It’’s a funny thing, happiness. People refer to it as something they want, something missing, as if it could be secured if they only knew where to find it. Lack of it is blamed on past relationships and hope for it placed on future lovers. Desire for it becomes a restless quest. Yet over and again in therapy, it is clear that a hungry pursuit for the illusive state of happiness only ends in frustration and yet more unhappiness.
When I ask a man who’’s just turned 40 and wants to try psychotherapy to tell me about the disappointments he mentions, he reels off a list: a love affair that lost its zest; a work project ruined by a colleague; a holiday spoiled by the weather; a plan halted by ill health. All were potential routes to happiness. And it is this endless feeling of things being spoilt that makes him feel let down by life and unhappy.
He tells me that he had been a willful child. He was, he says, spoilt rotten by very loving parents. They had suffered much hardship in their own lives, and when hard work and good luck made them well off, they decided that he, their only son, would have all they had lacked, and more.
He had wanted for nothing. Yet this came with a cost. For having everything on a plate before he had even developed an appetite had robbed him of the chance to reach and struggle for something meaningful and of his very own. There had never been an empty space he had enjoyed working to fill. Little wonder he was unable to remain attached to anything or anyone after frustration set in. Working through difficulty simply hadn’’t ever been asked of him.
While hopefully a by-product of developing emotional maturity, happiness was not, I told him, a specific therapeutic aim. But therapy could offer the challenge to stay with, and so gradually understand, the meaning of his unhappiness, rather than bolting when the going got rough. The notion that we can uncover a meaning within our suffering supports the whole therapeutic venture. By working towards understanding the reasons for his disappointments, this man had the chance to begin reshaping his own life journey. This was unlikely to give him happiness as a "given constant", but could enable him to develop something far more important. As C. G. Jung, the founder of Analytical Psychology, said:" The principal aim of psychotherapy is not to transport the patient to an impossible state of happiness, but to help him acquire steadfastness and philosophic patience in the face of suffering. Life demands for its completion and fulfillment a balance between joy and sorrow."
The author argues that happiness is