A review of Martin Seligman’s Authentic Happiness (Random House 2002).
Expectations
I was very much looking forward to reading this book for a couple of reasons. I’m in favour of happiness and that think that authenticity is the path to it (though to give a better understanding of what I mean I tend to substitute other terms like ‘lasting satisfaction’ for “happiness”). I like the idea of a psychology that is about joy and health rather than focusing on our pains and troubles: and Martin Seligman is the main mover of a psychology that attempts this – it is called Positive Psychology. (Positive Psychology has seen strong growth in the last few years – there must be lots of people like me who want something like this.)
This is a book that I was hoping I could recommend unreservedly, but I can’t.
My Two Reservations.
I’m one of those people who like to dispense with the negative first so I can focus on the positive. If you only want the positives about this book (and there are many) then skip this section.
1. Newness
To my mind the first sentence in the book is wrong. It says,
For the last half century psychology has been consumed with a single topic only – mental illness – and has done fairly well with it. (p. xi)
Actually after the Second World War there was a whole clutch of therapies that emerged, often called the ‘Third Force’ therapies that insisted on personal agency and usually didn’t subscribe to the medical paradigm. So there has been much psychology done in the last fifty years that isn’t consumed with mental illness. Perhaps these therapies don’t fall within Marty’s idea of psychology: Marty was an academic lecturing on mental illness so perhaps he was caught up in that world. Even allowing for this there was much work done on this period in things like organisational psychology, psychology of education and psychology of teaching: none of which is about mental illness.
2. The Approach to Emotion
Marty dislikes determinist approaches to psychotherapy. With this I am wholly in agreement. He also dislikes what he calls the hydraulic or psychodynamic approach to emotion. I have problems with his presentation of this approach as well as his critique of it.
The hydraulic/psychodynamic approach he presents as emotions needing to be expressed or they get expressed in some other (usually negative) way. He says that in this approach,
Emotions are seen as forces inside a system closed by an impermeable membrane, like a balloon. (p. 68)
Well, some of the therapies that encourage the expression of emotion are decidedly relational – the see the person as a node among relationships and not an impermeable balloon at all.
He gives two instances: depression and anger.
He presents the invention of Beck’s cognitive therapy for depression as contradicting the hydraulic/psychodynamic approach to emotion. Cognitive therapy is an education in thinking differently about the past – as well as the present and future. Here are some sentences, part of his presentation of this, that I find troubling.
Tim [Beck] found that there was no problem getting depressed people to re-air their past wrongs and to dwell on them at length. The problem was that they often unravelled as they ventilated, and Tim could not find ways to ravel them up again. Occasionally this led to suicide attempts, some fatal. (p.69)
Firstly, it may be that Tim wasn’t a particularly good therapist. Marty (as he tells the story here) apparently didn’t go looking for other therapists who could ravel people up again. He may have found some. Secondly and more seriously: it is likely that cognitive therapists have had clients in their care commit suicide. Does this invalidate cognitive therapy? Thirdly, I have never met a psychodynamic therapist (or a cognitively influenced one come to that) who got a client to air past wrongs so they can “dwell on them at length”. With all the people I know – and from much writing in their schools of therapy – the purpose of ‘airing’ past trauma is so that they can finally move on from it. [Anyone who has felt better after talking something through with a friend will be familiar with a mild instance of this process.] The therapists and therapeutic schools I know do not encourage ‘airing’ (talking about) past problems but working them through – and it IS work. ‘Airing’ for me has a dismissive feel that is utterly inappropriate. Marty points out that cognitive therapy works as well as drugs – better for preventing relapse. This is true. He neglects to compare it with other therapies – for which there isn’t much evidence but it seems that it works about as well as the other therapies. [It is my view that what heals is the relationship – and so the different schools and methods aren’t necessarily a terribly useful way to do research, but that’s another story.]
Marty says that expressing anger leads to problems: that those people who are angry a lot tend to have more heart attacks not less (p.69-70). Much depends here on what expression means. For the psychodynamic/hydraulic therapist it usually means that the emotion is expressed until it is finished with. Someone who is angry all the time in this view is not expressing their anger but half- (or less) expressing it.
Marty believes that emotions don’t need to be expressed and left to themselves dissipate.
