Power - Understanding happiness : a critical review of positive psychology

UNDERSTANDING HAPPINESS

We all want to be happy, and there are plenty of people telling us how it can be achieved. The positive psychology movement, indeed, has established happiness as a scientific concept within everyones grasp. But is happiness really something we can actively aim for, or is it simply a by-product of how we live our lives more widely?

Dr Mick Power, Professor of Clinical Psychology and Director of Clinical Programmes at the National University of Singapore, provides a critical assessment of what happiness really means, and the evidence for how it can be increased. Arguing that negative emotions are as important to overall well-being as the sunnier sides of our disposition, the book examines many of the claims of the positive psychology movement, including the relationship between happiness and physical health, and argues that resilience, adaptability in the face of adversity, psychological flexibility, and a sense of generativity and creativity are far more achievable as life goals.

This is a book that will fascinate anyone interested in positive psychology, or anyone who has ever questioned the plethora of publications suggesting that blissful happiness is 10 easy steps away.

Mick Power is Professor of Clinical Psychology and Director of Clinical Programmes at the National University of Singapore. He has previously worked in universities and hospitals in London, Troms, Milan, Beijing, Edinburgh and Lisbon. For many years he has worked with the World Health Organization to develop a measure of quality of life, the WHOQOL, that is now in widespread use throughout the world.

First published 2016
by Routledge
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2016 Mick Power

The right of Mick Power to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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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
Power, Michael J., author.
Understanding happiness : a critical review of positive psychology / Mick Power.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Positive psychology. 2. HappinessPsychological aspects. I. Title.
BF204.6.P69 2016
150.1988dc23
2015023177

ISBN: 978-1-138-92923-4 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-138-92924-1 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-68133-7 (ebk)

Typeset in Bembo
by Swales & Willis Ltd, Exeter, Devon, UK

To Irina

Happiness is no laughing matter.

(Richard Whateley)

Happiness
Look! The shimmering pool of happiness
hovers always on the roads horizon.
Like God and the Good and this book
its only there
to help us move forward together, so
do not suppose, dear reader, that you
can stay in any such place
anytime soon or ever, because happiness is
a place forever not here or there
in a time that has never been nor will come.
But look! its still there. So, onward, as Brummies say
better the expectant, hopeful, affectionate pose
treat the cycle of life like a cyclist
who only moves by balancing
and only by balancing, keeps moving.

(Mick Quille)

Let me start with a confession. I normally find books written about happiness and how to be happy extremely irritating. A rehash of some bland and obvious dos and donts, though I do like the quote from the Hungarian-born actress Zsa Zsa Gabor Ive been poor and Ive been rich, and Id rather be rich and unhappy than poor and unhappy. Notwithstanding Zsa Zsa, if I were to pick up this book in a bookshop and was suffering from amnesia so that I had forgotten writing it, there would be a risk of dropping it faster than a hot potato in case it was yet another illusion-filled Wizard of Pos guide to the Yellow Brick Road. So let me reassure sceptics like myself that this book is not another superficial rehash, but, instead, is designed to look behind the curtain and to look for the truth in philosophy, psychology, and the science of well-being and suffering at what we really should be aiming for in our lives.

Now friends are starting to get worried about me. In my previous book, Adieu to God, I gave up on god and the afterlife, and now in this book I am giving up on happiness. Surely you must be completely depressed and nihilistic without any of lifes props? they ask. On the contrary, I reply. Life has never felt better. Now I have a feeling of liberation because I have thrown off the shackles of all those strange beliefs that even as a child were no more convincing than any other fairytales. Letting go of the delusions leads to a feeling of freedom.

As a word, happiness has to be one of the most misused and misleading sequence of letters in the English language. It is simply the name for a brief emotion state that lasts for a few seconds or minutes and then disappears. It is one of a panoply of other such emotions, all of which play important functions, but none of which become ends in themselvesthe pursuit of happiness should sound as strange as the pursuit of guilt or the pursuit of anger, if they were to be posited as basic goals in life.

So this book is premised on a very simple proposalthat happiness has come to be used mistakenly as an end to be aimed for rather than being merely an ephemeral emotion. It is time to drop the illusions and delusions that are a consequence of such an impossible pursuit. Instead, we need to pursue our valued roles and goals, our relationships, and our hobbies in and of themselves. Meaningful work, connection through relationships and the occasional holiday in Italy go a long way to making life tolerable, and then dealing as best you can with the adversities that inevitably come at you. If your pursuits offer fleeting feelings of happiness, and of course many other emotions along the way, so be it. However, this proposal will not sit well with those who make their money from the happiness industrythose who attempt to market it, to bottle it, and to prescribe it. The American-led positive psychology movement will not be at all happy, especially when along the way I challenge some of their cherished proposals, such as criticising their claims about the supposed importance of optimism. However, it is important to note that the positive psychology movement is not just a one-coloured coat that simply promotes the pursuit of happiness, which it can be mistakenly portrayed as from the outside, but it is a coat of many colours and there are many points of commonality, especially in its consideration of the virtuous life.

When it comes to thanking my own family, friends and colleagues, perhaps I should start with my son Liam, a philosopher by training and a musician by trade, who, I hope, is soon to step into considerable musical success, and who frequently reminded me of how much us moderns are merely recycling Ancient Greek ideas. To colleagues, students and friends over many years for those many stimulating discussionsCharlie Sharp, Tim Dalgleish, Andy MacLeod, Eleanor Sutton (especially for Dragomirecka, Svetlana Akolzina, Olga Kishko, Miyako Tazaki, Yuantao Hao, Jiqian Fang, Don Bushnell, Marcelo Fleck, Neusa Sica da Rocha, Willem Kuyken, Ramona Lucas, Eduardo Chachamovich and Marianne Amir (who has sadly passed away). I must especially thank Martin Eisemann and his colleague Knut Waterloo for the many adventurous trips to Troms in Norway, where last winter I finally gazed in wonder at the Northern Lights.