The first question is philosophical in nature, the second lies in the province of therapeutic practice and research, whilst the third is essentially ethical. This article will provide what can only be a very brief and preliminary attempt at answering these difficult and fundamental questions.

I. What is happiness ?

If one is to make happiness the goal of therapy one had better be clear what one takes 'happiness' to be. Some psychological works proceed as if this step is not necessary. For example. Argyle (1986) in his otherwise excellent book ' The Psychology of Happiness' defines it as 'a reflection on satisfaction with life, or as the frequency and intensity of positive emotions'. but does not then in the rest of his book clearly distinguish between these very different things. Diener (1984) provides a fuller discussion of what happiness is. He distinguishes three main types of happiness :-

(A) Happiness as meeting the standard of the good life (Aristotle).

Discussions of happiness usually start with Aristotle. He maintained that ' both the general run of man and people of superior refinement agree that the highest of all goods achievable by action is happiness'.(Nicomachean Ethics, section 1.4) . However happiness is a not very precise translation of the Greek word 'eudamonia' actually used by Aristotle. Closer to the flavour of the original Greek than 'happiness' would be the expression 'meeting the objective standard of the good life'. This differs from happiness in that it is not a state of feeling or enjoyment or content, and neither is it subjective. I can claim eudamonia but be wrong, in much the same way that I could be mistaken in thinking I was acting lawfully. Such a definition of happiness may at first sight appear attractive. If one could say what the good life was, shouldn't everyone be leading it, and shouldn't therapists be getting clients to practice it ? The problem is with the 'if '. Who could say with authority what the good life is. ? One could agree with Aristotle that the good life involves philosophical contemplation, or one could take the view that it is living authentically, or with dignity, or being self-actualised or ..... In fact the difficulty is worse than this. We are talking about ultimate ends, but as Mill recognised long ago ' Questions of ultimate ends are not amenable to direct proof. Whatever can be proved to be good, must be so by being shown to be a means to something good without proof' (Mill 1861,pp 254- 255 ). Hence it is not just that we cannot agree about what the good life is - it is difficult to sustain the view that there is such a thing objectively as the good life, over and above individual's choices. Certainly it would be a bold claim for anyone, including a therapist, to announce that they knew what the good life was for everyone. For this reason this sort of happiness is to be rejected as providing a framework for therapy.

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B Happiness as pleasure (Bentham)

At the other extreme from Aristotle lies Bentham who defined happiness as pleasure and the absence of pain . This is certainly one meaning of 'happiness' in ordinary language. Moreover one would have to be a puritan to suggest that pursuing this type of happiness at all is wrong. But this sort of hedonism is much less attractive when it is considered as the major goal of human activity.. Consider a hypothetical 'experience machine' invented by the philosopher Robert Nozick (1974) to discredit the view that pleasure was the summum bonum. Imagine that the machine makes you experience perfect pleasure. Plug yourself into the machine and you will never feel pain again. Indeed you will feel a perfect state of pleasure - not, if you like, total pleasure, because that would be boring. No, the machine will be specially programmed so that you will just the right level of frustration so you great wehn things turn out, just the right combination of fulfilled and unfulfilled desires. And whilst you are plugged into the machine, you will not be aware of being plugged in. It will seem just like the real thing, a perfect simulation of pleasure. If Bentham is right then surely everyone would choose to be wired to the machine. But would you ? Probably not, and the fact that most people answer in the negative, and has a similarly negative attitude towards drug-induced states of happiness, counts heavily against Bentham's view. It would seem that pleasure in itself is not all that matters to us - other things such as one's life having meaning, being autonomous and the welfare of other people are important. For this reason happiness as pleasure is also to be rejected as the sole goal of therapy - though this is not to say that it should not feature as a component of happiness.

C Happiness as overall satisfaction with one's life

Happiness cannot be defined satisfactorily then as an objective standard or as moments of pleasure. There is a third type of happiness which is much more attractive. It is difficult to define it precisely, suffice to say that it could perhaps better be termed 'subjective well-being'. The two key components is that it is subjective (unlike Aristotle's eudamonia) and that is an overall satisfaction with life, not just a momentary sensation (unlike Bentham's pleasure). It could be defined more precisely as fulfilling one's life plan, or one's own standard of the good life, or perhaps of fulfilling one's major life goals. It is rather like eudamonia except that it is subjective. According to this notion a person is the best judge of whether they are happy. So in enhancing someone's happiness in this sense we would not be imposing our own standards. Moreover it avoids the pitfalls of Bentham's type of happiness.. One would not choose to be plugged into Nozick's machine because the sort of life one would lead, though pleasurable, would not match one's standard of the good life. Enhancing people's overall satisfacation with one's life is therefore a commendable endevour.

