I've been reading an article in The Atlantic What Makes Us Happy?  on a very interesting longitudinal study conducted at Harvard U on Adult Development.

The study in itself is very interesting, but the findings, as reported in this article, raised questions for me that are very congruent with some of my own struggles of adaptation at the moment.....

The author writes that the central question of the study
is not how much or how little trouble these men met, but rather precisely how—and to what effect—they responded to that trouble. His main interpretive lens has been the psychoanalytic metaphor of “adaptations,” or unconscious responses to pain, conflict, or uncertainty. Formalized by Anna Freud on the basis of her father’s work, adaptations (also called “defense mechanisms”) are unconscious thoughts and behaviors that you could say either shape or distort—depending on whether you approve or disapprove—a person’s reality.
.....
“immature” adaptations, which include acting out, passive aggression, hypochondria, projection, and fantasy.... aren’t as isolating as psychotic adaptations, but they impede intimacy. “Neurotic” defenses are common in “normal” people. These include intellectualization (mutating the primal stuff of life into objects of formal thought); dissociation (intense, often brief, removal from one’s feelings); and repression, which, Vaillant says, can involve “seemingly inexplicable naïveté, memory lapse, or failure to acknowledge input from a selected sense organ.”
....
The healthiest, or “mature,” adaptations include altruism, humor, anticipation (looking ahead and planning for future discomfort), suppression (a conscious decision to postpone attention to an impulse or conflict, to be addressed in good time), and sublimation (finding outlets for feelings, like putting aggression into sport, or lust into courtship).

Which, despite being a purely Freudian list, seems fairly reasonable....

But I wondered about the contrast between two of the cases listed, the first Case 128, as an exemplar of happy adult development:

 “Probably I am fooling myself,” you wrote in 1987, at age 63, “but I don’t think I would want to change anything.” How can we know if you’re fooling yourself? How can even you know? According to Dr. Vaillant’s model of adaptations, the very way we deal with reality is by distorting it—and we do this unconsciously. When we start pulling at this thread, an awfully big spool of thoughts and questions begins to unravel onto the floor.

You never seemed to pull the thread. When the study asked you to indicate “some of the fundamental beliefs, concepts, philosophy of life or articles of faith which help carry you along or tide you over rough spots,” you wrote: “Hard to answer since I am really not too introspective. However, I have an overriding sense (or philosophy) that it’s all a big nothing—or ‘chasing after wind’ as it says in Ecclesiastes & therefore, at least up to the present, nothing has caused me too much grief.”

I am interested by their exemplar of happiness who by his own admission was "not too introspective", but self reported high levels of happiness. Was he just not looking very deeply?

What does this say for those of us who are prone to questioning and inquiry? That we shouldn't 'pull the thread' on our distortion of reality? Or that it's ok to do so, but only with mature adaptations in place?

By this model does this very "neurotic intellectualization" lead to unhappiness?

I feel much more kinship with case No 47, the spirited (yet dysfunctional?) 'philosopher' who earnestly sought to “squeeze" the  "lemon” of life. A la Freud (who dismissed the very idea of “normality” as “an ideal fiction”) he asked:

"By what standards of reason are you calling people ‘adjusted’ these days? Happy? Contented? Hopeful?”

I think it's a good unanswered question.


image from ffffound

I followed a link from the previous article to "The How of Happiness" from the research of social psychologist Sonja Lyubomirsky. This is what she reccomends:

Counting Your Blessings
One way to practice this strategy is with a “gratitude journal” in which you write down the 3 to 5 things for which you are currently thankful – from the mundane (your flowers are finally in bloom) to the magnificent (your child’s first steps). Do this once a week, say, on Sunday night. Keep the strategy fresh by varying your entries and how you express them as much as possible. And if there’s a particular person who has been kind or influential in your life, don’t wait to express your appreciation. Write them a letter now, or, if possible, visit and thank them in person.

Practicing Acts of Kindness
These should be both random (let the dad with the crying baby go ahead of you at the check-out counter) and systematic (read a newspaper to an elderly neighbor). Being kind to others, whether friends or strangers, triggers a cascade of positive effects – it makes you feel compassionate and capable, gives you a greater sense of connection with others and earns you smiles, approval and reciprocated kindness. These are all happiness boosters.

Nurturing Optimism
This strategy involves such practices as looking at the bright side, finding the silver lining in a negative event, noticing what’s right (rather than what’s wrong), feeling good about one’s future and the future of the world, or simply feeling that you can get through the day. One way to practice this strategy is to sit in a quiet place and take 20 to 30 minutes to think about and write down what you expect your life to be 10 years from now. Imagine that everything has gone as well as it possibly could. You have worked hard and succeeded at accomplishing all of your life goals. Think of this as the realization of all of your life dreams. Then, write about what you imagined.

Learning to Forgive
Let go of anger, resentment, and feelings of vengeance by writing – but, not sending – a letter of forgiveness to a person who has hurt or wronged you. The inability to forgive is associated with persistent rumination or dwelling on revenge, while forgiving allows you to move on.

Increasing “Flow” Experiences
When you’re so absorbed in what you’re doing that you don’t notice the passage of time, you are in a state called “flow,” a term coined by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. So, become fully engaged at work, at home, and at play. Try to increase the number of flow experiences in your life, whether it’s completing a project at the office, playing with your children, or enjoying a hobby. Seek work and leisure activities that engage your skills and expertise.

