I recently had to write a short little paper on what two philosophers have said about happiness and how I think psychology can help people move towards being happier. It got me to thinking about a lot of things, including my own personal experiences in therapy, so I thought it might be good to share it here...

How best to pursue "happiness"? As contemporary philosopher Mark Kingwell aptly puts it in Better Living: In Pursuit of Happiness from Plato to Prozac, "We all think that we know what happiness is, or at least that we would like more of it. But the pursuit of happiness may be at once the simplest and most vexing of human endeavours." Once we have cracked the "magic code", how best the psychologist to help the process along? Perhaps a more important question: Is it even the psychologist's business to meddle in an issue of such cosmic proportion? I will draw on some of my own therapeutic experiences to illustrate how some psychologists have tried to help clients "achieve" happiness.

Plato had his own particular formulation of happiness. Happiness can come only from being just (and accepting that justice does not always lead to pleasure). The "just" person is the one in whom the three parts of the psyche—reason, the will, and the appetites—are in balance, such that each is able to perform its duty fully and without interference from the other. This is achieved when reason, in concert with will, controls the appetites. When this balance occurs, the individual is able to focus more readily on the intelligible world—wherein lies true knowledge—as opposed to the experiential world—which comprises mere representations of true reality. This true knowledge is called the Form of the Good. When one knows the Form of the Good, one is guided by a morality based on the truest knowledge. This just behaviour can be the only source of deep happiness (or at least neutrality). Because they are governed by the appetites and an empty, meaningless world of images, conjecture, and ignorance, all other behaviours are unjust and the source of the deepest unhappiness.

(It should be noted, however, that Plato felt this type of happiness is achieved by only a select few people, namely the philosopher kings of his time. Other people could come close to experiencing something like happiness so long as they followed their station in life and did what was expected of them in the social order. For Plato, following one's duties in life creates a just society, and only by living in a just society can non-philosophers hope to attain what is the next best thing to true happiness).

One of my first forays into psychotherapy brought me "head-on" with a therapist who was a true rationalist. My depression, my inability to complete schoolwork, and my vague sense of unhappiness was interpreted as my difficulty in balancing my deepest desires for personal connection and my rational faculties. A provocative attempt was made to "awaken" more of the reason within me. I was told to think more rationally and to consider that by staying in school while depressed and not achieving optimally, I was robbing another student of the opportunity to excel in my place. In essence, because I was so involved with my emotions, I was unable to see all perspectives on the situation and, thus, behaved somewhat "injustly". Instead of focussing on my depression, I should focus on ameliorating this injustice. While I know of several people who claim to have "found" happiness in such a therapeutic context, I did not.

For Roman statesman Marcus Aurelius, true happiness (or at least some modicum of peace or neutrality) arises under three major conditions: when we fully accept Nature, society, and ourselves; when we engage in complete self-absorption; and when we exercise our daily duty to others and to society. My reading of Aurelius leads me to consider his a "happiness by default"—one becomes happy when one is not subject to the pain that occurs in the absence of these conditions. When, for example, we refuse to accept nature and its events as they are, we needlessly expend energy and become upset upon realising that we cannot predict and control everything. When we focus our energies on the outside as opposed to the inside world, we fall victim to the disappointments inherent in empty, meaningless material goods, never-lasting corporeal pleasures, and false opinions. When we refrain from accepting the duties Nature demands of us, we interfere with its intended plans and potentially create conditions of disappointment and personal and social discord—potent sources of true unhappiness.

My second foray into psychotherapy brought me in contact with a "die hard" Rogerian therapist. This experience showed me that much of modern therapy is everything we thought it was not. Instead of getting clear-cut advice on how to achieve the ubiquitous happiness, I was told repeatedly that the answer lies only within myself—through deliberate solitude and "contemplation". Therapy sessions consisted primarily of encouragement and support in my journey inward. Although I never did "find" anything specific, I did achieve a contented (albeit not giddy) sense of what I term happiness in fully experiencing what I found inside—a wondrous, if not mysterious, part of the Natural order. Issues of acceptance and duty did not arise directly, but the implication in therapy was that by looking more within myself, I would attain a contentment that would make it easier to accept life and people as they are—and to shed the defences which interfered with my innate drive to be kind and dutiful to others. Needless to say, the prediction was correct and this therapy lasted longer than the first.

So where does this leave us? From my experiences, it seems the second "happiness philosophy" did me quite well. But is it the best for everyone? Both Plato and Marcus Aurelius—as well as Western society in general—use the word "happiness", leading one to believe that there is such a thing as happiness that can be understood and apprehended. There is some universal feeling so common to all of us that it deserves its own label. But what if this feeling does not exist? What if we have created the word "happiness" to describe a plethora of different feelings? Are any of us talking about the same thing? Worse, are we trying to create definitions that reify a purely linguistic term? Personally, I think there is a universal feeling so unique—so common to all of us—that we can call it "happiness".

However, noting that the above questions are still debatable, I do not think a psychologist does much respect to his client by claiming to know what happiness is and how to achieve it. What I think is more fruitful is helping the client attain the confidence and support needed to evaluate the nature of happiness by himself. If Marcus Aurelius is right, this self-absorptive activity will by itself lead to some sense of happiness. If he is wrong, then at least the psychologist has given the client the power to find his own truth and his own happiness.