A proposal to classify happiness as a psychiatric disorder (1992)
pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov155 points by wjSgoWPm5bWAhXB 7 hours ago
155 points by wjSgoWPm5bWAhXB 7 hours ago
Ha, this is fun. But there's a kernel of truth to it. The problem with American culture specifically is that it treats "happiness" as a goal, rather than a fleeting feeling that is probably better described with a more specific word (joy, accomplishment, excitement, satisfaction, contentment). Our culture leans on this so hard that people start to think there's something wrong with them if they're not feeling generalized happiness most of the time.
That's just not how life works.
A few years ago I read a claim that the word 'happy' is relatively young - ~500 years old - and that translations of others words into 'happy' are somewhat approximate.
My takeaway is that (presuming the argument is correct) that much of human striving is probably better described with specific words (as you suggested - joy, accomplishment, fulfillment, excitement, etc). For most of human history, most people probably didn't think "I want to be happy" but "I want to have a good partner", "I want a big family", "I want my crop to grow so I don't die."
I wonder how much unhappiness is caused by seeking a poorly-defined ideal of happiness.
The book was called "Power, Pleasure, and Profit: Insatiable Appetites from Machiavelli to Madison".
> My takeaway is that (presuming the argument is correct) that much of human striving is probably better described with specific words (as you suggested - joy, accomplishment, fulfillment, excitement, etc).
All those four words combined is something like the concept of eudaimonia that Aristotle describes in his Nicomachean Ethics:
I've not read Aristotle directly but translating eudaimonia was an example in the book that I mentioned. The argument was that eudaimonia is often translated as happiness but that doesn't make sense in contexts where we talk about a soldier dying experiencing eudaimonia (suggesting a loose translation).
You don't think it possible for some one to die happy?
No. It's certainly not a goal. And even if it can somehow happen, soneone could be resigned or drugged, it's different from something like "happy to die".
This question itself seems to be a perfect example of the point that the word is worse than meaningless. Worse because people use it like it has a useful meaning.
One can die in a state that has a lot of the qualities or features that overlap with other states that people call happy, but that doesn't make them equal or equivalent.
What emotion must people be feeling when they die then?
> the word is worse than meaningless
It seems as though you are redefining it to be meaningless, then projecting that onto everyone else. Is it not curious to you that everyone else takes no issue with its usage?
Oh, absolutely. 99.999% of human history has been "just want to survive another year."
Russ Harris has a great book about this called The Happiness Trap [0], which is an introduction to ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy)
[0]: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/76053/the-happiness...
Dunno. Traveling to less developed places parents still want the kids to be happy for a start. It's surprising in places without roads, internet, phones etc. how normal everything is.
It's normal for parents to want their kids to be happy… it's less normal for those kids to be "happy" all the time.
The word שמחה and conjugations appear in the Bible about 200 times, so we have a good idea of what it means in context. It means exactly what I perceive the noun Happiness and the adjective Happy to mean in English.
That's very interesting and is good evidence against the thesis - thanks for sharing!
Just because the word 'happy' is relatively young in the English/European language, a conclusion can not be made for the whole Humankind.
Very true - which is why this piece "that translations of others words into 'happy' are somewhat approximate." would be very interesting if accurate.
I suspect you would agree with this: https://theoatmeal.com/comics/unhappy
Even if feelings are temporary you can still have them more or less often. When somebody says they are happy, of course it does not mean they are experiencing bliss all the time; it means that the relative frequency of positive emotions is high and the relative frequency of negative emotions is low.
I think a lot of people assume it's not possible to be happy because their life circumstances are incompatible with it and they can't or won't change those circumstances. I think in the US at least, the things we want most and the things we strive for are not things that make us happy.
I have often felt conflicted about happiness and what we should strive for in our lives.
It is true that most people seem to think happiness is the ultimate goal for life. They say they just want to be happy, that they just want their kids to be happy. Often times, though, it seems almost circular in logic; any time you pushback against the idea of happiness or why being happy all the time isn’t always good, people will just say “oh, that isn’t REAL happiness” or “that actually is happiness!”
Often this is when I bring up hedonism and say, “well, if pure happiness is all that matters, why don’t we all just do heroin all the time? You will feel great!” Of course, they will say “well the high can’t last forever and eventually your life will suck and that is why it isn’t real happiness.
I think it is more than that, though. Imagine you could feel the best feeling you have had all the time, just sitting there. You could just lean back and feel good for as long as you want. Would you want that?
I think most people wouldn’t, and not just because we don’t think it is possible. It is more than that. We want to do hard things that make us work and that hurt a bit and frustrate us, because there is a sense of satisfaction when you persevere. We need to feel pain and sadness, to feel the fullest connection with others through the full range of emotions.