. . . emotions left to themselves will dissipate. Their energy seeps out through the membrane, and by ‘emotional osmosis’ the person returns in time to his or her baseline condition. Expressed and dwelt upon though, emotions multiply and imprison you in a vicious cycle of dealing fruitlessly with past wrongs. (p.70)
Firstly, what does it mean that to talk about emotions being “left to themselves”? When I experience an emotion it is as an impulse to action – a contraction of muscle (along perhaps with thoughts, memories and emotions). If Marty is advocating a quick expression of emotion that finishes with the situation then this is quite in line with the hydraulic/psychodynamic theory. If he means that consciously inhibiting emotional expression will lead to the feeling disappearing; then he needs to account for the times when we finally finish with a past incident and the emotion associated with it. Having inhibited an emotion in the past can lead to it staying around, not its gradual dissipation. Finally ‘expressed’ and ‘dwelt upon’ are quite different. As I said above the hydraulic/psychodynamic therapists and their theories do not encourage expression of emotion as a way of dwelling upon it – exactly the reverse: they encourage expression of emotion so that people stop dwelling on it, are freed of the past and able to live in the present. This is probably exactly what Marty wants.
If any reader has heard of any therapist who encourages the expression of emotion in order to dwell on it, then please provide their name in the comments (I doubt that there will be many – or any!).
I’ve taken a lot of space dealing with these matters because I wanted to be thorough and fair – not just give my opinion with backing it up. Now, on to the many positives.
The Positives
1. Marty writes well. He tells stories engagingly as a way of making his points. For a general readership this is an excellent way to write (I wish it were my skill) and he does it well.
2. Marty writes personally. The book is not cold and objective. Marty speaks about his experiences and how they have influenced him and the insights they have brought him. This is engaging and makes the points he is making memorable.
3. It is not simple hedonism. One of my worries about ‘happiness’ is that it is equated with getting as much of the goodies as you can for yourself and not worrying about anyone else. [Roughly speaking the classical economist’s way of looking at the world.] Thankfully this book does not recommend this. It provides solid research well presented that caring for others and altruism is more likely to lead to happiness than trying to get everything you can and walking over people to do it. The traditional virtues are an integral part of authentic happiness.
4. It doesn’t pretend that we just have to think happily and all will be well. In chapter four ‘Can You Make Yourself Lastingly Happier?’ Marty presents this formula: H = S + C + V. That is happiness is made up of the set range of your happiness (some people tend to be happier than others over the long term, and this tends not to alter much), plus your circumstances (some places are nicer to be than others) plus voluntary variables (what you choose to do). The acknowledgement of the realities or our temperaments and environments was great to see. And that there is something that we can do as well. This is a balanced approach that I’m very much in favour of – emphasising that we can do much but not minimising the role of our circumstances or who we are. I think this is excellent.
5. There is lots of good stuff on how to be happier. In brief:
To be satisfied with the past.
make a practice of gratitude, and,
find a way to forgive (or finish with) past wrongs and trauma
Being optimistic about the future.
to be more optimistic/hopeful means:
to see unpleasant events as having temporary causes and positive events as having permanent causes, and,
means being specific about unfortunate events and generalising positive events.
The way to achieve this is by arguing with yourself – to dispute the negative interpretation you have given to a past event. The process is: state the adversity, list your beliefs about it, give the consequences of your beliefs, dispute the beliefs, and enjoy the energisation you feel as a result.
Being happy in the present:
means savouring the pleasures (this is helped by: sharing with others, building a memory of the event, self-congratulation, focus on some elements and block others, become totally immersed in the experience), or being mindful of them; and,
the gratification of acting in accord with personal strengths and virtues. This is quite close to the advice of ‘follow your bliss’. There is a list of strengths (24) and virtues (6) provided. There is also a quiz for you to assess which are your main strengths.
This framework of authentic happiness is applied to the areas of work, love and child raising. This helps to ground the book and give specifics to use. There are lots of practical tips here – e.g. focusing on your partners strengths and learning to listen – especially about raising children: he gives eight ways to build positive emotion in children.
Overall Assessment
There is a ton of practical and useful advice in this book about living a happier life. It is solidly grounded accessible. There are exercises and quizzes, and lots of stories and examples given, so that it is easy to apply to your own circumstances.
This approach doesn’t value the ‘shadow’ part of us. It is fairly rational and management oriented in terms of its approach to life and ourselves. If you wish to dig deep into the ‘negative’ parts of you, this is not the book for you. Neither does it have a social critique: it is about being happier with the world as it is.
What this book does offer is a very practical approach to living a happier life that deals with the past, present and future; that acknowledges the place of pleasures, and includes our personal strengths and virtues. I think this is quite an achievement. Using this book could make a huge improvement to how happy you feel.
