Happiness and the capture of subjectivity

Abstract

The happiness movement is part of a growing trend in developed capitalist societies of separating the experience of suffering and anxiety from its socio-economic context. In their recent book, Thrive: The Power of Evidence-Based Psychological Therapies, Layard and Clark emphasise the genetic roots of depression and anxiety, which they want to characterise as the mental ill-health of the individual, the primary source of unhappiness and a scandal of unrecognised and untreated disease burden in the UK. The author argues that taken out of context, happiness is a facile concept that is invalid as a common good and a goal of political policy. Far more familiar in modern capitalist societies is the marketing of happiness as the ever-elusive reward of continuous consumption. Separating the subjectivity of individual suffering from the social complexities of lived experience exposes us to new possibilities of neoliberal ideological capture – social management through the marketisation of suffering as consumer demand serviced by an industry of happiness and positive-thinking providers.

Keywords:

• happiness
• capitalism
• CBT
• neoliberalism
• subjectivity

Notes on contributor

Paul Atkinson is a Jungian psychotherapist in private practice in London. Political activism has flushed him out of his consulting room over the last few years, nicely timed to coincide with his state pension and the arrival of grandchildren. He is a member of the Alliance for Counselling and Psychotherapy and is currently helping to set up the Free Psychotherapy Network.

Notes

1. Not to be confused, of course, with Coca-Cola's ‘Happiness is Movement’ campaign in 2014 (http://www.coca-colacompany.com/videos/happiness-is-movement-ytbn3bc63pz38).

2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lqT_dPApj9U.

3. http://www.campaignlive.co.uk/news/1100698/.

4. http://www.spectrum-consulting.net/category/advertising. For an infinity of examples of happiness as sales pitch, search google images under ‘happiness advertising’.

5. See an NHS review of the issue at http://www.nhs.uk/news/2013/08august/pages/controversy-mental-health-diagnosis-and-treatment-dsm5.aspx.

6. See, for example, http://dxsummit.org/archives/2032.

7. http://b.3cdn.net/nefoundation/bb8366694aa033e578_vvm6bfv3t.pdf.

8. See, for example, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23290196.

9. David Harper argues a similar case regarding Action for Happiness in the Guardian newspaper: http://www.theguardian.com/society/2012/feb/21/sad-truth-action-for-happiness-movement.

10. http://www.instituteofhealthequity.org/projects/social-determinants-of-mental-health/social-determinants-of-mental-health-full-report.pdf.

11. http://www.instituteofhealthequity.org/projects/demographics-finance-and-policy-london-2011-15-effects-on-housing-employment-and-income-and-strategies-to-reduce-health-inequalities/the-impact-of-the-economic-downturn-and-policy-changes-on-health-inequalities-in-london-full-report.

12. http://www.apa.org/about/policy/poverty-resolution.aspx.

13. http://apt.rcpsych.org/content/10/3/216.full.

14. http://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/content/assets/PDF/publications/starting-today-background-paper-3.pdf.

15. Pagination from the Kindle edition.

16. http://www.madinamerica.com/2012/03/poverty-mental-illness-you-cant-have-one-without-the-other.