It is not easy to articulate exactly what we want, but it isn’t simply happiness.
> I have often felt conflicted about happiness and what we should strive for in our lives.
It's the striving itself that is the source of our suffering & dissatisfaction
The reason its hard to articulate what we want is we are conditioned to think of our life as a series of targets to hit, but that striving is where we suffer. Maybe you target wealth, then you look for happiness, then you look for meaning, and it doesn't end.
Life is like a fire, you don't ask the fire what its goal is.
> We want to do hard things that make us work and that hurt a bit and frustrate us, because there is a sense of satisfaction when you persevere.
Even with this, making satisfaction the goal will turn it into another struggle or commodity to be consumed. We like hard things because the intensity forces us to be present. The striving mind stops worrying about the future or the past and you are fully present with the task at hand.
Once you can get out of the way of yourself, you realize we don't actually want a better experience, we just want to stop being distracted from the one we're already having.
> It's the striving itself that is the source of our suffering & dissatisfaction
thewebguyd out here laying down some Noble Truths!
"Happiness comes in small doses folks. It's a cigarette butt, or a chocolate chip cookie or a five second orgasm. You come, you smoke the butt you eat the cookie you go to sleep wake up and go back to f---ing work the next morning, THAT'S IT! End of f---ing list!"
-Dennis Leary
"For truly to enjoy bodily warmth, some small part of you must be cold, for there is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself." -- Herman Melville.
He describing to enjoy the warmth of blankets on a freezing winter night, it is imperative the nose be exposed to the cold likely as a metaphor to enjoy "happiness" something is needed for contrast.
It's always fascinating to see how fundamental concepts of Buddhist teachings appear in different names, forms, and metaphors across cultures.
Dependent origination: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prat%C4%ABtyasamutp%C4%81da?wp...
While some ideas are more obvious than others I always wonder whether the same insights occurred independently (of each other -- excuse the poor choice of words), or if the ideas can all trace their roots back to the same teachings.
> I always wonder whether the same insights occurred independently
No. Authors, Henry David Thoreau in 1854 and here Melville in 1851, and others at the time in that region were very heavily influenced by Hindu scriptures especially the Bhagavad Gita. Hindu mythology was mentioned several times in Moby Dick including referring to the whale as the Fish Incarnation of Vishnu.
I love that part of Moby Dick, it's so perfectly true. I always sleep with my feet sticking out for this reason.
> The problem with American culture specifically is that it treats "happiness" as a goal, rather than a fleeting feeling that is probably better described with a more specific word (joy, accomplishment, excitement, satisfaction, contentment).
Does it really? The sentiment of your post is pretty widespread at this point. It's kind of like saying "our culture is so commercialized" but everyone will tell you they're sick of commercialism.
> Our culture leans on this so hard that people start to think there's something wrong with them if they're not feeling generalized happiness most of the time.
I don’t think this is true, unless you’re using ‘happiness’ to refer to euphoria or acute joy.
The happiness that is generally sought is more accurately described as a general lack of sadness or despair. Having a roof over your head, food on the table, a job to go to, decent health, and friends and family is what constitutes basic happiness. That is a good goal to work toward, in my opinion.
you can't experience Latino culture without thinking that they treat happiness as a goal, it's sort of like you're applying a Germanic/Protestant/Puritanical filter to Americans
also I don't think the more subtle distinctions between happiness and contentment is something people can be expected to maintain in their everyday speech at every moment. That's just not how language works.
Feels to me like this is good old "if a measure becomes a target, it stops being a good measure".
I.e. happiness is a good measure to identify other things in your life: If something makes you unhappy, address it, if something makes you happy, follow it. (Very simplified)
But if you make "maximizing happiness" the direct target without any context, you get drugs.
It's a balancing act no? Generally you certainly want to optimise to minimise unhappiness but not to the point of avoiding conflict/difficulty.
You could also say the same general thing for being goal-oriented instead of process-oriented for anything else.
More like modern marketing depts and marketing theory leaning on it. They have replaced what religions used to offer when people asked about purpose, meaning, transcendence or what is the point of my story? Just telling people this is all just some biology and chemistry doesnt really answer questions about meaning. They will start searching for meaning elsewhere and marketing depts of corporate wonderland step in to fill the void.
Trying to distinguish happiness from all those other feelings is like trying to separate depressed from all the negative things you feel during a day. Some words do not describe specific emotions, but instead indicate a general state which has all kinds of internal variation and magnitudes. A person who doesn't have much financial stress, their kid isn't having issues that require lots of problem solving from the parent, their job is fine, they are not arguing with their spouse regularly. They would say they are happy. Alternately one can have accomplishments , new PR at the gym, solved an issue at work, but still think of themselves as unhappy because they have things that they prioritize more highly that are not going well.
