘a room without a roof’. This perception, I argue, is fortified by the fact that these social rules and norms are institutionalized. Hence, the demand to exercise them is evident in job ads, in the job or dating markets, talked about in social gatherings, or communicated on (social) media, and they have found their way into our kindergartens, schools, and universities. From toddler to teenager to high school student to university student, one is learning to strive for (almost to covet) and hence to internalize these demands via different programmes, teaching modules, and educational schemes that have been promoted politically. In that way, they have materialized themselves as social rules and norms that have political leverage as well as sociocultural and economic leverage. They have become ethical duties we collectively tap into. These norms and social rules are, in other words, those we mutually recognize as the ones we need to internalize in order to become successful individuals – to become winners instead of losers. And who does not want to be successful and win? Who does not wish to be happy? The same logic applies to these two elements, which is why it is possible to analytically intertwine them. They are bound by the same manifestation, namely that they present themselves as truths. As Pharrell Williams sings, happiness is the truth. It’s a truism. And it’s a truth that is anchored – and hence presents itself as morally profound – in the prevailing concept of freedom in the performance society. Pursuing happiness and exercising the potential to be happy are the right things to do. Moreover, it is not simply a manifestation of one’s ability to follow the path towards a successful and authentic life. Rather, it is a way of achieving freedom. Richard Sennett has persuasively written about an understanding of freedom that triumphs in the realm that he refers to as flexible capitalism. He states that We imagine being open to change, being adaptable, as qualities of character needed for free action – the human being free because capable of change. (Sennet 1998: 47) By slightly rewriting this quotation, it becomes possible to extract the understanding of freedom that dominates in the performance society. Here we imagine that the human being is free because they are exercising their potential to pursue happiness. The integrative function of the happiness ideology, its social representation, is that everybody is able to understand the positive inclinations of this concept of freedom. Intuitively as well as logically, the impact of the message is crystal clear. It resonates well. Therefore, it is no wonder that people morally back and support it. The main constituents of the ideology of happiness are namely presenting

The pursuit of happiness as ideology 43 themselves in a fairly straightforward manner. Happiness – understood as the unlimited and hence free pursuit of performance possibilities – is possible and pleasurable if one only adheres to the ideals of the performance society. According to this ideology, then, happiness can be ‘measured’ by one’s ability to constantly perform successfully and hence inscribe oneself in the group of winners. That takes a lot of effort. Within the realm of this ideology, happiness is embedded in the will to take responsibility for being a competent person constantly capable of following the routes to success. But the distortive and oppressive function of the ideology of happiness remains. We can address this via Pascal Bruckner’s claim: ‘Unhappiness is not just unhappiness: It is, worse still, the defeat of happiness’ (Bruckner 2000: 17). True, but the absence of pursuing happiness – and hence refraining from achieving one’s potential to do so – is also the same as being unfree. And that seems even worse than being unhappy. Because if caught in the manacles of unfreedom, the accompanying consequences are not only those of a lack of happiness but also those of sensations of individual incompleteness. As Bauman has stated, The spectre hovering over a society of would-be performers-by-decree is the horror of finding oneself deficient  – inept and inefficacious; as well as its immediate effects – loss of self-esteem and its prospective sequels: outcasting and exclusion. (Bauman 2016: 420) The grim reality of things seems to be that more and more people are finding themselves on the dark side of the performance society – not because of ill faith but because they cannot adequately manoeuvre in and tackle the demands presented to them. In fact, one could say that they are being trampled by the constant demands to perform and to be happy. But as I have already mentioned, the problems associated with the happiness ideology lie not only in its distortive function but also in its integrative function. How is that?

Happiness as controlling the uncontainable If the analysis so far is correct, the internalization of the social norms and rules of the performance society is central to pursuing and exercising one’s potential for happiness. The ability to adequately control these norms and rules is therefore pivotal to achieving happiness. But a serious problem arises when taking a closer look at these norms and rules. At first glance, they might present themselves as straightforward and even appetizing. Being flexible, adaptable, mobile, polyvalent, social, positive, and so on has a nice ring to it – the crème de la crème of desirable qualities. It is almost as if obvious points of resistance are suspended. Instead, a glossy picture is being painted in which people trying to adhere to the norms and social rules are depicted as malleable and easygoing. Or, the road to success is paved with a gradual dosage of flexibility. And that might be the case. However, the contents

44  Anders Petersen of these norms and social rules are also blatantly inconclusive. That is, one never reaches the endpoint of being flexible, adaptable or mobile. Instead, their completion becomes a never-ending journey that individuals are demanded to embark on. Being flexible, for example – as Richard Sennett has shown – is a question of eternal bending without sight of any fixed platform or safe haven to return to (Sennet 1998). The same goes for adaptability and mobility – and the rest of the social rules and norms, for that matter. In relation to the pursuit of happiness and the potential to exercise this, individuals in the performance society are therefore confronted with the demand to control something that in fact cannot be controlled. The norms are constantly on the move – they continually expand – and the attempt to keep up with them therefore requires the total abandonment of unmitigated control. Or perhaps one could say that being in control resides in the acceptance of not being in control. Within the realm of the performance society, this is, of course, perceived as a good thing. It is in the interest of this type of society to keep people on their toes and not expect happiness to come to them easily. Therefore, the logic of the performance society forces it to expand the zone of its pursuit of happiness to infinity and hence to invest in the complete disappearance of fixed entities of happiness. People have to strive for it – in that same manner that they have to strive for and dream about the next commodity in line that serves as a particular object or marker of their happiness. The endless performances have to somehow materialize into something, yet these objects or markers are, more often than not, flighty. Affirmed by popular culture and consumer ideals, happiness every so often boils down to the incessant hunt for various happiness opportunities. As Bauman stated, We have been brought up to think about happiness, by marketing, by advertising, by ever new temptations, seductions and so on, ever new fashions, to think about happiness as an uninterrupted row of better and better pleasures. (Bauman on Al Jazeera talks) Within the realm of the performance society, I believe it is safe to claim, the yardstick of measuring the success of one’s potential to exercise the pursuit of happiness is the freedom to capture new ground devoid of unpleasantness. Pleasures are, almost by definition, only pleasurable. And they are confined by time. A consequence of this is that happiness always is to be explored in the future and never to be located in the past. Faith in progress – and thereby in the idea of endless happiness possibilities – is associated with looking towards the future. In a forward-looking performance society, who wants to situate their happiness in the past? It is as if the words of John Wayne, which adorn his headstone, summarize the social condition well: Tomorrow is the most important thing in life. Comes to us at midnight very clean. It’s perfect when it arrives and it puts itself in our hands. It hopes we’ve learned something from yesterday. (Wayne 1971: 82)

The pursuit of happiness as ideology 45 Of course, today is already pregnant with tomorrow, and we ought to learn from days gone by. It is, however, the is-not-yet that holds currency and really matters. The past is not to be dwelled on, but the future has to be conquered. Tomorrow is ‘clean and perfect’ – not yet infested with the germs and bacteria of human intervention – and therefore the only logical place to position our pursuit and exercise our potential of happiness – in an authentic manner, naturally. But to take a firm grip on the future and establish the grounds for our pursuit of happiness, certain conditions seem to be needed. One is that confidence in the possibility to make this journey towards the future has to be secured. The future has, somehow, to be seen as a place we can rely on. Another is hope in the ability of the future to establish the platform for a ‘happier’ place than that of the past. The big question is whether this is the case. Zygmunt Bauman once wrote that the colonization of the future is bound to remain forever disconcertingly provisional and non-definite; the future is, after all, the site of the selfsame uncertainty which has prompted the colonizing thrust in the first place. (Bauman 1992: 54) So the future has always been a blurry and uncertain place. It seems, however, that the future has become more intangible and complicated than before. At the same time, mastering it is pivotal. Nowadays, it is not the past but the future that is breathing down our necks. If this is the case, the integrative function of the ideology of happiness is problematic. The basic idea on which it rests is precisely that it really is possible to become happier by the minute – as long as we actively master the future. As long as we invest ourselves in the pursuit of happiness and indulge in better pleasures. Seen in this light, the societal demand of the performance society to do so – and hence the request of constantly exercising the possibility of happiness – is not only highly demanding but deeply problematic.

Conclusion In this chapter, I have tried to show the fruitful endeavour of perceiving the happiness imperative in the performance society as an ideology. By doing so, I hope to have accounted for some ways that this ideology is both integrative and distortive and for the fact that the problem with the ideology does not reside only in the latter category. Of course, the problematic aspect of the ideology becomes all too obvious when confronted with its production of unhappy people and even mental suffering. But the ideology, in itself, is also problematic due to the vagueness of the demands its completion is founded on. That is, the ideology of happiness rests on premises that forces each and every one of us – on a daily basis – to stretch and bend ourselves enormously in order to master something that is extremely difficult to concretize. But alas, we do it anyway. Why? Because the ideology of happiness has teamed up with the concept of freedom that imbues the performance society. Only by pursuing and exercising one’s potential for happiness is one free. And who wishes not to be free?

46  Anders Petersen A rhetorical question, indeed. But perhaps a question that forces us to contemplate even more on what happiness is and how new ideas about happiness might question the structural demands of the performance society.

Notes 1 I am aware of the fact that this claim cannot be said to cover the sociological interest in happiness writ large. As David Bartram has shown (Bartram 2012), the sociological contribution to happiness studies has, during the last couple of decades, evolved immensely, thus broadening the range of perspectives that sociologists are interested in while dealing with issues of happiness. 2 I shall explain this term in the third section of the chapter. 3 In making this distinction, I am using Peter Wagner’s historical separation of epochs of modernity (Wagner 1994: 16–18).

References Bartram, D. (2012): ‘Elements of a Sociological Contribution to Happiness Studies’. Sociology Compass, 6(8): 644–656. Bauman, Z. (1992): Mortality, Immortality & Other Life Strategies. Cambridge: Polity Press. Bauman, Z. (2016): ‘From “Official” to “Do it Yourself” Fear’. Revue Internationale De Philosophie, 3: 413–420. Binkley, S. (2014): Happiness as Enterprise: An Essay on Neoliberal Life. New York, NY: State University of New York Press. Boltanski, L. & Chiapello, E. (1999): Le Nouvel Esprit du Capitalisme. Paris: Gallimard. Bourdieu, P. et al. (1993): La Misère du Monde. Paris: Seuil. Brinkmann, S. (2017): Stand Firm. Cambridge: Polity Press. Bruckner, P. (2000): L’Euphorie Perpétuelle: Essai sur le devoir de bonheur. Paris: Grasset. Butler, J. (2005): Giving an Account of Oneself. New York, NY: Fordham University Press. Chiapello, E (2003): ‘Reconciling the Two Principal Meanings of the Notion of Ideology. The Example of the Concept of the ‘Spirit of Capitalism’. European Journal of Social Theory, 6(2): 155–171. Dumont, L. (1977): Homo Aequalis: Genèse et épanouisssement de l’ideologie économique. Paris: Gallimard. Foucault, M. (1991): Discipline and Punish. The Birth of the Prison. London: Penguin Books. Honneth, A. (2004): ‘Organized Self-Realization: Some Paradoxes of Individualization’. European Journal of Social Theory, 7(4): 463–478. Jacobsen, M. H. (2014): ‘Sociology and Happiness: An Interview With Zygmunt Bauman’. The Journal of Happiness and Well-Being, 2(1): 85–94. Leinberger, P. & Tucker, B. (1991): The New Individualists: The Generation After the Organisation Man. New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers. McMahon, D. (2007): The Pursuit of Happiness: The History from the Greeks to the Present. London: Penguin Books. Petersen, A. (2016): Præstationssamfundet (The Performance Society). København: Hans Reitzels Forlag. Ricoeur, P. (1976): ‘Ideology and Utopia as Cultural Imagination’. Philosophical Exchange, 7(1): 17–28.

The pursuit of happiness as ideology 47 Riesman, D. (2001 [1961]): The Lonely Crowd. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Sennet, R. (1998): The Corrosion of Character: The Personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism. New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Co. Standing, G. (2012): The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class. London: Bloomsbury Academic Publishing. Taylor, C. (1989): The Ethics of Authenticity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Wagner, P. (1994): A Sociology of Modernity: Liberty and Discipline. London: Routledge. Wayne, J (1971): ‘Playboy Interview: John Wayne’. Playboy Magazine, May 1971: 80–82. Whyte, W. H. (2002 [1956]): The Organisation Man. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.

3 ‘The sickness unto health’ Self-reification, self-love, and the critique of happiness in contemporary life1 Alastair Morgan Introduction The pursuit of happiness as a public and policy goal has been much debated and analysed in contemporary theory (Ahmed 2010; Layard 2011; Shaw and Taplin 2007). Critiques of the pursuit of happiness have focused on the lack of attention to structural factors that determine wellbeing (Shaw and Taplin 2007; Cromby 2011) and on the historical constructions of different normalized conceptions of what happiness means and what counts as happiness (Ahmed 2007; Colebrook 2007). There have also been questions about the vagueness of the concept of happiness (Bruckner 2010) and the impossibility of accurately measuring happiness. While I share many of these critiques, in this chapter I want to focus on the subjectivity of happiness. What kind of subject or practices of subject formation are produced through this focus on happiness as an individual project of self-fashioning? My contention is that the focus on happiness produces a form of sickness in the pursuit of health. Specifically, I draw on some comments on the notion of self-reification that Axel Honneth (2008) has outlined, in order to demonstrate how the focus on happiness produces a form of self-relation that turns opaque, fluid processes of experience into instrumental objects for the production of an empty notion of happiness. What is produced is a modern form of the paradox of happiness that John Stuart Mill noted in his autobiography (Mill 1989; Austin 2009). The paradox of happiness consists in the problem that focusing on happiness results in its disappearance. As Austin (2009) writes, the paradox of happiness consists in how the attention paid to happiness results in its disappearance since happiness consists in what Phillips (2009: 4) has termed the free loss of interest in oneself. The modern self-monitoring subject produces a hyper-reflexive alertness towards the production of an empty concept of happiness that pushes any possibility of happiness further into the distance. This acknowledgement of a prescribed happiness that produces a joyless pursuit of pleasure and vitality is not necessarily new. Indeed, my title is an adaptation of a piece from T.W. Adorno’s book Minima Moralia, titled ‘The Health unto Death’. Adorno writes that The very people who burst with proofs of exuberant vitality could easily be taken for prepared corpses, from whom the news of their not-quite-successful decease has been withheld for reasons of population policy. (Adorno 1974: 59)

‘The sickness unto health’ 49 Writing in the late 1940s, Adorno already recognized a prescribed form of happiness that itself produces a form of labour. Blackman (2007) has written of the contemporary likening of happiness to a muscle that can be exercised and of discourses on happiness as a form of investment of time, energy, and daily practice. Layard (2011: 27) has written positively of happiness as a form of self-mastery, stating that just as we have mastered nature, we can now turn inwards to master ourselves to give us ‘more of the happiness we all want’. Seligman (2002), a prominent voice in the positive psychology field, has articulated influential notions of positive psychology and authentic happiness that revolve around the idea of an inspection and nurturing of positive strengths in order to produce happiness. For Seligman, happiness is the product of a measurement of character strengths that can then be nurtured and practised on a daily basis. In this chapter, I will begin by analysing the concept of happiness and defend an interpretation of the concept that stresses three central components: an absorption in something beyond the self, happiness as an aleatory experience, and the prereflective nature of the experience of happiness. The critical section of the chapter focuses on how current discourses on happiness construct a concept that leads to experiences that deny the possibility of happiness in a modern version of the paradox of happiness; once one seeks happiness, it vanishes. Here I will focus on the construction of subjective happiness as a form of self-reification, drawing on the work of Axel Honneth. Finally, I will look into the question of the possibility of a different conception of a subjective pursuit of authentic happiness by considering the possibility of self-love that is not reifying.

What is happiness? The problem with the notion of a self-fashioning labour that produces happiness is that it lies in direct contradiction to a central tradition of defining happiness as aleatory and fleeting and involved in a movement beyond the self (Vernon 2008). The concept of happiness is a heterogeneous concept that, even more than most philosophical concepts, is hard to define (Bruckner 2010). McMahon (2006) has produced a comprehensive history of the concept of happiness, showing how these multiple meanings and fluctuations through different historical periods. Therefore, any particular definition of happiness is a stance taken on this history. Nevertheless, I try to define a concept of happiness for the purpose of this chapter. There are three elements to the concept of happiness that I defend here. First, happiness is fundamentally concerned with absorption in someone or something beyond the self. Happiness is to be found not through an examination of purely subjective experiences but through a process of engagement in the world. This is a constant theme with the concept of happiness, that it is a moving beyond a preoccupation with the self, a sense of losing or forgetting the self (Nietzsche 1997). As Vernon (2008: 12) writes, happiness comes to us, as if ‘from outside’. This concept of happiness has been formalized as a concept of ‘flow’ (Nakamura and Czikszentmihalyi 2002). Nakamura and Czikszentmihalyi (2002: 90) write of flow as comprising the following elements. First, there is an intense and focused concentration on an activity in the present moment. Second, there is a merging of

50  Alastair Morgan action and awareness that results in an absence of reflective self-consciousness. Thus, in the moment of flow one is not monitoring or thinking about what one is doing. It is a sense of being in control without a controlling ego. This is what the philosopher Hubert Dreyfus (2007) has termed an immersed coping. Third, temporality is distorted in the ‘flow’ experience as time moves faster. Fourth, the activity itself is intrinsically rewarding and not geared instrumentally towards another goal. Therefore, one cannot seek ‘happiness’ as the flow, but the flow is the by-product of an intrinsically rewarding activity. The experience of absorption may or may not occur as a result of being involved in such an activity. However, what is certain is that the appearance of such a state of happiness is in some sense accidental, a by-product of engaged activity. You cannot seek the ‘flow’ itself; otherwise, it disappears (Vernon 2008: 34). The novelist Ian McEwan gives a good account of this experience of absorption in an interview in the Harvard Business Review, in response to a question about ‘flow’ states during writing: It happens to me only occasionally and it’s accidental. I can’t plan for it, but every now and then it occurs: All barriers fall away, and I’m outside of myself, I forget where I am, I’m completely locked into the moment, all sense of time, desire, even affect, even emotion is gone. It’s usually to do with confronting something difficult, breaking through, solving problems. I think this is one of the unsung forms of human happiness. It’s not about possessions or being rich or being successful. It’s about achieving that selflessness – total absorption in something that interests you and challenges you. (McEwan 2012) McEwan beautifully articulates the experience of absorption as a form of moving beyond the self, through an engagement in a meaningful activity that may or may not produce the experience of happiness. The first element of this concept of happiness therefore defines happiness as an absorption in something beyond the self, and then the second element of happiness defines this absorbed ‘flow’ experience in terms of its chance or accidental nature. As McMahon (2006: 10) points out, the etymological origins of the word happiness lie in notions of chance and luck. Ahmed (2010: 574) makes the same point when she writes of the relation of happiness to contingency, due to its reliance on the Middle English root hap, meaning chance or luck. There is something aleatory about happiness, and it is also aleatory in the sense that it cannot be sought; it just arrives. As John Stuart Mill writes, happiness is not something that can be sought in itself, but ‘those only are happy . . . who have their minds fixed on some other object than their happiness’ (Mill 1989: 112). Mill (1989: 112) writes about taking life ‘en passant’, meaning that happiness cannot be sought as such but only arrives through an immersed activity in something else. Taking these two elements together means that we cannot seek happiness for itself but that happiness arises as a chance occurrence through experiences and projects that are concerned with an absorption in things beyond the self.

‘The sickness unto health’ 51 The third element of this concept of happiness is that it is not reflective; indeed, reflection destroys the experience of happiness. If you start reflecting on the experience of being happy, then you destroy the happiness, because happiness consists of a level of absorption that is a loss of the self. Therefore, happiness can only be recollected, not reflected on in the moment. The philosopher Uriah Kriegel has written about two states of consciousness, a transitive and an intransitive form of consciousness (Kriegel 2003: 105). For Kriegel, intransitive states of consciousness function as a ubiquitous background, a base level of consciousness that is present as our everyday manner of being in the world. Intransitive states of consciousness are not thematized as such; they explicitly become an object only to be grasped in reflection, by what Kriegel terms transitive states of consciousness (Kriegel 2003: 105). Transitive states of consciousness describe the state of consciously reflecting on our own experience in a critical manner. These states involve a conscious thematization and taking hold of experience. For Kriegel, there are four key differences between transitive states of consciousness and intransitive states of consciousness (Kriegel 2003). First, a transitive state of consciousness is introspective, whereas intransitive states are immersed and engaged in the world. Second, transitive states of consciousness are the exceptions in experience, whereas intransitive states are the rule. Intransitive consciousness is our ubiquitous background manner of engaging with the world in a bodily manner, whereas transitive states of consciousness involve a stepping back from this immersion and a conscious attempt to introspect and try to lay hold of intransitive consciousness. Third, transitive states of consciousness are normally voluntary, whereas intransitive states of consciousness are involuntary. We have to consciously reflect on experience through our own cognitive stance towards ourselves and the world, whereas in intransitive states we just find ourselves in the world. Heidegger calls this a form of finding oneself in the world that is not a reflection but an occurrence or revealing of the self immersed in the world (Zahavi 2005: 84). Finally, as a corollary of the voluntary nature of transitive states of consciousness, they are also effortful states, whereas intransitive states of consciousness are free-flowing, without effort (Kriegel 2003). This distinction between transitive and intransitive states of consciousness is useful but clearly does not map accurately onto the account we gave earlier of the experience of ‘absorption’ or ‘flow’. Flow is a higher-level state of intransitive consciousness. It is a return to an enriched notion of being at one with experience that is gained only through an effortful form of transitive consciousness. What is at stake in the ‘flow’ experience is therefore a dialectic between transitive consciousness and intransitive consciousness that may or may not produce the experience of happy absorption that McEwan describes. Happiness, then, is not just the return to an unalloyed state of intransitive consciousness but also the achievement of an enriched notion of intransitive consciousness through the engaged activities of transitive consciousness. What is at stake in this account of happiness, therefore, is the kind of transitive consciousness that can allow the possible appearance of the ‘flow’ state of this enriched experience of intransitive consciousness. Zahavi (2005) has written of the problem of self-reflection, in that

52  Alastair Morgan any introspective moment of reflection has a tendency to objectify thoughts and feelings and thus to lose the free-flowing quality of intransitive consciousness. For Zahavi, this is a necessary tension in any kind of self-consciousness; it is not that we can do without the necessary critical moment of self-consciousness but that we need to be wary about how self-consciousness objectifies thoughts and feelings (Zahavi 2005: 91). There is a necessity for what Zahavi (2005 calls an attentive attitude towards the self and what Ferrara has written about as an ‘openness and receptiveness towards inner motives’ (Ferrara 2009: 21). It is the possibility of this receptiveness and openness that is foreclosed in the contemporary hyper-reflexivity of the focus on the labour of producing happy subjects in contemporary life. Seligman (2002) does conceptualize ‘authentic happiness’ as related to flow, but his conception of the labour that produces happiness dispenses with any notion of contingency. For Seligman, the production of wellbeing becomes an emphasis on and a nurturing of character traits and strengths that build a fixed personality with a propensity for wellbeing (Seligman 2011). This becomes more pronounced in his work in the move from an earlier, utilitarian focus on happiness to his later, more Aristotelian concept of flourishing. The concepts of flourishing and wellbeing downplay notions of pleasure and focus on virtues of character building, but these virtues are often in the service of adapting the self to become more resilient to negative situations. For example, Seligman (2011) stresses the importance of finding and using strengths to increase flow experiences, but many of his examples are focused on people adapting themselves to situations where they don’t wish to be. The concept of flow is reduced to a reductive focus on how to make the best of a bad situation. Happiness can then be produced through the quantification of fixed character traits that can then be nurtured or exercised. He, thus, destroys any notion of a receptivity or openness towards an uncertain self.

Narrative conceptions of happiness Therefore, we have a threefold definition of happiness. Happiness is concerned with a movement beyond the self; it is aleatory; and it is pre-reflectively engaged in the world. However, there is an important contrasting tradition of understanding happiness. Although the concept of happiness as a moving beyond the self into a form of ecstasy (standing outside of oneself) is a central tradition in the attempt to understand happiness in both religious and secular terms, there is an alternative manner of understanding happiness, in terms of self-actualization (McMahon 2006). Colebrook (2007) has given a clear outline of this narrative conception of happiness that has its roots in Aristotelian eudaimonia (living the good life). She writes that happiness in narrative terms is conceived of only through relating a present moment to a lifetime of agency and meaning. Therefore, happiness is intimately related to meaning, and meaning is constructed narratively and in recollection (Colebrook 2007: 82). Colebrook (2007) counterposes two opposing traditions in the history of happiness: that of narrative happiness and that of joy. Narrative happiness is concerned with recollection, agency, and subjectivity. Its

‘The sickness unto health’ 53 core lies in a lifetime of fulfilled agency and meaning ‘recollected in tranquillity’, to adapt a famous phrase from Wordsworth. Joy, on the other hand, is the pursuit of a life beyond the self, of moments of forgetfulness, not recognition or recollection. Colebrook writes here of a ‘life joyfully liberated from the bonds of the self and any personal ends’ (Colebrook 2007: 85). Nietzsche is the model here, and the notion of joy that Nietzsche proposes is based on a project of forgetting rather than recollection. In the Untimely Meditations, he writes, He who cannot sink down on the threshold of the moment and forget all the past, who cannot stand balanced like a goddess of victory, without growing dizzy and afraid, will never know what happiness is. (Nietzsche 1997: 62) It appears then that we have two opposing traditions in trying to define happiness: one that is exclusively concerned with narrative selfhood, and the other that is concerned with moving beyond the self. One could argue that if I placed my argument in the tradition of narrative happiness rather than joy, then the critique of happiness as too focused on the self would lose its force. I think this is not the case because the concept of narrative happiness is related to the concept of joy. One could say that happiness as losing the self, happiness as absorption, is the regulative but realizable ideal of happiness that is achieved through a lifetime of agency and meaning. Therefore, we could accept that there is a moment of recollection of a happy and meaningful life but that this recollection gains its particular emotional hue from the happy ‘moments’ of flow experiences within a life. There is a relationship between joy and happiness, and the two notions are not completely oppositional. Does this mean, though, that one cannot seek happiness? If we accept that there is an important truth to a concept of narrative happiness, then surely it is possible to seek happiness. One could conceive of a life that is lived in a particular way because one thinks this is going to produce happiness and that happiness can result from this. This is true, but I think that Mill’s argument still holds that happiness arises ‘en passant’, so to speak. It is not that happiness is somehow an arithmetical calculation that arises solely from a combination of factors that can be totalled up, as though if I achieve the correct balance of lifetime choices and circumstances, then happiness will necessarily arise. Indeed, it would appear strange to say that I were embarking on a career not through any intrinsic interest but because statistically most people in that job scored highly on job satisfaction surveys. There is an important sense in which happiness cannot be instrumentalized, that it is an end in life, but an end which arises through immersion in meaningful activities for their own sake and not for the sake of happiness. Happiness must have a content, but in a sense, the content comes first and happiness follows. This does not mean that there is not a broader concept of wellbeing that consists of fundamental social goods that form the basis of any happiness, such as economic stability and physical health. It is clear that a core level of economic, community, and personal security, alongside societal bonds of social justice and a

54  Alastair Morgan lack of glaring societal inequalities, are the key bedrock to any notion of human happiness (Wilkinson and Pickett 2009; Layard 2011). Furthermore, the concept of absorption in something beyond the self may not always lead to happiness. Certain states of extreme mental distress or fear can be characterized by absorption in something beyond the self but would not bring happiness. Therefore, one does need to discuss the notion of pleasure and pleasurable absorption, and this brings in numerous debates about types and kinds of pleasure that have been a central controversy in conceptions of happiness, although these cannot be covered in this chapter (McMahon 2006; Marcuse 2009). Despite the critiques and limitations of the notion of happiness as consisting in a movement beyond the self, I think that even a notion of narrative happiness does contain a reference to a conception of happiness that is involved in a pleasurable absorption beyond the self, and therefore, we can accept the centrality of this conception of happiness whenever we try to understand happiness as concept and experience.

The five ways to wellbeing The contemporary discourse on happiness as a public policy and as a daily practice of self-fashioning is caught in a central contradiction that is a modern form of the paradox of happiness. There is a recognition of happiness as a concept that is concerned with moving beyond the self, but at the same time, a concept of possessive individualism remains at the heart of the happiness agenda. Importantly, there is a fuzziness about the concept of happiness, and some proponents of the contemporary discourse tend to focus on concepts of wellbeing rather than happiness. As we have seen, Martin Seligman, one of the principal proponents of positive psychology, explicitly changed his emphasis from happiness to wellbeing as a response to critics who argued that his original theory did not take account of selfless acts and focused too much on pleasure (Seligman 2011). The concept of pleasure is still central in Seligman’s notions of positive emotion and engagement but subordinated to a more virtue-oriented concentration on concepts of positive relationships and lifetime accomplishments. In this way, Seligman (2011) attempts to combine both narrative and joyous concepts of happiness. However, there is an important sense in which the emphasis on pleasure and the demand for happiness and joy serve as critical utopian demands when contrasted with a concept of wellbeing that often functions as an adaptation to current social contexts and constraints. In an essay on hedonism, Marcuse (2009: 121) writes that the hedonistic demand for pleasure for its own sake preserves ‘an otherwise proscribed element of human liberation’. The deferral of pleasure in the name of a higher reason or a greater good converges with a society that accepts that the ‘sensual and sensuous potentialities and needs’ of humans should find satisfaction (Marcuse 2009: 121). There is thus a critical core to the concept of happiness that is masked in its replacement with a concept of wellbeing. A central public health message in the UK context that has structured the contemporary entry of discourses of wellbeing into public policy debates has been around the five ways to wellbeing. These steps have been developed in the UK

‘The sickness unto health’ 55 by the New Economics Foundation as an extension from the extensive Foresight report into mental capital and wellbeing (Foresight 2008). The idea behind these five steps is that a project of self-fashioning and dosing of the self with these daily practices can produce happiness, just as eating five portions of fruit and vegetables a day can produce physical health. The five steps, as listed by the New Economics Foundation, are as follows: 1 Connect – connecting with those around you, whether these are family, friends, or local communities. 2 Be active – exercise and take care of your body. 3 Take notice – appreciate the moment, be aware of the beauty of your surroundings. 4 Keep learning – try new activities or adventures. 5 Give – do something nice for a friend or neighbour. (New Economics Foundation 2013) All of these five messages involve an understanding of happiness as a movement beyond the self. They are concerned with an attempt to immerse the person in their own communities, in family life, in the body, or in a merging with nature. However, at the same time, they are hyper-reflective and instrumental processes of self-fashioning, and they take for granted a notion of a settled and non-threatening social context. Happiness is treated as without content, but as a goal that can be pursued with a rigorous and daily practice of self-fashioning. Importantly, though, this is a self-fashioning without content. One doesn’t participate in community ventures for the sake of an idea of community or justice but for the sake of building up instrumental points towards an empty state called happiness. This is most clear in organizations such as the pseudo-political movement in the UK, termed Action for Happiness (see www.actionforhappiness.org/), which was launched by Richard Layard, Geoff Mulgan, and Anthony Seldon in 2011. Although, this movement sets itself up as a campaigning organization, there is no content to its political goals, other than a completely empty notion of happiness. The contradiction at the heart of such movements is that the aim of the happiness industry is to produce an immersed, unreflective sense of merged happiness, but it does this through the production of hyperalert, vigilant, hyper-reflective individuals focused intensely on an instrumental notion of what it means to be happy. This can be clearly seen in the proliferation of apps for monitoring your mood, where you can check in with your moods and plot your emotions on a graph and then get tips on how to improve your feelings and your activity levels (for just one example, see the app inflow: www.inflow.mobi/). Beck (2009: 187) has written of modernity as a ‘risk society’, where the category of risk ‘consumes and transforms everything’. Here the risk is internalized to the degree that there is a constant alertness to attempting to fix and measure every fluctuation of mood and possibility of either a deterioration or improvement in one’s mental state. This self-fashioning involves a mode of reifying feelings and thoughts in order to instrumentally produce the supposed outcome of a happy state. Marcuse (2002)

56  Alastair Morgan initially wrote about this mode of self-reification in One Dimensional Man. This is a way of turning thoughts and emotions into fixed things, which Marcuse termed a pure form of servitude (Marcuse 2002: 36). It is a form of servitude even though the person does not experience this reification, and even feels their own emotional life as something ‘pretty, clean, mobile’ (Marcuse 2002: 36). This notion of self-­reification has been recently revived by the critical theorist Axel Honneth, in a particularly interesting manner that offers a critical lens to view this hyper-­ reflective form of self-fashioning that is being promoted in the name of happiness.

Self-reification In his lectures on reification, Axel Honneth (2008: 65–73) writes of an important aspect of reification that involves a self-reification: the way we treat our thoughts and experiences, as fixed, as thing-like, and as property that can be owned and produced. Drawing on the work of the philosopher David Finkelstein (2003), Honneth outlines two different modes of reified self-relationship, which he terms detectivism and constructivism (or constitutivism, as Finkelstein terms it: see Finkelstein [2003]). The detectivist model is as follows. It conceives of our relation to our inner self on the model of how we perceive and cognize external objects. So when we ask ourselves how we are feeling, we become detectives, trying to track down and inspect and bring into representation an inner thought, feeling, or image. The detectivist model means that a person regards their experiences as fixed and awaiting discovery. The constructivist/constitutivist model of self-relationship is different from the detectivist model in that it asserts that we are responsible for constituting our mental states. Our mental states and feelings are turned into objects that are the responsibility of our intentions. We manufacture our thoughts and feelings. We can intentionally produce our thoughts, emotions, and feelings. They do not befall us or arise unwittingly or spontaneously but can be produced in the name of various goods, including personal happiness, the selling of products, or the eradication of our own suffering. The contemporary search for happiness is caught between detectivist and constructivist models of self-relation. In terms of detectivism, the subject is constantly inspecting the self for signs of different moods and their context and then trying to isolate, analyse, and recalibrate those moods towards a better outcome. In terms of constructivism, the subject attempts to instrumentally produce an emotional state through the labour of self-fashioning that supposedly produces happiness as its end goal. What is missing here is any sense of a responsiveness to an internal emotional world that is given, that one finds oneself in. Slaby (2012: 63) writes of Heidegger’s concept of attunement to the self, which consists of a ‘receptivity for significance’. Such a receptivity, or attentiveness to the self, involves an awareness that emotional states are in an important sense a way of finding oneself in the world rather than something to be produced by a labour of the self.

‘The sickness unto health’ 57 Hochschild (1983), in her seminal study on the commercialization of feeling, wrote about forms of emotional labour that are practised in the service industries, where one’s labour power is exemplified by the display and sale of affect; for example, the flight attendant’s smiles on boarding an aeroplane. Hochschild (1983: 7) describes emotional labour as ‘the management of feeling to create a publicly observable facial and bodily display’ as a labour power in a service industry. She writes that this manipulation of feelings and gestures is not necessarily new, but its function as something that can be put to use instrumentally by large organizations is a significant extension of an instrumental attitude towards feelings. The cost of emotional work is the inability to listen to what Hochschild terms the signal function of feelings, or to be attentive to how we find ourselves in the world (Hochschild 1983: 21). The core of Hochschild’s critique is that the new culture of capitalism and the turn to emotional labour produces a form of labour on the self for the goal of happiness. This involves a constant alertness to the risk of being unhappy and a daily labouring to produce a sense of happiness. Greco (1993) has written of the production of ‘psychosomatic subjects’, where the urge to make every aspect of your life healthy results in a constant alertness and susceptibility to risk: as she writes, ‘to live is already and ever-increasingly to be at risk’. The individual attempts to fashion their own happiness through a form of emotional labour that is caught between the constant demand to fix and detect emotional deficits and then to constitute or construct feelings through a practice of labour. What is lost is any possibility of absorption or movement beyond the self, as the focus is an entrapped hyper-reflective, hyper-alert attention to the self. Emotions and feelings are treated as possessions, in a form of individualism that MacPherson (1988) writes of as possessive individualism. In possessive individualism, the individual thinks of themselves as essentially the owner of their own capacities and feelings, which have nothing to do with society or context and which can then be taken ‘to market’, so to speak. The interaction of individuals in communities is an interaction between people who exchange and negotiate feelings and emotions as commodities (MacPherson 1988: 3). Illouz (2007) has written about emotional capitalism, where intimate life and emotions are turned into objects of calculation that can be captured quantitatively. This gives rise to what she terms a new emotional ontology, where the idea is that ‘emotions can be detached from the subject for control and clarification’ (Illouz 2007: 36). Illouz (2007) writes of how this emphasis on emotional labour and work on the self oscillates between a demand for happiness and the production of suffering selves, which produces identities that are defined by what they lack and simultaneously impelled to work on the project of an empty self-realization (Illouz 2007: 108–110). Processes of detectivism and constructivism are embedded deeply within the culture of discourses of mental wellbeing and happiness. A good example of this is the Foresight report on mental capital and wellbeing, which initiated the five ways to wellbeing programme. Kirkwood et al. (2008), the authors of the report, begin with an attempt to capture thoughts, emotions, and feelings in explicitly

58  Alastair Morgan detectivist and commodified terms as capital. Thoughts, emotions, and feelings are variously resources, reserves, and sources of value and are analogous to money in a variety of ways. They acknowledge that it may seem strange to think of our inner life in this manner, but they quickly move on by stating that it is also ‘natural’, without any justification as to why it is natural. Mental wellbeing is defined largely in functional terms, as fulfilling purposes and goals and contributing to society. The current hegemony of cognitive behavioural therapy approaches in mental health practice also stems from a model that is thoroughly detectivist and constructivist. The idea that one can isolate and identify particular thoughts and emotions that can be correlated with negative behavioural consequences treats emotions, thoughts, and feelings as fixed objective entities that are available for inspection. Additionally, there is the constructivist idea that once one constructs and builds a healthy range of thoughts, feelings, and emotions, which can be produced through an effort of will, one can then amend one’s negative thinking styles. It would be possible to continue in this vein with reference to cognitive enhancement techniques, brain-based training exercises, the happiness science and its related industry, training your IQ, the positive thinking industry, and the need to monitor and develop cognitive resilience. Truly, forms of detectivism and constructivism abound in self-relationships when one starts looking.

Examples of self-reification To give two small examples of this kind of self-reified relationship, I will take first the idea of remaining in the moment and appreciating the world around you. Imagine you are walking in the park and see a jay alight on a tree, and you are struck by the beauty of its colouring and the way the light catches its wings. At that moment, you are absorbed in an appreciation of the beauty of the bird and the configuration of bird, tree, and light. However, if you are schooled in the emotional labour of happiness production, you immediately watch yourself watching the jay and note down a moment of appreciation, a moment that can be charted and quantified. As soon as you start reflecting on the experience as an experience of appreciation, the moment is gone, the happiness is over. This is an example of what Honneth terms detectivism: the idea that one’s feelings can be tracked down, isolated, and then inspected as though they were fixed states. The product of such detectivism here is the loss of happiness by focusing on it too much. Similarly, the injunction to do good to others is robbed of its content as soon as it is linked instrumentally to your own happiness. In one of their happiness posters, the Action for Happiness movement states ‘if you want to feel good, do good’, which immediately instrumentalizes the notion of ‘doing good’, whatever that might mean. What the poster should read is, ‘if you do good, then feeling good may arise as a chance occurrence from doing good’, but if you instrumentalize ‘doing good’, then you will cease to feel happiness at all. This is an example of what Honneth terms constructivism: the idea that feelings can be produced artificially through the pursuit of various activities that have no intrinsic meaning

‘The sickness unto health’ 59 in themselves. Honneth writes that what happens in these two modes of selfreification is that one’s own self becomes reified because in both cases these states are grasped as given, thing-like objects. (Honneth 2008: 73) The emotional labour expended on producing happiness produces an acute modern form of the paradox of happiness. The more we focus on happiness, the more we produce forms of self-relationships that exclude the possibility of happiness as absorption and loss of self. Happiness cannot be controlled, produced, or demanded but arises as a corollary of engaging in the world for the sake of goods other than individual happiness. The contemporary injunction to be happy is more likely to produce a relationship to the self that precludes the possibility of absorption. Self-love In a fascinating but rather brief set of reflections in the essay on reification, Honneth (2008) tries to articulate a positive form of self-relationship in opposition to processes of self-reification. He briefly refers to a concept of self-love taken from Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and also references Frankfurt’s references to selflove and Winnicott’s work on play as an integral moment in a self-relationship (see Aristotle 2000; Frankfurt 2004; Winnicott 2005). Honneth does not elaborate in any detail on these rather disparate and scattered sources but suggests that any critique of happiness needs to rely on fashioning some moment of authentic self-love. Rahel Jaeggi argues in her penetrating book on alienation that the critique of any form of alienation immediately presupposes a conception of a true form of existence or good life (Jaeggi 2014). Jaeggi is well aware of the dangers of such essentialism and attempts a negative conception of authentic happiness or selflove, which is related to the concept of freedom. For Jaeggi, being free means the ability to meaningfully appropriate our own desires and projects in a negotiation with other people and the environment. Frankfurt (2004) appears to argue something similar when he relates an authentic concept of self-love to the notion of being wholehearted in the sense of committing to one’s projects and attachments in the world. Self-love is the product of a ‘unified will’, according to Frankfurt (Frankfurt 2004: 95). Similarly to Jaeggi, he argues that a successful negotiation of our desires and meaningful projects and attachments results in an appropriate form of self-love. Such self-love then consists in love for our projects, attachments, and identities, not in a narcissistic infatuation with the self for its own sake. As Jaeggi (2014) points out, the self cannot be thought about in this sense, apart from a relational concept of the self. The self just is its relationship to the world, and self-love is, of necessity, a love that is projected outwards towards projects in the world. Self-love in this sense is opposed to a discourse on happiness that

60  Alastair Morgan is without content and focuses on the person’s relationship with other people and the external world. The concern about these accounts of self-love is that they too appear to dissolve into a form of possessive individualism but of a more enlarged kind. We are still within the orbit of a subject constituting the world through externalization and appropriation, and the passive, aleatory moments of happiness seem to be missing in this traditional, Kantian concept of autonomous practice. One might think that the subtle interplay of dependence and independence in the constitution of subjectivity is not accounted for here. However, Jaeggi is far too subtle a thinker not to pose the essential critiques of her own position. She writes that one could think that her account of self-love is far too harmonious, too successful, and that it reeks of the reified bourgeois ‘success story’ (Jaeggi 2014). She accepts that there are ‘alien desires and parts of ourselves that we do not have at our command’ (Jaeggi 2014: 129) She further writes that there is a tension between a process of ‘taking over and creating, between the subject’s sovereignty and its dependence’ (Jaeggi 2014: 39). Thus, for Jaeggi, any successful appropriation of our selves is always an, in principle interminable, process of self-fashioning that does not ‘presuppose complete transparency and command’ (Jaeggi 2014: 48). The other writer invoked by Honneth when thinking about self-love is D.W. Winnicott. Winnicott famously emphasizes a concept of play as an intermediate space between internal and external reality that is essential to a kind of freeformed or even ‘formless’ process of self-fashioning. He writes that it is only in ‘being creative that the individual discovers the self’ (Winnicott 2005: 73). Contrary to Jaeggi’s account of a purposive appropriation of meaning and desires, Winnicott emphasizes ‘non-purposive states, as one might say a sort of ticking over of the unintegrated personality . . . formlessness’ (Winnicott 2005: 74). Such a formless experience that is created in the therapeutic encounter is the arena for a play of impulses that can allow a creative relationship to the self. This creative apperception is what enables an appreciation of an openness of the self to a moment of happiness (Winnicott 2005: 87). It relates more clearly to the notions we saw earlier of aleatory happiness and Mill’s idea of taking life ‘en passant’. Winnicott recognizes that such feelings of formless openness are tantalizing, and individuals often recognize only a lack of such moments in their lives, a lack marked by a sense that they are ‘caught up in the creativity of someone else, or of a machine’ (Winnicott 2005: 88). This quotation gestures towards an understanding that concepts of self-love and happiness are situated within a larger context of the place of individuals within a societal whole. If, as Jaeggi argues, self-realization is a process that can take place only through an externalization in the social and material world, then such externalization can founder given the lack of opportunities for a process of playful exploration and appropriation in a social world marked by fixed identities and processes of the commodification of internal life. Jaeggi (2014) points to a fascinating passage from Adorno’s Negative Dialectics, where he writes of the feeling of ‘being not quite there, of not playing along, a feeling as if they were not themselves at all, but a kind of spectator’ (Adorno 1990: 363). Adorno is writing that a form of being a spectator of our lives is an

‘The sickness unto health’  61 inevitable corollary of the process of an individual awareness of insignificance in relation to an alienated totality of reified existence. Such a withdrawal, inhuman in its coldness, nevertheless preserves a form of critical distance from identification with a self that is compromised through and through by processes of possessive individualism modelled on capitalist exchange and commodification. In the alienated feeling of distance – of ‘what does it really matter?’ – lies the possibility of an awakening to a reified state of individualization within a society that reduces interaction to forms of exchange (Adorno 1990: 363). This would be a truly negative form of self-love that finds itself within alienation and not beyond it. In another piece, this time in Minima Moralia, Adorno writes about prescribed happiness: The admonition to be happy, voiced in concert by the scientifically epicurean sanatorium-director and the highly strung propaganda chiefs of the entertainment industry have about them the fury of the father berating his children for not rushing joyously downstairs when he comes home irritable from his office. (Adorno 1974: 62).