For the rest of this article our working definition of happiness will be as follows :- Happiness is overall satisfaction with one’s life. This is not to say that there are no difficulties with this view. A fuller treatment of the subject would require a detailed investigation into the merits of the alternatives alluded to , i.e. fulfilling one's life plan, or goals , or standard of the good life. Moreover the view that happiness is worth pursuing, though it seems very attractive, does of course reflect a pluralistic liberal value system. It is assumed that though there are no objective values, each person has sovereignty over their own set of values. This view could certainly be disputed. It could be suggested that someone can be wrong about their ultimate values, if one is misinformed or ignorant. Equally a Freudian might argue that values can be irrational in that they reflect one's development - so a parsimonious person's values may derive purely from fixation at the anal phase. These are deep philosophical waters beyond the scope of the current article. But whilst values may perhaps be corrected if they are based on misinformation, it seems arrogant and over-reductionist to assume that other people's values were derived purely from their upbringing.

II Can therapy enhance happiness ?

Having decided on a type of happiness that seems worthwhile pursuing, the question is whether or not therapy can promote it. Of the traditional paradigms the cognitive-behavioural has been the most explicit in its concern with happiness. For example Walen, DiGueseppe and Wessler (1980, p7) . say that 'two explicit values in the philosophy of RET .. are survival and enjoyment '. They connect this with the value of rationality suggesting that 'anything that promotes your survival and happiness can be defined as rational'. This school has developed a number of techniques to produce more positive affect and more attainment of goals. For example those catalogued by Moorey (1990) - decatastrophising, recognising and correcting absolute thinking, goal-setting, reality testing. - can all ease negative affect.

This approach has been expanded to enhance positive affect for 'normal' people as well as reducing negative affect for depressives. Fordyce (1977) ran a happiness-training program designed to make people happier. His research had shown that there are fourteen fundamentals conducive to happiness. These are:-

Fordyce's residential school encouraged people to focus on those fundamentals in which they were weakest. 89% of the participants said the program helped them stave off unhappy moods. 81% said it increased their level of happiness and72% found their long-term level of happiness was increased. Fordyce concluded that 'Those who understand happiness have the best change of attaining it'.

This encouraging result tempts one to conclude that such therapy should be made better known. Perhaps every therapist should give client's such homework and then 72% of client's would be happier. It is at this point that one discovers the importance of the philosophical analysis of Section I . For consider :- what type of happiness Fordyce is enhancing ? It seems to me that it is more a Benthamite happiness of a life full of happy moments that any other. Is lowering ones expectations a bit like connecting up to the Experience Machine ? To what extent is one respecting people's values if one is telling them to value happiness above everything else ? Fordyce's approach, like that of RET is unduly hedonistic. If someone's idea of the good life was to have lots of feelings of happiness Fordyce's program would be the answer (assuming his claims of success are reliable). But there is no reason why people should choose this sort of life.

If we use our definition of happiness, as being satisfied with one's life, the therapist must work with the client's values, not replace them. Therapy then can be divided into two main stages.

[1] Exploring with the client what they want from life.

[2] Facilitating the client achieving what whey want from life.

The first stage involves a thoroughgoing examination of the client's beliefs and values. It is exactly the sort of thing that is sought in exploratory questions by the counsellor like. ' I wonder how you feel about X' and 'What does Y mean to you ?'. The existential and perhaps person-centred approaches are well suited to this task.. It is close to what Emmy van Deurzen-Smith's (1988) statement that ' The aim of existential counselling is to clarify, reflect upon and understand life'. The point is that everyone has a set of implicit values, and it is therapy's role to make these explicit. Therapy should enable the client to develop a set of values they own, rather than ones they pursue through habit. It is a cliché that people sometimes reach a stage of life only to realise that the life they have been living has not been what it would have been had they been conscious of what they really valued. It can be therapy's role to stop this happening, by making people more self-aware, more authentic and consequently in a position to get what they want.