This reminds me so very much of that old American greeting: "Hey! How are you?" and then you don't give a shit about the actual answer, which must always be positive.
Having to explain to young children that people do this simply to say hello, that they aren't actually asking you your health or state, or anything really. Falls right in line with our need to smile ALL THE TIME.
I stand by statements made by my European friends: Americans are mostly full of shit, mostly liars, and ALWAYS are trying to sell you something.
Are we the Baddies? Yes, of fucking course we are.
After ROTFL, and checking is not 1st april, seems in the same line of: "life is a disease, sexually transmitted, with 100% lethal exitus".
More seriously (very little indeed) maybe the 'problem' is all those activities that need to create more and more new problems/disorders to justify all the work uppon, so what if psychiatry is a psychiatric disorder? regressum ad infinitum, take the red pill.
About happiness, Buddha, asked about the way to happines, say: happiness is not the destination, is the way.
The critique feels valid to me. There’s a tendency in modern psychology/media to pathologize the average human baseline: if you’re not consistently optimistic and thriving, something must be wrong with you, or at least you need to be in a pursuit of this.
But constant happiness isn’t realistic, it’s like a desire to be permanently high. From my own experience I’ve landed somewhere near the Buddhist framing: the healthy default is just calm and neutral, with happiness and sadness coming and going away.
Trying to force happiness as a permanent state seems like its own problem, which is kind of what Bentall is pointing at from the other direction.
> healthy default is just calm and neutral, with happiness and sadness coming and going away.
This is a very healthy attitude, and people often miss it. Every feeling/emotion/state of mind is impermanent. It will come and go on its own, its biology and there's nothing you can do about it. It's trying to "cling" to a specific state, forever, that leads to our own suffering. The moment you've move from "I feel happy" to "I hope this lasts forever" is where you will suffer. Just be a witness to the coming and going, you witness happiness occurring, you don't become happiness, and its the same for other feelings and states.
> There’s a tendency in modern psychology/media to pathologize the average human baseline
Is there though? I don't think modern psychology does. Where are these psychologists who don't think emotional ups and downs are a normal healthy part of life? Even in media it's often recognized that people being happy (or even just too tranquil) all the time, is wrong and creepy/unsettling. That said, it's absolutely true that advertisers are constantly pushing a narrative that you should be in an endless pursuit for what you don't have and that if you only buy what they want to sell you it will make you happier and improve your life.
It seems to me that you're implicitly thinking of happiness/sadness as zero sum. That can be very limiting.
Usually I don’t do math of sums, just let the happiness be and then fade or sadness or any other. Just grew to be ok with nothingness, cos I had a tendency of pushing towards sadness when I am not happy and then its like a pendulum and me riding it
I'm assuming this is some kind of jab at the general propensity of psychiatry to classify most things as disorders, rather than a serious proposal. If anything, I think the problem has gotten worse since this was published. (Then again, maybe happiness has also gotten more rare since 1992?)
We went from 3% on anti-depressants in 1992 to 13%. Lots more are trying to induce happiness without an external change of circumstance or internal perspective.
This reminds me of this old gem from The Onion:
FDA Approves Depressant Drug For The Annoyingly Cheerful [video/NSFW/2:06] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jd4tugPM83c
A similarly useful article:
More U.S. Children Being Diagnosed With Youthful Tendency Disorder https://theonion.com/more-u-s-children-being-diagnosed-with-...
I find the word "happy" is unfortunately overloaded and confusing - and in its confusion makes it hard to know how to achieve the state.
I think other languages have more shades for this much like eskimos have many words for snow.
For example in the Jewish tradition the word "nahas" is something like the satisfaction of watching the children you raised become excellent parents of their own.
Another word "simha" could be translated as "happy occasion" but really is only used for positive lifecycle events (birth, marriage, etc)
In modern English we would probably use "happy" for all these but it's unfortunate that we'd also use the same word for triviality like "I am happy jerking off in my basement"
The beauty of "nahas" and "simha" is they point us towards a sustainable and deeply meaningful way to be "happy" - to achieve significance in our lives that makes us feel good because things are deeply good.
"Happiness" does not act as a guidepost in the same way. I believe it actually comes from the same root as "happen" - a sort of vagarity you hope to stumble into but aren't sure how to work towards.
Don't get me started on the English word "love" lol.
> ...much like eskimos have many words for snow.
... which is a stereotyped myth, like most of what we were taught about indigenous peoples everywhere.