Investing in Relationships
One of the biggest factors in happiness appears to be strong personal relationships. Indeed, having the support of someone who deeply cares about you is one of the best remedies for unhappiness. Thus, this strategy involves putting effort into healing, cultivating, and enjoying your relationships with family and friends. Act with love, be as kind to the people close to you as you are to strangers, affirm them, share with them, and play together.

Avoiding Overthinking
Remember the book, Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff? There’s a time to think about the bad stuff in your life, but dwelling on your problems excessively is unhealthy. Very happy people have the capacity – even during trying times like a parent’s chronic illness – to absorb themselves in an engaging activity, stay busy, and have fun. To practice this strategy, pick a distracting, attention-grabbing activity that has compelled you in the past and do it when you notice yourself dwelling.

Savoring Life’s Joys
Pay close attention and take delight in momentary pleasures, wonders, and magical moments. Focus on the sweetness of a ripe mango, the aroma of a bakery, or the warmth of the sun when you step out from the shade. Some psychologists suggest taking “mental photographs” of pleasurable moments to review in less happy times.

Taking Care of Your Soul
Studies show that religious and spiritual people are happier and healthier than others, though researchers don’t yet know why. Perhaps the social support of belonging to a close-knit religious group is valuable, as is the sense of meaning and purpose that comes from believing in something greater than yourself. If you are so inclined, join a church, temple, or mosque; read a spiritually-themed book; or volunteer for a faith-based charity.

Committing to Your Goals
People who strive for something significant, whether it’s learning a new craft or raising moral children, are far happier than those who don’t have strong dreams or aspirations. Find a happy person and you will find a project. However, being dedicated to any pursuit won’t make you happy if you’re just doing it for superficial reasons such as making money, boosting your ego, or succumbing to peer pressure.

Using Your Body: Exercise, Meditation, Smiling, and Rest
Getting plenty of sleep, exercising, stretching, meditating, smiling and laughing can all enhance your mood in the short term and promote energy and strong mental health. Practiced regularly, they can help make your daily life more satisfying and increase long-term happiness.

"He talked a lot about the past and I gathered that he wanted to recover
something, some idea of himself perhaps, that had gone into loving Daisy.

His life had been confused and disordered since then, but if he could
once return to a certain starting place and go over it all slowly, he
could find out what that thing was"

I saw Gatz recently: a spectacular seven hour theatre experience by NY's Elevator Repair Service, a word by word reading of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. It was truly wonderful. For seven hours I was fully under the spell of wonderful storytelling and wanted for nothing. 



Listening to The Great Gatsby thus in one session it stuck me as "something extraordinary and beautiful and simple + intricately patterned": as Fitzgerald wrote of his aim before embarking on the novel. Profound by virtue of its poetic yet deeply simple observation of the relations of flawed characters.

Fitzgerald captures; the dazzle of materialism, and the inherent dishonesty, and  curious emptiness, this engenders in relationships, the deep intense currents of yearning -  for happiness, for intimacy, for human connection - that effect us, and romance, both sublime and full of self deception:

"One autumn night, five years before, they had been walking down
the street when the leaves were falling, and they came to a place where
there were no trees and the sidewalk was white with moonlight.
They stopped here and turned toward each other. Now it was a cool night with that mysterious excitement in it which comes at the two changes of the year. The quiet lights in the houses were humming out into the darkness and there was a stir and bustle among the stars. Out of the corner of his eye Gatsby saw that the blocks of the sidewalk really formed a ladder and mounted to a secret place above the trees--he could climb to it, if he climbed alone, and once there he could suck on the pap of life, gulp down the incomparable milk of wonder.

His heart beat faster and faster as Daisy's white face came up to his
own. He knew that when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his
unutterable visions to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp
again like the mind of God. So he waited, listening for a moment longer
to the tuning fork that had been struck upon a star. Then he kissed
her. At his lips' touch she blossomed for him like a flower and the
incarnation was complete."

It seems to me that Fitzgerald is beset by ambivalence; he is unable to fully forgive his characters their failings and yet unable not to love them.  In this, I set Fitzgerald in contrast with Steinbeck.

"Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream."

John Steinbeck

I found the clear sighted wisdom which Steinbeck displays in his extraordinary Cannery Row no less than stunning. His authorial voice invokes an unfailing, deep, and truly loving compassion through which he holds, observes and exposes the multifaceted truth of  his characters humanity.
It is, I think, through this compassion, this spiritual certitude,  that Steinbeck transcends (yet includes) an amibivalent observation of humanity's brilliance and weakness. Reading Cannery Row  my heart broke open  at Steinbeck's depiction of deep beauty in the ordinary, the shattering acceptance of love in wrongdoing, and the joy and pain, mystery and wonder, at moments of union in love with the heart of another in this ever passing world.

This difference in the two writers is  shown in their summation. For Fitzgerald it seems we push forward with hope towards the fading lustre of our dreams, against the unrelentling tide of struggle that is human life-

"Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter--tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . . And one fine morning----
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into
the past."

"Even now
I know that I have savoured the hot taste of life
Lifting green cups and gold at the great feast.
Just for a small and a forgotten time
I have had full in my eyes from off my girl
The whitest pouring of eternal light.
The heavy knife. As to a gala day."
(from the sanscrit poem Black Marigolds),