I have a framed Dalai Lama quote in my office that reads: “If anything I said is useful to you, I’m glad. If not, don’t worry, just forget about it.” Please keep this great advice in mind as you explore what follows.
The website you are about to enter is about happiness and its pursuit. My goal in this project is to share the key points I have learned (so far) about the topic, over more than 30 years of practicing psychiatry.
During this time, I have come to realize that, fundamentally, there is only a single psychiatric diagnosis: ineffective pursuit of happiness. I have never seen a person who voluntarily sought the help of a psychiatrist for any other reason but the perception that their pursuit of happiness is not going as well as it might. (This point is underscored by a state called euphoric mania, a very serious psychiatric pathology. A central component of the disorder is patients’ irrational, if not delusional, conviction that their pursuit of happiness is proceeding stellarly; consistently, patients in a state of euphoric mania typically do all they can to avoid psychiatric intervention. It actually makes sense — who would want a (questionable) authority figure intervening in their pursuit of happiness when it feels as if it is going exceedingly well?)
Members of our species are primarily interested in two pursuits: survival and happiness (experiences that don’t pertain to one or the other are inconsequential and irrelevant to this work, if at all). By extension, our brains have two modes of operation: a survival mode and a ‘thrival’ mode (thanks for the term, LD). Thrival mode applies to the pursuit of happiness and is the focus of this work.
My clinical practice, and therefore this work, draws heavily on Buddhist psychology. The pairing of Western Psychiatry with Buddhist principles is less unlikely than it may sound. Psychiatrists have been studying the pursuit of happiness (whether they realize it or not) for a little over a hundred years. Buddhist thinkers have been at it for more than twenty-five hundred. Not tapping into that body of knowledge seems inexcusable.
The material is organized into three sections. The Definitions section offers a glossary of terms relevant to the discussion, defined with the precision their importance warrants. The Theory section examines the logic and laws that govern the pursuit of happiness. Both are freely available here. The Practice section, which translates the theory into a structured set of mental exercises, is available for purchase.
Over the years of my clinical practice, I developed a deep appreciation for the foundational medical ethics principle: “First, do no harm” (primum non nocere). It is a precious guideline and, as I discovered, following it is much more challenging than it may seem. I am confident that this work meets the challenge — I trust you will find it harmless; I hope you’ll find that it surpasses that bar.
[Sidebar: Here’s my attempt to bring the two traditions together in verse:
My Freudian Poem
The Id said, “I feel, therefore I am.”
The Ego said, “I think, therefore I am.”
The Super-ego said, “I am value-driven, therefore I am.”
And the Buddha smiled. ]