Turns out English has MANY more words for "stream of water on land" than Inuit has for snow. Inuit has multiple nuancing endings - but English has snow, snows, snowy, snowlike, and so one.
I need some advice on etiquette. Is the correct answer to
"Good morning!"
"That's what the government wants you to believe."
"You want me to contract a psychiatric disorder? What did I ever do to you?"I've always loved, "what's so morning about it?"
What are other people's favorite humorous responses?
Always a fan of Gandalf's response to Bilbo:
> "What do you mean?" he said. "Do you wish me a good morning, or mean that it is a good morning whether I want it or not; or that you feel good this morning; or that it is a morning to be good on?"
> What are other people's favorite humorous responses?
"For a given definition of 'morning'."
There's Eeyore: "If it is good. Which I doubt."
But I knew a guy who didn't answer with words. He would just growl until he'd had coffee.
That sounds like me. There's a 1:1 correlation between how many cups of coffee I've had and the number of languages I speak.
And like a true computer nerd, of course it's an unsigned integer, meaning if I drink too much coffee I'm back to grunting only (this time on the toilet)
I think the DSM 5 says a disorder must cause clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning.
Correct. But even that definition risks over pathologizing the human experience. It creates a distinction between a broken brain and a reasonable reaction to a broken environment.
DSM defines a disorder by how well an individual fits into the current economic and social system. Technically, if someone is so blissfully happy they stop showing up to their job, they would actually meet the criteria for a disorder.
Just like if someone lives in a high-crime area with little security they may have crippling anxiety. DSM would say they have a generalized anxiety disorder, but I would argue they don't, they are experiencing a reasonable reaction to a broken environment.
We are far too quick to jump to "this person isn't functioning in society, therefore something must be wrong with them" instead of doing the hard work of adapting our social and economic systems to be more inclusive of different types of human experiences.
Case in point, homosexuality used to be a sociopathic personality disorder, and pre-DSM we thought it was a mental illness causing enslaved people to want to escape slavery.
> We are far too quick to jump to "this person isn't functioning in society, therefore something must be wrong with them" instead of doing the hard work of adapting our social and economic systems to be more inclusive of different types of human experiences.
Careful saying things like that, someone might accuse you of being a socialist (slight /s)
> It is proposed that happiness be classified as a psychiatric disorder and be included in future editions of the major diagnostic manuals under the new name: major affective disorder, pleasant type. In a review of the relevant literature it is shown that happiness is statistically abnormal, consists of a discrete cluster of symptoms, is associated with a range of cognitive abnormalities, and probably reflects the abnormal functioning of the central nervous system. One possible objection to this proposal remains--that happiness is not negatively valued. However, this objection is dismissed as scientifically irrelevant.
Reading this I can't help but feel that the person who wrote it is a POS.
I'm guessing that it's just a joke, but I'll admit that it reads like something you'd expect from somebody who doesn't know the difference between "sad" and "depressed" and thinks that there's some vast conspiracy to medicate people for normal human emotions. I'd bet this is smugly shared all over facebook by ignorant people who think that things like depression or ADHD don't exist.
If I count on my fingers, just the ones I know the parents, I'd guess 7/10 kids in my neighbourhood have some sort of diagnosis or suspected diagnosis.
To be honest, I'm also starting to wonder if we aren't medicating people for normal human emotions.
What do the parents you know say when you tell them that they're medicating their children for normal human emotions? My guess is that they could give examples of things that aren't actually normal which caused them to seek out a professional in the first place.
In previous generations children with corrective lenses were rare, and kids used to fear being made fun of and being called "four eyes" for wearing glasses to school. Recently it's gotten a whole lot more common for kids, even toddlers, to wear glasses. It might be tempting to think that Big Eyeglass was treating people for normal human blurriness, but it's more likely that eye glasses, and eye care more generally, has gotten more accessible and that more kids getting the care they need and recent environmental factors are contributing to the increase in kids needing glasses (and needing them at younger and younger ages).
It's the same with mental health issues. We have increased awareness of mental health, reduced stigma around seeking and receiving treatment, improved treatments, a better understanding of various conditions and how to diagnose them, and recent environmental factors that may be exacerbating problems if not inducing them.
If this proposal was to add toxic positivity and optimism bias as a psychiatric disorder, I'd be on board with that.
Reminded of that episode of House where the lady with dormant syphillis had something like this.
I wonder are there any ways I can contract this without breaking marital vows
I really liked this paper. I think it's less of an outright joke that it's possible to squint your eyes and laugh that happiness could be a disorder, and more of shining a light on the psychopathological system that tends towards over-diagnosis and hyperfixation on those diagnoses.
