Freud on Happiness

Varea Romanenco

FLAN 257

November 24, 2007

Sr. Elena Arminio

Freud on Happiness

The everlasting question of “What is Happiness?” has been inquired since the creation of men. Unfortunately, the only agreed answer that humanity came up with is that all the creatures seek happiness, but no one has the concrete directions for achieving it. Our libraries are overwhelmed with books about happiness, but no dictionary definition explains which path men must take to be happy. No mathematician gave us the axiom which we could use to solve the problem of living in bliss. No scientist brought up the formula of fusing certain ingredients to produce the “drink of happiness”. Still almost all the people consider that their ultimate purport in life is to achieve happiness. Ironically, very few of us can say, with certainty, that he/she is absolutely happy.

Writers and philosophers have debated this topic for thousands of years; each theory contradicting the previous one and each idea being the antonym for the forthcoming doctrine.

Sigmund Freud was one of the skeptics who rationalized “that the intention that man should be ‘happy’ was not in the plan of ‘Creation (Freud 263).” Freud believed that there were two ways, though, for men to achieve some sort of happiness: positive and negative. From one hand the person can try to avoid all the causes that bring unhappiness, from the other - experience a strong, but short, feeling of happiness. For Freud, happiness, in the strictest sense of the word, was only experienced in short-lived brief moments of satisfaction when needs were satisfied (Freud 262). Therefore, in his opinion, it was impossible to be happy for a prolonged time, but only temporarily.

Another important idea, which was mentioned in the Freud’s theory, was that a parallel core requirement for experiencing happiness emerges from contrast. Thus, the most important goal is not to get used to our “happiness”, because it might disappear; if it does, then we should start searching for a different way to satisfy our pleasures and, eventually, experience happiness from that. To say it better would be to cite the words of Freud, himself: “What we call happiness, in the strictest sense, comes from the (preferably sudden) satisfaction of needs which have been dammed up to a high degree (Freud 254).”

Freud proposes the Principle of Satisfaction when aiming to be happy, in other words “a problem of satisfying a person's instinctual wishes (Freud 263)." Consequently, he concludes that because our “appetite” can never be fulfilled, the attainment of happiness will be nothing else than pessimistic. Also, he notes, that not all pleasures or wishes can be satisfied as soon as they are conceived. Freud presents the example of a baby, who, initially, believes that all his/her wishes should be gratified, and only later learns, form the Reality Principle, the harsh truth, that the wishes can not be satisfied instantaneously. More than that, life teaches men that in order to experience happiness one must sacrifice the instant gratification of his/her desires in order to achieve happiness in future. A simple example would be when a businessman decides to work overtime in order to receive more money and, thus, receive more pleasure, of course temporary and in future.

So, Freud speculates on the conjecture that our universe or our world was created in such a way, that we are not be able to live happily for a prolonged time (Farrell 11). He introduces the Principle of Reality, the negative way of achieving happiness, when man strives to avoid all the catalysts of unhappiness. Thus, man experiences happiness if he avoids the sufferings, which our world abounds in. Freud believes that there are three main categories of suffering in this world. “We are threatened with suffering from three directions: from our own body, which is doomed to decay and dissolution and which cannot even do without pain and anxiety as warning signals; from the external world, which may rage against us with overwhelming and merciless forces of destruction; and finally from our relations to other men. The suffering which comes from this last source is perhaps more painful than any other (Freud Quotes).”

It is no wonder then, that being under the pressure of experiencing all these sufferings, people, actually, lower their claims on happiness. Consequently we transform our Principle of Pleasure into the Principle of Reality, already being happy if we can avoid suffering. In this way our goal to avoid the sufferings supplants our desire to receive pleasure. A simple example is when a person decides to outcast himself/herself from romantic relationships in order to avoid