The Business of Happiness

Positive psychology and self-help have led us to privatise suffering, removing it from a collective solution and placing its full weight on the individual.

Positive psychology is a current of psychology which concerns itself with the happiness of individuals. It aims to understand why some people are happy and others are not. It was founded by American psychologist Martin Seligman in 1998, at that time President of the influential American Psychological Association.

The main rhetoric behind positive psychology is optimism, conceptualised as the power of action individuals can tap into when they are convinced that bad things are temporary, limited and can be changed.

Self-help is an American current of thought that emerged in the 20th century. It advocates that individual can improve themselves (economically, intellectually, emotionally) by their own means. This often happens through consuming education material provided by self-help gurus and attending self-help groups, which foster a profitable industry.

Relevant criticisms can be opposed to both positive psychology and self-help. By turning happiness into an individual choice, it prevent to address the root cause of many (societal) sufferings.

Sociologist Eva Illouz coin this the privatisation of suffering. According to her, psychology fails to provide a suitable (political) language to understand and address the nature of this societal suffering.

And you, where do think your happiness and suffering are rooted?

Source: ARTE (Director). (2022). Le business du bonheur | ARTE. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JUljTvFbDA

References:

• Seligman, Martin (2011). Authentic Happiness. Nicholas Brealey Publishing.
• Illouz, Eva, Cabanas, Edgar (2018). Happycratie: How the Science of Happiness Controls our Lives. Premier Parallèle.
• Davies, William (2016). The Happiness Industry: How the Government and Big Business Sold Us Well-Being. Verso.
• Positive psychology. (2022). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_psychology
• Self-help. (2022). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-help