"If our so-called scientific system were really objective and honest, it would include happiness as a disorder." I think this is the goal the paper is trying to expose, more than just making a joke about mapping a good feeling to a description of a bad feeling. Indeed, I think the last line of the paper gives it away - our current system is very incomplete and needs to be extended:
> Indeed, only a psychopathology that openly declares the relevance of values to classification could persist in excluding happiness from the psychiatric disorders.
What it exposes is that there are underlying methodological presuppositions that are hazardous.
If statistical frequency is our ultimate basis for normative behavior, then things like happiness can be pathologized. This is absurd, which means normativity cannot be decided by ubiquity or popular vote. You have to look to the objective nature of the thing.
This is another case where materialism utterly flops, because materialistic ontology - one that reduces all of reality to Cartesian res extensa - cannot account for the normative at all (among other things).
Happiness is a derivative of purpose. If someone optimizes their life strictly for happiness while deprioritizing purpose, they likely won't achieve either.
Pursuing a meaningful goal almost always requires enduring unpleasant phases and friction along the way.
Good news is that the government can offer free treatment.
"It's so, so sad, to be happy all the time." - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzZPxUiAKTo
The way to happiness is to stop chasing it.
Never mind all the ads ... It isn't 'out there somewhere'.
Yeah. I achieve happiness by not caring about anything too much. Nothing matters, ultimately. This is a universal truth. Once you internalize that, everything seems small. You can appreciate things more.
These days I enjoy just having the time to stare at the clouds for a few hours at a time.
I would honestly prefer to watch paint dry than going to work though.
The only thing I kind of want in my life is UBI because I hate being forced into the rat race.
I'm in a weird situation because I used to be a hustler software engineer/solo founder who would move countries at the drop of a hat (I.e. for opportunities) and I worked nights and weekends on side projects for like 15 years straight.
But now I don't care about anything. I'm just tired of striving. When you waste your life in the pursuit of a goal, eventually you build so many negative associations that you eventually don't want to work for anything anymore. I only like free stuff now. My idea of success now is getting stuff I didn't earn. I optimize for minimal effort.
I honestly feel more happiness when I get something for free.
happiness is very linked to unexpected surprises.
I personally have been experimenting what basically amounts to a Christian version of Bhakti Yoga [0]
basically "wow, thanks God/Jesus, this is wonderful, I love you, you're awesome, thanks for X, Y, Z, etc". If you can stay in that mood of gratitude and occasionally add in a lil "and if I could get an A or B that would be great, but no worries if not", and... in my belief system/experience, the desired outcome happens somewhat effortlessly :)
"You look happy. What's wrong?" Ultimate conversation starter.
If you are too happy to work, you are sick. Makes sense.
Ahh 1992. At the time he probably didn’t know he needed to add a /s or he’d be taken seriously in our delusional future.
Redundant as it is possible to be bipolar with light hypomania without depressive episodes. So its already covered.
Reminds me of https://thenewinquiry.com/book-of-lamentations/ edit: A review of the DSM as if it where a dystopian novel basically, makes some interesting observations/points
Overall happinesses and motivation and belief are signs of too high level dopamine.
Most business owner people have it. That's why they are often out of touch with random Joe.
They belive in success even if math is saying that's bias.
Form of pychosis
Hypomania is very irritating, and can actually mess up a person's life. It's a neurotic defense mechanism that's opposite to depression
Yes. Too much of any particular state of mind can be bad.
The best is to cultivate a state of equanimity. Stop grasping at both good and bad states.
Woosh
it's Catch-22. the world is such a mess that if you're happy, you must be delusional.
I'm not the world, I just live in it. It might be a mess, but that mess mostly doesn't affect me. The few ways in which it does can be effectively mitigated by anyone who puts in even the tiniest bit of effort.
For that matter, nothing much stops me from carving out my own little world where I can clean up what mess it is, and live there. But to do that I'd have to admit to myself that I can't change the greater world and even acknowledge that there's no real point in wanting that other than to chase high status among our monkey tribe.
> But to do that I'd have to admit to myself that I can't change the greater world
Do you though? Can't we believe that change is possible, but also choose not to act on it? Not saying that's right or wrong, just that it's possible.
hard disagree. I think you can be happy about some things and not about others, and it's not so black-and-white.
<checks calendar> Wait, this isn't April 1st!
Seriously, happiness is a psychiatric disorder? Rare, sure, but a disorder? That's the craziest thing I've heard since... well, since the Iran war, I guess, so not very long. Still, that's nuts. I cannot imagine the world view that it must take to look at happiness that way.
It's more of a comment on the absurdity of what is and is not defined as a disorder i believe.