Discussion
A proposal to classify happiness as a psychiatric disorder.
boesboes: 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
eouw0o83hf: 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.
adyashakti: it's Catch-22. the world is such a mess that if you're happy, you must be delusional.
AnimalMuppet: <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.
boesboes: It's more of a comment on the absurdity of what is and is not defined as a disorder i believe.
pogue: This reminds me of this old gem from The Onion:FDA Approves Depressant Drug For The Annoyingly Cheerful [video/2:06] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jd4tugPM83c
letharion: 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?)
thomascgalvin: I had to check if it was April Fool's Day
bensyverson: 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.
techblueberry: 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.
dullcrisp: Or was the nineties, so it would have been a “not!” or a “psych!”
genthree: “… on Opposite Day!”
lo_zamoyski: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhIdbRp6xeg
delichon: I need some advice on etiquette. Is the correct answer to "Good morning!" still "That's what the government wants you to believe." or is it now "You want me to contract a psychiatric disorder? What did I ever do to you?"
freedomben: I've always loved, "what's so morning about it?"What are other people's favorite humorous responses?
AnimalMuppet: 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.
8bitsrule: The way to happiness is to stop chasing it.Never mind all the ads ... It isn't 'out there somewhere'.
variaga: "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
joshmarlow: 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".
dharmach: Just because the word 'happy' is relatively young in the English/European language, a conclusion can not be made for the whole Humankind.
amarant: 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)
bensyverson: 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...
tim333: 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.
gotwaz: 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 all just some biology and chemistry doesnt really answer question about meaning. They will start searching for meaning elsewhere and marketing depts of corporate wonderland step in to fill the void.
bensyverson: 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.
joshmarlow: Very true - which is why this piece "that translations of others words into 'happy' are somewhat approximate." would be very interesting if accurate.
emsign: If you are too happy to work, you are sick. Makes sense.
skeledrew: "You look happy. What's wrong?" Ultimate conversation starter.
NoMoreNicksLeft: Thanks for the book recommendation.
rglover: "It's so, so sad, to be happy all the time." - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzZPxUiAKTo
alansaber: It's a balancing act no? Generally you certainly want to optimise to minimise unhappiness but not to the point of avoiding conflict/difficulty.
tss93: 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.
curiouscube: It seems to me that you're implicitly thinking of happiness/sadness as zero sum. That can be very limiting.
wang_li: 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.
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.
_doctor_love: > 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.