Conclusion The injunction to monitor, track down, and produce happiness in contemporary discourses creates forms of subjectivity that remain entrapped in an objectifying relation towards one’s own interior life. Increasingly, we are encouraged to quantify, isolate, and detect emotions and moods as though they were separable entities within the flux of experience. However, the result of such a self-reifying attitude towards our interior lives is that any immersed absorption in experience is completely erased in a hyper-alert, hyper-reflective search for the elusive dream of happiness. The modern discourse on happiness produces subjects who, in an attempt to practise a discipline of happy lives, focus so much on happiness that the possibility of ever achieving it disappears. In this chapter, I have articulated how contemporary discourses of happiness and wellbeing contribute to a process of self-reification in the sense that our relationship to ourselves is constructed as though our thoughts and feelings are objects that can be tracked down, monitored, and manipulated like things. Such a process extirpates the playful relationship to the self that could open up a space for a happiness that lies in an absorption beyond a commodified self and towards the possibility of a happiness that lies in self-relinquishment.

Note 1 This is an extended and reworked version of a paper that was initially published as: Morgan A (2014) “The Happiness Turn: Axel Honneth, self-reification and the “Sickness Unto Health”, Subjectivity 7: 219–233.

62  Alastair Morgan

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‘The sickness unto health’  63 Layard, R. (2011): Happiness: Lessons from a New Science (2nd edition). London: Penguin Books. MacPherson, C. B. (1988): The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism – Hobbes to Locke. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Marcuse, H. (2002): One Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society. London: Routledge. Marcuse, H. (2009): ‘On Hedonism’. In H. Marcuse (ed.) & Jeremy J. Shapiro (trans.), Negations: Essays in Critical Theory. London: MayFly Books. pp. 119–151. McEwan, I. (2012): ‘Life’s Work, an Interview With Alison Beard’. Harvard Business Review, November. Retrieved from http://hbr.org/2012/11/ian-mcewan/ar/1, accessed 19 September 2013. McMahon, D. (2006): The Pursuit of Happiness: A History from the Greeks to the Present. London: Penguin Books. Mill, J. S. (1989): Autobiography. London: Penguin Classics. Nakamura, J. & Czikszentmihalyi, M. (2002): ‘The Concept of Flow’. In C. R. Snyder & S. J. Lopez (eds.), Handbook of Positive Psychology. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 89–106. New Economics Foundation. (2013): ‘Five Ways to Wellbeing Postcards’. Retrieved from www.neweconomics.org/publications/entry/five-ways-to-well-being-postcards, accessed 20 September 2013. Nietzsche, F. (1997): Untimely Meditations (trans. R. J. Hollingdale). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Phillips, A. (2009): ‘The Value of Frustration’. Conversation With Jane Elliott and John David Rhodes, World Picture 3. Retrieved from www.worldpicturejournal.com/WP_3/ Phillips.html, accessed 19 September 2013. Seligman, M. (2002): Authentic Happiness: Using Positive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Deep Fulfilment. London: Nicholas Brealey Publishing. Seligman, M. (2011): Flourish: A New Understanding of Happiness and Well-Being and How to Achieve Them. London: Nicholas Brealey Publishing. Shaw, I. & Taplin, S. (2007): ‘Happiness and Mental Health Policy: A Sociological Critique’. Journal of Mental Health, 16(3): 359–373. Slaby, J. (2012): ‘Emotional Rationality and Feelings of Being’. In: J. Fingerhut & S. Marienberg (eds.), Feelings of Being Alive. Berlin: DeGruyter. pp. 55–78. Vernon, M. (2008): Wellbeing. Durham, NC: Acumen Press. Wilkinson, R. & Pickett, K. (2009): The Spirit Level: Why Equality Is Better for Everyone. London: Penguin Books. Winnicott, D. W. (2005): Playing and Reality. London and New York: Routledge Classics. Zahavi, D. (2005): Subjectivity and Selfhood: Investigating the First-Person Perspective. Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press.

Part II

The political and social effects of happiness

4 Hijacking the language of functionality? In praise of ‘negative’ emotions against happiness Edgar Cabanas and Eva Illouz Introduction Happiness has become a pervasive ideology in neoliberal societies. Following the triumph of therapeutic culture (Nolan 1998), emotional capitalism (Illouz 2007, 2008), neo-utilitarian politics (Lamont 2012), and the self-help transnational industry (Nehring et al. 2016), positive psychology – henceforth PP – ­surfaces today as the tip of the iceberg of an epidemic phenomenon that has deeply haunted and fashioned morality, politics, economics, and therapeutics. Indeed, in a matter of a few years, the scientific discourse of happiness has been strongly inscribed and entangled within social structures of accountability, consumption, management, surveillance, care, measurement, and decision-making on a global scale – even infiltrating the most intimate spheres of life and transforming those same structures that it has wormed itself into. As numerous scholars have pointed out, neoliberal societies have witnessed how happiness has taken root as a moral imperative that rewards those who stand up to the pursuit of personal flourishing and stigmatizes those who fail to conform to it (Cederström and Spicer 2015; Zupančič 2008); as a tyrannical attitude that stresses individual responsibility and trumpets the triumph of attitudes over circumstances (Ehrenreich 2009; Held 2004); as an authoritative discourse that has proved useful to rekindling and legitimizing individualism in seemingly nonideological terms through the discourse of science (Cabanas 2016, 2018a); as a social norm to which individuals have no choice but to abide by if they are to be deemed productive and proactive citizens (Cabanas and Illouz 2017); as the economic dynamo of a global and multibillion-dollar industry that is based on the commodification and commensuration of emotions at multiple levels (Davies 2015); and as a first-order political criterion to inform and guide a multitude of institutional and governmental decisions and interventions (Binkley 2011, 2014). More fundamental for this chapter, the rise and expansion of PP has institutionalized a particular ‘emotional hierarchy’ (Illouz 2007) – that is, a particular scheme that structures the psyche and society, by connecting them and making them legible in emotional terms. Specifically, happiness scientists have brought to the fore and promote a positive emotional discourse that posits a sharp divide between

68  Edgar Cabanas and Eva Illouz what is normal and abnormal, healthy and hazardous, desirable and undesirable, and, in this regard, functional and dysfunctional for individuals in contemporary society. PP’s assumption that dysfunctional selves are not just sick selves but also not completely healthy and fully developed selves has penetrated therapeutic culture deeply in recent years. Relatedly, positive psychologists – henceforth PPs – claim that positive emotions, in contrast to negative ones, should be deemed the leading explanation and predictor of adaptive and optimal functioning behaviour has become particularly prominent, as well. Based on these and other similar assumptions, an emerging positive therapeutic paradigm on human behaviour that fetishizes wellbeing, reduces the notion of functionality to the exclusive realm of the psychological, and identifies health and success with happiness and personal development has firmly settled and developed worldwide, especially in the fields of therapy, applied psychology, and professional counselling. The correspondence between happiness and functionality is manifest in the way PPs address emotions and relate them to issues of optimal functioning – or flourishing, as they call it. According to this viewpoint, functionality is not a matter of psychological and emotional balance but a matter of higher positivity over negativity. Allegedly, the frequent experience of positive emotions relative to negative ones stands as the leading cause explaining why some people are more psychologically and socially fit than others – for example, cope better with uncertainty, display more flexible behaviour, show less physical and mental problems, develop abilities more effectively, better capitalize on opportunities, live longer, enjoy more-stable relationships, develop higher quality social relationships, and so on (Boehm and Lyubomirsky 2008; Catalino and Fredrickson 2011; Diener 2012; Fredrickson 2009; Judge and Hurst 2008; Lyubomirsky, King, and Diener 2005; Seligman 2008, 2011b). The present chapter argues that the scientific discourse of happiness is hijacking the language of functionality  – that is, the language that defines what it is to perform, act, and feel in psychological and social standards and expectations. Section 1 is mainly descriptive. It first presents PPs’ characterization of emotions and its relation to functionality. By way of illustration, it focuses on the work of Barbara Fredrickson. The section also describes the broad dissemination and main assumptions of positive psychotherapy (PPT). This self-proclaimed new therapeutic paradigm draws on PP’s account of emotions to reformulate the notion of ‘the average person’, further announcing happiness as the key and most defining feature of normality, adaptation, and functionality. Section 2 provides a critical account of the issues presented in Section 1. In this respect, it first argues against the fallacious divide between positive and negative emotions provided by PP, claiming that it departs from a rather reductionist and simplistic account on both the nature and functionality of emotions. In this respect, it stresses the importance of addressing the relationship between emotions and functionality in sociological, structural, and political terms. Later, the chapter comments briefly on some of the counterproductive and contradictory consequences that derive from the strong inscription of happiness into the definition of functionality.

Hijacking the language of functionality?  69

Positivity as new functionality Several years after the onset of the movement, Barbara Held (2004) critically argued that PP’s approach to emotions is founded on the polarizing assumption that positivity is good for you and that negativity is bad and bad for you. For PPs, only those behaviours that contribute to the happiness of individuals are rendered as functional and adaptive, whereas those emotions, thoughts, and attitudes that do not contribute to or diminish happiness tend to be depicted as maladaptive and unhealthy; for example, Seligman (2002) stated that negative emotional and cognitive states are ‘maladaptive in most endeavors . . . [this accounting for why] pessimists are losers on many fronts’ (178). Although some critical PPs were aware of the fact that ‘it would be a major mistake to assume that all that is positive is good’ (Aspinwall and Staudinger 2003: 18), forewarning that the main ‘pitfall of focusing on positive emotional experiences as definitive of the good life is the tendency to view any negative emotion as problematic’ (King 2001: 53). A major and polarizing account of the different nature and functionality of positive and negative emotions grew and strengthened as the movement gained in visibility, popularity, and authority. Positive and negative: functional opposites The work of Barbara Fredrickson, one of the most influential and representative authors, together with Martin Seligman and Ed Diener, is illustrative of this latter approach. Fredrickson’s key point is that people who flourish ‘don’t simply feel good and do good. Rather, they do good by feeling good’ (Fredrickson 2013: 3). According to Fredrickson, positive and negative emotions are functionally different in evolutionary terms. While positive emotions would have been naturally selected for their beneficial effects on personal growth and optimal psychological functioning, negative emotions would have been mainly selected for their survival function, but they involve important psychological costs (Fredrickson 2000, 2001). As Fredrickson’s famous broaden-and-build theory states, whereas positive emotions – including joy, interest, contentment, pride, and love – ‘all share the ability to broaden people’s momentary thought-action repertoires and build their enduring personal resources, ranging from physical and intellectual resources to social and psychological resources’ (Fredrickson 2001: 221), negative emotions – such as fear, anger, and disgust – narrow and shrink those same repertoires and resources. Further, Fredrickson claims that there is a natural opposition between positive and negative emotions, which would be evident in their inherent and functional incompatibility and asymmetry, at evolutionary, physiological, psychological, and social levels. Regarding incompatibility, Fredrickson’s ‘undoing hypothesis’ states that ‘positive emotions are somehow incompatible with negative emotions’ (Fredrickson 2001: 221). Apparently, positive emotions would work as both ‘buffers’ and ‘efficient antidotes for the lingering effects of negative emotions’ (2001:

70  Edgar Cabanas and Eva Illouz 221; see also Fredrickson and Joiner 2002). Although Fredrickson (2001) points out that the precise mechanisms of this undoing effect remain unknown, she adds that it seems beyond doubt that positive emotions help individuals by lessening and counterbalancing the harmful physiological, psychological, and social resonance of negative emotions, such as increased risk of cardiovascular problems, depression, or impoverished displays of coping strategies and socioemotional skills, respectively (Fredrickson 2009). Regarding asymmetry, Fredrickson claims that ‘whereas negativity dominates positivity in intensity, positivity dominates negativity in frequency’ (Fredrickson 2013: 6), meaning that in order for positive emotions to be effective in their preventive, undoing, and broaden-and-build effects, ratios of positive emotions to negative ones should be at least 2.9:1 (Fredrickson and Losada 2005). For instance, for Fredrickson, ‘successful marriages are characterized by positivity ratios of about 5:1, whereas marriages on cascades toward dissolution have ratios of about 1:1’ (Fredrickson 2013: 5). This seems to be so because higher ratios of positive emotions to negative ones trigger upward spirals that counter the downward spirals of negativity and augment individuals’ functional resources, ‘including their cognitive resources (e.g. trait mindfulness), psychological resources (e.g. environmental mastery), social resources (e.g. positive relations with others), and physical resources (e.g. reduced illness symptoms)’ (Fredrickson 2013: 2). Although Fredrickson carefully points out that two much of positive emotions could be somehow detrimental – for example, ratios about 11:1, according to Fredrickson and Losada (2005) – it is generally held that no signs of dysfunction are found even at high levels of happiness and positivity (see also Tarlow, Schwartz, and Haaga 2002). The spread of the positive paradigm Drawing on this theoretical divide between positive and negative emotions, PPs announced PP and its subfield, PPT (e.g. Seligman, Rashid, and Parks 2006), as a new therapeutic paradigm that ‘revisits “the average person” with an interest in finding out what works, what is right, and what is improving’ (Sheldon and King 2001: 216). This paradigm claims to move beyond ‘business-as-usual therapy’ – that is, away from the ‘disease model’ characteristic of ‘traditional’ therapeutics (Seligman 2002) – to focus instead on the universal study of ‘effective human functioning’ and the promotion of ‘what makes life worth living’: positive emotions, flourishing, authenticity, spiritualism, and positive strengths (Fredrickson 2009; Peterson and Seligman 2004; Seligman 2011b). Whereas traditional therapy, PPs claim, would have worn blinders that prevented it from recognizing the value of focusing and nurturing what is right with people (Sheldon and King 2001), PP on the other hand aims to move ‘all of the social sciences away from their negative bias’ (Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi 2000: 13) by shifting towards a positive, culturally unbiased, and empirically based redefinition of human functionality that could be expanded ‘to other times and places, and perhaps even to all times and places’ (Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi 2001: 90).

Hijacking the language of functionality? 71 As implied by PPs, PPT is based on four main assumptions. First, regardless of culture, race, social class, or gender, people inherently and universally desire growth, fulfilment, and happiness, instead of just seeking to avoid suffering, worry, and anxiety. Second, uprooting problematic conditions and learning coping strategies to deal with the hardships of everyday lives is not enough to build normal, fitting, and adaptive behaviour and personalities; rather, healthy and adaptive psyches are built through the achievement of positive emotional lifestyles that help people thrive and flourish as individuals. Third, happiness and wellbeing are primarily a matter of personal responsibility, with the individual held as the main agent accountable for its personal growth. Fourth, and summarizing the previous points, happiness is not a privileged or higher psychological state but a key defining feature of psychological and social normality, adaptation, and functionality. In spite of strong criticism, this positive paradigm has successfully spread and firmly settled in the past decade and a half (Donaldson, Dollwet, and Rao 2015; Rusk and Waters 2013) – impacting not only the academic and professional therapy but also counselling, management, leisure, education, politics, health institutions, private organizations, and even the military. A representative example of this positive shift in the social scientific and therapeutic fields is what Peterson and Seligman (2004) called the ‘manual of the sanities’, a positive counter version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) and International Classification of Diseases (ICD). This manual claims to provide a universal classification of human strengths and virtues to guide research and to diagnose, measure, and nurture what is right, authentic, and empowering for individuals instead of diagnosing and measuring what is wrong with people. The aim of this ‘scientific’ classification of human strengths, according to the authors, is to help people develop their authentic strengths of character and increase their wellbeing by promoting psychological and social adjustment through personal growth (Peterson and Seligman 2004). Although the authors acknowledge that this positive manual is not a taxonomy of human virtues, just a classification – since the former endeavour was beyond their ‘ability to specify a reasonable theory’ (2004: 6) – this work has been a key reference for an increasing number of researchers, life and business coaches, business leaders, educators, managers, and a wide array of practitioners around the world in the past decade (Niemiec 2013). Another representative example of this shift in academic and therapeutic fields is the concept of posttraumatic growth (PTG). Contrary to post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), allegedly more characteristic of negative therapy, PTG focuses on studying and nurturing experiences of personal growth – such as an increased appreciation for life, a richer existential and spiritual life, or an increased sense of personal strength – in the aftermath of crisis events – such as cancer, catastrophes, stressful situations, and so on. (e.g. Linley and Joseph 2004; Tedeschi and Calhoun 2004). The underlying idea is that through training and practice on positive emotions, mental toughness, and positive thoughts, suffering can and should be turned into an opportunity to grow personally and build more functional and preventive and flexible patterns of feeling, thinking, and behaving instead of merely bringing people back to their emotional baseline (Seligman 2011b). The increasing interest

72  Edgar Cabanas and Eva Illouz in PTG within academic and therapeutic fields, though, has been accompanied by extensive reviews that have questioned the scientific validity of the concept, pointing out that PTG might be more illusory than real (e.g. Sumalla, Ochoa, and Blanco 2009; Tomich and Helgeson 2004). It has been also challenged by research that questions the interventive and therapeutic effectiveness of the $145-million initiative comprehensive soldier fitness (CSF), a PP programme that consist of five modules  – emotional fitness, family fitness, social fitness, spiritual fitness, and posttraumatic growth – and that has been applied within the U.S. Army with the objective of creating ‘a force as fit psychologically as it is physically’ (Seligman 2011a: para 7; for a critical review, instead, see Brown 2015). More examples of this shift can be found in the professional field. Since its appearance in academia at the turn of the century, PP has increasingly intersected in synergetic ways with a broad range of ‘cultural mediators’ (Bourdieu 1984) that have simultaneously expanded and disseminated the principal tenets of this therapeutic shift. A good example is what Swan (2010) has termed personal development workers. These professionals include life and business coaches, learning consultants, motivational speakers, self-help gurus, and mindfulness therapists. Instead of targeting sick selves, they focus on ‘normal’ and healthy individuals with the aim of helping people achieve healthier, happier, and optimally functional lifestyles in virtually every sphere of their everyday lives – marriage, sex, eating, work, interpersonal relations, sleep, self-image, and so on. PPs have indeed acknowledged the shared goals underpinning both PP and these personal development workers (Seligman 2011b), arguing that both the academic and the professional fields should work together towards developing and popularizing this positive shift in therapeutics and psychological interventions (Joseph 2015). In this regard, and together with PPs, personal development workers must be regarded as active participants in the dissemination, popularization, and application of positive therapeutic know-hows and techniques that render happiness not as a privileged or higher psychological or vital state but as a key defining feature of psychological and social normality, adaptation, and functionality.

The fallacious functional divide between positive emotions and negative emotions The theoretical and functional divide between positive emotions and negative emotions held by PP, as advanced within the introduction, results in various pitfalls, omissions, and mistakes that are worth pointing out. On the one hand, the general framework on emotions provided by PP is reductionist. It draws on what authors such as Lupton (1998) have critically described as ‘emotions as inherent’ (i.e. emotions as a fixed, limited, specific, and natural set of universal states). Such an approach is characterized by an asocial and ahistorical understanding of emotions that neglects the complexity and multifarious nature of this concept – as several historical, psychological, and sociological approaches have put forward (e.g. Frevert 2011; Lazarus and Lazarus 1994; Lewis, Haviland-Jones, and Barret 2008; Rosenwein 2002; Wetherell 2012).

Hijacking the language of functionality? 73 PP also overlooks that emotions are as much properties of groups, communities, and societies as they are properties of individuals. This is not simply because emotions have an interpersonal functionality, such as communication, persuasion, and identification (e.g. Keltner and Haidt 1999) but also because they are imbued with cultural and social meanings (Despret 2004; Lutz and White 1986; MacKinnon 2007). Likewise, PPs’ approach to emotions overlooks the tight relationship of emotions to changing patterns of choice and consumption (e.g. Illouz 2007, 2008, 2012, 2018), as well as to social structures – that is, social situations and power relations (e.g. Barbalet 2004; Hochschild 2012). Further, PPs neglect that emotions are also ways of defining and negotiating social relations and personal views of the self within certain moral orders (e.g. Harré 1991). Despite the many works stressing the moral side of happiness (e.g. Ehrenreich 2009; Sundararajan 2005; Zupančič 2008), PPs opt for an evolutionist and positivist perspective that tends to play down, neutralize, and even reject the deep moral content with which notions such as personal fulfilment, wellbeing, or self-realization are saturated. On the other hand, the sharp divide between positive and negative emotions drawn by PP neglects the fact that when it comes to emotions, it is difficult to clearly demarcate the positive and the negative, particularly if we are to make good sense of them (Lazarus 2003), sociologically or psychologically. Ambivalent feelings colour any event in life. The news of a relative that has just passed away after a long and painful disease might make an individual sad and relieved at the same time, just as shoplifting might generate blends of guilt and excitement or watching a horror movie blends fear and enjoyment. It is therefore inaccurate to understand emotions as separate entities with precise contours or as combinations of simpler or more basic feelings (Kagan 2007). Happiness is a case in point. Contrary to PPs, who tend to render happiness as a single, quantitative, and harmonious variable, recent studies show that when compared to narratives obtained via interviews, happiness self-ratings neglect the variety of mixed, ambiguous, and ambivalent feelings that emerge when individuals assess and talk about how happy they are with their own lives (Ponocny et al. 2015). Similarly, the claim that positive and negative emotions yield clear positive and negative outcomes respectively is overly simplistic. For instance, hope always combines an energizing wish or belief that the desired outcome will happen with feelings of anxiety and fear that accompany the possibility that such outcome will not occur (e.g. Lazarus 2003); joyfulness propels individuals to engage in challenging activities but also to be less persistent in the face of difficult tasks, to make less accurate choices, to take higher risks, and to facilitate conformity and acquiescence (e.g. Forgas 2013; Tan and Forgas 2010); whereas forgiveness might reduce hostility towards others, it might produce opposite effects in certain circumstances  – for example, forgiveness might be beneficial for couples who seldom engage in arguments but detrimental for those who frequently fight (e.g. Pérez-Álvarez 2012). For its part, emotions such as anger might lead to destructive behaviours and to inflict humiliation, but it also compels individuals to seek to right the wrongs that others suffer, to challenge authority – or preserve it – and to tighten interpersonal and communal bonds in the face of injustice or shared

74  Edgar Cabanas and Eva Illouz threats (e.g. Storr 1992); nostalgia might drive individuals towards a sad rumination and longing for the past but also towards repairing that longing with a particular belonging, to engage in critical retrospective and prospective thinking, and to build or strengthen common identities (e.g. Boym 2001); and envy might lead towards resentment and hostility but can also be associated with increased effort, interpersonal admiration, and an attentional shift towards means to attain a desired goal (e.g. Lange and Crusius 2015). Nevertheless, the point should not be to find the positive in the negative – or vice versa. The ingrained tendency among happiness scientists to deem negative emotions functional – and hence worthy of their psychological and social status – only insofar as they can be ‘positivized’ (i.e. only insofar as they can be turned into positive means, goods, or opportunities for personal growth and flourishing) should be overcome. Resilience, and the related concept of PTG, is a good example of this tendency. Resilience training aims to reframe every negative emotion into a positive one and build a solid, positive self-concept that works as a ‘buffer’ against negative feelings and thoughts resulting from adverse or stressful events. This tendency does not simply insist on depriving negativity or suffering from any psychological and social functionality but also overestimates the extent to which resilience and the positive reframing of negative emotions are functional and desirable irrespective of social contexts and personal circumstances. For instance, optimistic explanations of one’s behaviour might undermine motivation to seek improvement (Pérez-Álvarez 2012), and a high positive selfconcept – such as self-love, self-preservation, and self-compassion – may increase emotional disengagement and prevent care, empathy, and solidarity with others in some circumstances. Indeed, resilience as a concept and desired psychological state not only emphasizes emotional self-sufficiency in the face of adversity  – hence undermining the structural interdependence from which solidarity usually arises – but also places excessive focus on self-preservation in the face of problems and hostile circumstances, which could result in egocentric behaviours. In this regard, many authors have argued that although positive emotionality might increase subjective empathy, it is often associated with decreased empathic objective performance, as well as with increased selfishness, stealing, stereotyping, and judgement errors in explaining the behaviour of others (Devlin et al. 2014; Forgas and East 2008; Park and Banaji 2000). PPs, however, seldom acknowledge these facts. Finally, the ingrained assumption in happiness science that, contrary to negative emotions, it is positive emotions that best build character and hold society together (e.g. Peterson and Seligman 2004) does not withstand sociological and historical scrutiny. Emotions such as envy, humiliation, fear, or anger are as favourable or unfavourable to building personality and social cohesion as love or compassion. In-group love and out-group hate, for instance, are often the two faces of the same coin (Barbalet 2004; Smail 2001). Although frustration, anomie, or hatred tend to be rendered as failures in the formation of the psyche, as well as detrimental and even inimical to social relations, these emotions are significant drivers in the formation of crucial and everyday social dynamics, such as group cohesiveness or collective movements (Hochschild 1975, 1994). Hatred,

Hijacking the language of functionality? 75 for instance, pushes individuals to take up social and individual action in the face of injustice and oppression, when resources are unfairly distributed or threatened or when individuals experience a lack of recognition (Honneth 1996). To this effect, it might be said that emotions such as hatred deeply hinge both on the core of political action and reaction and on the core of one’s sense of worth and identity. Yet by seeking to transform negative emotions into positives ones in order to render them adaptive and valuable, PP not only erases their personal and social functionality but also strips them of their core political nature.

Happiness as imperative, unhappiness as ailment Though seldom admitted by the growing array of academics, therapists, and professionals who celebrate the ‘happiness turn’, the inscription of happiness into the definition of functionality has resulted in significant tensions, paradoxes, and contradictions, at both psychological and sociological levels. Indeed, as we want to briefly highlight in this epigraph, it might well be the case that the longed-for paradigm on human functionality that PPs claim to provide is itself contributing – wittingly or unwittingly – to creating some of the dissatisfaction and discontent that it promises to remedy (Cabanas 2018b). On the one hand, the scientific discourse of happiness constructs subjectivities that are highly adaptive to coercive institutions. In previous works, we analysed how happiness repertoires and techniques contribute to reshaping both the meaning and logic of worker identities in order to adapt their behavioural patterns, sense of worth, and expectations of self-development to the emerging demands and needs of organizational control, flexibility, and power distribution in corporations (Cabanas and Illouz 2017; Cabanas and Sánchez-González 2016). The introduction of the scientific discourse of happiness in the labour sphere should be regarded as one step forward in the process of managing workers’ behaviour in terms of their ‘psyche’. PP renders illegitimate the evaluation of workers’ performance in terms of moral categories, providing instead a more neutral and scientific framework to reconceptualize workers’ failures or successes in terms of their own ‘deficient’ or ‘optimal’ selves and to instruct workers to cope with the burden of uncertain and competitive workplaces in terms of their personal autonomy and flexibility. Yet far from providing genuine autonomy and empowerment to workers, PP has proved useful to enhance worker’s acquiescence and conformity to corporate culture; to turn positive emotions into productive assets for corporations; and to render workers fully responsible for negotiating the many contingencies and contradictions derived from work context – thus displacing the burden of market uncertainty, scarce employment, structural powerlessness, and increased work competition onto individuals. In this context, therefore, to adjust, survive, and thrive, workers must conform to a constant process of personal development and transformation, show flexibility, and see themselves as the only locus of failure and success (Binkley 2011, 2014; Ehrenreich 2009). On the other hand, happiness scientists put forward a highly polarizing and reductionist standard for individuals to assess and value the worth and

76  Edgar Cabanas and Eva Illouz functionality of their personal narratives, according to which unhappiness morphs into a sort of abnormality or ailment. Happiness and positivity are rendered synonymous with mental and physical health, personal attainment, authenticity, and self-­development, whereas unhappiness and negativity are identified with illness, personal failure, self-deception, and individual decline. Paradoxically, this polarizing division of emotions between positive and functional emotions versus negative and dysfunctional ones, far from overcoming the alleged negative bias of traditional psychotherapy, generates new forms of pathologization – that is, a new emotional stratification in which unhappy or negative people are stigmatized for not leading healthy, functional, and even worthy lives. As many authors have argued (Cederström and Spicer 2015; Ehrenreich 2009; Held 2002), this pressing demand on individuals to adopt a sort of positive emotional bias towards life has morphed into an imperative and a tyrannical attitude that establish positivity as an emotional, cognitive, and moral requisite to preserve a subjective sense of wellbeing and a personal sense of worth. Indeed, feeling bad as well as not being able to feel better and happier is increasingly experienced as sources of personal disappointment, as signs of a flawed will and dysfunctional psyches, and even as markers of a failed biography. As Lipovetsky (2007) has pointed out, reporting not feeling happy or not happy enough with our lives is experienced as a source of shame and guilt, an indication of a wasted life, and an offence to personal worth, to the extent that people prefer to see themselves as happy or moderately happy, even in the face of unfavourable circumstances. The great percentage of people who report feeling ‘satisfied with their lives’ in many countries, both developed and developing, is certainly at odds with the increasing rates of depression, stress, anxiety, suicide, unemployment, insecurity, economic instability, and political discontentment in those same countries – not to mention the global success of a happiness industry to which millions of people resort in the search for coaching services, mindfulness courses, positive psychological advice, moodboosting medication, self-improvement smartphone applications, or self-help books because they do not feel happy or happy enough with themselves (Cabanas 2018b). Additionally, a certain sense of emptiness may result from individuals not knowing when enough is enough when it comes to flourishing and self-fulfilment. PPs insist that happiness entails a continuous investment in attention, time, and resources to develop ‘the best version of ourselves’. Indeed, the ‘happy self’ portrayed by PPs is by definition always incomplete. As argued elsewhere (Cabanas 2018a; Cabanas and Illouz 2017), underlying the scientific discourse of happiness is the idea that individuals are self-made people, though never completely or fully ‘made’, because we can always be fuller and better. This permanent sense of incompleteness of the self (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim 2002) involves the constant feeling of never being able to catch up with happiness and the full development of one’s potential. Indeed, the affirmation that an individual is not entirely happy if they do not meet their full potential is analogous to the assertion that someone is in a bad shape if they do not become a top-class athlete (Illouz 2008). Finally, the sharp divide posited by happiness scientists between positivity and negativity tends to delegitimize suffering and render it banal. The pervasive

Hijacking the language of functionality? 77 insistence on happiness and personal responsibility not only tends to turn emotions such as anguish and sorrow into something useless (‘for nothing’, as Levinas [2006] said), unproductive, and even offensive for those who do not suffer from them but also tends to turn these emotions into something less bearable and more humiliating for those who do. Satisfied individuals who attribute to themselves the ‘merit’ of feeling well and happy with their lives in turn feel entitled to blame those who do not feel the same. Happy individuals might feel in the moral right to blame unhappy people for not being able to cope or to adapt to adverse circumstances and not being flexible enough to use failures and drawbacks as opportunities to flourish and lead better lives. People who suffer, therefore, have to deal with not only the burden of negative feelings but also the guilt associated with not being able to face or overcome challenges. The discourse of happiness prompts us to see sadness, hopelessness, or mourning just as minor setbacks or fleeting stages in life that would go away if we tried hard enough, suggesting that any negativity can and should disappear without leaving traces or marks in the psyche – even more so now that PPs have allegedly found the scientific way to replace powerlessness and despair with optimism and hope. The insistence, however, to always look on the bright side of life regardless of the individuals’ particular circumstances, may, more often than not, result in disdain, misunderstanding, and even indifference towards those who suffer.

Conclusion The science of happiness has been established as a worldwide phenomenon in the last two decades. The strong institutionalization of this phenomenon not only circumscribes academia but has also haunted morality, politics, economics, and therapeutics to a deep extent. Furthermore, by proclaiming itself as a new and scientific paradigm on human behaviour, the science of happiness targets the ethical core of the notions of normality and functionality, putting forward a particular emotional hierarchy that reformulates the concept of the ‘average person’ and posits a sharp divide between what is right and wrong, healthy and hazardous, desirable and undesirable, adaptive and maladaptive, both in psychological and social terms. Based on a psychological, reductionist, and polarizing account of emotions, happiness scientists establish a conception of human functionality according to which the dominance of positive emotions over negative ones determines the cut-off point that sets apart those individuals who fit, flourish, and succeed in life from those who do not. Despite strong and growing criticism and opposition from many fronts, a positive shift in the understanding of psychological and social adaptation not only has established and spread but also seems to be gaining strength and momentum. Nonetheless, the success of the science of happiness, far beyond what PPs would be willing to admit, seems more ideological than scientific in nature. As William Davies points out, ‘one of the ways in which happiness science operates ideologically is to present itself as radically new. . . . “In the past, we had no clue about what made people happy – but now we know”, is how the offer is

78  Edgar Cabanas and Eva Illouz made’ (Davies 2015: 6). It is worth noting, though, that PP’s approach to human happiness is far from new. Claims advocating for a positive paradigm (either scientific or spiritual) able to unveil the secrets of human potential and full functioning behaviour have sustained numerous and ambitious attempts over the course of the second half of the past century despite several disappointments, some of them severe; for example, see the extensive critical review of Baumaister and colleagues (2003) on the self-esteem movement in the 1980s and 1990s. Whether PP and its subfield PPT meet the same fate, time will tell. For now, we think that PPs should acknowledge the fact that when it comes to emotions, there are no a priori functional or dysfunctional outcomes. On the contrary, any emotion provides essential information on how individuals construct their personal narratives, relate to others, navigate in their social environment, and cope with the hardships, pressures, and opportunities of everyday life. Sociologists and psychologists alike must acknowledge that any emotion provides crucial insights into the social and political incentives that move and drive individuals and group of individuals towards action, mobilization, cohesiveness, and change. The main challenge, thus, is to fully apprehend the functionality of every emotion and the role that each emotional response plays in shaping, maintaining, or challenging certain individual, social, and cultural dynamics in certain contexts – such as personal and social identities, joint action, collective humour, mutual recognition, political resistance, consumption, or national memory – not to disregard some of them by claiming that they have natural or inherent negative and hence dysfunctional or maladaptive properties.

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5 Happiness and the new politicization of subjectivity Grant Duncan

How does happiness, a subjective state, become political? Some prominent authors in the field of happiness studies have taken a direct route from happiness to government by making positive claims about the applicability of happiness research to public policy. What research results tell us about happiness can and should be applied by governments, they argue (Layard 2005; Veenhoven 2010). A publication endorsed by the UN declares that Happiness is increasingly considered the proper measure of social progress and the goal of public policy. (Helliwell, Layard, and Sachs 2017: 3) Not all happiness researchers quite agree, however (Bartolini et al. 2016). Economists Frey and Stutzer (2009) take a cautious approach, recognizing that an official national happiness monitor could produce perverse political feedback effects (Frey and Stutzer 2009). Some psychologists recommend that nations track levels of subjective wellbeing to create ‘national accounts’ that can supplement economic indicators of progress, but only to provide ‘additional information’ to policymakers rather than to be an overall goal (Diener, Oishi, and Lucas 2015). Acknowledging that the link with politics and government is a cause for debate in happiness and wellbeing studies, this chapter looks critically at the biopolitics of happiness to read this debate in a broader context. To begin, though, I simply test the happiness maximization hypothesis against the scientific and philosophical logics that are used in its support. I argue that the premises that support a politics of happiness are tautological and that the research methods supporting it are best described as pseudoscience.

Is happiness advocacy logically consistent? To create a new utilitarian politics of happiness, advocates wish to establish a scientific case. So one has to naturalize happiness and argue that it is a valid object of empirical inquiry. This may be done by pointing to brain-scans that show some part of the central nervous system is more active when a person reports feeling good, and a different part is active when they report feeling bad (Layard 2005).

