Most everyone is looking for happiness. The
shopping malls of the self-help industry feature thousands of different
methods, beliefs, and practices for finding it. Many of these approaches are of
limited value, and we do ourselves a big favor by avoiding them.

According to Martin E.P. Seligman, founder
of positive psychology, people who apply his method "are the people with the
highest well-being I have ever known." Seligman's approach encourages us to apply
determination and grit in order to increase our positive emotions and
relationships. We flourish, he claims, when we focus on engagement,
accomplishment, and a sense of meaning. His latest book is titled, Flourish: A Visionary New Understanding of
Happiness and Well-being (Free Press, New York, 2011).

Seligman's approach can produce a temporary
boost of happiness, or an illusion of it, but it doesn't deepen our spirit,
soul, or psyche. It risks turning us into smiley-faced puppet people instead of
real and authentic individuals who are evolving through deeper awareness. Positive
psychology advocates a kind of willpower-on-steroids programming that insists
we can feel fulfilled and happy by believing we are making it happen. This
system does not appreciate how, through unconscious conflict in our psyche, we compulsively
replay and recreate unresolved negative emotions.

When we try to dodge or repress our
psyche's inner dynamics, we encounter inner rebellion that produces a wide variety
of suffering and self-defeat. To become smarter, wiser, and more conscious, we
have to understand the inner mechanisms and drives in our psyche that induce us
to chase after old hurts, cling to painful regrets, and indulge in a variety of
other unresolved emotions.

We have two layers of negativity in our
psyche. The deepest is unconscious
negativity, which produces negative thoughts and feelings. This negativity,
which people do not typically feel or register, involves impressions left over
from childhood of being deprived, refused, controlled, helpless, criticized,
rejected, betrayed, abandoned, and unworthy. This unconscious negativity is a
major determinant of our suffering and unhappiness.

The second layer of negativity is
conscious. It consists of such painful feelings as anger, loneliness, fear,
envy, greed, resentment, bitterness, and depression. These negative experiences
are symptoms of the deeper negativity. As we become more conscious of the
nature of our psyche, we are able to trace our surface negativity back to its
source in the unresolved, unconscious negativity.

When we make unconscious negativity
conscious, we can start to release it. However, people are typically not eager
to see the deep negativity because doing so involves the humbling recognition
of our emotional attachment to it. We can't bring ourselves to let go of our
attachment to our particular hurts, grievances, complaints, negative
perceptions, and other forms of suffering. That's the dark secret of our psyche
that we find so appalling. Positive psychology doesn't come within a mile of
this awareness.   

Let's take just one example, the plight of
compulsive shoppers, to explore unconscious or deep negativity. Typically, compulsive
shoppers feel empty, anxious, or depressed after a shopping binge. That's
because their compulsive behavior is a defense intended to "prove" that
they want to get something of value, when in fact they are entangled in
powerful feelings that something vital is missing in their life. This
underlying unresolved emotion--the deep negativity--reasserts itself when the
shopping binge is over. These individuals are likely entangled in emotional
issues involving deprivation and refusal that go back to childhood. They often harbor
deep feelings of being unworthy and lacking in intrinsic value. Their compulsion
can also be traced to feelings of helplessness and passivity that produce their
lack of self-regulation. They can also, through lack of insight, be unable to
resolve a recurring conflict in their psyche in which the inner critic assails
them for their excessive spending, while they accept punishment for their
"naughty" behavior in the forms of guilt and shame.

Unconscious negativity has to be exposed
(made conscious) so that our intelligence can go to bat for us. We become
smarter and wiser when we see the full scope of how and why we suffer. Positive
psychology, however, makes no attempt to examine the roots of self-defeating
behaviors and recurring emotional difficulties.

The
Source of Positive Psychology

Essentially, positive psychology is a product
of that universal scourge of civilization, the egocentric mentality. This mentality
assumes that we can, through willpower or cognitive calisthenics, make choices
to flourish while ignoring the powerful undercurrents in our psyche that often make
self-defeating choices for us. The human ego is eager to make this claim to
power because it hates to acknowledge that it dances to the strings of
unconscious dynamics.

Much of our thoughts are influenced and
largely determined out of the clash of conflicting drives and primitive
instincts in the mysterious cosmos of our psyche. Yet positive psychology, like
other cognitive-behavioral approaches, claims the opposite is true--that our
thoughts cause our feelings. This presumption suits the interests of egotism,
which exalts in its own mental power and cleverness, though it can't feel with
any depth beyond its own self-centeredness.

Positive psychology is like an unwanted
guest that barges into someone's home (our psyche) through the front door,
giving orders and demanding compliance. This guest may at first appear to get
his way, but the host (the drives and other dynamics of our psyche) soon rebel to
restore the old order. A wiser, more humble guest studies the occupants,
procedures, and interactions of the home. She is intent on learning from her
host so that she can leave armed with precious self-knowledge.

Positive psychology, which Seligman claims
has produced "a tectonic upheaval in psychology," cannot see through illusions
or penetrate defenses. In Flourish,
for instance, he writes, "I now think that the topic of positive psychology is
well-being, that the gold standard for measuring well-being is flourishing, and
that the goal of positive psychology is to increase flourishing." This emphasis
on well-being is misguided. Americans had a sense of economic and social
well-being in the years and decades leading up to the financial crash of 2008. Our
well-being was an illusion. We were in denial as corruption, greed, and
stupidity prevailed beneath the surface. A sense of well-being is an impression
we can unwittingly produce to rationalize or justify our denial. In other
words, our sense of well-being can be blissful ignorance, a kissing-cousin to
denial of both inner conflict and social-economic-political dysfunction. Without
insight, we can't tell when our sense of well-being is being employed as a
defense or whether it is legitimate in its own right. At the moment, we have a
sense of well-being in terms of the earth as our sanctuary, even as we rush
about creating environmental conditions that might soon wash or blow away that
illusion.

The goal of psychology ought not to be well-being. The focus on
well-being is too individualistic and egotistical. How can we reinforce our
brain power with the vital intelligence that self-knowledge provides when we
remain unconscious of inner dynamics that shape our desires, impulses,
intentions, and motivations? Human development needs a more expansive sense of
where our intelligence and consciousness can lead us. Better goals for
psychology include the development of more self-trust, autonomy, and wisdom. We
need to learn to let go of inner fear so that we can see reality more clearly,
acquire the inner strength to accept reality, and the enhanced intelligence to deal
effectively with it.

Seligman also writes, "We often choose what
makes us feel good, but it is very important to realize that often our choices
are not made for the sake of how we will feel. I chose to listen to my
six-year-old's excruciating piano recital last night, not because it made me
feel good, but because it is my parental duty and part of what gives my life
meaning." Again, Seligman fails to see the bigger picture. We can't separate
good feelings from what gives our life meaning. Good feelings of the highest
quality are produced when we are fulfilling our duty to others and finding
meaning and purpose in life. His son's "excruciating" playing ought not to
preclude that deeper pleasure.

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