84  Grant Duncan This suggests an organic basis for happiness and (as discussed later) is often taken further to assert that happiness is also a product of natural selection. Evidence that a sensory or emotional experience is subtended by activity in a particular zone of the brain (just as vision and pain are) should be no surprise, but this is over-interpreted as evidence that happiness, while subjective, can be the object of a natural or empirical science. Brain scanning may aid the scientific understanding of the neurophysiological correlates of sensory or emotional experiences, but even in the apparently ‘self-evident’ case of pain, it cannot replace self-reporting, even in a clinical setting. Experiences of pain should not be conflated with or reduced to neural activity (Robinson, Staud, and Price 2013). This principle applies even more to happiness, as the uses of the word range from positive feelings through to prosperity and good fortune, encompassing sensation, emotion, and moral goodness. The primary data of the ‘science’ of happiness come from social surveys, however, and hence from what people say to a surveyor about how they feel or about how they rate their own wellbeing or life satisfaction. Such survey items may be inquiring into people’s evaluation of life, ‘the overall enjoyment of one’s life as-a-whole’ (Veenhoven 2010: 611), or hedonic experiences, for example: ‘feeling good – enjoying life and wanting the feeling to be maintained’ (Layard 2005: 12) or ‘a high ratio of positive to negative feelings’ (Myers 2004: 522). Saying that one enjoys life or not, feels good or bad, happy or unhappy is an introspective self-evaluation. These are feelings that we do or do not want, and the survey respondent is necessarily the judge and the reporter of their own feelings. Respondents rate their own levels of happiness on a Likert (or similar) scale, and the results can be analysed statistically. It is found that these produce reasonably reliable data sets that correlate with other wellbeing factors. Hence, Veenhoven (2004, 2010, 2012), for instance, argues that happiness is ‘measurable’ and that intersubjective and cross-cultural comparisons of happiness are valid. Having overridden cultural and linguistic variations, defined happiness as a part of human nature, and asserted happiness studies as a ‘science’, one still has to moralize happiness. This means that, as well as being a bodily or neural reaction (or a part of our nature), happiness is the overarching criterion or aim that guides what we ought to do, in our personal lives and in public political affairs. It is assumed that how well we feel is a good indicator of how well we live ethically. If the way we live our lives makes us feel good more of the time, then we must be doing that which is ethically the right thing. If one can show statistically significant relationships that predict the personal, economic, or social circumstances under which people are most likely to report that they are the most happy, then one could make a claim for individual and political action to ensure that those circumstances become more widely realized and normalized. This ‘natural science’ thus demands that it also be treated as a moral and political philosophy. And this approach may have some prima facie appeal. It looks intuitively valid, for instance, that a world ranking of happiness surveys should place Norway, Denmark, and Iceland at the top, and, at the bottom, Tanzania, Burundi, and Central African Republic (Helliwell et al. 2017). But this politicization of happiness

Happiness and subjectivity 85 confuses the disciplines of the natural and the moral sciences. From its first principles, it confuses sense data as the empirical basis of a natural science with statements that evaluate feelings or experiences that we do or don’t like. Happiness research breaches a basic norm of scientific inquiry by refusing to separate empirical ‘givens’ from value statements – indeed it turns value statements into the primary data of (what I will now call) a pseudoscience. How, then, does ‘feeling good’ come to be considered as both natural and the aim of ethics and politics? A common justification is to appeal to evolution and natural selection: But if I ask you why happiness is good, you can find no reason: you will say that it’s self-evident. The reason for this is deep in our biology. We are programmed to enjoy experiences that are good for our survival, and that is why we have survived. So the desire to be happy is a completely central feature of our nature. (Layard 2009: 97) Through natural selection, it would appear, humans have evolved to experience as ‘feeling good’ that which contributes to survival. So eating and sharing nourishing food feels good, and sex feels good, although both have important ­exceptions – for instance, if one is suffering from an eating disorder or being sexually violated. ‘Good for our survival’ could sometimes mean merely ‘expedient’ or ‘efficacious’, moreover, and hence not necessarily good in any ethically robust sense. In harsh conditions, a compelling urge to preserve one’s own life can lead to actions that are not morally ‘good’ – such as eating the flesh of companions who have perished. Or to ensure the survival of the state, a political leader might follow Machiavelli’s advice and abandon ‘the good’ in favour of ‘the necessary’. So the inferences made by Layard (earlier) from ‘beneficial for survival’ to ‘enjoyable experience’ and thus to ‘ethically good’ are not always valid. A less simplistic evolutionary biology argument holds that the supposed ‘mechanisms’ that have evolved through natural selection include some significant obstacles to the attainment of happiness. These obstacles could include ‘discrepancies between modern and ancestral environments, evolved emotional mechanisms [such as jealousy and anger] designed to cause subjective distress, and the existence of psychological mechanisms that are inherently competitive’ – so an evolutionary perspective may not offer many easy solutions to projects of happiness maximization (Buss 2000: 15). Moments of distress, struggle, and unhappiness are also ‘programmed’ into us, by this account. Nonetheless, Buss also assumes that happiness is a goal that humans strive for, so he argues that a deeper understanding of the evolutionary obstacles to this aim may assist us in fulfilling it. But neither Layard nor Buss successfully disposes of the sceptical Nietzschean view that human evolution could instead have produced in us such a deep partiality towards the preservation and affirmation of our own lives that we cannot escape ethical pathology and falsehoods. Survival could just as readily depend on the toleration or infliction of misery and the enjoyment of lies and

86  Grant Duncan fictions. Humans could have evolved a dependency on illusions in order to make life bearable, to protect themselves from despair, or to dominate others. In other words, evolution can be used as a premise for either an optimistic or a pessimistic view about human morality, wellbeing, and wisdom, whichever one prefers. No appeal to ‘nature’ works unquestionably in favour of happiness as a goal; there is nothing self-evident in nature that makes happiness, and not pain and suffering, its end – if it has a definite moral purpose at all. People experience pain and pleasure, but there is nothing in nature that strives for happiness. Nevertheless, happiness advocates argue that happiness is our ultimate goal (Griffiths and Reeves 2009). Because this is supposed to be ‘self-evident’, they make little effort to justify it, other than to appeal to ‘nature’, as noted. So we should examine the logic here more closely. To say ‘happiness is good and everyone desires it’ is not at all profound; it is as circular as saying ‘pain always hurts’. By definition, happiness is good and hence desirable; by definition, one would rather be happy than miserable. If it is ‘self-evident’ that happiness is desired because it is good, then ‘self-evident’ means, in this case, ‘tautological’. To conclude from this tautology that happiness is the ultimate human goal, all other desirable aims being merely steps towards happiness (as both J.S. Mill and Richard Layard have argued), is as weak as its premise. It does not account for the possibilities of disappointment and grief whenever we risk failure or loss through striving for higher achievements or entering new relationships, nor that we may derive some good from the unhappiness that arises from failures and losses. But the claim for happiness as the self-evident and supreme good is followed by the further claim that because we desire above all our own happiness, we must therefore desire the general happiness and uphold this as a goal for the whole of society. It is never explained why that which is ‘good’ for oneself is the unit on which the ‘good society’ is built. But can ‘society’ validly be the subject of ‘happiness’ at all? If a society is, correctly speaking, capable of happiness, is ‘society’ then also capable of enjoying a sunny day? And, even if we agree that an entity called ‘society’ does experience such feelings, collectively, then we must ask if the happiness of the whole of a society is simply the sum of the self-reported happiness of its constituent individuals. The best that happiness researchers can do in addressing this is to point to statistical evidence that suggests that social belonging, social rights, and good democratic governance correlate positively with the mean self-reported happiness scores of a population (Bok 2010; Dutt and Radcliff 2009; Frey and Stutzer 2009). But such research projects, in their basic design, presuppose that happiness is the key dependent variable when judging ‘the good’. Hence, it is circular to argue that these results support the case that societies should be evaluated by, or should aim for, ‘the general happiness’. The conclusion was already one of the premises. There is neither any empirical evidence nor any ethical reasoning to compel us to agree that happiness ought to be ‘the gold standard’ against which ‘good government’ or ‘social progress’ should be judged (Duncan 2010). Even if one does choose ‘average self-reported happiness’ as a criterion for evaluating a good or better society, it still has to compete with other policy-­ relevant criteria such as liberty, capabilities, and fairness. Happiness advocates

Happiness and subjectivity 87 may assert, but they could never prove, that those other criteria are no more than contributing ends to the supposed ultimate end, a collective or national happiness. The utilitarian aggregation of individual ‘happinesses’ piles unproven inferences on a founding fallacy. While there is normally no harm in wishing for one’s own and others’ happiness, the ethico-political case for happiness as an axiomatic goal or criterion for society is as weak today as it was when the classical English utilitarians advanced it. Its premise is a tautology, and it assumes that its ethical reasoning can apply from one to many – and thence to government – without robust justifications for those inferences. Happiness researchers have yet to address Rawls’s objection that utilitarianism ‘improperly extends the principle of choice for one person to choices facing society’ (Rawls 1999: 122). Moving the locus of ethical choice from one person to society changes (at the very least) the connotation of assertions about happiness. If a person says privately ‘happiness is the ultimate goal in life’, this need not affect any other person. But if the person who makes that statement is a political leader speaking publicly, then the rhetoric and connotations are quite different. The context of a much greater scope of power relations magnifies and transforms the performative effect of the statement. Obviously, more people hear it, but more significantly, it is conveyed along with the potential to command, implying the paradoxical injunction: ‘be happy!’ So does an ethics or policy of happiness maximization create a governmental injunction, at least by implication, and hence would it imply a personal civic duty to be happy? Here we may consider the term governmental in the broader senses explored by Foucault (Foucault 2007), including self-discipline, familial and pastoral responsibilities, and institutional ‘conduct of conducts’ – for instance, if schools were required to teach happinessmaximizing ‘skills’ or if urban planners were guided by public happiness as their ultimate policy outcome. If so, it may implicitly create a duty for citizens to adopt the attitudes and behaviours that (according to researchers) more probably lead to happiness. The corollary of such a duty could be that, if you are unhappy and miserable, then it may be your own fault, due to not choosing the pathways in life that researchers advise us will lead to happiness. The leap from happiness as a feeling or state that individuals experience and express to a collective or social happiness has become commonplace, however. For instance, David Cameron (2010), former prime minister of the United Kingdom, stated that he believed that there is ‘a link between what politics and government does and people’s happiness, contentedness and quality of life’. This was a change from Margaret Thatcher’s insistence on economic growth as the overarching concern of public policy. And his practical conclusion was simply that the United Kingdom’s official statistics should include indicators of social wellbeing. But there is now a regular output of public reports that advise governments on the primacy of happiness as a goal (Griffiths and Reeves 2009; Helliwell et al. 2017), and international agencies, including the European Commission, OECD, and UN, have developed sets of social indicators that include subjective wellbeing. Happiness has thus to an extent been adopted as a public value and/or a policy goal. Nonetheless, the research and statistics supporting it do not trump political

88  Grant Duncan ideology. No matter how robust the research results, those on the right will dispute the suggestion of some happiness researchers that redistributive egalitarian social policies are related to greater happiness (Bok 2010; Radcliff 2013); those on the left will not like the implications of research that suggests that people who are married and people who go to church regularly are likely to be happier (Lyubomirsky, King, and Diener 2005; Myers 2000). Even if we only draw the more modest and palatable conclusion from happiness research that economic goals need to be integrated into demonstrable wellbeing goals, such as supporting families and social networks, then there will still be a contest of political ideas over how best to achieve this, whether governments should intervene, and, if so, how much to spend on it. The political-ideological contest for public influence and authority will continue unabated. Research evidence is not likely to shift libertarians from their conviction that while happiness is a supreme good for the individual – who must have freedom to pursue it – the individual bears responsibility for a failure to achieve it. In Ayn Rand’s objectivist philosophy, happiness is ‘that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one’s values’ – which does not mean the enjoyment of pleasures for their own sake, though, because ‘values’ must be morally rational, purposeful, and realistic (Peikoff 1993: 336). The overarching goal of government can be only the protection of freedom, including the freedom to pursue (but not the right to attain) happiness, according to this view. Without needing to endorse Rand’s philosophy, one can see that happiness maximization as a governmental goal will run into ideological objections in a democratic society. The ‘universal’ ideal of happiness masks political ideology. Psychologically, people do not really want what they say that they want, including the empty signifier ‘happiness’. We keep objects of desire psychologically out of reach; this is how we maintain them as desirable. The highest intellectual and ethical achievements in life require sacrifice, suffering, and risking failure, so happiness could even be a fundamentally unethical category. The ideal of an attainment or maximization of happiness is thus psychologically self-deluding and politically obfuscatory (Žižek 2012). Happiness research does not produce any ‘knock-down’ evidence or rationality that will overcome political or religious contestation. It does not provide a compelling case for shaping the basic aims or criteria of public policy or political action. In short, we should not entrust policymaking to ‘happiness technocrats’.

Happiness and biopower So in asserting itself simultaneously as a natural-scientific and a moral-political discipline, the new utilitarianism is self-contradictory. It attempts both to naturalize and to moralize human feelings. From illogical premises, it jumps to the bold, but unproven, conclusion that it should guide public policy. Once it has reached that conclusion, though, it fails to provide a politically compelling or original case for what governments ought to do, as it cannot resolve our basic ideological differences. Just as Nietzsche (1998) once pointed out that there is no law of nature that connects pain and punishment, so is there no law of nature that connects feelings of happiness (or joy or sadness) with questions of ethics, justice, or law. If we could

Happiness and subjectivity 89 even agree on where ‘nature’ leads us, then what it supposedly calls or compels us to do is not necessarily ethically good or based on truth. If people do assume any connection between the natural and the moral, however, it is because they learn it culturally, through tradition and experience. Many modern humans have acquired a taste for maximum happiness and for asserting their right to it, just as they have learned that pain is morally meaningless. Today, one ‘should not have to suffer pain’; no longer is it a divine lesson or precursor of salvation (Bourke 2014). Similarly, humans had to learn (and later had to unlearn) that inflicting bodily pain administers justice; they had to learn how to demand care and relief when depressed or in pain; they had to learn that happiness is something we deserve and for which we should aim. It is not wrong to care about one’s own and others’ happiness. One may still approve of the government that addresses the health and welfare of citizens. But this is a historically contingent moral decision and not the result of a scientific discovery about human nature; progressive social policies were initiated well before there was happiness research. Happiness maximization, however, has become a part of contemporary ethico-political practice, so the disciplines that have supported this will now be discussed. The neo-utilitarian ‘politics of happiness’ could have taken heed of what Aristotle said long ago. Humans associate and cooperate for the sake of selfpreservation and group survival, as do many other species. This meets the needs to survive and to thrive. Humans, however, are also possessed of language. The ability to speak means that they can use reason and discuss matters of ethics, justice, and politics. The questions what is good? and what is a good life? are not matters that arise from an inherited biological ‘nature’ as animals; they are approached through reasoned (and contested) communication among groups of individuals who belong together as a society or state. Aristotle did not confuse the biological with the ethico-political. When he said that ‘man is by nature a political animal’, he was not referring to an inherited biological nature but instead to our ‘logical’ nature or our ability to aim for and to build, in collaboration, a better or higher way of living. His emphasis was on the political and its ‘nature’ as telos or final cause, not ‘nature’ as an origin or an efficient cause. The goal of happiness, prosperity, or human flourishing (eudaimonia) was, for Aristotle, an activity of the rational mind and an ethical concern, quite distinct from the biological imperatives of survival and reproduction – and also distinct from hedonism. In stark contrast, Layard and others see happiness as an imperative that is already ‘programmed’ genetically and biologically. According to this view, the form of happiness (founded in feelings) is not chosen rationally; its qualities are necessitated by that which has guaranteed our survival as a species evolving over millions of years. Of course, Aristotle had no theory of evolution or genetics. In the era of Darwin and Mendel, however, ‘the human’ as a political being, and not only as a living animal, underwent reformulation. As Foucault (1990: 143) put it, for millennia, man remained what he was for Aristotle: a living animal with the additional capacity for a political existence; modern man is an animal whose politics places his existence as a living being in question.

90  Grant Duncan Biological life has become an open object of knowledge and a field of political intervention. Happiness (if seen as an inherent aim of a living body) is one target, therefore, of modern biopower, informing those principles and practices by which we strive to maximize the potentials or performance of individuals and whole communities. The confusion of ethico-social and biological life (which would have seemed wrong to Aristotle) is symptomatic of this.

Subjectivity, lost and found To appreciate more fully the biopolitics of happiness, we may retrace the obliteration and rediscovery of subjectivity that occurred in the disciplines of economics and psychology between the late 19th century and the turn of the 21st. In simple terms, contemporary happiness research and policy advocacy represent a return to Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832) – but this time supported by social survey data. For Bentham, pain and pleasure could be sensory, emotional, and/or social experiences, and he asserted that they guide what we ought to do and what we shall do. Furthermore, a governmental policy conforms to the principle of utility when ‘the tendency which it has to augment the happiness of the community is greater than any which it has to diminish it’ (Bentham 1996: 13). This led to a ‘felicific calculus’, a proposed technique of political and economic decision-making. Authors of the marginal revolution in economics (notably William Stanley Jevons [1835–1882] and Francis Edgeworth [1854–1926]), developed the ‘felicific calculus’ mathematically, ‘counting’ pain and pleasure as cardinal values. Edgeworth announced ‘the conception of Man as a pleasure machine’ that can, in principle, be represented mathematically. Although this ‘machine’ is so complex that it defies precise measurement, he argued that we could at least observe ‘here a greater, there a less, multitude of pleasure-units, mass of happiness; and that is enough’ (Edgeworth 2003: 481). The problem with this approach to utility, however, was intersubjective comparison when ‘measuring’ pain and pleasure and hence ‘calculating’ net happiness, across a population. Vilfredo Pareto (1848–1923) proved that subjective utility could neither be quantified nor compared interpersonally. Economists discarded the concept of cardinal utility (or happiness), replacing it with an ordinal ‘scale of preferences’. Economic reasoning could then be applied to human decision-­ making ‘by transforming the subjective theory of value into a general logic of choice’ (Hicks and Allen 1934: 52, 54). Hence, the utility-maximizing ‘economic human’ was regarded only in terms of observable choices as a consumer facing a range of options in a market. Subjective experience could be ignored. The individual’s behaviour thus reveals a ‘preference pattern’: The whole theory of consumer’s behaviour can . . . be based upon operationally meaningful foundations in terms of revealed preference. (Samuelson 1948: 251) This gave the discipline of economics a cloak of objectivity. If the consumer has been able to choose a preferred commodity from a range of options, taking into

Happiness and subjectivity 91 account prices paid and incomes, then a demand function should objectively indicate ‘utility’. Inner motives or feelings of happiness or regret can be ignored, and all that counts towards ‘utility’ are prices and volumes. A similar turn to observable behaviour occurred in psychology, especially in the United States. John B. Watson (1878–1958) rejected the introspective methods of philosophers such as William James (1842–1910) and aimed instead to found an experimental psychology that would see the ‘elimination of states of consciousness as the objects of investigation’ and hence allow for ‘the prediction and control of behavior’. Psychology could then join the ranks of the natural sciences (Watson 1913: 158). This reached its peak in operant conditioning, led by B.F. Skinner (1904–1990), an experimental method using the control of environmental rewards and punishments and the measurement of consequent patterns of behavioural output. Assuming that all behaviour is controlled by environmental contingencies anyway, Skinner argued that the survival of society required the more careful management of extrinsic rewards and punishments. Ideas like liberty and happiness falsely assume an inner motivating will, putting the individual first and risking the future security of society (Skinner 1971). Under the aegis of behaviourism, many universities’ psychology departments rejected introspective methods and psychodynamic theories in favour of objective experimental operationalization and measurement. The return to subjectivity and happiness began somewhat earlier in psychology than in economics. Alternative philosophical schools such as existentialism and phenomenology influenced, for instance, humanistic psychology (Maslow 1943); (Rogers 1947) and the ‘anti-psychiatry’ movement (Laing 1960; Szasz 1960). Maslow challenged behaviourism by introducing a needs-based theory of motivation (in his well-known hierarchy of needs), and he saw happiness as a teleological justification: Even if. . . [more basic] needs are satisfied, we may still often (if not always) expect that a new discontent and restlessness will soon develop, unless the individual is doing what he is fitted for. A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately happy. What a man can be, he must be. This need we may call self-actualization. (Maslow 1943: 382). This logic works well for those indoctrinated to believe in an inalienable right to pursue happiness. It assumes that a person is inherently, for instance, a poet even before they compose their first poem. To be ‘ultimately happy’ would thus mean to express the inner essence or identity that already needed to be ‘actualized’. Not to do so, or to be prevented from doing so, would thus violate this preexisting inner need, leading presumably to less happiness or unhappiness. Maslow insists that if you can, you must. Whatever inner potential lies latent simply must be realized, in order to be happy. It would follow that we have a duty to ourselves to do whatever we are ‘fitted for’ and hence that society and the state have a duty either to assist us in all such endeavours or (more conservatively) not to stand in our way.

92  Grant Duncan While humanistic psychology helped to turn the tide against behaviourism, it was influenced also by existentialism, which emphasizes authenticity and liberty, but not necessarily happiness (Waterman 2013). On the more pragmatist and empiricist side of American thought, positive psychology emerged around the turn of this century. Positive psychology insists that the discipline must explore beyond the ‘abnormal’ and seek to understanding human fulfilment and happiness: [Psychology’s] almost exclusive attention to pathology neglects the fulfilled individual and the thriving community. . . . We believe that a psychology of positive human functioning will arise that achieves a scientific understanding and effective interventions to build thriving in individuals, families, and communities. (Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi 2000: 5, 13) Positive psychology’s view of human wellbeing is generally closer to the Aristotelian eudaimonistic approach, emphasizing values such as meaningfulness and living well in accordance with virtues such as gratitude (Jorgensen and Nafstad 2004). Happiness in the hedonic-utilitarian sense of ‘feeling good’ is only one part of this. So it would be wrong to suggest that happiness has taken up a dominant place in academic psychology; nonetheless, the fact that happiness is easy to survey, and hence amenable to statistical analysis, makes it useful for empirical studies. One can observe the progress in empirical psychological studies of happiness in papers by Wilson (1967), reviewing research in the middle decades of the 20th century, through to Diener et al. (1999), who summarize the intervening three decades’ research on subjective wellbeing.

The dismal science gets happy Meanwhile, the return to subjective accounts of utility in economics began in the 1970s, challenging the use of numerically measurable macroeconomic and ­consumer-behaviour data as proxies for wellbeing or utility. Tibor Scitovsky (1976), in The Joyless Economy, questioned the benefits of material affluence and comforts in modern consumer society, as they left people with no sense of urgency to survive, little of meaning to strive for, and fewer cultural aspirations. His analysis did not adopt a one-dimensional pain–pleasure continuum akin to Bentham’s. The comforts provided by material wealth and goods are not the same as pleasure, Scitovsky argued, and he did not see pleasure as a state or experience that one could aim for and achieve. Rather, pleasure arises from the process of change that occurs as an organism shifts from a state of too little or too much stimulation towards an optimal median level. This process is never-ending, and pleasure therefore depends on the dissatisfaction or displeasure that motivates the need for change (Scitovsky 1976). Material affluence and comforts produce, then, a stasis that reduces those experiences that are sources of genuine pleasure or happiness. The idea that growing material wealth may stand in the way of, rather than supply, greater happiness was reinforced by Richard Easterlin’s finding that

Happiness and subjectivity 93 American social surveys showed no rise in happiness or life satisfaction during the period of consistent economic growth following World War II (Easterlin 1974). Aristotle would not have been surprised. But economists regarded this as paradoxical, because real income growth and greater consumer choice were presumed to signify greater utility, even though the subjective happiness variable had been excluded from their calculations. Since then, economics journal articles on happiness, wellbeing, and life satisfaction gradually increased and then rose sharply in volume around the turn of the present century, suggesting a real increase in interest within the discipline (MacKerron 2012). Some economists describe this return to happiness and subjective wellbeing as a ‘revolution’ (Frey 2008); others see it as still ‘heterodox’ (MacKerron 2012). Based on surveys conducted worldwide, its supporters argue that happiness is a universally recognized construct that is measurable, reliable, and valid: A subjective view of utility recognizes that everybody has their own ideas about happiness and the good life and that observed behavior is an incomplete indicator for individual well-being. Nevertheless, individuals’ happiness can be captured and analyzed: people can be asked how satisfied they are with their lives. (Frey and Stutzer 2002: 405) So although the happiness ‘revolution’ in economics is neither conclusive nor victorious so far, one can at least observe a trend towards the reintroduction of subjectivity into the discipline, following its obliteration in the early to mid 20th century. There is nothing unusual in assuming happiness as a political or utopian ideal. Thomas Paine (1737–1809) and Sir William Beveridge (1879–1963) used the term as a teleological justification for social rights, for example. The revival of a Benthamite concept of happiness or subjective wellbeing seeks to redefine utility in economic theory, backed by social survey and statistical techniques. But it contributes to a transformation in the politics of subjectivity and to contemporary techniques of ‘psychological governance’ (Pykett, Jones, and Whitehead 2017). The new utilitarianism combines Enlightenment moral persuasion with the popular authority of statistics. This pseudoscience engages reflexively, through ‘representative samples’, the populations that it seeks to influence morally. In line with the democratic ethic of ‘one person, one vote’, each survey respondent’s self-rating of happiness is of equal statistical value. And the reported results of happiness research through popular media recast the subject and the nation as participants in a global effort to emulate ‘the happiest’. On a visit to my local supermarket, for example, a promotional video told me that my country is the eighth happiest on earth and that the company aims to make sure I’m feeling happier as I leave, so we can all participate in a mission to get to ‘number one’ on a global ranking of national happiness. The individual, the corporation, and the nation become reflexively recast as subjects of a kind of happiness that matters strategically. It is reflected in the exercise of political power and in the distribution of economic resources and services.

94  Grant Duncan In this universalization of utility, the happiness of the believer is statistically equal to that of the atheist; the criminal’s unhappiness has the same weight as the victim’s. Seen as a secular universal value, akin to codes of universal human rights, the principle of the greatest happiness may be held up as one that ‘can inspire and unite people of all ages from all backgrounds and all cultures’ (Layard 2016: 54). Just as a universalization of rights proposes political claims for ‘the human’ as such, devoid of determinate affiliations or qualities (and no longer as a member of a particular nation or community in a particular territory), so the global universalization of happiness and its equalization of all human beings reformulate the subject in terms of a common denominator of ‘good feelings’ that depend on ‘how well innate needs are met’ (Veenhoven 2012: 465). Such needs are deracinated from location or participation in any particular community or culture. In any language, people can express good feelings, and belonging and participation in a particular family and community is frequently cited as a highly important source of human happiness. But the local or cultural particularity of such self-expression, affiliation, or identification is dissolved into a statistically reified and universalized concept of a fundamental human happiness. As an axiom of a supposed ‘science’, happiness is said to apply teleologically to all humans as living biological beings – a species that forms social bonds for survival and wellbeing. And it is from this innate ‘animal’ basis that the principle of our ethical and political existence is derived. In its contemporary form, therefore, happiness rhetoric discovers the ethical within the life of a ‘pre-political’ animal. And that, paradoxically, is precisely what makes it political.

Conclusion Happiness can be introspectively evaluated, but not measured in the sense that an object in space or a wavelength is measured. What we say about our happiness or unhappiness expresses how we feel, good or bad. There are no objective units against which to measure either, nor their supposed growth or decline. But the variations or contrasts among our expressions of feelings have become prima materia for the growth of a contemporary ‘happiness industry’ (Davies 2015). Subjectivities are surveyed, tabulated as data, and submitted to multivariate analysis as one part of a wider historical ‘project’ of biopower that seeks to maximize human performance. The more we ask for happiness, the more we will find the ‘unmet needs’ underlying sadness. As subjects deserving of happiness – and underserving of pain and suffering – our knowledge of one expands our awareness of the other. This has become a claim for reflexive actions on the self, as well as an advancement of biopower. A psychology or an economics of happiness is forced to assume that the subject that knows is also (without query) an object to be known. One way of evading this paradox, beginning in the early 20th century, was simply to obliterate ‘the subjective’ and to count observable actions only. That approach had only limited success, because it ignored important dimensions of human experience and values. The return of subjective accounts of utility and happiness, beginning around the

Happiness and subjectivity 95 close of the 20th century, reversed that objectivism, but it does not overcome the hermeneutic paradox faced by human sciences when they seek to imitate natural sciences: how does one act as both the subject and the object of knowledge? In happiness research and political advocacy, the consequent conflation of physis and nomos, or ‘nature’ and ‘law’ (the latter manifested in ethico-political imperatives to be happy), is symptomatic of a failure to recognize that paradox. The psychological disciplines, as in the subgenre of positive psychology, have proposed an objective science of the subjective – and this is met by the discipline of political economy with its concerns about accumulation, productivity, and performance and about the ability to act, to work, and to contribute to the prosperity of the community. No longer do the psy-disciplines grapple with conflicting and inhibited desires (as in the Freudian problematic of bourgeois deferred gratification), nor with its opposite, an ‘empty’ actor that simply responds to environmental incentives, rewards or punishments (as in the behaviourist or revealedpreference paradigms). The aim of neoliberal politics is to maximize potential as producer and consumer of goods or to unleash energy and desire. Depression is the common person’s inhibitory condition, and therapies seek to release its restraining force. The correlative ‘promise’ of happiness calls us with an imperative to act, perform, innovate, upskill – to be positive, flexible and be always ‘on call’ – above all not to be sad and inactive, nor melancholic and reflective. This revision of politicized subjectivity is thus concerned with acting not only on what others do but also on what others can feel. It is a power of the immaterial. The personal imperatives underpinning contemporary political economy – the duties to perform, contribute, enjoy, and hence consume – are bundled into the paradoxical injunction ‘be happy!’ The emergent pseudoscience of happiness seeks to convert this personal injunction into a political obligation to maximize the happiness of the masses, or a new utilitarianism for an age of consumer capitalism and of flexible immaterial labour.

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6 Happiness A societal ‘imperative’? Laura Hyman

Introduction In recent decades, happiness and wellbeing have become increasingly popular areas of investigation among academics across the world. We now have available to us knowledge about the things that make people happy and unhappy, as well as a highly developed body of ideas surrounding techniques for the measurement of happiness using survey variables, experience sampling, diary methods, and neuroscience. As a result, there is an emerging picture of the differing happiness levels in different societies worldwide. Indeed, many national governments now collect data systematically on the wellbeing levels of their citizens (e.g. the United Kingdom’s Measuring National Wellbeing programme led by the Office for National Statistics [ONS 2018]). In addition to this, positive psychologists have established some of the ways people can increase their feelings of positivity (e.g. see Seligman 2002). Whether they do so successfully or not, people have at their fingertips a set of scientifically backed interventions that they can use in an attempt to improve their lives. Concurrently with this, happiness and wellbeing also occupy an increasingly visible position within popular culture in many advanced Western societies. The self-help industry, for instance, has been promoting the pursuit of happiness for many years. Initially centred on books and printed manuals, recent technological advancements have allowed the industry to expand across a range of media, and there now exists a plethora of websites, online videos, and smartphone applications that promise to guide users in the direction of wellbeing and fulfilment. Furthermore, activities such as meditation and mindfulness have become popular pastimes for many people who seek a peaceful refuge from their everyday routines. For some, these are more than simply a pastime: techniques are increasingly adopted in schools, universities, workplaces, and even prisons as means of enhancing their occupants’ wellbeing. However, what is also important is to understand how our experiences and perceptions of happiness are shaped by culture and society. More specifically, how are we presented with implicit – or explicit – guidelines on when and where we should be ‘happy’? How much happiness is it permissible to feel and to outwardly exhibit? Happiness, by definition, is a positive and pleasant experience that most

Happiness: a societal ‘imperative’? 99 people actively strive for in their lives, but how is its pursuit framed by systems of norms and guidelines, and how are specific ways of ‘being happy’ promoted in different societies? These are the questions that this chapter seeks to consider, with particular reference to British and American cultures. In addition, it draws on qualitative interview data collected by the author, which are presented as illustrative examples.

How do we ‘do’ happiness? How we ‘do’ happiness – by which I mean experience, express, understand, or perceive it – is very much shaped by the society we live in and the culture which surrounds us. This is the case in a number of ways. For instance, sociologists have, for many years, pointed to how all societies produce guidelines on how we should express and present ourselves in public. Erving Goffman (1959) and Arlie Russell Hochschild (1979), for instance, write respectively about the impression management and emotion work that we undertake in social situations, and liken these to aspects of roles played by actors in front of an audience. More specifically, Hochschild identifies feeling rules, which exist in particular circumstances and institutions and which are ‘the social guidelines that direct how we want to try and feel’ (1979: 563). While they have been explored most extensively in workplace settings (in the form of emotional labour) they are also evident in everyday interactions. Hochschild, for instance, highlights how people are expected to be happy at weddings, but not at funerals (1979). In the same vein, the customerfacing service worker must present themselves as happy to make those they are serving feel comfortable and appreciated, thus increasing the likelihood of repeat customers and profit. It is in this way that we can already start to appreciate the normative basis of happiness and how our experiences and understandings can be shaped by society and culture. While Hochschild and Goffman both highlight the orderliness of happiness as emotional expression (Goffman 1959; Hochschild 1979), it is also commonly understood not just as an emotion but also as an aspect of selfhood (Hyman 2014). That is, a person can aspire towards a happy life, in which they would be regarded by others as an overall happy person but would nevertheless exhibit a variety of emotional expressions day to day. We can thus also consider how societal guidelines surround this kind of happiness, which I will refer to as contentment. Such contentment has been described by McKenzie as ‘a fulfilling relationship between the self and society’ (2016: 252), and, he says, it should be regarded as something that complements, rather than competes with, understandings of happiness that refer to emotional, pleasurable experiences. Contentment with regard to one’s self, and aspiring to be a ‘happy person’, has arguably become a modern obsession for many people. Indeed, Michel Foucault’s concept of the ‘care of the self’ (1986), first used by Socrates in Greco-Roman philosophy in the first two centuries CE, lies at the centre of the ‘art of existence’. Initially writing about the monitoring and control of people’s sexual desires, Foucault acknowledges the significance of the Catholic confessional in relation to

100  Laura Hyman this. This form of confessing ‘truths’ about oneself with regard to sexuality has permeated wider society, and confessional discourse has become central to how people understand the self. For example, people now do this in psychotherapy settings, whereby they seek to confess their sexual practices and desires. This form of confession, Foucault says, is a means of examining oneself and caring for the self. More broadly, self-examination and caring for the self are also championed by self-help texts as something that readers must strive towards to better themselves and to be happy (Rimke 2000). They are thus encouraged to engage in internal dialogue and ask themselves questions in order to achieve self-improvement. Individuals who are able to care for themselves in this way are furthermore considered to be more ‘effective’ citizens, who are able to take responsibility for themselves (Rose 1996; Hazleden 2003). More recently, such practices of self-care have also taken new forms, beyond that of psychotherapy and the traditional self-help book. Advancements in technology, media, and knowledge have led to the emergence of videos, smartphone apps, and classes that enable users to improve themselves (Hyman 2014). It has been argued that this is one aspect of the ‘therapy culture’ that is said to now characterize contemporary Western societies, in which there has been an increasing influence of psychology, a rise in counselling and therapy, and an associated preoccupation with the self and internal life since the late 20th century (Wright 2008; Furedi 2004). Against such a backdrop, caring for one’s self and actively seeking to maximize one’s happiness have become paramount. Indeed, Nikolas Rose (1996: 157) comments on how the behaviour of individuals is centred on this goal: Contemporary individuals are incited to live as if making a project of themselves: they are to work on their emotional world, their domestic and conjugal arrangements, their relations with employment and their techniques of sexual pleasure, to develop a ‘style’ of living that will maximise the worth of their existence to themselves. . . . [This] enable[s] us to render our relations with our selves and others into words and into thought, and with expert techniques which promise to allow us to transform our selves in the direction of happiness and fulfilment. Such an emphasis on the self and its transformation means that, in modern Western democracies at least, the individual is responsibilized for their happiness and wellbeing. Whether or not a person is happy is thus not regarded as an outcome of social conditions or environmental processes but of choices made by the individual or the makeup of their psyche. In particular, if they fail – for whatever reason – to be seen as willing to maximize their happiness in the ways just outlined, such failure is regarded as being the fault of the individual, and often, their unhappiness is medicalized (Dworkin 2001) – that is, seen as a medical issue, as something that needs to be remedied by drugs or talking therapy. While clinical depression is a legitimate illness with a range of physical and mental symptoms, straightforward unhappiness is arguably a ‘normal’ part of

Happiness: a societal ‘imperative’? 101 human emotional experience; in recent years, however, the line between the two has become increasingly blurred as public understandings of psychology and mental health have developed and become more sophisticated (Rose 1996). In other words, psychological knowledge is now understood not only as an academic discipline but as a body of ideas that is permeating popular culture in advanced Western societies (see Rose (1996) and Illouz (2008) for discussion of this phenomenon), and such knowledge informs and shapes public understandings of emotional and mental wellbeing. Some scholars have even put forward the suggestion that everyday feelings of vulnerability are increasingly being interpreted via a prism of mental illness (Furedi 2017) and that lay interpretations of sadness have thus been transformed. It is in this way, then, that modern Western societies promote a distinctive way of ‘doing’ happiness (and, by extension, unhappiness), and any deviation from this could have major consequences for the individual.

Is happiness a ‘compulsory’ imperative? Modern Western societies have arguably become characterized by an increased preoccupation with happiness and wellbeing in recent decades. Self-care has become more central to the lives of many individuals, and it has been suggested that this has come about as a result of the enterprise culture in most neoliberal Western democracies (Rose 1996). Individuals are compelled to pursue a happiness that is branded as their own personal responsibility, and doing so is regarded as an important aspiration and as a significant achievement if done successfully. Knowledge from sociology and related disciplines can shed light on the development of and reasons for this preoccupation. For instance, Pascal Bruckner (2000) writes that happiness has become a social requirement and a duty. He acknowledges that while the right to happiness initially emerged at the time of the Enlightenment and was intended to bring about liberation, it has subsequently evolved into a religion-like dogma. Those who do not ‘achieve’ it are seen to have failed in some way. For Bruckner, then, not only must individuals strive for a happiness that is their own personal responsibility, but it is also something that can be attained via effort. He relates this to aspects of modern life, such as consumerism, which promotes a culture of gratification. Although such a culture could have the potential to liberate, it actually places more constraints on people as fulfilment, as well as happiness, becomes a ‘right’. There is no space for misfortune and misery in such an arena, and one must therefore actively seek to cultivate the best ‘self’’ that they possibly can. This imperative is particularly widespread in the United States. Barbara Ehrenreich has documented how a culture of positive thinking has come to characterize different parts of society (2009). Corporations and workplaces, for instance, invite motivational speakers to talk to employees to make them more positive and upbeat. This arguably enables them to become more productive in their work, which further benefits their employers (Ehrenreich 2009). Churches, too, have become sites for thinking positively, as American ministers have increasingly promoted the ‘prosperity gospel’ (2009: 124). Even branches of Christianity

102  Laura Hyman traditionally associated with feelings of sin and guilt now lead their followers towards positivity and cheerfulness. Such a culture has also pervaded healthcare. Ehrenreich, after being diagnosed with breast cancer, documents how patients are encouraged to take a positive attitude towards their illness. In support groups, for instance, the discussion of negative feeling – whether fear, dread, anger, or something else – was regarded as a hindrance to recovery, and the likelihood of survival was frequently attributed to sufferers’ positive attitudes. The implications of this are far from positive, however. Linking a sufferer’s chances of survival to the nature of their attitude means that, once again, the individual is responsibilized for their health and wellbeing. Any poor prognosis or setback is likely to be attributed to the individual’s failure to be positive, leading to feelings of self-blame. While aspects of such a culture can be found in all modern Western democracies, Ehrenreich points to how it is characteristic of American society more so than that of any other across the world. Reasons for this may lie in the country’s history. Christina Kotchemidova writes that until the 18th century, melancholy was an emotional norm in America, as it also was in Europe (2005). Expressions of sadness were associated with compassion and sensibility. However, the onset of the Enlightenment brought with it a change in outlook, whereby ‘enlightened men’ (Kotchemidova 2005: 8) were to be autonomous and thus capable of self-love. Cheerfulness was a prime manifestation of this. In addition to this, social and working conditions improved during the Enlightenment period, and working people were thus expected to be happy because of this. Expressions of cheerfulness were also, for Kotchemidova, bound up with being middle class in the United States, which was formed in the 18th century. At this time, business failure was attributed to weakness and a lack of emotional control; expressions of happiness were therefore signs of control, strength, and prosperity, and thus being cheerful was a sign of status. Furthermore, such cheerfulness could be associated particularly with the United States because of its lack of a distinctive class system. While in Europe, such systems bring about expressions of condescension to those of higher status and servility to those of lower rank (Kotchemidova 2005), in the United States, there is more equality in terms of class as well as behaviour, and cheerfulness is therefore expressed by everybody. In addition, the lack of traditional class system in the United States leads to heightened social anxiety and more friction than in Europe; this leads to a ‘constant need to lubricate social relations’ (2005: 23), which is achieved via expressions of cheerfulness. Such a history, then, could help to explain the reason for such a happiness imperative in the United States. Robert Bellah’s writings in his book Habits of the Heart (1986) can also contribute to an understanding of the US context. He develops the work of Alexis de Tocqueville (1966) in assessing the idea that individualism is central to the American character. As well as acknowledging that this has a potential to undermine the freedom that Americans have been found to value, he documents how this has led to a shift in how they make sense of their selves. Resonating with the ideas of Furedi (2004) and Wright (2008) discussed earlier, Bellah suggests that a therapeutic discourse has come to govern dominant understandings of the self and its autonomy. Self-fulfilment and personal happiness have become ultimate

Happiness: a societal ‘imperative’? 103 ideals, and the pursuit of them often overrides commitments to others, whether in the realm of relationships, religion, or work. It has been suggested that such individualism is rooted in a culture that has been present in the United States since the 18th century. Cabanas and Sánchez (2012) trace it back to Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Transcendentalism, in which the self was regarded as an ‘essence’ with abilities for autonomous self-development and command. This was a challenge at the time to Puritanism, in which the individual self was seen as powerless to shape its destiny. They draw parallels between this and contemporary positive psychology, which, though a secular body of knowledge based on ‘scientific’ principles, maintains a similar understanding of the individual, as one who is capable of maximizing their happiness. Although Cabanas (2018) warns that the individualistic happiness promoted by positive psychology has, counterintuitively, been associated with an array of problems (such as high rates of depression, anxiety, narcissism, and loneliness), today, elements of positive psychology have made their way into popular culture and have played a pivotal role in enabling the public’s continual quest for happiness and fulfilment. It is nevertheless evident that such an imperative exists, to some degree, in all modern Western societies. Arguably, pursuing happiness, positivity, and wellbeing has become synonymous with being a good person; according to Carl Cederström and Andre Spicer (2015), it has become a moral demand in Northern European societies as well. Such a demand to pursue happiness is part of a wider imperative to be healthy and well. Individuals are compelled to look after their minds and bodies and are encouraged to retreat into themselves via exercise, healthy eating, and self-tracking. In the same vein, one is also expected to demonstrate a commitment to happiness and positive thinking. This is regarded as a choice one can make, one that can be achieved through willpower, regardless of environment. As a result, those who do not exhibit a willingness to achieve happiness and wellness are labelled by others as weak-willed or lazy; if happiness is a choice, then it is no wonder that depression is stigmatized in a way that most physical illnesses are not; it is simply a result of poor choices. Cederström and Spicer (2015), critical of this moral imperative, warn that such a demand for wellness leads to a society of individuals who are narcissistic, politically disengaged, and passive. This preoccupation with happiness and wellness has spread. No longer simply a concern of the individual, it has now become a priority for organizations, governments, and corporations, or as William Davies (2015) suggests, it has moved from the private sphere of society to the public. Increasing numbers of organizations are implementing initiatives that boost employees’ wellbeing – for instance, employing ‘chief happiness officers’ – and are taking the happiness of their customers or clients more seriously – through the use of satisfaction surveys. These are done on the assumption that happier workers are more productive, and happier customers are more likely to spend more money. Thus, for Davies, this happiness imperative has become inextricably bound up with modern capitalism, and wellness has become synonymous with profit-making. It is evident that this ‘imperative’ for happiness has not had a wholly positive reception by academics. Striving to maximize one’s happiness is not necessarily

104  Laura Hyman ‘natural’ or desirable. Barbara Ehrenreich (2009), for instance, has pointed out the dangers of adopting a positive attitude after having been diagnosed with a terminal illness, and Cederstrom and Spicer (2015) acknowledge the effects that it has on levels of political engagement and communal life. This also echoes broader concerns about the therapeutic ‘turn’ that is being said to increasingly characterize society: this turn inward, whereby people are preoccupying themselves with their own thoughts, feelings, and wellbeing, is facilitating a rapid cultural decline in which social bonds and community relations are weakening (Rieff 1966; Lasch 1979). Furthermore, it is also commonly understood – not just by academics but also by lay people – that both positive and negative feelings are part of ‘normal’ human emotional experience. Respondents who participated in my own empirical research, consisting of qualitative interviews with 19 British adults, emphasized the importance of sadness for feelings of happiness, and they almost unanimously agreed that in order for happy feelings to be recognized, they must be juxtaposed with sad ones (Hyman 2014). Furthermore, they also recognized that such negative emotion is a fundamental part of being ‘realistic’, which for many of them was the optimal way of being in everyday life. One respondent, Gillian, asserted that to always be happy is ‘not normal’: GILLIAN (45, FEMALE):  I’ve

got this thing where I think to get depressed now and again is quite natural. There’s always gonna be death, there’s always gonna be break-ups, there’s always going to be, you know, something’s fallen through that you can’t have . . . you know, there’s always going to be disappointment and there’s always going to be sad times. Especially with bereavement. And that is part of life. Like what I said at the beginning, it’s not normal to be happy all the time.

She acknowledged a universality of negative feeling and highlighted the normalcy of it. Indeed, she suggests in her account that experiences of happiness – as well as unhappiness – are underpinned by a normative framework that governs such feelings in everyday life. Mark expressed a similar idea: MARK (41, MALE):  Happiness isn’t a constant. It can be snatched away at any time.

Tom also acknowledged the inevitability of negative experiences and feelings: TOM (25, MALE):  I think

you’ve got to take the rough with the smooth. You know, life isn’t one constant up. You know, you go up and down, up and down, that’s life. You know, you might get yourself a great job and earn good money, you might get to lots of good gigs, or Arsenal winning in the league, I don’t know, but then the next week you might get dumped by your girlfriend. And then you feel crap! So you can’t always be happy. I think it’s important to feel that sense of crap . . . unhappiness, to make you want to come forward and progress. That’s what I think is important.

Happiness: a societal ‘imperative’? 105 For Tom, negative events are a conduit to positive ones, and experiencing both in tandem is important in terms of giving an individual motivation to ‘come forward and progress’, or in other words, providing a capacity for self-fulfilment and self-actualization. Some respondents alluded to the idea that permanent happiness is not only not normal but also not desirable: LH:  Do you think that to be happy all the time would be a good thing? LAURENCE (65, MALE):  No. To be happy all the time would be so . . . stifling. You

know, I mean, you’d be living in cuckoo land, it just wouldn’t be real. I think we’ve got to be unhappy at times, to make us realise just how fortunate we really are. But being happy all the time, it just wouldn’t work.

For Laurence, being happy is made possible only by periodic feelings of negativity and that happiness experienced in the absence of these would be inauthentic. Others went so far to say that persistent happiness could bring about mental dysfunction. Indeed, Chris, on being asked to identify his happiest acquaintance, stated that only a ‘village idiot’ would experience high levels of happiness, thus implying that this is a near impossibility for anyone with ‘normal’ brain functioning: CHRIS (46, MALE):  I guess I have a sort of mistrust of other people who are consist-

ently happy, because I’ve met people who have seemed very happy but have then thrown themselves off a bridge. So to me, it’s like, you can demonstrate it, but that’s not necessarily who you really are. You know, I’m a little wary of it. I mean, as I said, I think the happiest person is probably the village idiot! Isn’t that awful, that I view permanent happiness as being a mental dysfunction? [laughs]

What is interesting about Chris’s account is that he implicitly suggests that the happiness individuals are often compelled to exhibit is not necessarily genuine (or ‘not necessarily who you really are’). He unwittingly echoes ideas voiced by Goffman (1959) and Hochschild (1979): happiness and cheerfulness can be products, respectively, of impression management and emotion work and that what is expressed does not always directly reflect what is experienced. Although the data presented here is by no means representative of the views of the British public at large, it does demonstrate that some Brits see the maximization of happiness as neither natural nor desirable. Such an outlook is distinct from that which scholars have noted as being the case in the United States and could arguably have roots in the traditional British persuasion of the ‘stiff upper lip’ (Walter 1997). The idea that one should seek to maximize their happiness has also been critically examined by Svend Brinkmann (2017) in his book Stand Firm, in which he puts forward a set of guidelines that enable readers to resist the self-improvement craze. Acknowledging negative feelings and recognizing that it is not always possible to live in the way that one wants to are among his suggestions. This resonates

106  Laura Hyman closely with the advice offered to the readers of Ian Craib’s The Importance of Disappointment, in which he says we can only make life better if we recognize and incorporate the dark side, the side of disappointment and death. Paradoxically, the more we deny this, the more difficult our lives become, the more we become involved in breaking the links between people. (1994: VIII) While we could try to opt out of this happiness imperative, there are costs for the individual who does so. As previously discussed, a failure to strive constantly for happiness is seen as a weakness and as a bad choice, and the person who does not take part in such an imperative is someone who is unable to take responsibility for themselves, which is, as we now know, central to being a good citizen and a good person (Rose 1996; Cederström and Spicer 2015). An imperative, or not? If we consider the arguments hitherto put forward in this chapter, what we have is something of a conundrum. Much of the academic debate surrounding this issue suggests that happiness has become an imperative in many modern Western societies. In particular, in cultures which could be described as ‘individualist’, such as in countries in Western Europe and the United States, there is evidence to demonstrate that people draw their happiness from self-esteem and personal achievement, and they are thus likely to seek to maximize their positive feelings and regard it as an imperative (Uchida, Norasakkunkit, and Kitayama 2004). However, there is also research, which happens to come from Europe, that shows that such a strong preoccupation with happiness has been met with criticism and that happiness is something that must be balanced alongside more negative affects (e.g. Hyman 2014; Craib 1994; Brinkmann 2017). The work of Ehrenreich and Kotchemidova in particular suggests that this may perhaps be more applicable to American culture than to that of Europe. Interestingly, in cultures that are known as ‘collectivist’ – for instance, many East Asian countries – happiness is more likely to be drawn from interpersonal connectedness, and balancing this with more negative feelings is more common (Uchida et al. 2004). It thus appears that such an orientation has also been adopted to some degree by Europeans (e.g. Brinkmann 2017; Hyman 2014). While one cannot ignore the increasingly morefrequent reminders to ‘be happy’ that are being issued to members of all Western societies or the wellness and happiness ‘industries’ around which we are now surrounded (Cederstrom and Spicer 2015; Davies 2015), one must also bear in mind that this has not gone wholly unchallenged.

Conclusion So now we must ask: why does all of this matter, and what are its implications? I argue here that this has implications both for academic debate and for society at large.

Happiness: a societal ‘imperative’? 107 First, we can consider how this contributes to academic debates surrounding happiness and wellbeing. It is particularly useful when we think about how happiness and wellbeing are measured in cross-national contexts (see the World Values Survey 2017 and the European Social Survey 2017). In these cases, all respondents in all participating countries are asked standard ‘global’ questions, along the lines of ‘Taking all things together, how happy would you say you are?’ and are asked to quantify this on a numerical scale. This could be ascribed greater meaning if we also have a deeper understanding of the particular social and cultural contexts in which happiness and wellbeing sit; as this article has demonstrated, these contexts are not always the same. In the World Values Survey specifically, where respondents are answering the same question in different countries across the world, it is likely that their everyday understandings and experiences of happiness would be significantly different. This would thus affect their responses to the questions, and it would also shape how resulting data were interpreted. This happiness imperative can also be considered within the context of positive psychology and the self-help movement. In particular, they prescribe that a person’s social context ought not to be a factor in their attainment of happiness, or lack thereof (Seligman 2002). But I emphasize here that a society’s understanding of happiness and wellbeing are fundamental to how people consume the information produced by these institutions. Furthermore, it would also have a significant bearing on a person’s likelihood to use them, as well as on their perceived success. That is to say, an individual whose culture promotes the idea of a happiness imperative is, first, more likely to pursue happiness via positive psychology or self-help literature and, second, more likely to expect success from them than an individual who sees their happiness as originating from interpersonal connectedness. However, these ideas also have major implications for society more broadly. Happiness and wellbeing clearly occupy a distinctive place in modern societies, and examining how they are packaged and aspired towards by their members is of paramount importance for understanding everyday life. It can also shed some important light on how people understand their lives and their surroundings, and it raises questions whether the promotion of happiness and wellbeing is actually good for society. Indeed, by definition, they are about feeling good. But to what degree is a preoccupation with or constant pursuit of happiness beneficial for the common good? Psychoanalysts such as Ian Craib (1994) would say that emotions such as disappointment and sadness are just as important for the individual psyche as are happiness and joy, as they enable us to deal with difficult – and inevitable – events in our lives; but beyond this, I emphasize that such a balance of positive and negative is also beneficial for society as a whole. This is because a fixation on personal happiness could divert attention away from society’s injustices and, more specifically, could result in social ills being attributed not to societal inequities but to individuals themselves. Indeed, this is something that can already be witnessed in contemporary life, as those experiencing high levels of unhappiness are offered solutions that are designed to remedy so-called chemical imbalances in the brain and help the individual come to terms with their own thoughts, emotions, and life events. Antidotes that are biological or psychological in nature are unable to redress the social issues that contribute to unhappiness; thus, whether

108  Laura Hyman these are financial problems, poverty, inadequate housing, gender, race or class inequalities, or something else, they are almost certainly overlooked and remain present in the social fabric of our everyday lives; meanwhile, social problems are seen to result from damaged or faulty psyches. One could even go so far as to draw parallels between this happiness and wellbeing imperative and religion as understood by Marx. That is to say, is this imperative that is gaining increasing traction in the secular West replacing religion as something that is ‘the heart of the heartless world and the soul of soulless conditions . . . the opium of the people’ (Marx 1970: 131)? In a society that is unjust and beset by a range of social structural issues, the promotion of the pursuit of happiness stands as an invitation into an alternative world in which problems, pathologies, and injustices do not present themselves and do not cause worry. While being happy is, by definition, a positive state to be aspired towards, we must at the same time be aware that to really address the unhappiness of modern Western societies, we must live alongside the societal issues that bring it about. So perhaps the real imperative should be for a happy realism – that is, a realistic recognition of the injustices of society that need redressing while catching and celebrating the happiness that comes our way. After all, perhaps happiness really is about taking ‘the rough with the smooth’.

References Bellah, R. (1986): Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Brinkmann, S. (2017): Stand Firm: Resisting the Self-Improvement Craze. Cambridge: Polity Press. Bruckner, P. (2000): Perpetual Euphoria: On the Duty to Be Happy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Cabanas, E. (2018): ‘Positive Psychology and the Legitimation of Individualism’. Theory and Psychology, 28(1): 3–19. Cabanas, E. & Sánchez-González, J. (2012): ‘The Roots of Positive Psychology’. Papeles Del Psicólogo, 33(3): 172–182. Cederström, C. & Spicer, A. (2015): The Wellness Syndrome. Cambridge: Polity Press. Craib, I. (1994): The Importance of Disappointment. Abingdon: Routledge. Davies, W. (2015): The Happiness Industry: How the Government and Big Business Sold Us Well-Being. London: Verso. De Tocqueville, A. (1966): Democracy in America (trans. George Lawrence). New York, NY: Harper and Row. Dworkin, R. W. (2001): ‘The Medicalization of Unhappiness’. The Public Interest, 144: 85–128. Ehrenreich, B. (2009): Smile or Die: How Positive Thinking Fooled America and the World. London: Granta Publications. European Social Survey. (2017): ‘About the European Social Survey’. Retrieved from www.europeansocialsurvey.org/about/. Foucault, M. (1986): The History of Sexuality: Volume 3: The Care of the Self. New York, NY: Vintage Books. Furedi, F. (2004): Therapy Culture: Cultivating Vulnerability in an Uncertain Age. London: Routledge.

Happiness: a societal ‘imperative’? 109 Furedi, F. (2017): What’s Happened to the University? A Sociological Exploration of Its Infantilisation. Abingdon: Routledge. Goffman, E. (1959): The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. London: Penguin Books. Hazleden, R. (2003): ‘Love Yourself: The Relationship of the Self With Itself in Popular Self-Help Texts’. Journal of Sociology, 39(4): 413–428. Hochschild, A. (1979): ‘Emotion Work, Feeling Rules and Social Structure’. American Journal of Sociology, 85(3): 551–575. Hyman, L. (2014): Happiness: Understandings, Narratives and Discourses. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Illouz, E. (2008): Saving the Modern Soul: Therapy, Emotions and the Culture of SelfHelp. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Kotchemidova, C. (2005): ‘From Good Cheer to “Drive-By Smiling”: A Social History of Cheerfulness’. Journal of Social History, 39(1): 5–37. Lasch, C. (1979): The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations. New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Co. Marx, K. (1970): Critique of Hegel’s ‘Philosophy of Right’. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. McKenzie, J. (2016): ‘Happiness vs Contentment? A Case for a Sociology of the Good Life’. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 46(3): 252–267. Office for National Statistics. (2018): ‘Measures of National Well-being Dashboard’. Retrieved from www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/wellbeing/articles/ measuresofnationalwellbeingdashboard/2018-04-25. Rieff, P. (1966): The Triumph of the Therapeutic: Uses of Faith After Freud. New York, NY: Harper and Row. Rimke, H. (2000): ‘Governing Citizens Through Self-Help Literature’. Cultural Studies, 14(1): 61–78. Rose, N. (1996): Inventing Our Selves: Psychology, Power and Personhood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Seligman, M. (2002): Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfillment. New York, NY: Free Press. Uchida, Y., Norasakkunkit, V. & Kitayama, S. (2004): ‘Cultural Constructions of Happiness: Theory and Empirical Evidence’. Journal of Happiness Studies, 5(3): 223–239. Walter, T. (1997): ‘Emotional Reserve and the English Way of Grief’. In K. Charmaz, G. Howarth & A. Kellehear (eds.), The Unknown Country: Death in Australia, Britain and the USA. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 127–140. World Values Survey. (2017): ‘World Values Survey’. Retrieved from www.worldvalues survey.org/wvs.jsp. Wright, K. (2008): ‘Theorizing Therapeutic Culture: Past Influences, Future Directions’. Journal of Sociology, 44(4): 321–336.

7 ‘It’s the soul that needs the surgery’? The social life of (un)happiness Nicholas Hill

Introduction The prelude to Beyonce’s hit song Pretty Hurts is a conversation between a beauty pageant contestant and a judge. The judge asks the contestant about her aspiration in life. After some thought, she replies, ‘Oh my aspiration in life would be, to be happy’. In response to an enquiry, happiness is expressed as an ordinary human desire. The song then explores the soul-destroying (and health-destroying) effects on women of feminine beauty standards. Within this framing, happiness is a means of escape from socially produced pain and suffering. According to the song’s lyrics, however, the achievement of happiness requires turning inwards and discovering the true self: ‘It’s the soul that needs the surgery’. Rather than addressing damaging beauty standards, redemption is found within. The song’s lyrics illustrate how therapeutic discourses are interpellated with the self. You stripped away the masquerade (pretty hurts, pretty hurts) The illusion has been shed (pretty hurts, pretty hurts) Are you happy with yourself? (pretty hurts, pretty hurts) Are you happy with yourself? (pretty hurts, pretty hurts) Yes By turning her attention to her internal life and cultivating self-acceptance, the protagonist is able to achieve salvation in the form of happiness from the destructive influence of society. The construction of the soul as suffering and in need of ‘surgery’ draws attention to an increasingly dominant – some might say unavoidable – way of thinking about, understanding, and working on the self (cf. Rose 1998; Madsen 2014; Wright 2011), at least in that economic, cultural, intellectual, and religious tradition of the West (Illouz 2008). Positioning the soul in need of surgery suggests that happiness may not simply be desirable but a social demand, an exhortation. Individuals must work to overcome their suffering and re-establish themselves as productive and happy subjects. Therapy, self-help, and New Age spiritualties can then be understood as resources for addressing the ‘damaging’ effects of self-denial and improving individual wellbeing (Heelas 2009; Madsen 2014;

‘It’s the soul that needs the surgery’? 111 Moskowitz 2001). The availability of tools for remedying unhappiness means that happiness is now depicted as a choice. This is significant because, as Ahmed (2010) notes, happiness shapes worlds. It is an orienting ideal that gives shape and form to our lives and frames how we relate to others. Because happiness signifies to ourselves and others how we are travelling, it might best be understood as a ‘moral mood’ (Walker and Kavedžija 2015). It is the framing of happiness as a moral choice that is the focus of many critiques of the happiness turn (cf. Ahmed 2010; Brinkmann 2017; Cederström 2018). These critiques point to the potential stigmatization of those who do not opt into this new emotional regime (Brinkmann 2017; Ehrenreich 2010). There is a need for greater critical engagement with the effects of the happiness turn as they are experienced and expressed within everyday experience, interactions with others, and social relationships. It is this gap that I address in the following pages. Drawing on a larger qualitative empirical study that examined the contours of the happiness turn through an examination of the experience of people engaged with and participating in happiness and wellbeing practices, this chapter explores the social implications of the framing of happiness as an ideal. In particular, I focus on how happiness and its alterities, namely anxiety, depression, dissatisfaction, sadness, suffering, and unhappiness, were situated socially in people’s accounts, at the nexus of self and other and that of self and world. The framing of happiness as an internal process – a matter of orientation – is contrary to understandings of emotions as relational (cf. Burkitt 2014; Holmes 2010; Nussbaum 2001). A central argument is that the emphasis on happiness as an individual achievement reduces interpersonal relationships and interactions to a purely instrumental exercise understood in terms of their individual affects. Rather than pursuing an individualized form of happiness, one divorced from social relationships, the accounts suggest people were attempting to build and sustain stronger social ties because of the meaning and happiness they provide. In a contradictory move, therapeutic and self-help practices foster an inwards-looking reflexivity. The accounts suggest that while happiness may be experienced individually, social relationships may be central to the production and maintenance of good and happy lives. By turning our attention inwards, towards our ‘souls’, an important source of wellbeing may be reduced to a simple transaction. Before presenting key findings, I contrast accounts of happiness that treat emotions as an internal process with more-complex and more-relational understandings, focusing particularly on happiness and suffering.

The simplicity and complexity of happiness Backed by ‘scientific evidence’, the happiness industry (Davies 2015) has generated a new emotional style (Illouz 2008: 14) – a vocabulary and related set of practices and techniques that assist people in their pursuit of happiness. The promotion of happiness as achievable extends what Eva Illouz (2008) terms emotional capitalism, which describes the way discourses of emotions and economic discourses have become intertwined in contemporary life. The assumption in this

112  Nicholas Hill regime is that individual feelings and behaviours are amenable to ‘adjustment’ with technological assistance (Binkley 2014; Sointu 2005). Happiness according to this formulation is reduced to ‘a set of practices of the self-oriented towards particular goals’ (Blackman 2007/2008: 15). As Lisa Blackman (2007/2008) notes, happiness is now linked to the ‘development of will’ and the cultivation of ‘good habits’. The promotion of happiness as an ideal (Bruckner 2000) is fostering a new moral regime centred on the cultivation of positivity and physical health (Brinkmann 2017; Ehrenreich 2010; Cederström 2018). Thus, a new model of selfhood built on self-governance and continual self-development is produced, what Edgar Cabanas (2016) terms the psytizen. The framing of happiness as an ideal is arguably giving shape and form to new images of the good life that individuals use to evaluate their lives. The backdrop to the happiness turn (Ahmed 2010) is the pervasive sense that the contemporary world is perpetually in flux, putting at risk our self-identity, our relationships with others, and our happiness (cf. Bauman 2000; Gergen 2000; Rosa 2013). Indeed, a dominant narrative circulating in the popular zeitgeist and one that is also evident in expert claims is the overwhelming presence of suffering and crisis in levels of happiness that are attributed to contemporary social processes (Ahmed 2010; Carlisle, Henderson, and Hanlon 2009; Turner 2018). Those making claims about happiness (Frawley 2016) assert that tending to one’s internal life is a means of moderating and managing the affective dimensions of contemporary life that threatens our relationship to the world beyond ourselves and others, what McKenzie (2016) terms contentment. Getting in touch with one’s emotional life or one’s inner most authentic self is presented as a means of resisting and rising above dehumanizing social forces (Guignon 2004; Moskowitz 2001; Trilling 1972). According to this negative understanding of social life, discovering one’s internal self requires rejecting external demands and duties so that we can ‘be all we can be’ and focus on ‘what we really want and need’ (Guignon 2004: 60). Prioritizing oneself and one’s happiness as a responsible life choice points to the construction of a human subject who is affectively self-contained (Blackman 2007/2008). The self presented within such an ideal is omnipotent, able to counter and rise above the constraints of personal circumstance (Cederström 2018). The promise of happiness, then, is powerful in a time of precarity where the potential for suffering is presented as a constant risk and ongoing challenge for the individual, with much at stake. As Wilkinson and Kleinman (2016: 9) note, suffering disrupts social worlds and is experienced as a kind of ‘social bereavement’ manifesting at the level of the collective or individual body as ‘sadness, disorientation, anomie, and unfulfillable longing’. The availability of tools with which to increase levels of happiness and, by extension, manage and inoculate the self against social processes that relentlessly undermine the self and one’s relations is appealing. According to Nussbaum (2001: 5), to have a sense of ‘emotional health requires the belief that one’s own voluntary actions will make a significant difference to one’s most important goals and projects’. We might then understand happiness as assisting people to maintain a sense of agency. Such

‘It’s the soul that needs the surgery’? 113 individual framings, however, locate emotions in the individual and reify feelings in the construction of a hyper-reflexive, happy subject (Morgan 2014) which problematizes the achievement of happiness. Critiques highlight the insular and self-serving nature of the happiness turn and suggest that therapeutic and selfhelp practices might be selling a false promise (cf. Brinkmann 2017; Cederström 2018; Morgan 2014). This line of criticism extends work examining the effects of therapeutic and self-help culture, which argues that such discourses foster narcissistic and thin selves (Furedi 2004; Lasch 1991 [1979]; Rieff 2007 [1966]). Yet the promotion of a subject that is emotionally cloistered and related critiques are in contrast to theorizations of the role that emotions play in social life. An alternative view understands emotions as complex, disorderly, and even disruptive phenomena that are central to individual conduct, everyday life, and social relationships (cf. Burkitt 2014; Holmes 2010; Nussbaum 2001). They are important because they involve judgements and appraisals about our place in the world. It is through emotions, as Eva Illouz (2008: 65) reminds us, that we enact ‘cultural definitions of personhood as they are expressed in concrete and immediate but always culturally and socially defined relationships’. Emotions are implicated in our relationships to the world of external objects that are outside of our immediate control (Nussbaum 2001: 4). Ahuvia et al. (2015) suggest that emotional experience is a complex interplay of interdependencies between the mind and the world at large. Burkitt (2014: 2) also decentres emotions by locating them within relationships: ‘[W]hat our feelings and emotions are the subject of . . . are patterns of relationships between self and others and between self and world’. According to Burkitt (2014: 16), emotions are composed of interrelated aspects of experience, such as ‘the bodily, the psychological, the discursive or linguistic, and the biographical’. The performance of emotions is shaped dialogically through social interaction, where the appropriate level or display of emotions is determined by social context, what Hochschild (2012) terms feeling rules. It is through the successful management of our emotional performance that we are able to maintain our status as social actors (Goffman 1986). Emotions are therefore central to our real or imagined dialogue with that generalized other and to the production of self (Holmes 2010). Such insights problematize claims by experts that happiness is simply a matter of orientation and, where necessary, readjustment. Reducing happiness to purely internal processes puts at risk our relationships, what are potentially more meaningful, valuable, and stable sources of meaning and happiness. Indeed, limited qualitative work reveals the grounded and contextual way that people understand and approach happiness (Cieslik 2015; Hyman 2014; Thin 2012). Cieslik (2015: 235), for example, suggests that people’s experiences of and reflections on happiness are ‘very much rooted in social relationships and reciprocal acts of compassion, altruism, and duty’. He argues that experiences and understandings of happiness are located in biographical projects where individuals navigate tensions and conflicts between values and interests in the ‘face of wider social constraints and regulation’ (2015: 235). It is through our relationship with others and the world that we attempt to live good and happy lives. Examining the nexus of happiness and suffering is a necessary step in any examination of

114  Nicholas Hill the happiness turn given the perceived sense of crisis in levels of happiness and wellbeing. Focusing attention on how individuals positioned happiness and its alterities socially draws attention to individual lives as they are actively lived and experienced in social life and generates insight into what the ‘good life’ means for them and how they attempt to establish and maintain their status as social actors. Notes on method The material presented here was collected as part of my PhD project, which examined the way therapeutic and self-help framings of happiness and wellbeing are reshaping how people think about and respond to anxiety and suffering in contemporary life.1 Semi-structured narrative interviews were conducted with 13 women and eight men aged between 24 and 81 who were engaged in or facilitating pedagogical practices framed by the happiness turn. Interview were conducted between 2014 and 2015. The interviews were transcribed and then analysed using narrative methods focusing on how people positioned themselves in their selfaccounts. The accounts should not be treated as a true depiction of people’s experiences but a fiction (Freeman 1998) created in collaboration within myself (Kvale and Brinkmann 2009). Because narration is a goal-oriented and value-laden process (Schachter 2011), the way people positioned themselves in their narratives and vis-à-vis others made possible an examination of the way the positing of happiness as a moral ideal is reframing social relations.

Happiness as a social investment For the people interviewed as part of my research, there was little distinction between ‘evidence-based’ practices, traditional therapeutic and self-help practices, spirituality, and New Age therapies. People engaged with happiness and wellbeing therapies, as well as therapeutic, life coaching, and self-help practices, alongside New Age therapies, religion, and forms of spiritualism by enrolling in classes workshops and courses. Many participants also drew on a diverse range of media such as books, apps, and websites. They described how they practised mindfulness, gratitude science, happiness science, meditation, and yoga, as well as forms of self-help, spirituality, dance, and laughter yoga, among many other practices. They spoke excitedly about the ideas promoted by the happiness industry, often explaining how they had enthusiastically discovered and embraced these new practices. People sought out various practices to deal with every day crises and problems, what Szasz (2007) terms problems of living. These problems were described in emotional terms, such as the experience of anger, anxiety, depression, grief, loss, and general unhappiness, as well as more existential feelings such as a lack of purpose or meaning. The diversity of aims and, further, the inclusion of numerous practices not directly traceable to the happiness turn because of the lack of scientific evidence suggests that the happiness industry might simply be promoting and selling hope. Even where people spoke of feeling happy enough, evident

‘It’s the soul that needs the surgery’? 115 within their accounts was a concern with how their present activities and behaviours might impact their future emotional self. While people’s experiences were described largely in self-referential terms, interpersonal interactions and social relationships figured prominently. I present the analysis in three sections. The first section illustrates how people emphasized emotional control and containment. The second section highlights the limits of autonomous and individualized lives. The final section considers how happiness and wellbeing discourses are reducing social relationships to an instrumental exercise. Emotional performance: stability and contagion According to many participants, therapeutic and self-help practices helped them to control, manage, and transform unwanted emotions, feelings, and thoughts. These feelings could be immediate and fleeting, like anger for instance, or more pervasive and all-encompassing emotions, such as sadness or depression. In these narratives, emphasis was placed on self-mastery. Developing the ability to master and control certain emotions was necessary for some people to maintain their dignity and integrity as social actors. Others noted that because emotions could travel and affect others, it was important to protect the self and others from negativity. In these contrasting approaches, emotional control and emotional containment were constructed as individual tasks and a social responsibility. Controlling and managing emotions as they arose in the context of everyday interactions and life transitions was important in many of the analysed accounts. Susan, for example, described the value of her meditation practice for her selfconfidence and self-esteem: I’m aware of the influence of the meditation coming through all the time. I’m rarely ever emotional in a way that I’m not proud of afterwards. I’m usually able to take a breath and think about it. And not feel ashamed of myself after, because I’ve been you know, mean or furious or panicky or something like that. So I think it comes through in that way. I can be more thoughtful. (Susan, 41, married, clinical psychologist/trained yoga and meditation instructor) The quotation suggests that meditation is not simply a practice but a behaviour that is best internalized and embodied. Through the embodiment of the principles of meditation, Susan described how she was able to bracket aside strong emotions that arose in social interactions. Displaying ‘anger’ or panic meant acting in socially undesirable ways, which put her social status at risk. To avoid feeling ashamed and losing face, Susan needed to conform to the feeling rules (Hochschild 2012) of the situation. The social norms that constrain and shape Susan’s emotional performance might be linked to her professional identity as a clinical psychologist whose practice, according to her account, is informed by positive psychology, as well as her yoga

116  Nicholas Hill and meditation practice. Losing control of her emotions risks her professional identity (Goffman 1986). How the practice of meditation is described as being internalized in her narrative suggests a therapeutic investment in her social identity. In contrast to Susan’s emphasis on emotional performance, Isabella drew on a narrative of contagion to explain why it was important to remain positive. Of all the accounts of psychologists, life coaches, and other facilitators of pedagogical practices, Isabella’s investment in happiness was by far the strongest. According to her story, Isabella’s coaching practice was informed by her experience of feeling isolated and alone after coming out as a lesbian to her Catholic IndonesianChinese parents, and the death of her father several years later. Her account is an illustrative example of the way people’s stories of engaging with happiness and wellbeing practices were strongly situated in their personal biographies and relationships. Isabella explained that it was through the completion of a life-coaching course several months after her father’s death that she realized the importance of emotions. When I enquired further, she replied that it was important to ‘know what exactly you are feeling, and then, is it true?’ She went on to assert that it was important to know whether an emotion was empowering or disempowering, linking positive emotions to agency. There is a presumption that negative emotions are less ‘true’ than positive ones, suggesting that positivity is closely associated with authenticity. Being in touch with the ‘truth’ of one’s emotions was important for a person’s agency and, further, emotional performance. In our discussion about the relative importance of emotions, Isabella’s narrative shifted suddenly and took on a proselytizing tone. The experience related in the following excerpt is the emotional and social dislocation she experienced after coming out. Like even with my guilt and sacrifice, right, I went into that deep. Just being so focused on my own shadow and my own – I felt guilty. I felt, I need to do this. Then it made me realize, ‘How could I be so selfish in the sense that I’m focusing on my own flaw’, right? But the thing is focusing on my own shadow is not gonna change. It’s not going to make situations better – not for myself, not for other people, right. . . . That dwelling on the past is not going to change anything. Dwelling on guilt is not going to change anything. In fact, it’s a very selfish thing to do, because people think that being happy is selfish, is a selfish act, right! It’s crazy! I had a session with someone who said that, ‘I feel that I’m not good enough to experience happiness’. Like what? [hand gestures, indicating exasperation] But it’s a true story right, because they think that being happy is a selfish thing to do, but if you’re not happy, you are being selfish. If you’re not happy, you’re just taking everyone down with you. (Isabella, 37, single, life coach) Evident in this excerpt is a significant investment in an agentic, socially (and emotionally) responsible self. Through the lens of the life-coaching course her guilt was reframed as a selfish act, a ‘flaw’. The ‘flaw’ is not the fact that she felt that she had disappointed both her parents and her partner at the time but rather her

‘It’s the soul that needs the surgery’? 117 inability to see beyond her suffering, which is emphasized by the metaphor of the ‘shadow’. The social implications of her suffering are reinforced; focusing on her guilt was not going to improve the situation for herself or other people. Change and improvement was prioritized, highlighting how therapeutic labour acquires a social value. Interwoven within Isabella’s personal testimonial of the social importance of happiness is a description of an encounter with one of her clients. The description of her clients’ belief that they did not feel ‘good enough’ to be happy is used strategically with her narrative to reinforce her claim that dwelling on suffering is a ‘selfish’ act. According to Isabella, it is not simply that individuals have a right to happiness but that have a responsibility because their unhappiness threatens the happiness of others. Underlying this assertion is the idea that individually experienced emotions travel and affect (or perhaps infect) other bodies. The suggestion that the experience of unhappiness could bring ‘others down’ demonstrates how new forms of responsibility around emotional conduct are generated through the happiness turn. Happiness is posited as both a right and a duty. Therapeutic and self-help practices are producing new moral norms governing emotional life while reinforcing their value for individuals by opening up new, more socially acceptable emotional pathways. The idea that emotions might also infect other bodies shaped how people perceived and related to others. The idea that happiness and unhappiness travel required people to be selective with family, friends, and work colleagues, according to some participants. The account of Sam is instructive. I was diagnosed with cancer five and a half years ago and the future was uncertain and that prompted me to change my lifestyle into, hopefully, contributing to the community. It also meant some more healthy living habits, which was a positive and I try to keep myself positive and mix with positive people. (Sam, 73, married, retired small business owner/volunteer) A significant turning point in Sam’s biography that generated a change in lifestyle is outlined here: the cancer diagnosis. We see an implicit allusion to the metaphor of contagion. In contrast to Isabella, who asserted that it was important to be positive for the sake of others, Sam suggested that being with positive people was beneficial for his own emotional wellbeing. Positive emotions are presented as fragile and in need of protection from negativity. In addition, the positivity of others may work to reinforce one’s own happiness, suggesting that emotions have a transactional quality. The use of emotions to evaluate the worthiness of others suggests that new patterns of social inclusion and exclusion are forming. The performance and management of emotions have significant implications for the way people appear before and interact with others. This section has demonstrated the different ways social norms shape and influence the expression and management of emotions and highlights the limitations of theorizations that locate emotions in the individual body. The emphasis on happiness and wellbeing is resulting in a privileging of positivity and stigmatization

118  Nicholas Hill of negative emotions, which, by extension, is reshaping patterns of social conduct and interaction. The control and management of emotions, as Susan’s narrative indicates, is central to the dignity and integrity of individual identities. The increased emphasis on the emotionally contained self within happiness and wellbeing discourses is creating new emotional hierarchies that in turn are reshaping social relations. The pathologization of negativity is generating new patterns of social inclusion and exclusion on the basis of emotional experience and performance. The underlying idea in the accounts of Sam and Isabella is that emotions travel and can infect other bodies, suggesting that the ideal of emotional selfcontainment may be a myth. The accounts indicate that happiness and wellbeing discourses are restructuring intersubjective life along emotional lines, where individuals are called upon to conform to emotional norms and avoid being the cause of other people’s unhappiness. Most significantly, positive emotions are viewed as a form of social capital that can be transacted socially. The limits of individualized existence In the collected narratives, the maintenance and achievement of happiness was strongly situated in intersubjective life. People expressed their desire for deeper and stronger social ties. The absence or presence of happiness or wellbeing in people’s lives was felt to impact people’s ability to form and sustain social relationships. This had important implications for not only people’s identities but also how they felt they were perceived by others. For some people, it was important to be seen to be working to transform their suffering and reposition themselves socially. Significantly, many people noted the meaning and value that personal relationships provided. Andrew, for instance, strongly situated his account of actively working to improve his happiness and wellbeing in familial relationships. According to his story, it was the realization that his parents were close to the end of their lives that resulted in his turn away from the ‘unhealthy lifestyle’ associated with the electronic music scene that he had been involved with for many years. It shook me that the bonds with other people were so direct and so meaningful and that how I lived my own life dramatically affected others and because of that, I had the absolute onus to live a good life, because it would directly affect others. And so therefore, everything just either unravelled or changed. (Andrew, 46, single, student) What is narrated here is a sudden and dramatic encounter with the limits of an individualized existence. The recognition of the strength and meaning of social bonds is posited as the precipitating event that drove Andrew’s desire for personal transformation. The desire to live a good life is not driven by a narcissistic selfconcern but the realization that the way he lived his life impacted others. Instead of aiming for a radically free subjectivity, divorced from social ties, Andrew justified

‘It’s the soul that needs the surgery’? 119 his pursuit of personal transformation by emphasising the importance of social ties. Self-care, then, can be viewed as an investment in social ties, problematizing critiques that centre on concerns of atomization and narcissism. It is worth staying with Andrew’s account momentarily because his discussion illustrates the social value of therapeutic and self-help practices. The following excerpt is Andrew’s response to my question regarding the benefits of improving his self-knowledge: It’s through a greater focus and through realizing that concentration on things that actually hold value, add to your life and what they add to your life is sort of like a greater sense of being in the world and that is sorely missed I think in a lot of people’s lives and it certainly was missing in mine. And not seeing the reasons why I was doing things. And when I sorted out my reasons more, I had a better skill of being able to sort out my reasons. And so being able to sort out my reasons for doing things made me more true to myself to a certain extent and true to what, being able to work out more, what was actually true and that’s certainly makes you more interesting to other people and I think valuable to other people, in what constitutes true value. Andrew employed an awakening or conversion narrative structure (DeGloma 2014) to highlight the personal and social value of turning away from what is constructed as a false or misguided life. In accordance with awakening narratives, value is placed on self-interrogation, personal discovery, and authenticity. Significantly for our discussion in these pages, the emphasis on authenticity is articulated socially – ‘valuable to other people’. There are echoes of personal salvation evident in this short excerpt that suggest that redemption can be found via therapeutic self-care. Redemption is not simply to be found in a personal endeavour but is to be achieved in the eyes of others. The emphasis given to other people and the sense of ‘being in the world’ points to what is at stake for Andrew, his personal relationships, and his status as a ‘valuable’ person. The economic metaphor of value suggests that happiness and wellbeing discourses are producing new forms of social capital centred on emotional life. The increased social acceptance that Andrew emphasizes is found through the therapeutic and self-help facilitation of personal transformation. His account can be read as a tightening of normative frameworks that shape images of good, happy, and socially connected lives. Yet it also suggests that social relationships are themselves a source of meaning and happiness, highlighting the limits of theorizations that locate emotions in the body. People also spoke in different ways about the value of social relationships for their wellbeing. Edith’s account is illuminating here. In other sections of her account, Edith described her rejection of the nine-to-five working culture and the way she had carved out an autonomous and authentic life for herself. The self presented in these sections was reflective of the autonomous, enterprising, and productive subjects suited to the present economic and political sphere that promotes

120  Nicholas Hill choice and freedom (Binkley 2014; Rose 1998). The following extract, however, points to the limitations of this lifestyle: NICHOLAS:  What is it about reaching out to people? EDITH:  It’s acknowledging that I have a need for social

contact. Because I’m a freelancer and I live alone, it would be quite easy for me to not actually see people. You know like, if I don’t make the effort, then a few friends would contact me and invite me out to things, but it’s different to running into people all the time at a workplace or you know so I kind of go. And also, I do it to nurture them as well, particularly my family, I think, because I’ve realized that my family’s wellbeing is important to my wellbeing and also to theirs. (Edith, 29, single, freelance writer)

The quotation points to the value of social bonds and the importance of ‘nurturing’ friends and family, suggesting that wellbeing is produced and sustained through social interaction. Contributing productively and meaningfully in her personal relationships was central to Edith’s social identity. Elsewhere in her account, Edith described how she was a source of support for her brother, father, and ex-boyfriend, all of whom experienced chronic depression. Because of this role, Edith believed that she had a moral responsibility to maintain her wellbeing. Significantly, providing this support was also a source of her wellbeing. We see again how happiness and wellbeing discourses are colonizing both the self and social relationships, not only generating new forms of responsibility and social demands along therapeutic lines but also altering the value and meaning of social relationships. The accounts of Andrew and Edith underscore the limits of an autonomous and free existence and highlight the importance of personal relationships for individual happiness. To be accepted by others requires conforming to normative expectations of personhood, as Andrew’s account illustrates. The value of therapeutic and selfhelp practices is to be found in their ability to highlight the extent to which people have strayed from normative expectations while usefully illuminating a pathway to redemption. These accounts also illustrate the limits of individual attempts to cultivate happiness and wellbeing in isolation from others. There is a tension introduced into the self by the demands of therapeutic and self-help discourses. To be free and happy and live authentically requires the prioritization of the self (Guignon 2004). Yet in different ways, the accounts suggest that social relationships are inescapable and, more importantly, are central to people’s experiences of happiness. The tension between self and others and between self and world fostered by happiness and wellbeing discourses threatens to undermine the meaning and value that relationships hold because it asks us to consider them in terms of their therapeutic value. The social life of happiness Intersubjective life was central to people’s accounts of engaging with happiness and wellbeing practices, which points to the limits of critiques that argue that

‘It’s the soul that needs the surgery’? 121 such discourses foster insular and narcissistic selves. In the analysed narratives, people described attempts to strike a balance between prioritizing self and others and prioritizing self and world. People emphasised how they were individually responsible for their personal happiness and wellbeing, while simultaneously highlighting their social obligations and duties. Social relationships were inescapable and central to one’s place in the world. Balancing personal relationships and managing one’s own wellbeing was constructed as a risky enterprise. According to people’s accounts, maintaining their happiness or wellbeing was an ongoing task that necessitated constant self-surveillance. For many people, maintaining their wellbeing was central to being able to meet the social expectations associated with their role as an employee, friend, mother, father, sibling, or community member. Simultaneously, however, people described the need to strike a balance between social demands and the self. There were social risks of not attending to one’s wellbeing, as demonstrated by Sharon’s account, which highlights the moral value assigned to self-care. We can see resonances with Susan’s account, which was considered earlier. Sharon’s identity was strongly linked to her role as a single mother of five children. According to her account, attending to individual wellbeing is a necessary step to fulfilling social obligations. SHARON: 

Consequently, if you are not tending to your own wellbeing, you are not tending to other ones. It’s like in the aeroplane, the adults put their mask on first before the children. NICHOLAS:  So what’s the ethic around that? SHARON:  Well if you’ve got no oxygen and you’re dead or passed out, you’re not helping anyone. NICHOLAS:  Yes, that’s true. SHARON: [laugh] NICHOLAS:  That’s always a very grim metaphor but very vivid. SHARON:  A very blunt way of putting, yeah. And you know, it’s the same, if you are not tending to your needs and you end up depressed and not functioning, sometimes you need to be there, so if that’s what you need to do and be still and be resting and that means you’re going to be in a place to help other people sooner. (Sharon, 52, divorced, exercise scientist/personal trainer) The dramatic metaphor of the oxygen mask illustrates the moral accountability that individuals felt to actively work on their wellbeing. At stake was their ability to provide support to others. Equating wellbeing to oxygen suggests that this subjective state is a fuel that can be exhausted. According to her account, a lack of wellbeing can result in a metaphorical social death because a person is unable to fulfil their social duties: ‘sometimes you have to be there’. It is the responsibility of individuals to constantly refuel, according to Sharon. The singular burden and responsibility that Sharon felt to both herself and others must be read in relation to her role as a single mother, which was an important element of her account.

122  Nicholas Hill Therapeutic self-care provided the fuel needed for Sharon to provide support to her five children and avoid the stigma of being viewed as a failed mother. The excerpt highlights the precarity people experience in their social roles and points to a tightening of social norms around self-sufficiency and effective social functioning. The final section of talk underscores Sharon’s moral justification of attending to personal wellbeing through the use of the pathological state of depression as a cautionary tale. There is a precariousness inherent in the need to prioritize both self and others, since the timing of social demands may not correlate with the ability to attend to one’s own wellbeing. The need to strike a balance between internal needs and external demands is reshaping social relationships in other ways. The analysed accounts suggest that therapeutic and self-help practices are facilitating an instrumental approach to personal relationships. Aileen’s description of how she developed a ‘real focus’ on happiness is instructive. She explained that she had turned to happiness during her travels in India after breaking up with her first husband because of his depression, suicide attempts, drug use, and abusiveness. Like others, the turn towards happiness was described in dramatic terms, centring on a near-death experience in India. Aileen described how afterwards she reflected, ‘Okay, I could be dead right now. Enough of living my life for other people. I just do what I want to a bit more’. This personal transformation and prioritization of self was extensive but limited, as we shall see. This experience was nominated as the causal event that lead to her retraining as a yoga and meditation instructor, who also facilitated wellbeing workshops. The following discussion was prompted when Aileen identified green spaces as an ingredient of her personal happiness. NICHOLAS:  What would be AILEEN:  Definitely for me,

the ‘ingredients’ of happiness for you personally? part of it is around sort of the meditation practices, meditation and yoga. So having time, it’s about having time to just be. You know whether it’s outside in nature, whether it’s doing meditation, whether it’s whatever, but time on my own to kind of recharge and notice what’s going on with myself. If I don’t have that, then scchhht – [hand gesture indicating everything out of control] everything will kind of spiral out of control after a week or two if I just went straight from one thing to the next thing to next thing, to the next thing. So I know that that’s really important for me.   And then another part is – it’s kind of the opposite part – is being with people. Like spending time with people who – either two ways: people who I get support from; or, people who I give support to. Not, you know, nobody is 100% one way or the other, but I have a friend at the moment and she’s struggling with a lot of things and she says she’s not being a good friend, but I still enjoy meeting her because I can see that I’m helping her and that’s important to me. (Aileen, 37, married, yoga/meditation instructor)

In a similar vein to Sharon’s story, Aileen constructed wellbeing as a source of energy necessary for everyday conduct. Bearing witness to her internal life is described as a way of resisting and managing social demands. Failure to prioritize

‘It’s the soul that needs the surgery’? 123 herself puts at risk her identity as someone who is in ‘control’ and who is able to and enjoys providing support to others. There is a tension between internal needs and external demands evident in Aileen’s description of wellbeing. According to her account, a balance must be struck between the two. It seems that personal relationships and feeling connected to the world beyond the self is central to happiness and wellbeing. Yet social interaction according to this view is reduced to an instrumental transaction aimed at improving individual wellbeing. This was also evident in familial relationships, highlighting how therapeutic and selfhelp discourses enter into and reshape personal values and family practices. Ingrid explained that contributing to her family legacy was a source of wellbeing for her: I tend to bring things back to values quite a bit and for me . . . values around I guess, investing in my family and contributing to the legacy of my family, which is not in some whiz bang way. It’s just about, I guess bringing up kids to become great, genuine, authentic contributors to the world and can make their own little positive contribution. (Ingrid, 32, married, trainee psychologist/musician) Parenting and family legacy are transformed through a therapeutic and self-help lens into sources of wellbeing and happiness. The economic metaphors of investment and contribution are used to describe the value of family life to her personal wellbeing. Ingrid’s attachment to her children and their future is tied to her experience of wellbeing, demonstrating the futility of attempts to remove oneself from social relationships completely. According to Ingrid’s account, her wellbeing is tied to her ability to parent therapeutically – by this I mean her ability to bring up ‘great, genuine, authentic contributors’. This also has implications for the choices that her children make, putting at risk their recognition as good, ‘authentic’ citizens by Ingrid. Her narrative highlights how therapeutic and self-help practices are deeply colonizing. They are reshaping parental duties and concerns, and entering into the hopes and dreams that parents hold for their children’s futures. The accounts presented in this section highlight how personal relationships are important for our identities and are a valuable source of happiness and wellbeing. Yet they also indicate that significant tensions are being introduced into the relationship between self and other and self and world. Personal relationships and social interaction are potentially reduced to a simple equation where they are used to evaluate their positive or negative impact on individual happiness and wellbeing. This results in a bifurcation of intersubjective life where individual needs and social demands must be kept in balance, which by extension, necessitates the adoption of a therapeutic reflexivity in personal relationships and social interaction. The happiness and wellbeing derived from personal relationships might best be understood in terms of the meaning and value they hold for the individual rather than their affective qualities. In this way, personal relationships and intersubjective life might be more stable sources of meaning and value because of the way they anchor us in the world. Reducing relationships to their therapeutic value may inadvertently undermine them and introduce new forms of precarity into the social world.

124  Nicholas Hill

Conclusion The analysed accounts presented in this chapter point to the many contradictions and tensions that therapeutic and self-help framings of happiness and wellbeing introduce into subjective and intersubjective life. The implication of emotional life in social relationships means that happiness and wellbeing are perpetually unfinished and always at risk. People in my research described experimenting with and adopting happiness and wellbeing practices in the hope of maintaining a sense of emotional health (Nussbaum 2001). There are, as I have shown, significant limitations to understandings of happiness as purely internal processes (Ahuvia et al. 2015). All of the participants interviewed as part of my research nominated intersubjective life as a central source of meaning and value. Yet in fundamental and problematic ways, the accounts indicate that happiness and wellbeing discourses potentially reduce relationships to their affective qualities. Happiness and wellbeing discourses penetrate deeply into the self and social life and are colonizing the life world. They are reframing and tightening norms around social conduct through a simplistic demarcation of positive and negative emotions. The happiness industry is producing new patterns of personhood centred on emotional control and containment. Allusions to and the use of the metaphor of contagion by some participants point to a contradiction: the investment in both self-containment and a form of social capital. Working to maintain a happy and positive countenance is a moral activity because of the way emotions travel and infect other bodies. It also avoids the stigmatized identity of a failed self (Goffman 1986). Because emotions travel and can affect other bodies, new forms of responsibility and social capital are forming around emotional lives. Indeed, positive emotions are increasingly commodified (Illouz 2008) through happiness and wellbeing discourses and can therefore be viewed as a form of emotional capital that can be accumulated and transacted socially. The role of personal relationships and the fulfilment of social obligations and duties in individual understandings and experiences of happiness and wellbeing further problematize constructions of the self as affectively self-contained and related critiques. There are limits, as the accounts have illustrated, to individualized existence. Some participants, for instance, described how they were forcefully confronted with the value and meaning of interpersonal relationships. Significantly, the findings suggest that people are engaging with happiness and wellbeing practices in an attempt to build, sustain, and deepen social ties in the face of social forces that put them at risk. Counterintuitively, then, these discourses simultaneously threaten social relationships: if we are to be socially accepted, we must conform to new norms governing the expression of happiness and its opposites. When we stray from the path of happiness, therapeutic and self-help discourses helpfully illuminate a pathway to redemption via the discovery of the authentic, happy self. Yet this self is mediated by social relationships introducing further precarity into the self. People are in effect caught in a perpetual feedback loop of self-concern from which the only escape is the rejection of regime of happiness, which again puts their social relationships and status as social actors at risk.

‘It’s the soul that needs the surgery’? 125 The metaphorical description of happiness and wellbeing as a form of fuel or energy, undermines alternative and potentially more-durable and more-stable understandings of happiness and wellbeing. Instead of criticizing the social forces that undermined their happiness, people described how they responsibly and dutifully managed the emotionally taxing demands of everyday life at the level of the self in order to meet the expectations associated with their social role, as a mother, father, daughter, partner, or employee. Attempts to improve individual contentment (McKenzie 2016) through happiness and wellbeing practices are risky because of the emphasis on individual responsibility and the priority given to one’s internal life over social relationships. In this regime, social interactions and relationships are reduced to an instrumental exercise – that is, their ability to generate happiness and wellbeing. Social connections help people to feel anchored and secure in the world, but happiness and wellbeing practices undermine relationships by reducing them to a simple therapeutic transaction. This move effectively brackets off and prevents alternative ways of understanding and valuing social relationships. The focus on individual subjectivities in discourses of happiness and wellbeing stands in contrast to how emotions are understood and enacted in everyday life. Evaluating relations between self and others and between self and world in a more-holistic and more-contextual way may generate a richer understanding of the meaning and value that relationships and social interaction hold for happiness and the good life as it is actively lived and experienced. A productive and robust line of critique of the framings of happiness as a simple matter of individual (re) orientation might better centre on the patterns of relationships in which individuals are implicated and that they struggle to maintain in the face of everyday problems and crises. It is important for researchers to acknowledge the meaning and value that social relationships hold. By doing this, we are better placed to promote types of social and political relationships that are more forgiving, accepting, and supportive of negativity and suffering. In other words, relationships that offer a stronger and more meaningful way of securing the self in an unstable world.

Note 1 Monash University Human Research Ethics Committee (MUHREC) – number CF14/514–2014000177 granted approval for this project. All data have been de-­ identified, and participants have been assigned a pseudonym.

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‘It’s the soul that needs the surgery’? 127 Moskowitz, E. (2001): In Therapy We Trust: America’s Obsession With Self-Fulfillment. Baltimore, MD: The John Hopkins University Press. Nussbaum, M. (2001): Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Rieff, P. (2007 [1966]): The Triumph of the Therapeutic: Uses of Faith After Freud. Washington, DC: ISI Books. Rosa, H. (2013): Social Acceleration: A New Theory of Modernity. New York, NY: Columbia University Press. Rose, N. (1998): Inventing Our Selves: Psychology, Power, and Personhood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schachter, E. (2011): ‘Narrative Identity Construction as a Goal-Oriented Endeavour: Reframing the Issue of “Big vs. Small” Story Research’. Theory & Psychology, 21(1): 107–113. Sointu, E. (2005): ‘The Rise of an Ideal: Tracing Changing Discourses of Wellbeing’. The Sociological Review, 53(2): 255–274. Szasz, T. (2007): The Medicalisation of Everyday Life: Selected Essays. New York, NY: Syracuse University Press. Thin, N. (2012): Social Happiness: Theory Into Policy and Practice. Bristol: Policy Press. Trilling, L. (1972): Sincerity and Authenticity. London: Harvard University Press. Turner, B. (2018): ‘(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction: Happiness and Successful Societies’. Sociology, 54(3): 279–293. Walker, H. & Kavedžija, I. (2015): ‘Values of Happiness’. Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 5(3): 1–23. Wilkinson, I. & Kleinman, A. (2016): A Passion for Society: How We Think About Human Suffering. Oakland, CA: University of California Press. Wright, K. (2011): The Rise of the Therapeutic Society: Psychological Knowledge & the Contradictions of Cultural Change. Washington, DC: New Academia Publishing.

Part III

Resources for critical happiness studies

8 Living well and living right Aesthetic and ethical dimensions of happiness Svend Brinkmann

Introduction Allow me to begin with a personal confession. Like many others (I guess), I am fed up with all the happiness talk that permeates modern life. We are constantly exposed to advice about what will make us happy, products are sold that promise to make us happy, and it seems as if the only worthwhile goal of life is now some form of happiness in the shape of subjective wellbeing. This is promoted in schools, workplaces, and the media. I happen to find this rather nauseous, and I have welcomed – for both personal and academic reasons – the analyses that now appear to deconstruct this whole happiness hell, including Critchley’s How to Stop Living and Start Worrying (2010) and Burkeman’s The Antidote (2012) on the more popular end of the spectrum and Davies’s The Happiness Industry (2015) on the more traditionally academic end of the spectrum. In a world that is going through several crises – not least concerning its ecological and economic systems – it seems rather perverse to constantly advocate the conventional ‘be happy!’ ideology. I have tried to articulate my discomfort in a paradoxical anti-self-help book of my own about how to avoid constant self-development and self-improvement, positive thinking, and happiness seeking (Brinkmann 2017). So I am certainly among the critical voices. However, it seems to me that the critical discussion should not end by simply concluding that the idea of happiness has become an ideological construct that serves specific interests and might be downright oppressive. To put it in a rather banal manner, it seems that human beings cannot do without some idea of happiness, however implicit it might be. Even libertarian arguments, claiming that no one should interfere with other people’s conceptions of happiness (because these are subjective), rest on the premise that it is good for people (and their happiness) to let them decide on happiness by themselves. Do not even the most sceptical critics of the happiness ideology themselves work with an implicit idea of what it is? In this chapter, I shall argue that we cannot escape from normative prescriptions about happiness, not even when we criticize the dominant notions of happiness. Often, the implicit critique of the happiness discourse is paradoxically that it makes people, yes, unhappy (Morgan 2014). But relative to which idea

132  Svend Brinkmann of happiness? I will ask how a viable notion of happiness can emerge from the ashes of critique, so to say – that is, after the legitimate critiques of the ideological constructions of the ‘fantasy of happiness’ that no one really knows what is (Cederström 2016). I will argue that after the justified critique of happiness, it is time to explore and defend an ethical1 notion of happiness specifically – that is, one according to which human happiness is more than ‘living well’ and maximizing one’s subjective wellbeing (although this may be important too). A proper notion of happiness, which goes back to Aristotle and should re-emerge now, involves also ‘living right’. But in order to develop the argument that happiness is normatively about ‘living right’, we have to transcend the experience-focused theories of happiness that prevail today, which mainly concern what Søren Kierkegaard referred to as the ‘aesthetic’ sphere of life. The important question becomes how to develop an ethical notion of happiness without falling into moralism and constructing a new oppressive ideology about what people ought to do to live right. Steering between the Scylla of subjectivism (everyone decides for themselves what happiness is) and the Charybdis of moralism (happiness is a specifically moral way of life) is a difficult matter, but my argument here is that the attempt is necessary for both existential and ethical reasons. We simply cannot escape the normative discussion about happiness. Even the critical voices should consider which implicit ideas of happiness can be found in their work.

Inescapable frameworks of happiness Let me begin with William Davies’s insightful and critical analysis of ‘the happiness industry’. In Davies’ book, which is both a thorough historical account of how happiness emerged as a ‘product’ to be sold on a psychological market and also a cultural critique of our times, the author targets in particular the utilitarian, behaviourist, and biological aspects of our current quest for happiness. But even if the book is primarily critical, Davies does not reject the notion of happiness as such. Instead, he refers to some ‘scattered alternatives’ to the dominant happiness discourse that are found here and there, as he says, and that see unhappiness not necessarily as a cause for treatment but rather as ‘a basis for critique and reform’ (Davies 2015: 243). This call represents a re-politicization of the discussion of (un)happiness that seeks to place the discourse in a normative realm of social justice, duties, and rights (or the lack thereof) rather than in a psychologized realm of subjective wellbeing, which so often happens today. I find Davies’s search for ‘scattered alternatives’ very welcome, and it is in this spirit that I proceed in what follows. One of the most influential books in moral philosophy in the latter half of the 20th century was Sources of the Self by Charles Taylor (1989). In this deep and complex text, Taylor provided an analysis of how the modern identity has been shaped by changing ideas of what counts as good and worthwhile. We are selves with identities only with reference to some notion of the good, Taylor argued: ‘selfhood and morality, turn out to be inextricably intertwined themes’, as he put it programmatically (1989: 3). Who I am is defined by where I stand on important matters, and what is deemed an important matter is not solely up to me as an

Living well and living right 133 individual but is something defined by the moral traditions and communities of which I am a part. These important moral matters are the sources of the self. Even Nietzsche, who wanted to remake the table of values, had to turn to the shared horizon of significant moral issues in order to decide which values to overturn. It was not up to him alone. Although there might be certain universal features of our moral lives as humans, Taylor was more interested in how our moral experiences change and provide for new conceptions of identity through history. One thing that is universal, according to Taylor, is that we live our lives within what he calls ‘inescapable frameworks’ about what is good and valuable. What counts as good is not a purely subjective choice; even subjectivism as a philosophical theory about the good rests on certain historical traditions and refers to ways of deliberating and arguing about value that transcend the subjective. (Minimally, a subjectivist about value will need to come up with arguments that demonstrate why it is good and right to be a subjectivist that are potentially convincing to others. It is not enough to say ‘I am a subjectivist, and you should be one too, because this is what I subjectively feel like being and so should you’). The inescapable moral frameworks have shifted from the Greeks – for example, as articulated by Plato and Aristotle, who depicted life as lived within an ontic logos (i.e. a cosmos where things each had their places and functions, which defined what they – including humans – ought to do to in order to live up to what they essentially were). Modern science in many ways ‘disenchanted’ this teleological world, to borrow the famous notion of disenchantment from Max Weber, and things were no longer defined with reference to their objective functions but rather in terms of mechanical causality and laws of nature. This paved the way for a technological approach to the world, as analysed by Heidegger (among others), where things – including humans – eventually became standing reserves or resources that can be used as tools to bring about subjectively desired ends (Heidegger 1993). Today, we talk about ‘human resources’ and human resource management without even thinking about it, even though these terms put humans on the same scale of resources as oil or iron. We come to think in instrumentalist terms about almost everything, as our domination over nature leads to erasure of meaning (Horkheimer and Adorno 1944). The process of disenchantment means that it becomes difficult to address qualitative distinctions in our lives, and instead, we come to think primarily in quantitative terms, as Davies also pinpoints in his book: In a world where we cannot agree what counts as ‘good’ and what counts as ‘bad’, because it’s all a matter of personal or cultural perspective, measurement offers a solution. Instead of indicating quality, it indicates quantity. Instead of representing how good things are, it represents how much they are. (Davies 2015: 146) In the long historical perspective, the disenchantment of the world, and the accompanying dismantling of the old frameworks of qualitative contrasts between better and worse ways of living, has not left us without frameworks, however, because all cultures need them in order to be cultures (i.e. systems of meaning). Instead, it has left us with rather poor and reductive frameworks that focus on

134  Svend Brinkmann quantities instead of qualities. The focus is now on how happy I feel instead of what happiness means. It is the intensity of my positive feelings that is emphasized, not the qualitative contents and phenomena in my life that should provide the grounds for feelings. I should now ask myself, how can I achieve positive emotion? rather than, what is worth feeling positively about? We witness a decoupling of the subjective reactions of human beings from how things actually are. This is seen quite clearly in the widespread happiness measures such as the subjective happiness scale developed by positive psychologists, where one should locate oneself on a seven-point scale in response to the following statement: ‘In general, I consider myself: not a very happy person . . . a very happy person’ (Lyubomirsky and Lepper 1999). What it means to be happy is left completely to the individual as a subjective feeling. In principle, if it makes someone a happy person to manipulate, oppress, or even torture others, and the person succeeds in doing so, then this is what happiness means to this person, and they are therefore happy and should report it on the scale. Only the individual decides. Davies correctly connects this whole subjectivist perspective on happiness to consumer society. As he puts it, ‘we need to examine the history of psychology and the history of consumerism as intertwined projects’ (Davies 2015: 76). In a consumer society, the client is always right, so if the client is happy, then no one can question this subjective experience. Psychologists have largely reflected the subjectivist tendencies of consumerism in their dominant approaches to happiness. However, this does not mean that the subjectivist approach has escaped from all overarching frameworks about the good and the right. As we have seen, Taylor’s point is that such frameworks are inescapable, which means that even the attempt to escape from them may quickly become a new framework in itself. In many ways, this is exactly what has happened with subjectivism. It says that all frameworks of value and happiness are subjective, but this is then transformed into a normative framework of its own. In many ways, one now ought to think subjectively about happiness, and one ought to identify one’s inner preferences and desires and realize them to the largest possible extent. Perhaps one even ought to be a hedonist. Davies quotes from Slavoj Žižek’s well-known analysis, which claims that enjoyment has today become a greater duty than obeying the rules (Davies 2015: 177). The old superego used to speak the language of prohibition: thou shalt not! The new superego speaks the language of demand (which is also the language of advertising): just do it! If the question, do what? is raised, then there is nothing much to say besides ‘Only you know! Whatever you feel like doing.’ And if the person cannot know by themselves, then a host of life coaches, therapists, and self-help books are available to assist in identifying one’s inner wishes and desires. These ‘psy-technologies’ (Rose 1999) cannot provide the answer by themselves, but they can be used as means to mirror the individual’s subjectivity, so that they may come to understand themselves better and ‘just do it!’. Only the person being coached has the answer inside them, as it is often said by life coaches and other happiness technologists. Davies’s analysis claims that happiness has become a kind of capital that people can fall back on in a capitalist economy that is becoming ever-more uncertain

Living well and living right 135 (Davies 2015: 114). It is not the first time in history that humanity faces various crises and a threatening future, but it is perhaps the first time that we witness such a widespread individualistic response: Think positive thoughts, be mindful, practice gratitude, choose happiness! Davies’s verdict is harsh: ‘Positive psychology, which repeats the mantra that happiness is a personal “choice”, is as a result largely unable to provide the exit from consumerism and egocentricity that its gurus sense many people are seeking’ (2015: 6). Barbara Ehrenreich’s critique is even punchier: the think-positive-and-be-happy movement is basically how the rich suppress the poor today (Ehrenreich 2009). From this perspective, happiness, as currently conceived within the subjectivist framework, is pure oppressive ideology disguised as emancipation. Emptied of qualitative contents (about a good and proper life for human beings in an ethical sense), our dominant inescapable frameworks of happiness have today collapsed into subjectivism, which means that it is subjective wellbeing that is the target of happiness interventions rather than the societal, structural, and cultural contexts in which we live. But if subjectivism about happiness embodies its own inescapable framework, however reductive it might be, so do the critiques of the happiness discourse. These are often left much more implicit, however, and it can be quite a challenge to dig them out. Traditional Marxism, for example, which has inspired some of the analyses of the ideological implications of the current happiness discourse, does not have a lot to say explicitly about happiness. After having famously declared that religion is opium for the people, Marx continued less famously by adding: ‘The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions’ (Marx 1844; my emphases). What he did not state, however, was what ‘real happiness’ is. The philosophical anthropology of Marxist thought is based on the idea that human beings are working animals, creatures who realize their natures by transforming nature together. And it is this essential capacity that is subdued in a capitalist society, where humans must sell themselves in the form of labour and thus become alienated from their activities, each other, and ultimately themselves. This negative problematics is probably the reverse of what a Marxist conception of happiness would look like: people working collectively to improve their living conditions in the manner of ‘From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!’ as Marx wrote in The Critique of the Gotha Program. Still, this does not amount to much, especially concerning the term needs, which easily operates as an empty or floating signifier (who is to say what anyone really needs?). On a more trivial interpretation of Marx, it seems safe to conclude that most of us have become Marxists in a way: at least many people in the modern world seem to agree with him ‘that human labour could serve as the agent of our deliverance, the means and site of human transformation’ (McMahon 2006: 402). We invest so much time and identity in work that it seems obvious that the Marxist anthropology has somehow become our folk anthropology. We seemingly share the Enlightenment belief, accepted by Marx, that humans ‘can make themselves happy through effort of their own’ (2006: 402).

136  Svend Brinkmann This is not a universal idea, and, McMahon can be said, in his penetrating account of the history of happiness, to analyse how the inescapable frameworks have changed, even if he does not use this exact concept (McMahon 2006). He begins by quoting Hegel: ‘One may contemplate history from the point of view of happiness’ (2006: XI). How humans have conceived of happiness through history is perhaps the most significant key to unlocking our various and changing self-interpretations. McMahon goes back to the ancient Greeks, notably Aristotle’s idea that happiness is an activity of the soul in accordance with virtue (and there was nothing subjective about happiness for Aristotle), which, for the Greeks, demanded much luck in life. For Aristotle, it was impossible to think of happiness outside an ethical framework about the proper life for human beings. And we are not creators of our own fate and happiness but dependent on external fortune. McMahon then takes the reader up to modern times, where our current ideal of happiness in many ways is a product of the Enlightenment: ‘It was in that period that considerable numbers of men and women were first introduced to the novel prospect that they could be happy – that they should be happy – in this life’ (2006: 12). Taylor (1989) refers to this change in the inescapable frameworks as ‘the affirmation of ordinary life’: what it means to live well was no longer defined solely with reference to certain elites (e.g. the Greek aristocracy) but became within reach for all of us, because happiness is potentially there, in this life, right in front of us (if we only want it, as the life coaches like to emphasize in their hunt for passion and motivation). The idea emerged that humans even have a right to be happy, and the Enlightenment more or less replaced the religious question, how can I be saved? with the psychological question, how can I be happy? as the ultimate existential concern (McMahon 2006: 209). As McMahon’s grand historical study of happiness makes clear, we have now reached an era when the right to be happy has become a demand or a commandment to be happy, and he poses the following relevant question: ‘Does not our modern commandment to be happy produce its own forms of discontent?’ (2006: 15). Again, as I have argued here, we see that the critique of the happiness imperative itself presupposes an implicit notion of happiness; otherwise, it would not be possible to accuse the current happiness promoters of paradoxically producing the opposite. I believe that articulating one’s implicit idea of happiness – even for the critics of the contemporary happiness discourse – is necessary to reduce the risk of being a victim of problematic ideologies. So what is the allegedly truer idea of happiness that lurks in the background and is thwarted by the new subjectivist framework? I shall suggest that this must be an ethical or eudaemonistic notion of happiness that can be seen in contrast to the popular aesthetic and often downright hedonist notions that prevail today. These opposing views can be articulated as living right versus living well – or through Kierkegaard’s distinction, between the ethical and the aesthetic.

Happiness: aesthetic and ethical aspects Philosophers have discussed the relation between living right and living well for centuries and even millennia. Today, this discussion has spilled over into popular

Living well and living right 137 media where it is often highlighted how doing the former contributes to the latter. We become happy in the subjectivist sense (that can be measured on the quantitative scales) by performing morally right actions. For example, Scandinavian Traveler, which is the official magazine for Scandinavian Airlines System (the largest airline in the Nordic countries) featured a whole special issue in September 2015 called The Good Issue. Many articles were devoted to exploring ‘the good’, one of which was titled ‘Why be good?’ Good here means living right in the moral sense and the concrete theme under discussion was conceived as ‘helping others’. So why do this? Why be good and generous? Five answers were given, and because I believe that they represent a widespread approach to morality and happiness today, I quote them at some length. The following reasons were given for doing the right thing: 1 2 3 4 5

Giving makes us feel happy (‘you do feel good afterwards’). When you give, you receive (‘generosity gets rewarded’). Giving evokes gratitude (‘and gratitude is good for you; according to research, it’s integral to happiness, health, and social bonds’). Giving is good for your health (‘people who help neighbours or relatives have a lower risk of dying over a five-year period’). Giving is contagious.

It can be observed how most of these reasons instrumentalize moral goodness. One should be good in order to feel good about oneself, receive something in return, and improve one’s health. Moral goodness is thus not depicted as something good in itself – regardless of the consequences for the giver – but its value is made relative to what the person gains from acting in the right way. The problem with this is not just that it seems to emphasize the wrong (or at least irrelevant) reasons for doing the right thing (after all, according to most systems of morality, one should help one’s neighbour – say, a drowning child – even if one receives nothing in return) but also that it makes the value of the right thing relative to an outcome that actually has little, perhaps nothing, to do with it. This means that there is a risk that doing right becomes valuable only to the extent that it contributes to living well. Morality is thus reduced to an instrument for individual happiness. Ethics becomes just another kind of wellness technique. We see here how powerful the subjectivist happiness discourse is and how it may conquer and overtake a moral discourse that has otherwise been historically strong. Utilitarianism, the normative moral theory that one ought to maximize the happiness of the greatest number of people (or sentient creatures), can in this light be considered as a kind of generalized subjectivism: each has their own preferences and desires that we would like to have fulfilled, and the morally right action is thus one that contributes as much as possible to this for the largest possible number of people. Again, moral value is defined in terms of how much something contributes to subjective happiness – doing right is made relative to living well and feeling good. The distinction between living right and living well was famously articulated in the writings of Søren Kierkegaard. He discussed this under the headings of

138  Svend Brinkmann the aesthetic and the ethical in human life (e.g. Kierkegaard 1843). Of course, for Kierkegaard, the religious Lutheran, the concept of the religious was also immensely important, but here I shall limit the discussion to the spheres of the aesthetic and the ethical. In Either/Or, the aesthetic is defined as ‘the immediate’ in life – that is, how one subjectively feels, what one desires, how one experiences the world. The term comes from the Greek aesthesis, which means ‘sensation’ or ‘perception’. For Kierkegaard, this is a sphere that is present in all human lives all the time, but if one decides to make it the foundation of one’s existence, then one becomes an aesthete. This means that one comes to live in immediacy, seeking pleasure, entertainment, and subjective happiness. Alasdair MacIntyre characterized, in his influential work on moral philosophy After Virtue, this lifeform as a logical outcome in an emotivist culture: one that has lost touch with fundamental moral values and virtues and that therefore falls back on defining the contents of morality (living right) with reference to subjective happiness and positive emotion (living well) (MacIntyre 1985). For Kierkegaard, a life lived in the aesthetical sphere lacks ‘continuity’, because it is driven by whatever new desire or subjectively appealing impulse arises in the individual at any given moment. One therefore cannot commit to anything beyond the subjective, possibly because there is nothing beyond it of value at all (since, for subjectivists, values are created by the subject’s feelings and experiences). The ethical, in contrast, is defined by Kierkegaard through Kantian notions of duty. The ethical sphere transcends the immediacy of the aesthetic and is about subjecting one’s preferences and desires to ethical scrutiny. One may have a certain desire (aesthetically), but the ethical reflection goes beyond the desire itself and involves a willingness to evaluate whether it is worth realizing in light of moral values. It is thus about what Taylor and other modern philosophers discuss as ‘second-order desires’ (Taylor 1985) – that is, desires about having certain desires, which are understood with reference to a moral horizon. Taylor refers to this as strong evaluation, when it is not the quantitative strength of one’s desire that determines its value (as in subjectivism) but rather its qualitative moral value. Strong evaluation occurs when one considers what to do in light of overarching moral values and ideals rather than with reference to how much one desires something (Taylor called the latter weak evaluation, where only the strength of a desire is given weight). Thus, a desire may be frail and almost nonexistent, but it may nonetheless be of immense moral value, which can provide the person with a reason to care about it, seeking to turn it into action. The question in our context then becomes, is acting morally by engaging in strong evaluation really about happiness? The answer to this question depends, of course, on how one defines morality and happiness, so we need to return to these concepts. The main title of this chapter is inspired by a chapter in Thomas Nagel’s (1986) famous book The View from Nowhere, in which he lists five ways of approaching the tension between living right (the moral or ethical life) and living well (the happy or aesthetically appealing life). The crux of Nagel’s book is to discuss the grand philosophical problems in terms of the clash in ‘the perspective of a particular person inside the world with an objective view of that same world’ (p. 3). That

Living well and living right 139 is, Nagel reinvigorates the classic discussion of subjectivism and objectivism with the ambition of uniting them. In relation to moral matters specifically, the clash between the subjective and the objective follows quite closely the conflict between what I have referred to as the aesthetic here on one side – emphasizing subjective reasons for action based on an individual’s preferences and desires – and the ethical on another side – focusing on impersonal reasons for action that all human beings share simply by virtue of being human. What should be done when these perspectives clash? Philosophers have given different answers about the relation between the right and the good, and Nagel boils them down to five ideal types: 1 The moral life is defined in terms of the good life (e.g. Aristotle): this answer states that there really is not much of a clash, because ultimately, the contents of morality are defined in terms of the necessary conditions for a good and happy life. Everything about this account hinges on what we mean by happiness, the good life, or eudeamonia, to use Aristotle’s phrase. Todd May has recently articulated Aristotle’s approach: Eudaemonia is not a matter of how we feel about ourselves or our world. It is a way of being whose features are inscribed in the cosmos. To be happy or flourishing is nothing other than to be a proper human being. Granted, Aristotle thinks that eudaemonia brings us pleasure. But that is a side effect of living a fully human life. It is not the goal. (May 2015: 26). So the right kind of life may be defined in terms of the good life, but this is not to say that that the good life is constituted in any way through a modern, subjectivist version of happiness. Rather, the good life for humans is an objective matter, just as it is objective for physiologists what a good heart is (an organ that fulfils its function of pumping blood through the body). As MacIntyre argued in his updated version of Aristotelianism, ethics is on this account the practical science of how to transform ‘man-as-he-happens-to-be’ into ‘man-as-he-could-be-if-herealized-his-essential-nature’ (MacIntyre 1985: 52). But this presupposes that the human being does have an ‘essential nature’ that it is good and right to realize. Historically, this has been sought via practical education and character formation by participating in the practices of the community (something the Greeks referred to as paideia), but along with modernity’s processes of disenchantment and individualization, this becomes a problematic quest. 2 The good life is defined in terms of the moral life (e.g. Plato): this position is perhaps best explained by Socrates’s dictum that it is better to suffer evil than to do evil. Socrates explains this in Gorgias and states that happiness consists in virtue, and then Polus reacts with astonishment: POLUS:  What? Does happiness rest entirely upon this? SOCRATES:  Yes, in my opinion, Polus, for the man and woman who are noble and

good I call happy, but the evil and base I call wretched.

[Gorgias 470e]

140  Svend Brinkmann In both Aristotle’s and Plato’s philosophies, a conflict between the right life and the moral life is inconceivable, says Nagel, because the two spheres are presented as internally related. Although they seemingly contradict each other, (1) and (2) are in fact quite alike, because the ethical and aesthetic dimensions of existence are seen in both perspectives as belonging to one existential whole: a unity of the true, the good, and the beautiful. It seems fair to conclude that both of these, as versions of eudaemonistic philosophies, represent a stark corrective to contemporary subjectivist notions of happiness. 3 The good life overrides the moral life (e.g. Nietzsche): according to this perspective, there is a genuine conflict in human life between what is deemed right and what is deemed good. But in concrete cases of conflict, advocates of this position will state that we have reason to choose the good (the aesthetic) over the right (the ethical). According to Nagel, Nietzsche – as a representative of this position – went even further in arguing that morality as such is bad for its possessor and should be discarded (Nagel 1986: 196). This is a rather extreme position: we have reason not to be morally good, because it will interfere with our happiness, but it seems at least internally consistent and represents the logical endpoint of a subjectivist approach to value. 4 The moral life overrides the good life (e.g. Kant and utilitarianism): this position also admits that there can be a conflict between the right and the good, but it will then insist that we have reason to choose what is ethically right and possibly sacrifice our own good. Morality may simply require us to give up a good and happy life (1986: 6). This is a purist and even puritan position, and the classical argument against it is that it will lead to demotivated individuals: impersonal morality simply demands too much of us, as Williams argued in his famous book Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (Williams 1985). If we are to consider other people’s needs on a par with our own and always choose to do that which from an impersonal standpoint will create the best net result, then our individual lives will quickly become miserable, and no one will gain from that. Williams developed what is called the integrity argument against utilitarianism, stating that agency is necessarily some individual person’s agency – there is no such thing as the kind of impersonal agency that is demanded by utilitarianism – and, in some sense, also by Kantian theories that urge us to consider the right action ‘from a view from nowhere’ (Nagel 1986). 5 Neither the good nor the moral life consistently overrides the other: this is a kind of open position that clams that the aesthetically good and the ethically right are separate spheres in life but that there is no universal truth about their order of priority. Sometimes we may have reason to emphasize the aesthetic aspects of life and seek happiness, and sometimes ethical considerations should win. I am not sure that this would be Kierkegaard’s own position, but the title of the second part of Either/Or – authored by the pseudonym Judge Wilhelm – is ‘The Balance Between the Esthetic and the Ethical in the Development of the Personality’. This seems to indicate that a certain harmony between the immediacy of the aesthetic and the duties and commitments of the ethical is needed for humans to flourish (develop their ‘personality’, as Kierkegaard put it). I find this idea attractive

Living well and living right 141 because it seems to be in accord with most people’s phenomenological experiences of life: there are different ‘vectors’, so to say, that are all important and drag us in different directions, and we need to balance them. Nagel himself defends (4) and (5) but says that he inclines towards (4) (Nagel 1986). He defends this view by arguing that ‘while doing the right thing is part of living well it is not the whole of it, not even the dominant part’ (1986: 197). I agree with Nagel that we should think of happiness as having an essential moral component, although this component may not exhaust the idea of happiness. But it may nonetheless be a necessary component without which we would not call a person happy. I believe Nagel here underestimates the insights of Aristotle, who in fact claimed something close to this, but in this context, I think it is not really important to get one’s interpretations of philosophers right but rather to say something helpful. Nagel counters Williams’s integrity argument by stating that ‘If there are intrinsic reasons to be moral, then being moral will be to that extent a good for the individual, even if he doesn’t pursue it out of self-interest’ (1986: 198). This, I find, represents a profound truth, which also invokes the Platonic idea that doing the right thing in itself is a form of happiness – happiness is not the selfinterested pursuit of subjective wellbeing. Nagel follows up and argues – contra Williams – that the demands of ethics (of an ‘impersonal morality’) do not require that the individual becomes alienated from their projects and commitments, since the impersonal standpoint (the ethical) is one immensely important aspect of the self. I am reminded of a remark once made by the pragmatist philosopher John Dewey (recounted in Brinkmann 2013). If one asks, Why be moral? Might it not be more worthwhile to be egotistic, unbound by ethical demands? then one has, Dewey argues, misunderstood the nature of ethics and morality. The question arises precisely because one has already dichotomized the world from the self, thereby allowing one to consider whether or not to let morality play a role. Dewey, however, argues that it is impossible to push morality out of the world and life in practice. In a letter to Thomas Davidson (who managed a school at which Dewey was to give a lecture), Dewey wrote the following of his moral philosophy: But when you say that I have no answer to the question, Why am I bound? I rise up in protest. Why, what am I? I am nothing but this binding; it is my bindings [in conduct], which make me what I am. Why am I bound to do good? Because that is what I am. (quoted in Martin 2002: 123) It is not that the self is a pure bundle of aesthetic desires to feel good; rather, the self is defined by its ethical bindings and commitments to valuable projects and other people. This is exactly the basis for Taylor’s moral theory of the self: we are selves only in relation to a horizon of moral values that is not of our own subjective making. Happiness, then, is not about turning one’s back on the moral horizon and pursuing pure subjective wellbeing instead, and it is also not about making subjectivism into a new moral framework. Rather, it is about finding the proper balance in life between subjective wellbeing and more impersonal ethical

142  Svend Brinkmann demands. Even if Nagel invokes the useful distinction between positions (1) to (5), I believe that this in some sense is a common thread among them all – perhaps with the exception of (3).

Conclusions In this chapter, I have argued that we need to liberate the concept of happiness from its current close connection to subjective wellbeing that can be measured on simple scales. Happiness is much more than an emotional affair of feeling good; it is also about living in a right manner for human beings. The latter kind of sphere is the ethical sphere, which, however, stands in constant danger of collapsing into moralism. But I  find that this danger is worth risking now that the opposite ­problem – that of subjectivism – is so prevalent in our culture. A subjectivist notion of happiness has detached the concept from its connections to worldly events and processes, and it thus becomes a private concern, which in principle is cleansed of moral significance. This, I have argued, is untenable, because humans cannot do without an inescapable moral horizon of qualitative contrasts (this is what makes us selves with identities), so subjectivism itself is often erected as a new, but rather reductive and perverse, kind of moral horizon. According to this, one ought to feel good and positive, regardless of the circumstances. With Kierkegaard’s distinction between the aesthetic and the ethical and Nagel’s five possible relations between living right and living well, I hope to have established a conceptual ground on which to discuss happiness as more than an aesthetic phenomenon. Happiness is also an ethical phenomenon, but how precisely the aesthetic and the ethical come together to constitute human happiness should be in focus for future critical happiness researchers, both philosophically and in empirical studies of how people think about and enact happiness.

Note 1 I use the terms ethics and morality interchangeably in this chapter. Although some philosophers stipulate useful differences between them, they appear as synonyms in this context, in accordance with their etymology (morality was originally Cicero’s Latin translation of the Greek ethics, which was prompted by his reading of Aristotle). Both terms are here taken to refer to the ‘oughtness’ of our lives, actions, thoughts, and emotions.

References Brinkmann, S. (2013): John Dewey: Science for a Changing World. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers. Brinkmann, S. (2017): Stand Firm: Resisting the Self-Improvement Craze. Cambridge: Polity Press. Burkeman, O. (2012): The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can’t Stand Positive Thinking. Edinburgh: Canongate Books. Cederström, C. (2016): The Fantasy of Happiness. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Living well and living right 143 Critchley, S. (2010): How to Stop Living and Start Worrying: Conversations With Carl Cederström. Cambridge: Polity Press. Davies, W. (2015): The Happiness Industry: How the Government and Big Business Sold Us Well-Being. London: Verso. Ehrenreich, B. (2009): Smile or Die: How Positive Thinking Fooled America and the World. London: Granta Publications. Heidegger, M. (1993): Basic Writings. London: Routledge. Horkheimer, M. & Adorno, T. W. (1944): Dialectic of Enlightenment (This edition 1997). London: Verso. Kierkegaard, S. A. (1843): Either/or: A Fragment of Life (This edition 1992). London: Penguin Books. Lyubomirsky, S., & Lepper, H. (1999). ‘A Measure of Subjective Happiness: Preliminary Reliability and Construct Validation’. Social Indicators Research, 46: 137–155. MacIntyre, A. (1985): After Virtue (2nd edition with postscript). London: Duckworth. Martin, J. (2002): The Education of John Dewey. New York, NY: Columbia University Press. Marx, K. (1844): A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. Available online, accessed 2 October 2016. May, T. (2015): A Significant Life: Human Meaning in a Silent Universe. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. McMahon, D. M. (2006): Happiness: A History. New York, NY: Atlantic Monthly Press. Morgan, A. (2014): ‘The Happiness Turn: Axel Honneth, Self-Reification and “Sickness Unto Health” ’. Subjectivity, 7: 219–233. Nagel, T. (1986): The View from Nowhere. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rose, N. (1999): Governing the Soul: The Shaping of the Private Self (2nd edition). London: Free Association Books. Taylor, C. (1985): ‘What Is Human Agency?’ In Human Agency and Language: Philosophical Papers 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Taylor, C. (1989): Sources of the Self. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Williams, B. (1985): Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy. London: Fontana Press.

9 Sociology, biographical research, and the development of critical happiness studies Mark Cieslik

Introduction Like many of the contributors to this volume, I have been intrigued by the spectacular growth in the happiness industry in recent years and wondered about its significance in the sorts of questions that sociologists pose about people and societies. What do the countless books on finding happiness tell us about the changing nature of the identities, cultures, and lifestyles of ordinary people? As governments and employers increasingly measure wellbeing and use it to inform policies, does this suggest greater surveillance and oppression or more insights and opportunities to live well? Although some sociologists are now researching happiness and wellbeing in imaginative ways (Abbott, Wallace, and Sapsford 2016; Hyman 2014) it still has a marginal position in the discipline, with much commentary that is sceptical about happiness studies (Jacobson 2014; cf. Bartram 2012; Veenhoven 2006, for reviews). Elsewhere, I have suggested that there is a need for further happiness research, because we are all interested in living well, so happiness studies should be central to the sociological imagination (Cieslik 2015). Yet there are an influential group of sociologists who are cautious about wellbeing research and the expansion of happiness studies (Furedi 2004; Illouz 2007, 2008; Ahmed 2010; Davies 2015; Frawley 2015). To summarize this position, albeit rather crudely, this scepticism lies in the argument that a consciousness of wellbeing is an aspect of subjectivity/selfhood that has been framed by capitalist corporations and psychological discourses. To be concerned about living well has become yet another feature of consumer identities that has predominantly been created for us. The happiness industry promises contentment, personal growth, authenticity, and empowerment, but many sociologists doubt these claims. This is because the versions of happiness offered by therapists and self-help books are far too narrowly conceived, as they are overly psychological, subjective, or voluntaristic, whereby people are constructed as free agents with the ability to change themselves to be happier. For these sceptical sociologists, this form of wellbeing is far too emotional, individualistic, and ultimately superficial. A more empowering way of living is had if people come to understand their lives as connected to wider social and historical processes that work through changing cultures, economics, and politics.

Developing critical happiness studies 145 Sociologists are sceptical about happiness studies, therefore, because they see wellbeing as a problematic subjective expression of the underlying exploitative structures of capitalist societies – overly consumerist identities and commodified lifestyles that enrich corporations by promising quick-fix routes to contentment. These critiques of happiness/wellbeing are persuasive, yet it is paradoxical that studies that begin by researching a good life morph into depictions of loss, suffering, and unhappiness. These accounts seem a little unbalanced or pessimistic, depicting people as either living miserable, joyless lives or experiencing shallow, ephemeral happiness. When I look at my student’s lives and indeed my own experiences, the effort to live well appears far more empirically complex and diverse than the accounts of happiness offered by these sociologists imply. Accordingly, my own research has sought to explore empirically some of these complex ways ordinary people experience wellbeing. As I go on to discuss, the popular interest in wellbeing might well be a problematic feature of consumerist lifestyles, but we may also want to acknowledge that ‘living well’ might be a positive development for some that reflects their creativity and efforts to ‘get on’ in difficult times (see also Wright 2008; Illouz 2008: 223).1 These subjectivities and practices may also express how people draw on a plurality of values and beliefs (religious, spiritual, or political) to inform ways of living rather than the influence of what some suggest is a pervasive consumerized wellbeing or ‘therapy or ‘emotionalized’ cultures (Furedi 2004; Illouz 2007). In developing my sociological research into happiness, I wanted to offer a critical analysis of the structuring of wellbeing (and the role of economic and cultural processes) and also engage more with the meanings, emotions, and empirical messiness of trying to live well. I study people in traditional sociological ways by exploring the nature of power relationships but also pose some less-familiar questions (for sociologists at least) about a good life and being human, such as those concerning love, friendships, beauty, wisdom, and the pleasures of work.

Sociological research into wellbeing: developing a biographical approach to ‘social happiness’ My interest in happiness emerged out of my disillusionment with the ways that sociologists often conduct their work. In my area of education and youth studies, many focus on the social problems of young people – delinquency, poverty, ‘marginal transitions’, teenage pregnancy, and mental illness. Research often depicts young people in unbalanced ways – as victims or villains rather than as people doing ordinary things: shopping, eating, playing, loving. There are far fewer studies that explore the fun and enjoyment that we all have when young. Admittedly, young people do face many problems today – debt from their studies, poor employment, and housing. Nevertheless, there are significant questions about how young people navigate these challenges in pursuit of a good life, setting up homes, building careers, and finding partners. This contemporary practice of sociology as a ‘problem-based’ discipline stems in part from how we have drawn on the work of Durkheim, Marx, Weber and Du Bois and their concern with the

146  Mark Cieslik ‘dark side of modernity’ and concepts of anomie, alienation, disenchantment, and double consciousness. The study of happiness will continue as a marginal topic in sociology so long as the discipline focuses primarily on explicating social problems and the pathologies of domination, division, and oppression. Empirical questions driving research usually focus on deficits, suffering, and loss rather than on flourishing, empowerment, and living well. The politics and the practice of academe, certainly in the United Kingdom, also encourage these traditional ways of doing sociology. Doctoral students have a relatively short period to undertake research, and young academics face pressures to publish and generate ‘impact’ from their work, so it is risky to pursue projects outside of the mainstream. Hence, there have been relatively few sociologists particularly when compared to psychology, philosophy, and economics who have explored happiness/wellbeing in a balanced way. Those sociologists who do work in this area are greatly influenced by the prevailing orthodoxies of the discipline. Some draw on survey techniques to measure differences in wellbeing and usually operate within the confines of their particular subspecialisms such as employment, health, education, and youth (Montsserat et al. 2014 The Good Childhood Report 2015). These researchers, accordingly, tend to be less interested in how happiness might be experienced holistically across different life domains and how there are complex questions about meaning and collaborative social processes. Because I wished to study happiness in a more open-minded way that was still sociological and critical, my own project emerged through a dialogue with these sceptical and survey approaches to wellbeing in sociology (see Cieslik 2017).

Moving beyond wellbeing surveys and critiques of the happiness industry Wellbeing surveys have generated fascinating insights into the nature of happiness – how life satisfaction can vary in relation to income, age, education, societal context, and so on. Yet these surveys rely on a few relatively simple self-report questions about satisfaction or feelings/affect. Although some recent studies have used diaries and iterative techniques (e.g. experiential sampling) such approaches do reduce the complex subjective experiences of living well to simpler, measurable phenomena (cf. Veenhoven 2008). In contrast, philosophers have written of the multifacetted nature of wellbeing – the emotional aspects of hedonia, and the enduring, embodied, and practical aspects of eudaimonia (Schooch 2007). I have tried to capture some of this greater complexity of happiness by examining how meanings related to happiness emerge in various settings (such as school, work, and home) through everyday relationships with partners, children, colleagues, and friends. Accordingly, I used qualitative interviews with subjects of different ages, gender and class to map how their wellbeing had evolved across their life course. I also asked participants to keep diaries where they documented their daily routines and rhythms of wellbeing, its intensity, its frequency, and the duration of happiness events (Cieslik 2017).

Developing critical happiness studies 147 Recent sociological critiques of the happiness industry view the emergence of popular ideas about wellbeing as a key feature of consumer lifestyles. The problem this critique identifies is that the industry promotes overly narrow, apolitical ways of living that ultimately offer superficial forms of happiness that paradoxically lead to anxiety and discontentment rather than to the promised good life. I was keen to explore these claims empirically, whether people have been influenced by these consumerist notions of happiness. Or indeed was there evidence of other beliefs and values that framed different ways of living and the understanding of wellbeing? I used concepts from Bourdieu (such as habitus, capitals, field, and practice) to explore these cultural and structural influences on people’s biographies and how they worked at living well (Bourdieu 1977). Existing critical approaches to happiness tend to view wellbeing as something that has been produced, like a consumer good, for us. So I was keen to examine these processes of consumption but also whether interviewees were more creative and active than this in how they lived and worked at living well. I  identified key moments in the life course (such as adolescence, the 30s, mid life and old age) where participants were faced with challenging life events (involving economic and social constraints) so that we could explore this interplay of structuring and agential processes. Finding a job, finding a home, becoming a parent, and surviving illness and bereavement, and planning for and living in retirement were all moments where I could critically investigate the shaping of wellbeing and the creative skills and resources deployed by individuals as they navigated their way through life. Because I wished to study the everyday experiences of happiness and its sources, I borrowed ideas from other disciplines on how to conceptualize happiness and its sources. As McMahon (2006) has shown, there is a vast literature on this subject, so I selected ideas that could frame a small empirical project on wellbeing. I drew on classical thinkers such as Aristotle (2009), who wrote of happiness as a practical everyday activity of trying to live well – something that we do personally but also with others. The Greek philosophers also spoke of the significance of moderation or balancing different aspects of life and the ability as we age to develop skills of living, to become wiser and ‘a craftsman of life’ (McMahon 2006: 48). Psychologists such as Argyle (2001) and Csikszentmihalyi (2002) also identify the role of creative processes for wellbeing and the notion of happiness as a threefold phenomenon: a balance of positive/negative affect (or feelings and emotions); reflection and cognition (internal conversations, imagination, and memories); and objective factors and processes such as income, housing, education, and associated social policies. This framework guided the research into the ways that happiness is experienced and how age, life events, and aspects of class, gender, and ‘race’ can influence wellbeing. In developing a phenomenological approach to happiness, I explore everyday accounts of wellbeing in rather finer detail than do critics of the happiness industry, who tend to advance more general arguments about the nature of identities, culture, and power in capitalist societies.2 An ambitious study of happiness raises questions about human nature and features of a good life/society. I drew on these debates (from Greek philosophers,

148  Mark Cieslik Buddhism, and Marx’s writings) to explore whether interviewees subscribed to ways of living or drew on beliefs that guided their everyday practices. For example, many of the classical ideas on living well (that informed some of Marx’s writings on alienation/flourishing) discuss the significance of relations with the natural world; social relationships/friendships/intimacy; learning, creativity, using skills; relationships with our bodies; and producing things that we value. These fundamental features of wellbeing guided interview discussions, yet happiness research is still fraught with challenges for sociologists. As others have noted (Veenhoven 2008), when we examine wellbeing, there are often unpredictable relationships between objective forces/factors and the subjective/­emotional responses of actors. Under certain circumstances, the expected associations between income, health, or education and wellbeing do not apply. Greater affluence does not always make one happier; ill health can be linked to good wellbeing; and better education can be associated with poor wellbeing (Stevenson and Wolfers 2008).3 Hence, many sociologists are sceptical about happiness research precisely because of these unstable relationships between social position/status and subjective wellbeing (Cederström and Spicer 2015). Conversely, I suggest that such instability makes wellbeing an intriguing subject for sociological investigation. These confusing, often-counterintuitive relationships between objective conditions and subjective experiences arise partly because of the complexities of how people live – as wellbeing emerges out of shifting social relationships situated in concrete settings of the family, school, workplace, and street. On the other hand, simple questions about life satisfaction directed at isolated individuals will produce only general and often predictable insights into subjective wellbeing. As others have shown (Dolan 2015; Deary 2014; Gilbert 2006), people are rarely isolated, rational decision-making machines, so individuals lack the knowledge to make informed choices about how to be happy and live well. At times, this fallibility stems from the routines and cognitive shortcuts we develop or the emotions that saturate our lives. As we grow older, we also accumulate layers of meaning and depth onto our subjectivities that inevitably colour the way we interpret and experience events. Hence, these features of ageing, biographies, and fallibility are significant for any critical sociological analysis of happiness.

The sociological critique of the happiness industry: problems of wellness, self-help, and flourishing In the remainder of this chapter, I focus on the sociological critique of the happiness industry because this work has created an influential narrative about how sociologists should study happiness. I draw on two case studies to illustrate the empirical messiness of everyday experiences of happiness and the cultural and economic processes that frame wellbeing – in contrast to the rather simpler depictions of some recent sociological critiques. In so doing, I suggest that the everyday experiences of happiness or a consciousness of wellbeing can be read as positive cultural practices rather than as problematic consumerized ways of living, as has sometimes been suggested by recent critical commentators (Furedi 2004).

Developing critical happiness studies 149 Contemporary critiques of the happiness industry are interesting because they apply earlier, 19th- and 20th-century polemics about happiness and capitalism to modern subjectivities and popular cultures (see Cieslik 2015). They claim, drawing on a wide range of ideas from Marx, Weber, critical theory, and Foucault, that the power of capitalist corporations, the media, the state, and psychological discourses have all helped create alienated citizens and disenchanted ways of living. There are various dimensions to these depictions of happiness; one, for example, involves hedonistic lifestyles, narcissism, and the pursuit of personal pleasure: One of the most distinct features of our emotional script is its celebration of happiness and contentment. . . . The emphasis which our emotional script attaches to feeling good about oneself is a distinct feature of contemporary culture. It is underpinned by an outlook that regards the individual self as the central focus of social, moral and cultural preoccupation. (Furedi 2004:31) Furedi echoes earlier writers, such as Marcuse (2002) and Lasch (1979), who argue that the growth in ‘pleasure seeking’ among ordinary people marks a wider social and moral decline – part of the long-term process of individualization and de-politicization driven by the development of capitalism. However, there are tensions in these critical writings about how wellbeing/happiness is portrayed. Some commentators, as with Furedi and the sociology of consumption, suggest that capitalist societies promote materialistic routes to wellbeing (Miles 1998). Yet paradoxically, corporations also market psychological programmes (such as positive thinking, emotional self-development, and resilience) that are also more spiritual and anti-materialistic (Cederström and Spicer 2015: 12). These critical commentators suggest that happiness culture and its associated industry have become so pervasive because of the slippery nature of happiness itself and how it has become ingrained in the underlying cultural assumptions of Western capitalism and particularly the idea of the American Dream. Projecting a happy, positive persona and pursuing happiness can be the catalyst for wider success in life, which in turn can support further happiness: A crucial component of positive thinking is the promise of success. It talks directly to the dream of catapulting yourself into a prominent position in American society, replete with extraordinary wealth. . . . success and happiness often appear should-to-shoulder. This suggests that happiness opens up an infinite array of possibilities: to meet new friends, become rich, develop a closer relationship to oneself. (Cederström and Spicer 2015: 65–66) The chameleon-like nature of happiness, critics argue, make it an ideal vehicle through which corporations and interest groups can promote their goods and services. Technological advances like the Internet and social media have also expanded the scope and reach of the happiness industry and consumerized/

150  Mark Cieslik therapeutic forms of wellbeing (Davies 2015: 207). These critics link these trends to the rise of Facebook, Instagram, online dating and gaming, Snapchat, and mobile phone technology as they encourage shallow forms of interaction and enjoyment, focused on obsessively monitoring the self. Eva Illouz (2007, 2008) documents how corporations have marketed their online dating services to lonely individuals with the promise of love and happiness. Such sites encourage users to reflect on their identities as they create online personality profiles. Yet echoing Weber’s insights on rationalization and disenchantment, Illouz suggests that this process of marketing the self to virtual others paradoxically undermines the very emotional depth that people long for (Illouz 2007: 90). She makes the telling point that authentic love emerges slowly through face-to-face relationships that cohere over time; there are no digital shortcuts to such intimacy. Recently, William Davies and Cederström and Spicer have been influential by documenting the ways corporations now use wellbeing, creating for example ‘happiness officers’ who encourage staff to work at their wellbeing through mindfulness and emotional intelligence programmes. Although these programmes seem benign, critics suggest this wellness syndrome is a sinister development expanding the scale and sophistication of employee/citizen surveillance and control: A growing number of corporations now employ ‘chief happiness officers’, while Google has an in-house ‘jolly good fellow’ to spread mindfulness and empathy. Specialist happiness consultants advise employers on how to cheer up their employees, the unemployed on how to restore their enthusiasm to work and in one case in London – those being forcibly displaced from their homes on how to move one emotionally. (Davies 2015: 4) The concern is that the science of psychology has been used to expand and legitimize this use of happiness, furnishing it with ideological properties – its wholesome appearance masking its underlying political and economic functions. The elastic, slippery nature of happiness allows it to be used in apparently positive and progressive ways: what can be wrong with governments, employers, and consumer corporations helping ordinary people to live better lives? Yet the many academic and popular books caution us, as Marx, Marcuse, and Foucault did before them, that happiness/wellbeing is used in ways that conceal how identities and cultures are shaped to serve the interests of the powerful rather than those of ordinary people. Employers profit from more productive, ‘contented’ workers; politicians garner votes by demonstrating ‘improvements’ in national wellbeing; and companies expand because they meet the endless (manufactured) desires of consumers. It is difficult to disagree with these sociological critiques of the happiness industry. My point, however, is that given the diversity of people’s lives, there are surely other ways, in addition to these ideological/problematic forms, that people understand and experience happiness and wellbeing. As much of this existing sociological critique is through cultural criticism rather than empirical research,

Developing critical happiness studies 151 I sense that detailed qualitative projects will reveal a messier role of happiness in the lives of ordinary people than that offered by these critical commentaries. If we study individual biographies in the round, mapping social networks and activities (in employment, home, leisure, etc.) and their significance in wellbeing, we produce a more-nuanced account of happiness than either critical commentators or survey approaches. As these other approaches discuss people in general or in relation to individual domains such as work or the Internet, they struggle to appreciate how wellbeing emerges actively from diverse experiences across many institutions. The methodological approaches of surveys and critiques also lend themselves to arguments that wellbeing has increasingly become a personal, subjective, and emotional phenomenon. Conversely, if we adopt a more-holistic network approach, we see that wellbeing is also experienced through different social relationships; it is very much a social phenomenon that is actively coproduced rather than something that people ‘have’ or consume. This notion of ‘social happiness’ (Thin 2012) implies that wellbeing is something that people do together, and these activities are also underpinned by shared meanings – beliefs and values about living well. If wellbeing is partly framed by meaning, then how these values and beliefs evolve over time, biographically, are also significant for any analysis of happiness. The recognition of the centrality of ‘meaning’ to how happiness functions in everyday life therefore guides us to the contexts or situations in which people live and pursue a good life and how these change over biographical time. This situational and biographical ‘embeddedness’ therefore calls for ethnographic projects into happiness that are sensitive to our social relationships and how these change as we age.

Young people and living well Happiness, friends, and successful transitions to adulthood When interviewing the young people in my research sample, we mapped their social networks and life histories documenting how experiences of happiness are structured both by the resources and opportunities of individuals (via social class, gender, race, sexuality, and so on) and by the choices and strategies of people trying to live well. When I spoke with the five young interviewees about happiness, they indeed offered common-sense accounts that we would all recognize, such as the pleasures of dancing, music, partners, sports, holidays, and so on. Yet although these notions appear deeply psychological, emotional, and personal, the young people also spoke about the quality of their relationships, particularly friendships, for their wellbeing: I’m very sociable. I’m out nearly every night of the week with friends or with family. We all played football either with or against each other from 10 or 11 year old. We all support Newcastle. We all go to the games, usually away games for the day out and the night out. . . . There’s a pub that we are the most regular people in there so they are quite relaxed with us. We just go through

152  Mark Cieslik the week, have a few cokes, few games of pool and then on the weekend we go there before we go out. . . . Whatever happens we would always be there for our mates. . . . We are a critical bunch in the pub for a pint, get the piss taken out of them for one thing or another you know? We’re just that kind of bunch. That’s our sense of humour; it’s the way we all get along. (John) There is something about the warmth and support of peer cultures that influences the happiness of young people. The significance of shared activities and cultural practices has been noted elsewhere in the youth studies literature (Gilligan 2000) – how friends provide recognition and a sense of belonging, bolster self-worth, and offer opportunities for play, learning, creativity, and development. For John, his friendship group offered many opportunities for those aspects of flourishing as detailed by earlier writers such as Marx (1983) and later psychologists (Csikszentmihalyi 2002). The social networks that comprised John’s peer cultures involved a wide range of cultural, economic, and symbolic resources important for his wellbeing. Significantly, the interview data point to how happiness/living well for the young interviewees was a shared, collective, meaningful set of activities embedded in everyday peer cultures. Interestingly, none of the young interviewees demonstrated an understanding of or interest in emotional intelligence or positive thinking, either in relation to their time in education or in relation to recent work experiences. John suggested that his employer had developed wellbeing initiatives but was unable to describe these in any detail. Similarly, the young people’s experiences of social media seemed at odds with claims made by critics of the happiness industry. Although they had constructed personal profiles for sites like Facebook, they predominantly used social media to sustain long-standing social relationships and face-to-face interaction rather than to create new friendships. Happiness and austerity: coping with deindustrialization and precarious work When I mapped out John’s life history, we could see how important waged employment and an income was to his wellbeing, as economic capital enabled participation in peer group activities. His leisure activities (trips to the pub, clubs, football, and cinema) involved considerable expense, as youth cultural activities have increasingly become commodified in recent decades. Securing employment has also offered him a status and self-worth as well as a structure to his daily/ weekly routines. In many ways, we can understand John’s relatively good wellbeing as he has been fortunate to make the transition from working-class home, through school and qualifications, into waged work and a consumer lifestyle. He has been able to meet those traditional aspirations framed by his working-class habitus. John has been fortunate since these sorts of trajectories have become increasingly insecure and risky as declining labour market opportunities (because of wider patterns of deindustrialization in the North East of England) have

Developing critical happiness studies 153 reduced the employment opportunities for working-class males (Webster et al. 2004). This sort of analysis – exploring wellbeing in relation to habitus and economic restructuring – differs from some critical commentators (such as Furedi or Illouz) who view wellbeing as an expression of a therapeutic or emotional culture. My approach suggests that wellbeing and notions of happiness depend on the different cultural and economic circumstances of individuals and hence more diverse than these more general accounts of happiness. Although John’s current good wellbeing appeared to stem from the quality of his peer relationships, one can also see a more-complex temporal pattern to his wellbeing framed by life-course transitions. When we charted his happiness over time, we saw some peaks and troughs that point to the significance of life-course events and ageing for an understanding of wellbeing. These movements in wellbeing echo findings of larger-scale surveys of young people’s wellbeing in the United Kingdom – whereby significant numbers at key moments in the life course can suffer poor wellbeing (The Children’s Society 2015). One way of understanding these temporal variations in wellbeing is through the mismatch between cultural expectations that young people have for a good life and the shifting structure of opportunities they encounter – so-called hysteresis.

Hysteresis and the shaping of wellbeing: the mismatch between habitus and structures of opportunity In several publications, Bourdieu explores the notion of hysteresis, which denotes a mismatch between habitus and circumstances such as we see when economic change renders traditional work practices or aspirations obsolete (Bourdieu 1977: 83; Bourdieu et al. 1999). Individuals can suffer anxiety and other ill effects as their ways of living (shaped by their habitus) have become anachronistic, and they are forced to adapt to new times, changing their ideas and practices to manage new jobs, relationships, and so on. There were two points in John’s biography where there was evidence of this hysteresis effect on his happiness – initially towards the end of his schooling and more recently when in waged employment. These periods of insecurity and anxiety associated with hysteresis are significant because they appear to be periods when people can be sensitized to the nature of their wellbeing and compel them, for a time at least, to reflect on their lives and rethink how to live well. This consciousness of wellbeing and associated emotions can be a positive, creative process – a way by which individuals navigate their way between their cultural endowments (habitus) and the shifting terrain of jobs, social policy, and politics. This understanding of wellbeing, as a creative process forcing people to reflect and look outwards at others and wider society, stands in marked contrast to many critical commentators who see such consciousness as narcissistic and disabling. Wellbeing and dilemmas of working-class adolescence When we examined John’s biography, he noted how he was far less happy during the final years of schooling than he is at present.4 He accounted for this dip in his

154  Mark Cieslik wellbeing by talking of the uncertainty he felt about the choices he needed to make about his future. He was torn between a route into vocational training and employment and a more academic one of higher qualifications and entry to university. Growing up in a working-class habitus, he was drawn like many of his friends to early entry into waged work. Coming from a lower-income, single-parent family, he was also attracted to the idea of economic independence that employment can bring. Yet he was also aware of the challenges of finding work in a depressed economy and need for alternative plans. John’s mother had encouraged him to stay in school and seek a university place, yet governments had raised university fees, which meant decades of debt to repay these. As others have noted (Reay, Crozier, and Clayton 2009), though working-class young people like John may aspire to a university education, they often felt, at the same time, because of their cultural backgrounds, that they may not ‘fit in’ in the middle-class culture of higher education. John found himself experiencing an episode of hysteresis: those traditional dispositions and practices influenced by his habitus had run up against changing education policies and labour market opportunities. John decided to remain in school, take further qualifications, and pursue a university place. Within a year, however, he realized that extended study was not for him, so he left to seek work. Hysteresis and employment: young working-class males in office jobs When John and I spoke of his future prospects, he discussed some emerging threats to his wellbeing – another example of hysteresis. Although he spoke of being happy to have found work and enjoyed the lifestyle that this funded, he had concerns about his long-term future with this employer. This is an example of one of many paradoxes of happiness.5 When unemployed, a job appeared to be the key to a happier life, but within a year of working, John had come to realize that there were problems with his employment that were beginning to undermine his wellbeing: I took business at college . . . so destined to be in an office, but I suppose the 9–5 life isn’t exactly what I wanted to do. . . . I came here from the apprenticeship company and was told this was just about the best apprenticeship so I had pretty high expectations. . . . I should have thought better about some of the tasks that they would have an apprentice doing. I didn’t think at the time it would just be filing and paperwork and pretty boring stuff. . . . Quite a few of them (my mates) are working in construction so the contrast in jobs is quite big. . . . You get the pen-pusher jibes and stuff like that, just sitting wasting your life away, 9–5 that kind of thing. (John) We can interpret these experiences, echoing the work of Nayak (2006), as suggesting that young men like John would prefer traditional male craft employment (reflecting aspects of working-class habitus), but they can secure only office work as deindustrialization has greatly reduced traditional work opportunities. Despite

Developing critical happiness studies 155 the demise of traditional craft jobs in the 1980s, the skills and status of these workers still shape the cultural landscape of cities like Newcastle Upon Tyne. Accordingly, John felt embarrassed to be working in an office and uncomfortable working in a feminized working environment. Despite his job providing an income that funded his leisure activities, it failed to offer much meaning or status for John, which in time threatened his wellbeing. When charting these life stories, we see subjective wellbeing emerging out of the cultural expectations that people have for a good life (that differ in relation to habitus) as well as the economic resources and opportunities that they enjoy and the strategies that they employ in trying to live well. Yet these sorts of everyday cultural dynamics of wellbeing tend to be overlooked by existing sociological critiques of the happiness industry. Wellbeing is therefore embedded in the everyday social relations that comprise our daily lives and our biographies as we age. We see this interplay of processes and its influence on happiness becoming even more complex in the older participants in my research.

The wellbeing of thirtysomethings I interviewed five people, who were of ages between 28 and 32, and this key moment in the life course (where employment careers, parenting, long-term partnerships, and homes were being established) allowed me to examine the influence of social structures and the creative adaptations on wellbeing. One question I explored was whether interviewees had developed a problematic consciousness of their own wellbeing that reflected the growth in a wellness or therapy culture, as suggested by recent sociological critiques. William Davies, Eva Illouz, and Frank Furedi suggest that the traditional religious beliefs that once offered guidelines for living have been replaced by more-consumerist, individualized wellbeing ideologies today. Although commentators cite much evidence to support their claims that young people are increasingly inwards-looking and apolitical, many studies at the same time point to young people’s activism on climate change, social justice, and globalization (Furlong 2009: 291). I explored the suggestion that at times of uncertainty (because of economic restructuring and cultural change) people may adapt by becoming more aware of their own wellbeing and that a focus on ‘self-care’ (that appears narcissistic) can also coexist with prosocial beliefs and activism that are collaborative and compassionate. Barry: good wellbeing through ‘thrift’ and work-life balance Barry came from a middle-class family in North East England and was approaching his 30th birthday when he was interviewed. He was interesting, as he spoke of living a contented life (as happy as far-more-affluent interviewees in my sample of 19 participants) despite a decade of irregular employment in relatively poorly paid jobs. He had attained good school-level qualifications and entered university but dropped out after one year. He admitted that this had hampered his ability to secure better-paying professional jobs and a more-affluent lifestyle. Barry had

156  Mark Cieslik mostly lived in rented accommodation in poorer parts of town and relied on benefits to subsidize his income. He had recently set up home with his girlfriend, who was training to be a teacher. How might we account for Barry’s good wellbeing despite his low income – particularly given his move to a new home and desire for children, a lifestyle that seemed beyond his income? Other research (Waite, Luo, and Lewin 2009; Vaillant 2012) points to the significance of loving relationships for good wellbeing, which might explain his happiness. But the interview data point to other factors that might help make sense of his relatively good wellbeing. Barry spoke at length about the principles that informed his understanding of wellbeing. He tried to balance the demands of waged work with time for partners/family, hobbies, and interests. This significance of work-life balance for good wellbeing has been noted elsewhere (Lunau et al. 2014) and builds on classical ideas of moderation or the notion of striving to be a ‘craftsman of life’ (Aristotle 2009). As Barry remarked in one interview, I never defined my sense of happiness through the work I do. Work is a means to an end. Work is just about having the physical ability to do the things you want to do in life. . . . I have started leasing a cab so you can work whenever you want and stop when you want . . . like tinkering around with cars . . . inherited from my dad, father/son bonding time fighting with the clutch on Citroëns over the years. (Barry) Barry spoke of how over the years he had learned that living a balanced life was better for his wellbeing, so he combined waged work with more pleasurable and nourishing activities, such as fixing cars and other goods that he could recycle and reuse. As we saw earlier with John, Barry’s good wellbeing seemed to be attributed in part to a good balance of different activities and opportunities to be involved in some key principles of flourishing, such as creativity/learning, producing things of value, sustaining good relationships, and maintaining links with nature. His parents were also ‘thrifty’ environmentalists, so his way of life has been partly shaped by this habitus or cultural background. Hence, over time, he developed the skills of a repair technician, doing odd jobs and fixing appliances for family and friends. Such activities he also felt were important environmentally and so were linked to personal ethics about how to live well that involved looking after oneself but also others and the environment. Having principles to live by was something he felt was important for a sense of purpose and meaning in life – a feature he shared with many of the ‘happier people’ I interviewed in my research. At the same time, however, Barry also spoke of the numerous poor-quality, low-paying jobs he had undertaken over the years, and these experiences of the effects of economic restructuring had also informed his views on how to live well. His recent move into self-employment as a taxi driver emerged out of his disenchantment with the many poor-quality jobs he had undertaken in recent years.

Developing critical happiness studies 157 Despite an approach to living that was informed by his cultural background and economic experiences, Barry’s desire for a balanced life was also framed by his distinctive biographical position. He was trying to balance the need for an income (to purchase a home) with time for his new partner, family, and hobbies. As he aged and was moving on to the next phase in the life course (in comparison to John and adolescence), Barry’s social networks were now more complex and posed new challenges for his wellbeing: Where the difference between happiness and wellbeing lies, you know, you can be happy for yourself, but actually having a good life involves not just making yourself happy but making the people that are important to you happy as well. (Barry) When reflecting on the changes that come with ageing, Barry discussed how he had become more aware of the social aspects of wellbeing – the significance of looking out for others. Barry spoke about the new richness in his life and new depths to his happiness as he had found someone who he could share his life with. He was grappling with the challenges of balancing the different aspects of his own life with supporting his partner’s wellbeing too. John’s case study offers a view of wellbeing that differs markedly from more critical sociological accounts of happiness. Instead of a problematic happiness that has been framed by corporations and psychological discourses, we see wellbeing as a positive cultural adaptation to a distinctive economic experience, emerging out of a distinctive habitus. There is also evidence of the continuing role of disparate beliefs and values in shaping identities and practices rather than the emergence of a dominant therapeutic ethos. Accordingly, we also see more-complex, empirically diverse cultural practices that combine self-care with wider social commitment, solidarities, and activism rather than the more inwards-looking or narcissistic sensibility suggested by those who make sociological critiques of the happiness industry. The two cases of John and Barry pose some questions concerning the way some sociologists critique happiness studies. Instead of a consciousness of wellbeing becoming a problematic way of living that promotes self-absorption, these two men had developed an interest in living well that offered a rich, authentic way of life that they shared with other people. Barry had come to ‘care for himself’, and these skills and practices in turn had supported wider social activities that were altruistic, collaborative, and compassionate. John’s wellbeing was rooted in supportive peer cultures that emerged in part because of his cultural endowments and the distinctive economic conditions of the North East of England.

Conclusions I have argued that happiness/wellbeing is a niche topic in sociology. It is often the subject of quantitative research or a feature in the critiques of contemporary

158  Mark Cieslik capitalism. Accordingly, happiness tends to be represented empirically in quite narrow ways as subjective emotional experiences of individuals – a personal characteristic or something that they have and pursue. Such depictions are used to advance arguments about the problematic nature of cultures, power relationships, and subjectivities today due to the rise of narcissism and use of wellness strategies by corporations. In contrast, I suggest there is a need for further empirical research into the experiences of happiness since my own data point to morecomplex, richer, and more-varied accounts of wellbeing in daily life. Happiness is not something that one has that can be easily measured but rather something that people often work at together: a cultural practice. As my interviews showed that wellbeing tends to be a rather more social process – rooted in people’s relationships and evolving over their biographies. I offer a more optimistic view of popular culture and modern subjectivities than recent critics of the happiness industry. After all, inherent in my interviewees’ accounts of wellbeing were everyday efforts to engage in prosocial activities – altruism, compassion, and collaborative pursuits. These stemmed from a wide range of cultural influences that offered guidelines for living and that emerged from local histories and traditions, spiritualism, environmentalism, and different faiths. It is far too simplistic to suggest that Western societies have seen the rise of a therapeutic culture or cultures of emotionalism, and these now frame people’s understandings of wellbeing. Cultural landscapes and legacies in Western societies are much more diverse than this and in turn influence a variety of everyday understandings of happiness/wellbeing. Although I suggest we need to move beyond existing sociological approaches to happiness (as they seem too preoccupied with measuring wellbeing, critiquing psychology, or constructing dystopias), I still wish to offer a critical, sociological analysis of happiness. I am interested in how people define a good life, how they experience living well, how some achieve a good life, and how these things are structured through power relationships and different resources and opportunities. As psychologists, economists, and philosophers have shown us, living well can be linked to a variety of factors, such as income, health, intimacy, friendships, and so on. Many of these aspects featured in my participants’ narratives about happiness, particularly about their ability to pursue a meaningful life, supported by their social networks as they aged, moving through different stages of the life course. Happier individuals were also those who had opportunities to learn and be creative, sustain good relationships, produce things they valued, and stay connected to nature  – potential forms of flourishing noted by Marx and others. The cultural endowments of individuals (their habitus) offer different resources (forms of capital) and opportunities (positions in social fields), and these frame the expectations people have for their wellbeing. Yet such expectations can periodically clash with shifting economic conditions, creating anxieties and insecurities about how best to live. As we saw with John and Barry, such problematic episodes can raise awareness of wellbeing. Yet I suggest that this consciousness of happiness should be viewed not necessarily as a problematic cultural development but rather as a more positive cultural response to contemporary insecurities. During difficult

Developing critical happiness studies 159 times when our happiness is threatened, we are often compelled to reflect, create, and imagine – to explore different ways of living. The contemporary interest in happiness may therefore be a far more positive cultural development than sociologists have hitherto suggested.

Notes 1 Illouz’s (2008) work is interesting in that she does acknowledge how a consciousness of wellbeing can be positive and empowering for ordinary people, although the overall tenor of her argument is marked by how discourses around happiness have been colonized by powerful groups in modern societies. Similarly, she acknowledges the importance of situated, empirical research, yet her texts use little of this data. 2 Perhaps we are pursuing different objectives here rather than conflicting ones. Critics of the happiness industry operate at a greater level of abstraction and make general political points about societies and cultures, whereas I agree with much of this analysis but contest their relative disinterest in the creativity that people demonstrate in trying to live well. 3 Subjective wellbeing is not always simply connected to the objective status of individuals such as income or ‘success’ at work or materialist lifestyles – echoing the Easterlin paradox (1974). 4 I used some standard wellbeing questionnaires to compare the relative subjective wellbeing of participants; see Cieslik (2017) for details. 5 See the hedonic treadmill effect, in which people adapt to their circumstances, so goals and ambitions shift with time, proving to be elusive.

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10 Drowning in liquidity Zygmunt Bauman on happiness, ambivalence, and security Jordan McKenzie

For Zygmunt Bauman, modernity is characterized by a series of contradictions, and rarely is this more apparent than in the contemporary pursuit of happiness. From his early work on socialism and utopia in the 1970s; through his contributions on ambivalence, mortality, and ethics in the 1990s and the application of his liquid modernity thesis; to the topics of love, fear, and identity in the 2000s, Bauman has consistently sought to comprehend how modernity jeopardizes human happiness. While many postmodern theorists of the 1990s celebrated the new era of reflexive modernization as the liberation of individuals from outdated social structures, the work of Zygmunt Bauman provides a detailed overview of the emotional consequences that the new liquid era creates. Bauman’s work is often criticized for lacking a strictly systematic nature or a recognizable grand theory of society,1 yet there are consistent themes that can contribute to a critical analysis of happiness. In an era when neoliberal values pervade discourses on happiness and the good life, Bauman contributes a critical platform for engaging with happiness in contemporary Western culture (Bauman 2000, 2008a, 2008c). While an enormous amount has been written about Bauman in the last three decades, the underlying purpose of this chapter is to take the work of a major contemporary theorist and provide a reading that demonstrates the valuable contributions of critical theoretical perspectives to debates on happiness. Zygmunt Bauman has a reputation for publishing a lot. His style of critical sociology, while falling outside of the formalized group of Frankfurt School thinkers,2 offers a broad range of rich critical theoretical perspectives that emphasize experience (Beilharz 2000: 38). In this chapter, I propose that one way of bringing together the array of themes in his work over the last half century is to read them as a project in critical happiness research. At its core, Bauman’s unrelenting question is, why is modernity not more fulfilling? Or to frame this question in a more critical tone, in what ways does liquid modernity sideline or sabotage the genuine efforts of individuals to be happy? These threats to happiness are not strictly economic or structural, for Bauman; they are best understood as ideological and ingrained in processes of individualization and neoliberalism (2008c). Yet there is a clear lineage between this emphasis on ideology in his later work and the contradictions of freedom and security in works like Postmodernity and Its Discontents (1997) and Modernity and Ambivalence (1991). Bauman suggests

Drowning in liquidity  163 that in a liquid modern age of seemingly unlimited consumer satisfaction and economic growth, raising critical questions about happiness is almost counterintuitive (2008a). Yet Bauman’s work is rich with critical insights about happiness, even in periods where the term happiness is rarely mentioned. There is no clear definition of happiness offered by Bauman, only claims about what it is considered to be in popular culture, paired with critiques of practices that fail to deliver this modern happiness. Perhaps a proposal for happiness could be constructed by using these ideas, and it might align with some of the more relationally focused theories of happiness (Ahuvia et al. 2015; McKenzie 2016; Thin 2012), but the critical perspectives in Bauman’s work are what are most intriguing in the present day. While happiness has been of interest to philosophers for thousands of years, Bauman suggests that it was during the Enlightenment period that contemporary definitions of the term first appeared. Hannah Arendt (1963) showed how the Enlightenment shifted the emphasis towards the ‘pursuit of happiness’ in the Declaration of Independence of the United States; however, Bauman highlights the proclamation of liberty, equality, and fraternity as a promise of happiness through radical change to the structure of society itself (Bauman 2008b: 117). This period demanded new social relations and structures that simultaneously required new foundations, new values, and new sources of meaning. With radical social change, perspectives on happiness and the good life from philosophers, artists, and revolutionaries made a conscious effort to move away from the theological narratives of happiness that had dominated the lives of Europeans for centuries. Yet the adopted definition of happiness in a given culture, and at a specific time, is generally as telling as (if not more telling than) the measuring or ranking of happiness itself. Bauman points to Sigmund Freud for a modern definition of happiness as the freedom ‘to act on impulse’, which coincidently is precisely the form of ‘freedom that tends to be surrendered . . . for the sake of a “portion of security” ’ (Bauman 2001: 41). The underlying claim here is that modernization has reduced happiness to individual pursuits of pleasurable experiences, which are inevitably negated by the dangers, anxieties, and sheer loneliness of living in an increasingly fragmented world. Bauman uses this line of thought to establish a central claim in his analysis of happiness: recent cultural shifts have sacrificed certainty and security for newfound freedoms, and this has led to new and unanticipated challenges to individual happiness. During the Enlightenment, the pursuit of happiness became a justification for a new society, and yet it is the period of modernization between then and now that Bauman has made a career out of dissecting and critiquing. Before venturing into Bauman’s work, we must note the categorical difference between research that aims to uncover the causes and consequences of happiness in modernity and work that aims to aid personal efforts to find happiness among individuals. In this sense, Bauman’s distinction between morality and ethics serves as a useful analogy for how we can think about critical happiness research in contrast to the mass of literature on finding happiness. According to Bauman (1994), ethical claims are ideals about how ethical action can best be conducted. These claims are typically made by theorists – people who engage with ethical dilemmas as a full-time pursuit rather than a passing conversation at a dinner

164  Jordan McKenzie party. Therefore, ethics is a matter of finding the right answer; everyday life, on the other hand, is an entirely different story. In contrast, the study of morality involves a study of the kinds of shared values in a community that function as moral principles. For Bauman, to study morality is not to study the right or truthful answer to a dilemma in a strict sense. It involves understanding what morality does in a set of cultural values and exchanges. I argue that the study of happiness and the good life similarly involves two lines of analysis that each aim at distinct outcomes. While the question, what is happiness? is by no means new, the parallel question, what does happiness do? or, what do people think happiness is? is a somewhat recent development in the field. Bauman’s work on happiness does well to comment on the former question through an analysis of the latter. His contributions are not intended to be ontological or strictly philosophical explorations of ‘what is good’ or ‘what it is to be happy’, but rather, they involve the emotional consequences of modernization that involve political, economic, and cultural factors that result in humiliating, desublimating, and dehumanizing experiences for individuals. This chapter will outline a number of key periods in Bauman’s writing that set out useful criticisms of modernization that can serve as a foundation for critical studies of happiness in the contemporary era.

Disenchantment and the rationalization of the self Variations on the theme of rationalization can be found in many of the canonical thinkers in sociology, and in each case, the conclusions found in these projects can be linked to challenges for the good life. For Emilé Durkheim, it is the division of labour that leads to increased specialization and eventually a loss of meaningful social bonds; meanwhile for Karl Marx, it is found in the alienation of the worker in modern factory conditions, and for Georg Simmel, it is the blasé attitude that becomes necessary to survive everyday life in the metropolis. Yet it is the work of Max Weber that best resonates with Bauman’s work on modernization theories of rationalization. While Bauman is not typically known as a Weberian scholar, portions of his work could be understood as an attempt to modernize Weber’s contributions to theories of rationalization, bureaucratization, and disenchantment. Yet in Bauman’s works, these trends are associated with postmodern shifts in late modernity. While Weber highlighted how the logic of 19th- and 20th-century capitalism shaped and interacted with cultural practices, Bauman focuses his attention on the outcomes of living in Weber’s vision for over a century. According to Bauman’s contributions to postmodern debates in the 1990s, individuals are struggling to cope with uncertainty after decades of social change that promised the order, consistency, and control that Weber was so eager to warn us about. For Bauman, order was only ever a projection onto a chaotic world; it is nothing more than an attempt to find comfort and sideline anxieties about the future. With reference to Cornelius Castoriadis, Bauman (1994: 4) writes, Human beings exist in the never ending, since never fully successful, effort to escape from chaos. . . . Society, we might say, is a massive and continuous

Drowning in liquidity  165 cover-up operation. And yet the best escape attempt ever succeeds in coming up with is a thin film of order, continuously pierced, torn apart and folded up by the Chaos over which it stretches. A debate over whether the present day is more or less chaotic than the past would not be productive. What is significant here is that current generations have been promised a sophisticated, ordered, stable life that modernity cannot deliver, and this has left them less capable of dealing with disorder, failure, and, perhaps most importantly for Bauman, contingency. In his work on contingency, Bauman expands on classical theories of rationalization by incorporating an emphasis on classification in a postmodern culture (1991: 4). While dramatic cultural shifts have occurred that demonstrate the destructuralization of modern cultures, Bauman’s Modernity and Ambivalence (1991) points to an aligning obsession with labelling, categorizing, and ordering. This process of distinguishing and differentiating is closely tied to forms of othering that do more to reinforce either/or binaries than to deconstruct them (Bauman 1993: 5). Yet as Peter Beilharz notes, for Bauman, ‘modernity eliminates its others, its surplus populations, its masterless men and women from the Enclosures through to the vagabonds of the metropolis and the peripheries today’ (Beilharz 2006: 110). Subjects and objects outside of classification are inefficient and are therefore problems that require solving in modernity. The result for Bauman is a population living under a curse of ambivalence: The residents of the house of modernity had been continuously trained to feel at home under conditions of necessity and to feel unhappy at the face of contingency; contingency, they had been told, was that state of discomfort and anxiety from which one needs to escape by making oneself into a binding norm and thus doing away with difference. Present unhappiness is the realisation that this is not to be, that the hope will not come true and hence one needs to learn to live without the hope that supplied the meaning – the only meaning – to life. (Bauman 1991: 233) Ambivalence is not reducible to apathy or disinterest; rather, it highlights an unwillingness or inability to decide between equally undesirable or equally problematic options. This is a life stuck between antimonies where the individual is paralysed by the pressure to make meaningful and necessary decisions, between meaningless and unnecessary binaries. Furthermore, Bauman insists that the problem of ambivalence is unlike cultural challenges of the past in that the battles against it make the problem more only difficult to address (Bauman 1991: 15). A common theme in Bauman’s analysis of modernization is demonstrated here: culture increasingly moves in different and even contradictory directions simultaneously. In this case, social life is becoming both more rational and structured while boasting that traditional structures and binaries are being broken down. There are two key themes that can be extracted from this period of Bauman’s work in regard to the theme of happiness. The first concerns the dehumanization of individuals living in highly rationalized capitalist societies (see Bauman 2000;

166  Jordan McKenzie 2003; 2004) and the second is the tension in pursuing happiness between freedom and security (see Bauman 1997; 1999). While the latter theme came earlier in the genealogy of Bauman’s works, there is some merit in presenting these ideas in the order given earlier. The contemporary application of rationalization as something that threatens the sanctity of human subjectivity is not unique to Bauman; versions of Weber’s analysis of modernization can be found in George Ritzer’s McDonaldization thesis (1993), Richard Sennett’s Corrosion of Character (1998), and Seyla Benhabib’s Situating the Self (1992). Bauman’s work is unique in this group, largely due to his unconventional sociological influences and his incorporating perspectives from Karl Marx, Antonio Gramsci, and Leszek Kołakowski with literary authors like Milan Kundera and Robert Musil. The result is a contribution that never intends to be a structured or grand theory but rather a vividly detailed image of contemporary life, one that allows for a greater incorporation of emotional experiences into an analysis of modernization. In this sense, Bauman’s work (1991: 188) closely aligns with the notion of the blasé attitude set out in Georg Simmel’s The Metropolis and Mental Life (1903), which involves a denial and suppression of emotion in order to thrive in the modern bustling city. This blasé attitude (or outlook) describes the reduction or homogenization of complex cultural difference into simple categories for the sake of economic productivity. For Simmel, money ‘hollows out the core of things, their peculiarities, their specific values and their uniqueness and incomparability in a way which is beyond repair’ (Simmel 1903: 14). The person who adopts the blasé attitude is not permanently underwhelmed (as the term blasé might suggest in the present day); rather, for Simmel, the holder of the blasé attitude has forfeited the peaks and troughs of emotional life for a consistently ‘grey’ existence, and this is not only for the sake of success but also increasingly a necessity for modern cosmopolitan survival. This sentiment is explored in Bauman’s Liquid Love (2003). A superficial reading of this text might conclude that Bauman simply yearns for ‘old-fashioned’ relationships, but this would be an oversimplification. The pressing themes in this text are threefold: capitalist rationality is increasingly being used to make decisions pertaining to intimate human relationships; reducing one’s emotionality is seen as beneficial or productive in this era of rationalization; and, finally, this transition in intimate relationships is tied to major challenges to the propensity for self-love. While these conclusions on relationships are of interest, it is the challenge of self-love that is most useful to happiness research. The difficulty for Bauman is how one can meaningfully access self-love without a well-established cultural practice of having love for others. He engages with Freud’s objections to the love-thy-neighbour principle, but for the sake of simplicity, this can be summarized here as the need for love for others in order to see one’s self as being worthy of love from others and consequently from the self. He writes, Because what we love in our self-love is the selves fit to be loved. What we love is the state, or the hope, of being loved. Of being objects worthy of love, being recognized as such, and given the proof of that recognition. (Bauman 2003: 80)

Drowning in liquidity  167 As life in liquid modernity increasingly produces selves who are defined not through their relationships with others but through individualistic traits and accomplishments, access to a self who is worthy of love becomes more and more problematic. In Wasted Lives (2004), Bauman develops this approach with an expansion of the notion of dehumanization in contemporary capitalism. Here he argues that while disposability and waste have become common methods for increasing profit in the post-industrial age, the culture of waste can be understood in terms of wasting not only resources and commodities but also people. This is true of the sweatshops in Bangladesh and sales clerks in London, UK. The culture of waste has become so entrenched in contemporary norms and values that it no longer discriminates between victims. In Wasted Lives, he states, ‘Nothing is truly necessary, nothing is irreplaceable. Everything is born with a branding of imminent death; everything leaves the production line with a “use-by-date” label attached’ (Bauman 2004: 96). Bauman uses a number of examples to make this point, but in the wake of the 2011 riots in London, UK, his use of humiliation is perhaps the most appropriate in the development of critical happiness perspectives. Bauman argues that the violent outbursts of youth against shop fronts and affluent suburbs are the somewhat inevitable consequence of repeated and systematic humiliation among a dehumanized and disenfranchised population (Bauman 2011). In this case, the powerful anger and resentment expressed in these riots is a result of unattainable narratives of happiness and the good life that not only keep the working class at arms-length but continue to frequently humiliate these individuals for falling short of near-impossible goals. Bauman describes these ‘defective and disqualified consumers’ as having been raised with the belief that success is a nice house and a new car, and yet they are excluded from any realistic opportunity to achieve these goals (Bauman 2011). Humiliation is a unique emotion because it involves an intense subjective experience combined with a cultural expectation to suppress these experiences in one’s interaction with others. The sales clerk is expected to smile politely at the arrogant and uninformed customer, knowing that they themselves could never afford to buy the objects that they sell. For Bauman, humiliation inevitably erupts, and this is how we ought to make sense of contemporary debates over the attitudes and values of millennials that differ significantly from their parents and grandparents. While this is not the place for a discussion of intergenerational entitlement and advantage/disadvantage, it is worth noting that Bauman believes that the youth of today are facing challenges that older generations fail to comprehend (Bauman 2004: 10). In the case of employment, for example, young people who face difficult and unstable job prospects are told to be flexible and not particularly choosy, not to expect too much from jobs, to take the jobs as they come without asking too many questions, and to treat them as an opportunity to be enjoyed on the spot as long as it lasts rather than as an introductory chapter of a ‘life project’, a matter of self-esteem and selfdefinition, or a warrant of long-term security. (Bauman 2004: 10)

168  Jordan McKenzie Ostensibly, young people who have been raised on the mantra of ‘you can be anything you want’ are then told to lower their expectations or risk being labelled as ‘entitled’. They may not have conscription, a world war, or the great depression, but the dreams of freedom and security that older generations fought for are by no means unproblematic for modern individuals. Similarly, the drive to consume is one cultural practice where the chaos of modern life offers (or even promises) a sense of order. In Legislators and Interpreters (1987), Bauman puts forward a series of attempts made by modern individuals to create a sense of order and control over their lives, and after failing to find this in ethics, economics, and politics, they turn their attention to the highly individualized practice of consumerism. This is a result of the failure of the rationalization project in modernity (Bauman 1987: 188). Bauman writes, ‘Individual needs of personal autonomy, self-definition, authentic life or personal perfection are all translated into the need to possess, and consume, market-offered goods’ (Bauman 1987: 189). The failure of consumer culture to provide happiness is well documented, and Bauman, among others, adds that this failure only serves to drive higher levels of consumption. In a moment that resembles the critique of happiness as desire found in the work of Arthur Schopenhauer, Bauman writes, ‘It is the non-satisfaction of desires, and a firm and perpetual belief that each act to satisfy them leaves much to be desired and can be bettered, that are the fly-wheels of the consumer targeted economy’ (Bauman 2005: 80). This argument is noteworthy, but the larger phenomenon occurring here is the individual task of finding ways to feel in control in a fast-paced culture of instability and rapid change. In Legislators and Interpreters, Bauman establishes this line of thought through the analogy of the garden, the gardener, and the transition from ecosystems that are naturally occurring to ones that are artificially constructed and designed. The result is a process of modernization that understands progress as the transformation from naturally occurring and self-sufficient ecosystems to highly manicured and artificial gardens that cannot survive without the careful monitoring and manipulation of experts. This ‘garden state’ is made up of individual efforts to create surroundings that are in one’s control, spaces that eliminate the chaos that occurs beyond the reach of the gardener (1987). This metaphor presents a critique of modern pursuits of happiness that equate the good life with the ratio or orderly life. Yet Bauman insists that rationalization is about more than disenchantment in the pursuit of happiness; it also necessarily works to dehumanize people. Bauman famously outlined the risks involved in this kind of rationalization, in Modernity and Holocaust (1989), a book that explicitly links the catastrophic and brutal acts of history to the forms of progress that drive modernization (Beilharz 2002: 91). By refusing to see the Holocaust as something that was out of character for modernity and instead as an event that was made possible through rationalization and bureaucratization, Bauman insists that we view the most bloody and violent events in recent history as being as intrinsic to modernization as the development of industrialism, technology, and rationality. The progress of modernity and the horror of the Holocaust are simply two sides of the same coin that is modernization (Bauman 1989: 7), and he insists that ‘the Holocaust was as

Drowning in liquidity  169 much a product as it was a failure of modern civilization’ (Bauman 1989: 89). The rationalization of modernity is dissatisfying and unfulfilling for the subject who is busy pursuing happiness, but it is also lethal as unemotional and bureaucratic justifications for violence become everyday aspects of contemporary politics. The ambivalence of living in a culture of antinomies is again relevant here as many of the apparent successes of modernity such as technology, security, and medicine are made possible only through environmental degradation, human rights abuses, and animal cruelty. I can marvel at the technology contained in my smartphone, but the startling suicide rates among the workers in Chinese smartphone parts factories results in a kind on ambivalence that is part and parcel with modern life. The ability to function and even prosper despite these contradictions is central to Simmel’s blasé attitude and also to Bauman’s Liquid Modernity. Rationalization can be attributed with creating many of modernity’s greatest successes and also its most colossal failures and atrocities. A number of the themes discussed here can merge into an argument about the good society and how utopia is used as a collective path to happiness through the construction of a good society. While these more collective approaches to finding happiness as a community are clearly preferable to individualized consumer pursuits, Bauman is eager to remind us that efforts to create an ideal society can just as easily lead to disaster. In an interview with Michael H. Jacobsen and Keith Tester, he states, The dream of making uncertainty less daunting and happiness more plausible by changing one’s ego, and of changing one’s ego by changing its outer wrappings, is the ‘utopia’ of liquid modern times; the ‘deregulated’, ‘privatized’ and ‘individualized’ version of the old-style visions of good society, society hospitable to the humanity of its members. (Jacobsen and Tester 2007: 319) Yet the distortion of utopian thought is not simply a problem at the level of individualism and deregulation, and the Holocaust is perhaps an example of the worst imaginable outcome for social change driven by the desire to create a perfect society. Happiness, employment, and freedom were all promises made in Nazi Germany, and the eradication of the Jewish population and other ‘undesirable’ citizens could be understood as some kind of radical utopia. Bauman’s work here demonstrates how promises of happiness can be used to do massive harm. The problem is not the focus on more macro social changes that can foster and encourage happy lives; the problem is constructing directions for social change that are based on the dehumanizing principles of rationalization.

Freedom and security While Bauman’s liquidity thesis is often bundled together with the contributions of reflexive modernization theorists like Ulrich Beck and Anthony Giddens, his approach differs in at least one significant way. While many social theorists in

170  Jordan McKenzie the 1990s welcomed the increased flexibility and malleability offered by a newly restructured (or de-structured) society of reflective and self-aware individuals, Bauman was sceptical of the claim that this would lead to greater happiness. He insists, ‘the greater our individual freedom, the less it is relevant to the world in which we practice it’ (Bauman 2008b: 110), and this view is by no means uncommon throughout Bauman’s work. In his work on mortality, Bauman claims that the greater the number of people who are immortalized by history, the less meaningful immortality becomes. Immortality is, much like freedom, a finite resource: it abides by a series of checks and balances. In other words, it is valuable because of its exclusivity. The priority of maximizing freedom for all is therefore impossible, according to Bauman. The freedom of one person demands the restriction of another, so all we can do is reassemble the equations in different ways to match social exchanges with social values. To claim that moving away from a rigidly structured society to a more reflexive one will lead to greater freedom is not unlike a nation in recession continually printing more money to pay its debts: eventually the currency that allows exchanges to occur becomes worthless. The idea that happiness equates to freedom has been a central notion in the philosophy of the Enlightenment, and therefore, for Bauman, the ‘pursuit of happiness was an individual affair’ (2008b: 117). Yet there is a contradiction here: the declaration of liberty, equality, and fraternity in the Enlightenment promised that the freedom to pursue happiness was a right for all individuals, and yet the attention given to creating the good society where happiness pursuits could prosper was woefully insufficient. Reflexive modernization was an opportunity to further liberate one’s self from tradition and create new and dynamic selves capable of negotiating their specific needs and wants, free from structural demands that were no longer relevant. However, for Bauman, this is only a matter of extending the mistakes of the past. While reflexive theories of social change offer a view of modernization that highlights the increased role of malleability, speed, and fluidity, Bauman was quick to warn that this would also have negative consequences for modern individuals. The demise of social structures would liberate individuals in certain ways but also leave them floating free and lost in others. Decisions that were once made for people (such as whether to pursue higher education or whether to have children) are now solely the responsibility of the self, and while this is indeed liberating, it also places the responsibility for choosing incorrectly with the individual alone. There is a risk here in assuming that fluidity and reflexivity mean that individuals are now free to choose between options that might have previously been decided for them. As we have seen in the previous section, significant cultural, economic, and political factors remain that shape and even dictate our opportunities, yet for Bauman, the new liquid era treats these decisions as though they are entirely within the scope of the self. This theme is present throughout Bauman’s work and, in particular, in the described tension between freedom and security. Although (as the previous section highlighted) modernization has pushed for order and consistency, this can easily be associated with a desire for security. Specifically, his work on the problem of contingency demonstrates how the dream

Drowning in liquidity 171 of control and predictability through rationalization has left individuals underprepared to deal with the chaos of the modern world. But security through control can be accomplished only through sacrifices to freedom, and freedom necessarily involves a degree of danger. This point is developed in detail in Bauman’s Postmodernity and Its Discontents (1997), a book that picks up on a number of debates set out in Freud’s Civilization and Its Discontents (1930). I have addressed this material in more detail elsewhere (McKenzie 2016), though the key challenge is described by Bauman as follows: You gain something, you lose something else in exchange: the old rule holds as true today as it was true then. Only the gains and the losses have changed places: postmodern men and women exchanged a portion of their possibilities of security for a portion of happiness. The discontents of modernity arose from a kind of security which tolerated too little freedom in the pursuit of individual happiness. The discontents of postmodernity arise from a kind of freedom of pleasure-seeking which tolerates too little individual security. (Bauman 1997: 3) Security in this sense can be read as something individuals find in stable and consistent structural conditions. For Bauman, the pace of change in modernity has left individuals incapable of selecting, committing, and accomplishing a goal before the landscape changes, and it nullifies the goal itself. The lack of security is not read here as a lack of physical safety; rather, it is a matter of dependability in societal conditions that would allow the self to make plans and know that they will have lasting merit. A practical example can be found in the newfound freedom to work in flexible environments and change career directions more easily and effectively than in the past while forfeiting the potential for a reliable ‘job for life’ that was more common for previous generations. The individual is therefore liberated from having to work the same job for a lifetime, but in return, they must now live with the thought that at any moment, substantial personal changes may need to occur to remain employable. The security that has been sacrificed in the name of happiness and freedom is, for Bauman, a price too high – though one that has been effectively sold to modern individuals as a bargain. This tension would eventually inform the next period of Bauman’s work after the publication of Liquid Modernity (2000) and the subsequent texts that build on this theme. Liquid Modernity sought to differentiate Bauman from the torrent of postmodern literature that he had been somewhat responsible for building. Having seen what the field was becoming, Bauman made a decisive move on, to frame his analysis of modernization in a new terminology, free from the baggage that came with the frequently misinterpreted notion of postmodernism. By liquidity, Bauman refers to the process of the liquefaction of traditional social structures into more malleable social relations. In the liquid modern era, cultural practices, norms, and morals are unshackled from fixed interpretations and made capable of changing shape to fit a given context. This should not be reduced to the claim that

172  Jordan McKenzie social structures are no longer relevant; instead, it points out that the structure no longer resembles scaffolding. A key aspect of this argument is that this transition is primarily one of how members of a society view that society rather than purely a transition of a society itself. To paraphrase, the present era is simply modernity without the illusions of fixed social structures and linear forms of meaning and authenticity. Yet Bauman’s liquidity thesis differs in important ways from other influential reinterpretations of the structure/agency divide, such as the reflexivity theories offered by Giddens and Beck.3 Whereas there is a degree of optimism in the evaluation offered by Giddens, Bauman is quick to warn of the hidden dangers of a liquid modernity. A useful example of this point – on the theme of happiness research – can be found in each thinker’s newfound theories of identity. While Giddens offers a theory of identity in modernity that promises new opportunities to negotiate the terms and conditions of our social selves, Bauman would want to remind us that this new freedom comes with its own challenges (2000). Giddens is not necessarily naive in his account of identity projects, and he is right to imply that the rise of more reflexive understandings of the self and society grants individuals greater freedom to construct an identity within a framework of cultural meanings that they also have some agency in determining (Giddens 1984; for a more detailed overview of power in Giddens’ structuration work, see Stones 2009). But it is over the extent to which this agency is effective that Bauman would take issue with the more liberal approach. For Bauman, this approach is problematic for a number of reasons: it neglects the importance of uneven distributions of power and therefore agency; it encourages individualization and anomie; and it underestimates just how taxing the ongoing project of the self really is. He claims, ‘the idea of the pursuit of the good life and happiness as a self-referential business for each individual to pursue and perform on his or her own is grossly misconceived’ (Bauman 2010: 137). Giddens could be accused of celebrating the notion that the task of constructing one’s identity is never completely finished, thus allowing individuals to continually reinvent themselves as they desire. Yet for Bauman, this task is less an opportunity and more a demand (Bauman 2001) – one that individuals have little choice but to abide by. The individuals who fail to reinvent themselves are deemed a failure by modernity, a relic whose time has passed. Furthermore, the meaningful process of self-discovery and identity construction is co-opted by political and economic ideologies, according to Bauman. The present state of happiness discourse that has formed a new kind of self-help literature could be understood in this way; genuine questions about happiness, meaning, and purpose are addressed with consumer purchases and quick fixes. Identity is, after all, a public issue. While the construction of a self is worked on privately, it is then performed publicly, and the knowledge of this coming performance is integrated into the private process of self-determination. It is not enough to simply be the self that has been meticulously prepared and arranged; one must then venture out into the world and perform that self convincingly for others. In other works, Bauman refers to this as the ‘Art of Life’ (2008a), the ongoing project of the self that forms a kind

Drowning in liquidity 173 of living piece of art. The role of the self is therefore to sculpt an identity out of the resources available and build an authentic life that takes advantage of every moment for the sake of happiness. In an age when every walk on the beach and cafe lunch is shared on social media for a legion of followers to see, Bauman’s point is easy to see: Perhaps instead of talking about identities, inherited or acquired, it would be more in keeping with the realities of the globalising world to speak of identification, a never-ending, always incomplete, unfinished and open ended activity in which we all, by necessity or by choice, are engaged. (Bauman 2001: 152) Bauman might make similar claims about the process of pursuing happiness: it is not enough to feel it; one must also demonstrate it to others. This also reflects individualized narratives of finding happiness such that it has become a competition that must be won against the pursuits of others. The effort that goes into this preparation and performance is exhausting, for Bauman, and it leaves little time for meaningful self-reflection and interaction with others. It actively rewards individuals for being inwardly focused and self-interested, and will inevitably leave individuals feeling isolated, unfulfilled, and unhappy. In this sense, the phrase art of life is misleading, because it is not solely a matter of making one’s life into a work of art for its own sake. It is an act of narcissism, and sadly, it is one of the few forms of fulfilment on offer to contemporary individuals. Bauman’s advice here is to search for more authentic and meaningful ways of living, but just as Theodor Adorno (1996 [1945]) attacked the description of music as sublime for its commodification and retail value, authenticity has been reduced to an aesthetic representation of a good life, one where looking happy is valued above actually being happy (Ruti 2014). There is a common criticism levelled at Bauman that considers the kinds of positions described thus far as harking back to a golden era when things were better, simpler, and more meaningful. Such a golden era is inevitably a kind of fiction: surely, any previous period of society consists of systematic advantages and disadvantages for individuals. While Bauman focuses on intergenerational shifts and in doing so critiques the current state of the world, it is an oversimplification to say that Bauman would wish to return to a bygone era. This point is especially clear when the forms of discrimination that Bauman has spent a career dismantling were more systematically enforced in the past. Yet even this claim – that civil rights movements have successfully lessened the problem of discrimination  – would, for Bauman, be a gross oversimplification. Instead, he puts forward a stance that has now been explored more extensively by Hartmut Rosa (2013): change is perhaps the one consistent aspect of social life and that the pace of social change is the defining characteristic of modernity. Instead, it is more fruitful to read Bauman’s criticisms of the present as the result of a series of exchanges or trade-offs. We have traded security for freedom, stability for change, and experiences for appearances. For Bauman, modernity is a place

174  Jordan McKenzie of contradiction and hidden danger where exciting new cultural shifts should be treated with suspicion rather than uncritical acceptance. There could be legitimate criticisms of Bauman’s work regarding its Eurocentrism or the lack structured or systematic rigour found in other comparable thinkers of his era, like Jürgen Habermas or Anthony Giddens. Yet this could reasonably be treated as a strength for Bauman, because fully satisfying these critiques in his later work would lessen the impact of his descriptive analysis. The emphasis on emotional experience in an analysis of shifts in the makeup of modern social structure makes Bauman a powerful theoretical figurehead for the emerging critical work on happiness.

Conclusion As an alternative to the popular contemporary discourse on happiness pursuits, Bauman’s work offers vital critical perspectives that provide sobering and muchneeded challenges to dominant norms. Projects such as Bauman’s can be read as an effort to contemplate the ideal society through the platform of maximizing happiness. Happiness literature that focuses on individual happiness as a choice could not be further from the wealth of material available over the last century on utopias, yet both can be seen as a reflection of the values and priorities of a culture in a given time period. The way that individuals pursue happiness from magazines and talk shows rather than community or political engagement would not be surprising to Bauman; meanwhile, in the post-war period of rebuilding society throughout Europe and the United States, the public discourse on utopia – linked with the 1968 student protests around the world – indicates a different set of cultural values around happiness and the good life. Critical social theorists such as Bauman offer us the opportunity to merge these disparate approaches and consider both the macro social changes necessary for fostering happiness and an understanding of the specific emotional experiences of a society as a whole. In doing so, the current popularity of happiness literature presents an opportunity to re-engage with public discussions about how society ought to function, and Bauman’s lifetime of contributions to sociology can function as a powerful theoretical foundation for this study to be built on.

Notes 1 Keith Tester likens it to a ‘garden of forking paths’ (2002: 55). 2 In the preface to Modernity and Ambivalence, Bauman goes so far as to state that his intention with the book is to ‘wrap historical and sociological flesh around [Adorno and Horkheimer’s] “dialectics of Enlightenment” skeleton’ (1991: 17). However, Bauman did not see himself as belonging to a particular school of thought and resisted categorization as a critical theorist in the traditional sense. 3 This distinction has been disputed elsewhere (see Atkinson 2008 on the role of class in Bauman’s work), but I maintain that Bauman pays greater attention to the concepts of power and inequality than either Giddens or Beck and that he differentiates his notion of liquefaction as a primarily critical analysis of modernization.

Drowning in liquidity 175

References Adorno, T. (1996 [1945]): ‘A Social Critique of Radio Music’. The Kenyon Review, 18(3– 4): 229–235. Ahuvia, A., Thin, N., Haybron, D. M., Biswas-Diener, R., Ricard, M. & Timsit, J. (2015): ‘Happiness: An Interactionist Perspective’. International Journal of Wellbeing, 5(1): 1–18. Arendt, H. (2006 [1963]): On Revolution. New York, NY: Penguin Books. Atkinson, W. (2008): ‘Not All That Was Solid Has Melted Into Air (or Liquid): A Critique of Bauman on Individualization and Class in Liquid Modernity’. The Sociological Review, 56(1): 1–17. Bauman, Z. (1987): Legislators and Interpreters. New York, NY: Cornell University Press. Bauman, Z. (1989): Modernity and the Holocaust. Cambridge: Polity Press. Bauman, Z. (1991): Modernity and Ambivalence. Cambridge: Polity Press. Bauman, Z. (1992): Mortality, Immortality and Other Life Strategies. California: Stanford University Press. Bauman, Z. (1993): Postmodern Ethics. Malden: Blackwell Publishing. Bauman, Z. (1994): ‘Morality Without Ethics’. Theory, Culture & Society, 11(4): 1–34. Bauman, Z. (1997): Postmodernity and Its Discontents. Cambridge: Polity Press. Bauman, Z. (2000): Liquid Modernity. Cambridge: Polity Press. Bauman, Z. (2001): The Individualized Society. Cambridge: Polity Press. Bauman, Z. (2003): Liquid Love: On the Frailty of Human Bonds. Cambridge: Polity Press. Bauman, Z. (2004): Wasted Lives: Modernity and Its Outcasts. Oxford: Polity Press. Bauman, Z. (2005): Liquid Life. Cambridge: Polity Press. Bauman, Z. (2008a): The Art of Life. Oxford: Polity Press. Bauman, Z. (2008b): Does Ethics Have a Chance in a World of Consumers? Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Bauman, Z. (2008c): ‘Happiness in a Society of Individuals’. Soundings: 19–28. Bauman, Z. (2010): ‘Communism: A Postmortem? Two Decades on, Another Anniversary’. Thesis Eleven, 100(1): 128–140. Bauman, Z. (2011): ‘The London Riots – On Consumerism Coming Home to Roost’. Social Europe, August 10. Beilharz, P. (2000): Zygmunt Bauman: Dialectic of Modernity. London: Sage Publications. Beilharz, P. (2002): ‘Modernity and Communism: Zygmunt Bauman and the Other Totalitarianism’. Thesis Eleven, 70(1): 88–99. Beilharz, P. (2006): ‘Zygmunt Bauman – To Build Anew’. Thesis Eleven, 86(1): 107–113. Benhabib, S. (1992): Situating the Self: Gender, Community and Postmodernism in Contemporary Ethics. New York: Routledge. Freud, S. (2002 [1930]): Civilisation and Its Discontents. London: Penguin Books. Giddens, A. (1984): Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theory of Structuration. Cambridge: Polity Press. Jacobsen, M. H. & Tester, K. (2007): ‘Sociology, Nostalgia, Utopia and Mortality: A Conversation With Zygmunt Bauman’. European Journal of Social Theory, 10(2): 305–325. McKenzie, J. (2016): Deconstructing Happiness: Critical Sociology and the Good Life. New York, NY: Routledge. Ritzer, G. (1993): The McDonaldization of Society: The Changing Character of Contemporary Social Life. Newbury Park, CA: Pine Forge Press.

176  Jordan McKenzie Rosa, H. (2013): Social Acceleration: A New Theory of Modernity. New York, NY: Columbia University Press. Ruti, M. (2014): The Call of Character: Living a Life Worth Living. New York, NY: Columbia University Press. Sennett, R. (1998): The Corrosion of Character. New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Co. Simmel, G. (2002 [1903]): ‘The Metropolis and Mental Life’. In G. Bridge & S. Watson (eds.), The Blackwell City Reader. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. Stones, R. (2009): ‘Power and Structuration Theory’. In S. Clegg & M. Haugaard (eds.), The Sage Handbook of Power. London: Sage Publications. Tester, K. (2002): ‘Paths in Zygmunt Bauman’s Social Thought’. Thesis Eleven, 70(1): 55–71. Thin, N. (2012): Social Happiness: Theory Into Policy and Practice. Bristol: Policy Press.

11 Complicating the happy cure Psychoanalysis and the ends of analysis Colin Wright

Psychoanalysis: friend or foe to critical happiness studies? Although there are now numerous critiques of the social, political, and economic agendas behind the field of happiness studies and its allied discourses of resilience and wellbeing (Davies 2015; Binkley 2014; Evans and Reid 2014; Berlant 2011; Ahmed 2010 and 1914; Bruckner 2010; Ehrenreich 2010; Whippman 2016; Wright 2013), there has so far been insufficient reflection on the theoretical frameworks that might found an opposing discipline of critical happiness studies. This chapter argues that while a number of approaches have been used effectively in recent interrogations of happiness – from feminist cultural studies to critical phenomenology; from Foucauldian biopolitics to discourse analysis; from cultural history to the sociology of health and of work; and from critical psychology and psychiatry to theories of affect inspired by continental philosophy – one resource has been notable for its relative absence: psychoanalysis, as a body of theory but particularly as a clinical practice. On the one hand, this seems surprising. Psychoanalysis offers one of the richest and most flexible conceptual frameworks available for engaging with the question of human happiness and its obdurate opposite, one that has, moreover, played a central part in the Frankfurt School tradition of Freudo-Marxist critical theory (Held 1980; Wolfenstein 1993). Furthermore, the rejection of psychoanalysis is a gesture constitutive of the fields of positive psychology and happiness studies themselves. Figures like Martin Seligman regularly claim that Freud’s big mistake was focusing on pathological suffering rather than on potential self-improvement, rendering psychoanalysis in his eyes nothing less than a ‘rotten-to-the-core doctrine’ (Seligman 2013: XII). Though never as dismissive as this, the critics of happiness studies have often found themselves in counterintuitive agreement that psychoanalysis is somehow part of the problem. Thinkers such as Eva Illouz date the rise of what she calls emotional capitalism from 1909, ‘the year Sigmund Freud went to lecture in America at Clark University’ (Illouz 2007: 5), while others, such as Sam Binkley, follow Foucault and Deleuze and Guattari in locating psychoanalysis squarely in the governmental apparatus of the Oedipalizing psy-disciplines (Binkley 2014). Yet on the other hand, this sidelining of psychoanalysis as a critical framework is not surprising at all, because Illouz and Binkley are right that an utterly diluted

178  Colin Wright version of ‘Freudianism’ has indeed been co-opted by the very therapy industry (Moloney 2013) that now sustains the discourse of happiness, even as it seems predicated, paradoxically, on a rejection of Freud. This pertains to the knotty history of psychoanalysis in the United States specifically, which there is no hope of disentangling much here (although see Hale 1971; Makari 2008; Burnham 2014). Nonetheless, it is thanks in part to what might be called ‘Freud-lite’, promulgated in the United States since the early 20th century, that a neoliberal conception of happiness is now experienced as a new sensus communis in the 21st century. However, this entanglement of psychoanalytic ideas with the globalization of the American pursuit of happiness does not call for the wholesale abandonment of Freud’s invention. On the contrary, it necessitates a careful parsing out of psychoanalysis proper from its problematic deviation. Despite the often-ossified psychoanalytic theory to be found mainly in the arts and humanities faculties of many universities today, I argue that the clinical practice of psychoanalysis represents an ongoing engagement with happiness too valuable to be ignored by this new field. The consulting room is also a site of knowledge production, albeit an overlooked and peculiar one, in which the ‘knowledge’ produced does not lend itself to university discourse (Lacan 2008a).1 My own experience as a psychoanalyst suggests the importance of a tactful pragmatics with the subjective demand for happiness rather than the relative ease of an academic dismissal of it as a neoliberal ‘ideology’ (true though that undoubtedly is). Luckily, much of the work needed for this parsing out has already been undertaken by the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, as long ago as the 1950s and 1960s. His polemics regarding the adaptationist tendencies of what he called the other psychoanalysis (Lacan 2006a), which pertained primarily to an American variant called ego-psychology (see Bergman 2000; Hale 1995), echo our positivitypreoccupied present, and we can learn a great deal from revisiting them. Lacan foresaw the transformation of happiness into a therapeutic ideology (Lacan 2007), and his distancing of psychoanalysis from the psychiatric and medicalized notion of ‘cure’, central to the therapeutic culture in which ‘flourishing’ now flourishes, arguably redeems psychoanalysis as a theoretical resource for critical happiness studies. It is therefore towards Lacan’s complication of the ‘happy cure’, and his related reflections on endings of analysis other than straightforwardly happy ones, that this chapter will ultimately make its way.

Baby and bathwater: the psychologization of psychoanalysis First, however, a brief review of some exemplary critical texts on happiness studies will illustrate the relative sidelining of psychoanalysis to which I have referred. In so doing, I certainly do not want to suggest that psychoanalysis is a panacea: Freud himself was insistent that it should not be a Weltanshaaung or overarching worldview (Freud 1963). Evidently, psychoanalysis does not hold all the answers, and critical happiness studies must continue to draw on an interdisciplinary array of theoretical frameworks and research methods to triangulate its protean object

Complicating the happy cure 179 of study. Yet I do argue that psychoanalysis, especially clinical psychoanalysis, should claim a more prominent place among them if the politics of the (un)happy subject are to be more adequately theorized. Progress has certainly been made in the appraisal of the happiness agenda. Its intimate overlaps with neoliberalism have been outlined in a number of publications now. For example, William Davies’s excellent The Happiness Industry: How the Government and Big Business Sold Us Well-Being (Davies 2015) offers a critical history of the ‘happy’ present. It situates the emergence of happiness studies in relation to the common denominator between Jeremy Bentham’s utilitarianism and Gustav Fechner’s mathematical psycho-physics in the 19th century: the numerical measurement and comparison of administered pleasures and satisfactions. Davies shows how experimental behavioural psychology, an affective style of management in the corporate sphere, and a behavioural economics increasingly decoupled from the welfare state each attempted to actualize the statistical capture of affect that Bentham had only imagined in his felicific calculus. However, in this otherwise comprehensive account of contemporary happiness, psychoanalysis barely features at all. It appears primarily as what is excluded by mainstream psychiatry in the process of medicalizing depression with the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (Davies 2015: 164) or as what a figure like the psychosociologist Jacob Moreno was reacting against in his development of socalled sociometrics (2015: 199). But this is true only in relation to a caricature of psychoanalysis that needs to be seen in the context of the proverbial problem of throwing the baby out with the bathwater if that problem is to be avoided. Indeed, the presence of psychoanalysis only in a descriptive narrative of its rejection is a motif that one can also find in the happiness studies texts that Davies is so critical of. To give just one example, in Jonathan Haidt’s The Happiness Hypothesis: Putting Ancient Wisdom and Philosophy to the Test of Modern Science (2006), Freud and psychoanalysis are present primarily as what Aaron Beck contradicted when he created cognitive therapy (Haidt 2006: 37); as a theory of rigid developmental determinism that had to be overcome to arrive at the apparently universal ‘happiness formula’ (2006: 91); and as what had to be refuted so that psychologists Harry Harlow and John Bowlby could ‘humanize the treatment of children’ (2006: 109). Something similar happens in Sam Binkley’s equally excellent book Happiness as Enterprise: An Essay on Neoliberal Life (2014). Binkley is convincing in his advocacy of the relevance of a Foucauldian framework for the analysis of the rise of institutionalized positive psychology. Foucault helps us to see the latter as an apparatus of neoliberal individuation functioning across diverse domains such as health, education, and the military. Drawing on Foucault’s Collège de France lectures on The Birth of Biopolitics, Binkley demonstrates that happiness has become ‘a purely plastic attribute of a psychosomatic self’ (2014: 2), one modelled on the entrepreneur who continually undertakes cost-benefit analyses of affective as well as monetary transactions. This approach arguably builds on the work of Nikolas Rose, who explored the rise of the psychological self as a mode of, and target for, biopolitical governmentality (Rose 1998, 2007). Indeed, I have argued for the

180  Colin Wright pertinence of the concept of biopolitics for understanding contemporary happiness in a special issue of Health, Culture & Society (Wright 2013). However, as I suggested there as well, this Foucauldian framework is helpful descriptively and analytically, but not necessarily critically or in relation to the crucial question of subjectivity. I argue that psychoanalysis is much better attuned to this issue. Yet in Happiness as Enterprise, psychoanalysis almost always appears next to a minus sign: it is what was rejected by Rogerian humanistic psychology (Binkley 2014: 131); it is an integral element of what Foucault called the psy-function (2014: 137); it is an Oedipalizing technology of the self (2014: 139); it is perfectly compatible with the industrial psychology pioneered by Elton Mayo (2014: 140); and it is a normative framework that reinforces the institution of the family and marriage through counselling and then family systems theory (2014: 144). In such arguments, Binkley is of course faithful to Foucault’s trenchant critique of psychoanalysis as an aspect of disciplinary and then biopolitical power (Foucault 1988, 1998, and 2003). And yet seen as a critique of institutionalized forms of precisely what Lacan called the other psychoanalysis, Foucault’s argument need not be taken as a dismissal of psychoanalysis tout court and can even complement Lacan’s critique. What both of these motifs – the inclusion of psychoanalysis only in the narrative of its exclusion and that of its containment without remainder within the ‘psyfunction’ – arguably have in common is a rapid conflation of psychoanalysis and psychology. In the clinical field, this is enabled by the ambiguity introduced in the term psychotherapy, which in practice covers a vast range of eclectic approaches, almost all of which are decidedly non- or even anti-psychoanalytic (see Loewenthal 2015; Parker 2015). The effects of this are noticeable in Eva Illouz’s otherwise perceptive arguments in Cold Intimacies: The Making of Emotional Capitalism (2007). Although not focused specifically on happiness, this illuminating text is a crucial reference point for a discipline of critical happiness studies, as indicated by her welcome participation in this volume. Drawing on a sociological tradition very much informed by Frankfurt School critical theory, Illouz demonstrates how the management of emotions became, from the early 20th century onwards, a central concern in the workplace and in the home, resulting in a blurring between these realms. This commodification of emotion extends into the pores of supposedly intimate, affective life. She shows this in the sphere of love, through an analysis of online dating sites where one can discern the imposition of normative social scripts regarding emotional exchanges ultimately figured as ‘profitable’ in some sense.2 Illouz is absolutely right to identify experimental psychology and its emphasis on statistical measurement and the management of affect as the catalyst behind these developments; but in so doing, she is perhaps a little too quick to absorb psychoanalysis into this narrative, to conflate Freud with a perceived ‘Freudianism’. But I argue that, again, a slight shift in perspective can reframe Illouz’s analysis in Cold Intimacies as a much-needed critique of the psychologization of psychoanalysis in the United States, without at all accepting that this real and powerful process exhausts what psychoanalysis is. Just as Foucault’s view of

Complicating the happy cure 181 psychoanalysis can be illuminating if framed as a critique of the other psychoanalysis rather than of psychoanalysis as a whole, so Illouz’s analysis of the rise of emotional capitalism can be extremely relevant if contextualized in relation both to the vast distance between mainstream clinical psychology and psychoanalysis (see Parker 2015) and to the history of psychoanalysis in the United States, which has arguably minimized this distance to the point of attempting to erase it (Hale 1971, 1995; Burnham 2014). It is no surprise that the can-do attitude and down-to-earth pragmatism of American culture should have given birth to positive psychology and happiness studies. What is surprising is that such a culture could have previously welcomed the deeply European pessimism of psychoanalysis with open arms. Arguably, however, psychoanalysis in the US was from the beginning a less-than-faithful psychologization of Freud’s ideas, and it was essentially this development to which Jacques Lacan objected so vehemently in the 1950s and 1960s.

Contesting the other psychoanalysis Lacan famously declared the need for a ‘return to Freud’ in his Rome Discourse of 1953 (Lacan 2006b). This clarion call was motivated by an intense dislike – not uncontaminated by a European cultural prejudice he shared with Freud himself (see Falzeder 2014) – for the ‘neo-Freudian’ wave that emerged in the United States in the 1940s but began to exert considerable influence in the International Psychoanalytic Association and well beyond in the 1950s. Over that period, Lacan had observed American (or naturalized American) psychoanalysts such as Erik Erikson, Karen Horney, Harry Stack Sullivan, and Clara Thompson openly rejecting Freud’s drive theory and thus the centrality of psychosexual conflict in psychoanalytic theory (Hale 1995). In so doing, they paved the way for a much greater focus on the sociocultural factors involved in ego-formation and thus on developmental psychology and attendant notions of maturity, adaptation, and even normality rather than the unconscious per se. Despite many differences between them, these neo-Freudians broadly came to advocate a therapeutic approach based on strengthening the ego and even identifying with the strong or ‘healthy’ ego of the analyst. This evolved into a specific orientation of American psychoanalysis called ego-psychology, which is associated primarily with another émigré analyst, Heinz Hartmann (see Bergman 2000), but also – not insignificantly – with Lacan’s own analyst, Rudolph Loewenstein. Based on Freud’s metapsychological writings and what we know of his own clinical technique, however, we can say with some confidence that these neo-Freudians were in fact anti-Freudians in all but name. Nowhere was this more apparent than in their insistence on a ‘mature’ and ‘conflict-free’ ego as a desirable therapeutic goal. As we will see in a moment, the conflict-free ego is an out-and-out oxymoron for Lacan. Nonetheless, the notion of an ego-based ‘cure’ made sense in an American cultural context in which selfesteem had started to be conceived, in a much broader self-help movement, as a kind of psychological capital (Cruickshank 1993; Rimke 2000). Until its declining influence in the 1970s with the rise of cognitivism, ego-psychology effectively

182  Colin Wright presented itself as the preeminent psychotherapeutic framework with which to facilitate the constitutional right to the pursuit of a happy ego. This cluster of concepts, clinical practices, analysts, and analytical institutions, then, is what Lacan gathers under the pejorative heading of the other psychoanalysis. He was not alone in recognizing its dangers, however. Around the same time, Herbert Marcuse developed his own critique of this revisionist school in Eros and Civilization (Marcuse 1987), centring his discussion on the question, precisely, of happiness-as-cure. Marcuse noted that whereas Freud identified the structural impossibility of happiness in conditions of modernity in Civilization and Its Discontents – limiting the clinical ambitions of psychoanalysis to the attainment of that ‘ordinary unhappiness’ referred to as long ago as Studies on Hysteria of 1895 – the so-called neo-Freudians had begun to ‘proclaim a higher goal of therapy’, nothing less than an ‘optimal development of a person’s potentialities and the realization of [their] individuality’ (Marcuse 1987: 258). This should sound familiar to readers of positive psychology and the happiness studies literature today, so much so that neo-Freudianism can be seen as part of their shared yet disavowed genealogy. There are vast differences, of course, particularly the positivism of positive psychology that puts such stress on measurement, but at the level of the higher goal that Marcuse mentions,3 we can certainly speak of a close family resemblance. Would this not cast new light on the almost symptomatic nature of the repeated rejection of psychoanalysis by happiness gurus such Seligman and Haidt? To my knowledge, there is little to no scholarship on this subterranean connection between today’s positive psychologists and the neo-Freudian wave of American ego-psychologists. Any doubt, however, could probably be dispelled by reference to the work and considerable influence of yet another émigré American psychoanalyst, Heinz Kohut (see Strozier 2001). Not long after his forced migration from Vienna to Chicago during World War II, Kohut began to develop what he called a self psychology, the central postulate of which was a healthy narcissism (Kohut 1985). In stark contrast to Freud’s own position on narcissism in 1914 (Freud 1957), Kohut conceptualized this healthy narcissism as a kind of psychic fuel powering ambition and self-realization, even as a ‘bank account of self-esteem’ (Lunbeck 2014: 219) on which to draw during trying times. Does this not sound like both flourishing and resilience avant la lettre? And does not the bank account metaphor translate Freud’s quintessentially 19th-century thermodynamic understanding of ‘economics’ into a different 20th-century financial register? Thanks partly to his powerful position as president of the American Psychoanalytic Association, by the 1970s, Kohut’s self psychology seemed to have absorbed the author of The Interpretation of Dreams into the American dream. One is inclined to look back on Freud’s alleged comment to Jung as they approached the American coast back in 1909 – ‘They do not know that we are bringing them the plague!’ – and wonder who, in fact, was unaware of where ‘the plague’ really lay in wait. This, in any case, would be Lacan’s polemical position, which he developed in a number of texts and seminars over 20-odd years. Here I will restrict myself

Complicating the happy cure 183 to a few comments on just four references: his 1958 text ‘The Direction of the Treatment’ (Lacan 2006a); his seventh seminar on The Ethics of Psychoanalysis from 1959 to 1960 (Lacan 2007); the series of lectures he gave in 1967 that have been gathered together as My Teaching (Lacan 2008b); and, finally, his gnomic observations on the differences between psychotherapy and psychoanalysis in the televised interview from 1973, titled simply Télévision (Lacan 1990).

From the imaginary to the symbolic, and away from happy endings Lacan’s ‘Direction of the Treatment’ is a classic combination of acerbic wit, iconoclasm, and conceptual innovation, but his overall aim is ostensibly to intervene in the then-dominance of the ego-psychologists. Via ‘strong readings’ of Freudian texts, also through his own idiosyncratic deployment of structural linguistics, Lacan criticizes the assumptions of the ego-psychologists at the same time as elaborating a contrasting theoretical and clinical framework. The first key difference is that, in keeping with the famous mirror-stage paper (Lacan 2006c), Lacan understands the ego as structurally alienated in an external Other: the ego is not there from the beginning as a locus of adaptation, only emerges in and through a dialectical relation to an Other. It is not that this alienation befalls the ego as a kind of tragic accident but rather that the ego is this alienation. This makes any notion of egoic harmony as a model of happy ‘cure’ completely wrong-headed from the start. For Lacan, the ego is entirely imaginary. This is not to say that it doesn’t exist – far from it – but rather that the mode of existence that it has is inescapably entangled with the demands of this external Other, which is often a conduit for social values around everything from sexuality to love relations and to what counts as ‘productive’ or ‘worthwhile’ work – in other words, for normative understandings of happiness. From this perspective, the self of Kohut’s self psychology would be the result not of healthy narcissism but of a narcissism marked by a constitutive misrecognition that renders the ego vulnerable to rivalry, aggression, and exhaustion. The ego, then, is a non-identity that uses consoling fantasies, individual as well as social, to pretend that it is in fact an autonomous, non-alienated identity. One can quickly see how the ‘promise of happiness’ (Ahmed 2010) comes in at this imaginary level in order to prop up imagos of wholeness, plenitude, and the happiness-to-come of complete satisfaction; yet simultaneously, one can also see how such an inherently false promise of happiness leads to an even deeper alienation in the Other’s demands and thus a kind of ‘burnout’ (see Han 2015). This would bring us back to the dialectic of repression and sublimation that Freud identified in Civilization and Its Discontents as a deadlock for modern happiness. From Lacan’s perspective, therefore, prescribing a strengthening of the ego to ‘cure’ neuroses is like trying to put a fire out with petrol: it is a recipe for frustration, acting out, or even a serious passage à l’acte on the patient’s part. Hence, he asks, ‘How can the ego, whose aid they [these ‘other psychoanalysts’] claim to enlist here, not suffer, in effect, from the blows of further alienation they induce

184  Colin Wright in the subject?’ (2006a: 534). This is because the ego is constitutively blind to the subject’s unconscious desire, which is what is ‘speaking’ in a roundabout way in the neurotic symptom. This relates to the fundamental conceptual opposition organizing the argument in ‘Direction of the Treatment’ and indeed much of Lacan’s work in the 1950s, namely that between the imaginary and the symbolic. If the ego is imaginary, the unconscious is symbolic structured – as he famously put it – like a language. That the ego and the subject are two distinct entities, that, in other words, the unconscious exists, is a fundamental hypothesis of psychoanalytic theory. Yet it is precisely this that is set aside by the neo-Freudians when they formulate concepts such as the total personality or a putative nonconflictual sphere. For Lacan, then, directing the treatment would consist in handling the transference so that the neurotic patient can move beyond the ego’s imaginary demand for happiness and towards the unconscious desire that really animates them as a speaking subject. This is not at all a matter of telling the patient they are wrong to imagine some possible happiness in life, to educate them in the tragic nature of human existence, or indeed to point out that happiness is a mirage of neoliberal ideology. It is hard to imagine this being of any use to the patient! Such sermonizing would rest on a position of assumed knowledge, of a preexisting and very universal type, which the analyst should resist if they are to truly listen to the patient’s speech, where a very different kind of knowledge can emerge. Rather, it is a matter of giving some space – and, crucially, some words – to the frustration implicit in the demand for happiness. Why would one be demanding happiness, after all, if one already had it? Demanding happiness already implies unhappiness, but addressing it to an analyst who knows how to work with the transference can enable the initial complaint to crystallize into a subjectively assumed question, which has no ready-to-hand answer in off-the-shelf tropes of happiness. This question can then propel the analytic work away from imaginary fantasies and towards unconscious, symbolic desire. The direction of the treatment, then, involves the transformative tact with happiness to which I referred in my opening remarks. These may seem like narrow issues of clinical technique, but Lacan never stops underlining the broader ethical and political consequences intrinsic to the other psychoanalysis. For example, he discerns clearly the link between egopsychology and the exercise of a certain kind of power and authority. Its theoretical framework implies an insight into the nature of reality on the analyst’s part that the patient needs to learn from. Therapy can then be modelled along didactic lines as a kind of re-education, with the analyst teaching the patient about what reality is: ‘They gauge the patient’s defection from it [this reality] using the authoritarian principle which has been used by educators since time immemorial’ (2006a: 493), namely that their own teachers taught them about this reality, so it must be true. Imagining a ‘good’ therapeutic outcome as ‘identification with’ or ‘introjection of’ the ‘healthy part of the analyst’s ego’ stems from this same assumption of superior insight into reality. And yet, for Lacan, reality is itself an imaginary category: our experience of reality, he argues, is constructed using fantasy coordinates of what the ego would like to be in the eyes of the Other. This self-centred take on ‘reality’ is a common enough condition, of course, but it becomes a serious ethical

Complicating the happy cure 185 problem in an analyst who ends up imposing it onto the patient, especially when this imposition is raised to an analytic principle by a whole training school. Lacan does not pull any punches in targeting what he perceives to be the truly narcissistic self-authorization at work in the schools of ego-psychology across the pond: A team of egos [in English]  .  .  . offers itself to Americans to guide them towards happiness [in English], without upsetting the autonomies, whether egoistic or not, that pave with their nonconflictual spheres the American [in English] way of getting there. (2006a: 494) The use of English in the original French text here indicates the perceived effects on psychoanalytic theory of an Anglophone cultural and philosophical (empiricist, pragmatist) context. This could certainly be read as European snobbery on Lacan’s part, and it would be hard to deny that something of the sort is at play, yet he does take the time to detail the consequences of the distortions of Freudian doctrine of which he believes ego-psychology to be guilty. From his insistence that ‘reality’ is an imaginary lure, it follows that the pseudoDarwinian notion of adaptation to reality, by which Freud himself was arguably tempted at times, should have no place in psychoanalytic theory or practice. On the contrary, Lacan says that the ego is ‘only too well adapted to [this reality]’ (2006a: 498), meaning that it is already thoroughly alienated in the imaginary. In analysis, ‘what is at stake is something altogether different than the relations between the ego and the world’ (2006a: 499). Moreover, because the notion of adaptation lends itself to the explanatory frameworks that define developmental psychology, Lacan is also critical of the ‘geneticism’ common in the other psychoanalysis. Geneticism refers to the latter’s tendency to appeal to developmental stages in offering causal explanations of psychopathologies, as if Freud’s psychosexual phases (oral, anal, phallic, etc.) could be reduced to the more or less successful unfolding of an organism’s nature. Notwithstanding the scientific credibility gained from this supposed overlap, psychoanalytic ‘geneticism’ has ultimately been very damaging. Lacan does not discuss it, but an illustrative example would be Bruno Bettelheim’s incautious postulation of ‘refrigerator mothers’ in the pathogenesis of autism, as if ‘bad parenting’ at a crucial developmental stage were the underlying problem. As well as crude mother blaming with dreadful consequences for parents caught up in this discourse, this has the even more pernicious effect of denying the autistic child any subjectivity of their own.4 In ‘Direction of the Treatment’, Lacan expresses his disappointment that this intersection between ‘geneticism’ and developmental psychology has not led to a ‘fruitful critique of the relations between development and the obviously more-complex structures Freud introduced’ (2006a: 504). Elsewhere, he draws on these ‘more-complex structures’ to develop a recursive model of psychic causality, thereby combatting the simplistic model inherent in the developmental perspective (Lacan 2006d). Each of these interventions goes a long way towards disentangling psychoanalysis from the happy ego conceived in American ego-psychology. However, it

186  Colin Wright is also noticeable in ‘Direction of the Treatment’ that on the specific issue of happiness, Lacan retains a rather nuanced position: people imagine that a psychoanalyst should be a happy man. Indeed, is it not happiness that people ask him for, and how could he give it, commonsense asks, if he does not have a bit of it himself? It is a fact that we do not proclaim our incompetence to promise happiness in an era in which the question of how to gauge it has become so ­complicated  – in the first place, because happiness, as Saint-Just said, has become a political factor. (2006a: 513) Imaginary though it might be, it seems the analyst would be unwise to dismiss the question of (un)happiness that leads someone to seek analysis in the first place: it is this nuanced pragmatism with the demand for happiness that I believe offers useful lessons for critical happiness studies.

Furor sanandi: the cure sickness A related lesson can be drawn from Lacan’s careful separation of psychoanalytic practice from dominant paradigms of medical cure. As health is increasingly framed in terms of economic productivity, risk assessment and something akin to customer satisfaction today, this positioning becomes more and more important (Polzer and Power 2016). The question of what a psychoanalytic ‘cure’ is has long been a pressing one. During a debate about the requirements of a psychoanalytic training sparked by American analysts who insisted that a full medical degree ought be a precondition, Freud argued in ‘Questions of Lay Analysis’ that psychoanalysis must not belong solely in the hands of the medical sciences: he stressed instead the value of a broad knowledge of the arts and humanities, including literature and the visual and plastic arts (Freud 2001). At stake in this debate was the disease-model of cure, which enjoyed the scientific credibility of the biological and health sciences but which was totally inadequate for conceptualizing the psyche. It is clear from his recommendation of a literary training for the would-be analyst that, in a ‘Lacanian’ way, Freud considered the psyche in symbolic rather than organic terms: the psychoanalytic symptom is not like a virus that one can catch, and cure, if such there is, is not like a vaccination. In several later papers on technique, Freud insisted in the same way that there is a ‘navel’ of a dream that permanently resists interpretation, so the psychoanalytic ‘cure’ encounters an ineradicable limit in what he called the bedrock of castration (ibid.). Castration cannot be cured. Indeed, Freud warned of the dangers of the opposite assertion, terming it a furor sanandi, a kind of fury or rage to heal that can stymy analytic work. Now that in the era of quick-fix cognitive behavioural therapy, ‘cure’ often means little more than getting back into the workforce, Freud’s warnings about furor sanandi take on a decidedly political relevance. This is brilliantly captured in the title of

Complicating the happy cure 187 Cederström and Spicer’s book The Wellness Syndrome (2015), and it should be contextualized in relation to neoliberalism and the health effects of austerity politics (Schrecker and Bambra 2015). Lacan’s own work echoes these Freudian debates. The original French title of ‘Direction of the Treatment’ is actually ‘La direction de la cure’ (my emphasis), and the broader psychoanalytic literature in French tends to use this term, whereas, for reasons that warrant further investigation, English texts generally use treatment. A year or so after ‘La direction de la cure’ was published, however, Lacan took up again the problematic overlap between the notion of cure and prevailing ideas of happiness in his seventh seminar, The Ethics of Psychoanalysis (Lacan 2007). This rich reflection on Aristotle, the Stoic tradition, Antigone but also the Marquis de Sade, Kant, and Jeremy Bentham’s utilitarianism is centred on the classical question of the good and its relation to pleasure, making it an extremely relevant source for critical approaches to happiness. We find there the same reference to Saint-Just’s quip mentioned earlier, but Lacan provides a deeper historical context that links the modern demand for happiness to the radical egalitarianism of the French Revolution. At the height of the Ancien Régime, feudal subservience, monarchical absolutism, and the Church’s theological justification for deferring bliss until the hereafter combined to prevent worldly happiness becoming an existential question as such. The revolution in which Saint-Just participated changed all that, but not without ambivalent consequences. For example, Lacan seems to see Benthamite utilitarianism as a nullifying response to the revolutionary dimensions of the demand for happiness, transforming the latter into the top-down administration of aggregated pleasures organized around a notional average (the famous ‘greatest good for the greatest number’). Some see happiness studies as an updated utilitarianism (Veenhoven 2010), and the role of happiness and wellbeing indexes in health and social policy supports this (Bok 2010). It is already for these reasons that Lacan, in The Ethics of Psychoanalysis, calls happiness a bourgeois ideology (Lacan 2007: 359), which analysts must have nothing whatsoever to do with. Towards the end of the 1960s, Lacan is making similar points, but with a renewed awareness, post-Kinsey report and after the Sexual Revolution, that the notion of the happy cure has been sexualized, paradoxically through a truly perverted reading of Freud. In My Teaching, a text that brings together three lectures delivered during 1967 – the year of the summer of love that preceded the outburst of revolutionary desire in May 1968 – he attacks ‘Freud-lite’: Sexuality is something much more public. In truth, I do not think that psychoanalysis had much to do with that. Well, let’s argue that if psychoanalysis did have something to do with that, and that is precisely what I am saying, then this is not really psychoanalysis. (Lacan 2008b: 18) He follows this attempt to distance psychoanalysis from what is being done in its name with a series of puns that work only in French. He begins by arguing that

188  Colin Wright ‘Sa vie sexuelle’, their sexual life – the centrepiece of a certain countercultural inflection of the other psychoanalysis – should be written ‘using a special orthography’ so that it reads ‘ça vice sexuelle’, ‘this sexual vice’. Although more or less homophonous, this foregrounds the deeply unfashionable idea that there is some link between sexuality and vice. However, it is crucial that we do not imagine Lacan is here being a reactionary and calling for a return to Victorian morality. On the contrary, the vice referred to has nothing to do with the act of sex itself but rather with appealing to the image of sex and sexuality as a new version of the ‘happy cure’, a new realm of nonconflictual harmony and non-repressive expression. Lacan is not convinced by the equation of ‘free love’ with the supposedly untrammelled ‘joy of sex’ and is thus unimpressed by the model of cure tailored to such ideas: you have to ask yourself if the ideal end of the psychoanalytic cure really is to get some gentlemen to earn a bit more money than before and, when it comes to his sex life, to supplement the moderate help he asks from his conjugal partner with the help he gets from his secretary. (Lacan 2008b: 20) Still targeting the ego-psychologists, he directly addresses Franz Alexander of the Chicago School, noting the huge effort of theoretical revisionism it took him to ‘inaugurate this extravagant therapeutic fashion’ (Lacan 2008b: 21), which promises that ‘when the ego is strong and at peace, when the obsession with tits and bums has signed its little peace treaty with the superego . . . everything is fine’ (2008b: 20). This notion of psychoanalytic cure as sexual healing is in total contrast to Lacan’s assertion that ‘sexuality makes a hole in truth’ (2008b: 21), meaning, among other things, that the real of sex is akin to Freud’s ‘bedrock of castration’. This is what the last in the series of puns in this talk is getting at: following the logic of the signifier, Lacan gets to the more or less nonsensical ‘ça visse sexuelle’ (2008b: 18), which might be rendered as ‘it screws’. Screwing doesn’t fill a hole or compensate for a lack; it makes a hole, a real, which everybody has to find a singular way of dealing with. By the 1973 interview transcribed as Télévision, Lacan is even more circumspect about the notion of cure, primarily because it has become entangled in psychotherapeutic ideas that are in turn contaminated by the American pursuit of happiness. Once again, he does not dismiss the notion of cure, but he is careful with it: ‘The cure’, he argues, ‘is a demand that originates in the voice of the sufferer, of someone who suffers from his body or his thought’ (Lacan 1990: 7). As in ‘Direction of the Treatment’, this situates the cure not in a disease-model but in the patient’s demand, as a means of articulating their suffering. To push this novel understanding of cure further, Lacan then reflects on the differences between psychoanalysis and psychotherapy. This has become important precisely because ‘[t]hese days there is no psychotherapy that is not expected to be “psychoanalytically inspired” ’ (Lacan 1990: 7). He refuses the usual lazy differentiator, namely the use of the couch in psychoanalysis and its absence in psychotherapy. Since a

Complicating the happy cure 189 bit of furniture does not seem to offer a robust criterion, he makes a deeper distinction pertaining to two different understandings of language. Psychotherapy, Lacan argues, emphasizes the side of language that facilitates meaning and what we imagine to be transparent ‘intersubjective communication’. After the Sexual Revolution and in the wake of a certain reading of Freud that Lacan terms sexo-leftism (1990: 31), sex has become a kind of transcendental meaning, the meaning behind all others, so that a pseudo-Freudian mode of psychotherapy ‘pours out a flood of meaning to float the sexual boat’ (1990: 8). And yet this focus on meaning is ultimately an imaginary phenomenon: ‘not that it doesn’t do some good, but it’s a good that’s a return to what’s worse’ (1990: 8). By contrast, psychoanalysis emphasizes that ‘meaning . . . acts as speech’s screen’ (1990: 8), which is to say that it is where meaning fails, in slips of the tongue or dreams or symptoms, that the screen of meaning falls and the unconscious is seen or heard to speak. Faithful to Saussure, then, Lacan argues that ‘to the side of meaning the study of language opposes the side of the sign’ (1990: 8). Rooted in clinical practice and thus speech, psychoanalysis offers not the cure for a disease per se but an exit from the interminable imaginary labyrinth of happiness as the false promise of both a final meaning and of the sexualized commodity’s illusory claim – ­‘satisfaction guaranteed’. As Lacan had already argued in his seventeenth seminar, ‘it is only the phallus that is happy – not the bearer of said’ (Lacan 2008a: 73).

Conclusion: the politics of the subject and the symptom At the beginning of this chapter, I pointed out that critical approaches to happiness studies have tended to reduce psychoanalysis either to a narrative of its exclusion in the rise of positive psychology or to a central component of the psy-disciplines that specialize in a neoliberal form of individuation. However, by demonstrating that clinical psychoanalysis, and the theory arising from it, is in fact reducible to neither of these roles, I have made the case for the pertinence of psychoanalytic perspectives, especially Lacanian ones, for this emerging field of critical happiness studies. Allow me, in closing, to briefly enumerate some of the potential gains of using psychoanalysis as a critical theoretical framework. First, in revisiting the complex schisms in the international psychoanalytic movement, one gets a sense of the stakes in the commodification of Freud’s ideas. Simplifying enormously, it is possible to discern two potential models of the subject. On the one hand, we have the truly Freudian subject, which, far from coinciding with the socialized ego, constitutes a kind of singular excess, a remainder left outside of ‘discourse’ understood in a Foucauldian manner. On the other hand, we can perceive a subject that is essentially identical with a resilient ego deemed to be well adapted to its reality and fully entitled to pursue its market-based right to happiness. As Binkley (2014) clearly shows, this ego, as the supposed apex of individualism and self-identity, is in fact fundamentally empty, a hollow that offers little more than a plastic and malleable receptacle for the demands of today’s Other, the market. Second, as well as exposing the genealogical origins of this hollow subject in the neo-Freudian wave of ego-psychology, psychoanalysis helps us to focus on

190  Colin Wright the persistence of the truly Freudian subject today, the divided subject who is made unhappy by the impossible demand to be happy in this new superegoic way. Third, some dialogue with clinical psychoanalysis allows critical happiness studies to push beyond the discourse of happiness and wellbeing in order to engage with their subjective effects, including the well-documented rise of what Lacanians call the new symptoms: depression, anxiety, addiction, and eating disorders. After all, one of the most pernicious effects of the new discourse of happiness is its all-encompassing logic: indexing everyone somewhere on a continuum of happiness effectively eliminates the right to unhappiness, precisely as it enjoins individuals to be entrepreneurs of their own wellbeing. Accentuating the positive really does mean eliminating the negative. Clinical psychoanalysis, therefore, facilitates the attunement of critical happiness studies to the politics of the unhappy subject. Fourth and finally, I believe that critical happiness studies stands to gain from an engagement with that tact with happiness I have discerned in Lacan’s recommendations for the ‘direction of the treatment’ (and in my own practice as an analyst): the signifier ‘critical’, with which this new field intends to distinguish itself, can perhaps move beyond ideology critique and towards the transformative creativity of the analytic experience itself . . . without, of course, the promise of happy endings.

Notes 1 Briefly, university discourse is defined by Lacan as a form of the social link that situates knowledge, often technical, disembodied knowledge, in the place of mastery once occupied by more vertical modes of traditional authority. 2 Illouz has since developed this argument further (see Illouz 2013), effectively pitting sociology against psychoanalysis, or at least a certain version of it, as an explanatory framework for difficulties in love. 3 Marcuse’s critique of the neo-Freudians is remarkably perceptive but also problematic in its own ways. Rather like Adorno, he much prefers psychoanalytic theory to its clinical application, viewing the latter as intrinsically normative. 4 As some of the work with autistic subjects undertaken by Lacanian analysts demonstrates, psychoanalysis must proceed the other way, identifying and supporting what of a subject is already there precisely where other orientations would see only the ‘disorder’ (see Maleval 2009).

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Index

absorption and happiness 49–50 Action for Happiness 55, 58 Adorno, Theodor W. 2, 11, 24, 48–49, 60–61, 173 advocacy for happiness, logic of 86–88 aesthetic notion of happiness 136–142 agency and happiness 112–113 Ahmed, Sarah 3, 31, 50, 111 ambivalence, Bauman on 165 Arendt, Hannah 4, 163 Aristotle 4, 26, 89, 136, 140, 141, 147 austerity and happiness 152–153 authenticity: awakening narratives and 119; of emotions 116; happiness and 27–28, 33; performance and 39–41; social norms and rules and 41–42 awakening narratives 119 Bauman, Zygmunt: ‘Art of Life’ 172–173; on colonization of future 45; critiques of 173–174; on disenchantment and rationalization of self 164–169; on freedom and security 169–174; on individual incompleteness 43; Legislators and Interpreters 168; liquidity thesis of 169–170; Liquid Love 166; Liquid Modernity 169, 171–172; on modernity 162; Modernity and Ambivalence 165; Modernity and Holocaust 168–169; Postmodernity and Its Discontents 171; on pursuit of happiness 35–36, 44; themes of works of 162–163; Wasted Lives 167 Beck, Ulrich 8, 169, 172 Bellah, Robert 102 Benhabib, Seyla 166 Bentham, Jeremy 5, 90; see also utilitarianism Bettelheim, Bruno 185

Beveridge, William 93 Bierce, Ambrose 24 Binkley, Sam 8, 35, 177, 179, 180, 189 biographical approach to social happiness 145–146 biopolitics, as concept 179–180 biopower and happiness 88–90 blasé attitude 164, 166, 169 Boltanski, Luc 9, 37 Bourdieu, Pierre 40, 147, 153 Brinkmann, Svend 105–106 Bruckner, Pascal 2, 32, 33, 43, 101 Butler, Judith 11 Cabanas, Edgar 103, 112 Callinicos, Alex 9 Cameron, David 87 capitalism, new spirit of 9 catchphrases about happiness 24 Cederström, Carl 7, 103, 104, 149, 150, 187 Chiapello, Eve 9, 37 choice, happiness as 26, 29, 100, 103, 111, 135 Christianity and happiness 27–28 churches and positive thinking 101–102 Colebrook, C. 4–5 collectivism and happiness 106 comprehensive soldier fitness initiative 72 consciousness, transitive and intransitive states of 51–52 consciousness of wellbeing 153, 155, 158–159 constructivism 56–59 consumerism 101, 134, 168 consumerist notions of happiness 144–145, 147 contagion of negative emotions 116–118, 124 contemporary society, defining 8 contentment 4, 99–100, 112

194 Index control of uncontainable, happiness as 43–45 corporations: happiness and 29–31, 103, 149–150; positive thinking and 101 Craib, Ian 105–106, 107 crisis, pervasive sense of 7–8 critique: functions of 11; of happiness discourse 131–132; of happiness industry 147, 148–151; of happiness/ wellbeing 144–145; invitation to 10–12 culturalist tradition, ideology in 37 cultural practice, happiness as 158 Davies, William 1–2, 7, 103, 150, 155; The Happiness Industry 131, 132, 133, 134–135, 179 dehumanization of population 164, 165–166, 167 depression: age of 10; stigma of 103 de Sade, Marquis 27 detectivism 56–58 Dewey, John 141 Diener, Ed 69 discipline, society of 38 disenchantment: process of 133–134; rationalization of self and 164–169 ‘doing’ happiness 99–101 Durkheim, Emile 164 Easterlin, Gary, and Easterlin paradox 9 economic restructuring, wellbeing in relation to 153–155 economics: discipline of, and objectivity 90–91; indicators of, and happiness 9; mismatch between habitus and structures of opportunity 153–155; subjective accounts of utility in 92–93 Edgeworth, Francis 90 ego-psychology 181–182, 183–185 Ehrenreich, Barbara 101, 102, 104, 106, 135 elements of concept of happiness 49–52 Emerson, Ralph Waldo 103 emotional capital 124 emotional capitalism 28, 57, 111–112, 177, 180–181 emotional labour 57, 58–59, 99 emotions: ambivalent 73; controlling and managing 115–118; expressed vs. experienced 105; information provided by 78; as normal 104–105; positive psychology approach to 69–70, 72–75; as relational 111; in social life 112–113

empathy and positive emotionality 74 employment see work engagement in world and happiness 49–50 enjoyment and happiness 28–29, 33 Enlightenment 2, 26, 27, 101, 102, 136, 163 Epicureans, happiness fantasy of 26–27 Esaiasson, P. 7 ethical notion of happiness 132, 136–142 ethics, Bauman on 163–164 eudaimonia/eudeamonia 4, 25–26, 52, 89, 139, 146 evolutionary perspective on happiness 85–86 fantasies, happiness as see moralistic fantasies, happiness as flourishing 52, 68; see also functionality; wellbeing flow 49–50, 51–52 Foresight report on mental capital and wellbeing 55, 57–58 forms of happiness, Aristotle on 4 fortune and happiness 25–26 Foucault, Michel 10, 38, 89–90, 99–100, 179, 180 frameworks of happiness, as inescapable 132–136 framing of happiness: critique of 125; as ideal 112; as internal process 111, 113–114; therapeutic and self-help 114, 120, 123–124 Frankfurt, H. 59 Fredrickson, Barbara 68, 69–70 freedom: Bauman on 169–174; government and protection of 88; happiness ideology and 36; in performance society 42–43, 45 Freud, Sigmund: on being human 33; Civilization and Its Discontents 171, 182; on furor sanandi 186–187; on happiness 29, 163; Illouz on 177; ‘Questions of Lay Analysis’ 186; Reich and 28; Seligman on 177; see also psychoanalysis functionality: correspondence between happiness and 68; positivity as new functionality 69–72; scientific discourse of happiness as hijacking language of 68, 75–77 Furedi, Frank 149, 155 furor sanandi 186–187 future and happiness ideology 44–45

Index  195 gambling and happiness 31–32 geneticism, Lacan on 185 Giddens, Anthony 169, 172 Goffman, Erving 99, 105 good life vs. right life 136–142 governments: Bentham on 5; collection of data on wellbeing by 98; happiness maximization and 87–88 gross national happiness index 9 habitus, wellbeing in relation to 153–155 Haidt, Jonathan 179 Hartman, Heinz 181 healthy narcissism, Kohut on 182 hedonia 4 hedonic treadmill effect 159n5 Herodotus 25–26 Hochschild, Arlie Russell 57, 99, 105 Honneth, Axel 40, 41, 48, 56, 58–59 hope, happiness industry as selling 114 human-made selves 39 human potential movement 30 humiliation, consequences of 167 Huxley, Aldous 2, 24 hysteresis 153–155 ideal, promotion of happiness as 112 identity, theories of 172–173 ideology, happiness as: in neoliberal societies 67; overview 35–36; potential/ pursuit of 36–38; problematic aspects of 43–45; social norms and rules supporting 41–43; societal context for spread of 38–41 illness and positive thinking 102 Illouz, Eva: Cold Intimacies 180–181; on consumerism 155; on dating services 150; on emotional capitalism 28, 57, 111–112, 177; on emotions and personhood 113 imperative for happiness: conundrum of 106; implications of 106–107; overview 101–106; resources for 110 imperative for happy realism 108 incompleteness of self, permanent sense of 76 individualism and happiness 102–103, 106 individualized existence, limits of 118–120 infrastructure, ideology as 37 injustice: anger and 73–74; happiness imperative and 107–108; hatred and 74–75 institutionalization of happiness 2, 8–9

instrumental approach to relationships 48, 53, 55–59, 111, 122–123, 125 internalization of demands of performance society 41–43 intransitive states of consciousness 51–52 Jaeggi, Rahel 59, 60 James, William 91 Jevons, William Stanley 90 Johnson, Samuel 23 joy 4, 53 Kierkegaard, Søren 132, 137–138, 140 Kohut, Heinz 182 Kotchemidova, Christina 102, 106 Kriegel, Uriah 51 Lacan, Jacques: on being human 33; ‘The Direction of the Treatment’ 183–184, 185–186, 187; on ego and ego-psychology 181, 183–186, 188; The Ethics of Psychoanalysis 187; on fantasy 24; My Teaching 187–188; on other psychoanalysis 178; on psychoanalytic ‘cure’ 186–189; Télévision 188–189; themes in works of 182–183 late modern performance society see performance society Latour, Bruno 11 Layard, Richard 49, 55, 85, 89 Lear, Jonathan 26, 33 Leinberger, Paul 39–40 Lennon, John 23 libertarian approach to happiness 131 living right: happiness as normatively about 132; living well vs. 136–142 living well: case studies of 151–157; classical ideas on 148; factors in 158; living right vs. 136–142 Loewenstein, Rudolph 181 logic of advocacy for happiness 86–88 MacIntyre, Alasdair 138, 139 maintenance of wellbeing, as ongoing task 120–123 Marcuse, Herbert 54, 55–56, 182 Marx, Karl 164; The Critique of the Gotha Program 135 Marxist tradition: happiness in 135; ideology in 37 Maslow, A. 91 May, Todd 139 McEwan, Ian 50

196 Index McKenzie, Jordan 4 McMahon, Darrin M. 25, 26, 49, 50, 136, 147 measurement of happiness 5–7, 94, 107 meditation and mindfulness 98, 115–116 Mill, John Stuart 48, 50 modernity and happiness 162–164 moralistic fantasies, happiness as: authenticity and 27–28; enjoyment and 28–29; history of 25–27; overview 24–25, 31–32; recognizing and leaving behind 32–33; work and 29–31 morality, study of, Bauman on 164 moralization of happiness 84–85, 137 ‘moral mood,’ happiness as 111 Moskowitz, Eva 10 Nagel, Thomas 138–142 narrative conceptions of happiness 4–5, 52–54 natural selection, happiness as product of 84, 85 negative emotions: as contagious 116–117, 124; fallacious functional divide between positive emotions and 72–75; as in opposition to positive emotions 69–70; positive emotions as important to 104–105; as realistic 104 neo-Freudians 181 neoliberal societies, happiness ideology in 67, 178, 179 neo-utilitarianism 88, 89, 93–94 New Economics Foundation 55 Nietzsche, F. 53, 88, 133, 140 nihilistic doctrine of happiness 32–33 normative basis of happiness 99 ontic logos 133 opposition between positive and negative emotions 69–70 Paine, Thomas 93 paradox of happiness 48–49, 154 Pareto, Vilfredo 90 peer cultures and happiness 151–152 performance society: pursuit of happiness in 36, 37–38, 39–41, 45; social norms and rules in 41–43, 44–45 personal development workers 72 personal responsibility for happiness 100, 101, 102; see also choice, happiness as phenomenological approach to happiness 147

Plato 140 politics of happiness: biopower and 88–90; claims about 83; creation of 83–84; economics, utility, and 92–94; logic of advocacy for 86–88; moralization of happiness and 84–85; new utilitarianism and 94–95; subjectivity and 90–92 positive emotions: as emotional capital 124; fallacious functional divide between negative emotions and 72–75; negative emotions as important to 104–105; as in opposition to negative emotions 69–70 positive psychology (PP): approach to emotions of 69–70; Davies on 135; development of 9–10; emotional hierarchy institutionalized in 67–68; as fallacious functional divide between positive and negative emotions 72–75; happiness and 49, 67, 103; imperative for happiness and 107; neo-Freudianism and 182; overview 92; spread of 70–72; see also Seligman, Martin positive psychotherapy, assumptions of 71 possessive individualism 57, 60 posttraumatic growth (PTG) 71–72, 74 Potkay, Adam 4 PP see positive psychology private happiness 4 problems of living 114 promotion of happiness 6–7 psychoanalysis: clinical practice of 178; as critical framework 177–178, 189–190; fantasy and 25; nihilistic doctrine of happiness and 33; psychologization of 178–181; see also Lacan, Jacques psychology, discipline of, and objectivity 91–92 psytizen 112 PTG (posttraumatic growth) 71–72, 74 public happiness 4 quotes about happiness 24 Rand, Ayn 88 rationalization of self 164–169 Reich, Wilhelm 28–29 Reisman, David 39 religion and happiness imperative 108 repression, happiness beyond 28–29 research on happiness/wellbeing: biographical approach to 145–146; categorical differences in 163;

Index  197 conceptualization of happiness in 147–148; critiques of happiness industry and 148–151; disciplines conducting 1–2; hysteresis and 153–155; interviews in 146; methodological approaches of 151; methods of measurement in 5–7; narrow view of happiness in 158; scepticism of, in sociology 144–145, 148; of thirtysomethings 155–157; young people and living well 151–153 resilience training 74 resistance and critique, happiness as form of 7–10 Ricoeur, Paul 2, 37 right life vs. good life 136–142 Ritzer, George 166 Rose, Nikolas 100, 179 Rosa, Hartmut 173 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 23 Rubin, Gretchin 7 science of happiness: institutionalization of 77–78; limitations of 94–95; measurement and 5–7; social surveys and 84; teleological applicability of 94; validation of 83–84 Scitovsky, Tobor 92 second-order desires 138 security, Bauman on 169–174 self: incompleteness of, permanent sense of 76; rationalization of 164–169 self-actualization and happiness 30, 32–33 self-care 99–100, 101, 119, 120–123 self-evident, happiness as goal as 86 self-government, happiness as mode of 7 self-help industry and movement 98, 100, 107 self-love 59–61, 166–167 self-psychology 182, 183 self-reification: examples of 58–59; focus on happiness as producing 48; modes of 56–58; overview 61; as pure form of servitude 56 Seligman, Martin 9–10, 49, 52, 54, 69, 177 Sennett, Richard 42, 44, 166 sexuality, Lacan on 187–188 signal function of feelings 57 Simmel, Georg 164, 166, 169 Skinner, B. F. 91 social cohesion and emotions 74–75 social happiness 151

social investment, happiness as: emotional performance and 115–118; intersubjective life and 120–123; limits of individualized existence and 118–120; overview 114–115 social life: of happiness 120–125; happiness and 113–114; negative understanding of 112; role of emotions in 112–113 social norms: of expression and management of emotions 115–118; for pursuit of happiness 98–101; supporting happiness ideology 41–45 society: benefits of pursuit of happiness to 107–108; happiness as criterion in evaluation of 86–87 sociology: critiques of happiness industry within 148–151; as problem-based discipline 145–146; scepticism of research on wellbeing in 144–145, 148 Socrates 139 Sointu, Eve 8–9 Spicer, Andre 7, 103, 104, 149, 150, 187 Stoics, happiness fantasy of 27 strong evaluation 138 structures of feeling 8 subjectivist framework of happiness 134–135, 137, 142 subjectivity: in economics 92–93; of happiness 48, 83; measurement of 94; obliteration and rediscovery of 90–92 suffering: delegitimization of 76–77; nexus of happiness and 113–114, 116–117; potential for, as constant risk 112 superstructure, ideology as 37 surveys of wellbeing 146 Taylor, Charles 28, 40, 134, 136, 138, 141; Sources of the Self 132–133 tectonics of happiness 3–5 theories of happiness 23–24 therapeutic gospel of happiness 10 therapeutic turn 3–4 therapism 33 ‘therapy culture’ 100–101, 104, 145 thirtysomethings, wellbeing of 155–157 transcendence 9 Transcendentalism 103 transitive states of consciousness 51–52 truth and psychoanalysis 33 Tucker, Bruce 39–40 Turner, Bryan 8 turn to happiness 3

198 Index unhappiness 75–76, 100–101, 132 United Kingdom (UK): context of expectations of happiness in 104–106; wellbeing of young people in 152–153 United Nations (UN) 2, 3, 4 United States (US): context of expectations of cheerfulness in 102–103; neo-Freudians and ego-psychology in 181–182 utilitarianism 87, 137, 140, 187; see also neo-utilitarianism utility 92–94 utopia, Bauman on 169 Wagner, Peter 38 Watson, John B. 91 Wayne, John 44 wealth and happiness 92–93 Weber, Max 164, 166 wellbeing: conceptions of 52, 53–54; five ways to 54–56; positive psychology and 70–72; as social indicator 87; social

relationships and 151–153; surveys of 146; of thirtysomethings 155–157; see also flourishing; research on happiness/ wellbeing Whyte, William H. 38–39 Williams, B. 140, 141 Williams, Raymond 8 Winnicott, D. W. 60 work: Bauman on 167; happiness and 29–31; hysteresis and 153– 155; organization of, as socially institutionalized 38–39; precarious, and deindustrialization 152–153; scientific discourse of happiness in sphere of 75; time and identity as invested in 135 work-life balance 155–157 World Values Survey 107 young people: Bauman on 167–168; hysteresis and 153–155; living well and 151–153