Conversely it is an open question what therapeutic technique is suited to the second stage outlined above. Therapy is of use here because even when people know what they want they are sometimes unable to get it. Even if they are sufficiently healthy and wealthy, it is very often the case that left ot their own devices they would not achieve all they wanted. Every paradigm has its own pet explanation of the this phenomenon. A cognitive-behaviourist may blame irrational negative automatic thoughts, a Freudian may pinpoint neuroses fixed at an early stage of childhood, a Rogerian may berate a negative self-concept. It is an empirical question as to which therapeutic techniques best help people get what they want. Maybe there is no definitive answer and a 'horses for courses' approach is required. It is certainly well beyond the scope of this article to arbitrate in this dispute. The important point is that most therapies are already designed to facilitate the client getting what they want from life.

Therapy then is well equipped to enhance overall happiness. It would be interesting to speculate as to the mechanics of a counselling process that would best enhance happiness. Maybe it would be more focused on happiness than therapy normally is. In that way it could be made more attractive to those who think they have no particular problems but more like to be happier. Perhaps it would explicitly advertise itself as happiness therapy, and consist of the two stages outlined above. On the other hand this could be counterproductive in that raising the stakes of therapy too high early on might produce anxiety and not allow the normal processes of empathy and the therapeutic alliance to grow. Clearly there is much scope for further thought and research on this subject.

III Is happiness a legitimate goal of therapy ?

Now that we have defined happiness we are in a position to examine whether the pursuit of a client's happiness should be the goal of therapy. This can now be rephrased as follows :-

'Should therapy help the client gain a sense of satisfaction with their life as a whole. ?'

It should be obvious by now that I would answer this question in the affirmative. There are two particular considerations worth adding to the discussion of Section II. In the first place therapy has focused too little on justifying itself. At a time when it is under attack from the press, and under pressure for funds it should be clearer than ever about what it is for. Linking therapy with happiness provides such a justification. The question of whether or not the changes therapy brings about are good is an ethical question. In this country the dominant ethical view is broadly speaking utilitarianism (as evidenced , for example, by Glover (1975) and Singer (1979) ). Utilitarianism suggests that an action is good in so far as produces good consequences. These consequences are usually measured in terms of happiness or preference-satisfaction. So if a moral philosopher were to assess the benefits of psychotherapy, he would weigh these up in terms of the effects on those involved. If therapy were explicitly aiming to enhance happiness, then it would not be hard to see its virtues. Psychotherapy would be worthwhile since its consequences would be to increase the happiness of clients.

A second justification is that if therapy enhanced overall happiness it would pay the ultimate respect to the client's autonomy. Most therapies claim that the client's values should be respected. Indeed in view of the therapist's power over the client this is a most admirable goal. However how much respect does person-centred therapy pay to the client, if it encourages them to 'move away from oughts', 'towards valuing the experience of the moment', 'towards a greater respect for others' and 'towards a longing for more intimacy' ? (Thorne, 1990 page 113). This is not to deny that these are laudable values - the therapist's right to impose them on the client is at issue. It has already been argued that REBT embraces a type of hedonism not consistent with respecting other values clients may have. Similarly the Freudian emphasis on self-understanding is a value not all may share. In contrast the approach advocated in this article pays full respect to autonomy. The client's own values are sovereign, they determine what state of affairs therapy should help bring about for the client.

IV Conclusion

From the first section it was concluded that there is a sense of happiness which is not open to obvious objections as a worthwhile end of human action. This is happiness in the sense of overall satisfaction with one's life. It was then argued that this can be enhanced by therapy - but not by happiness training, which is too narrowly hedonistic. The counsellor should use the existential approach to explore the client's value system and world view, in order to find out what the client really wants from life. The most appropriate tool from the counsellor's toolbox can then be used as a means towards the client achieving a higher satisfaction with their life. Finally it was suggested that happiness is not only a legitimate goal of therapy but a most laudable one, since it is most consistent with ultimate respect for the client's values and with a utilitarian justification of psychotherapy.

References

Argyle, M (1986) The Psychology of Happiness (Routledge)

Aristotle Nichomachean Ethics,(Oxford)

Bentham, J (1789) Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation

van Deurzen-Smith ,E (1988) Existential Counselling In Practice (Sage)

Dienner , E(1984) 'Subjective Well-Being' Psychological Bulletin

Eysenck,M (1990) Happiness (L.E.A)

Fordyce.M (1977) 'Development of a program to increase
personal happiness' Journal of Counseling Psychology 24;511-21

Glover, J (1977) Causing Death and Saving Lives (Harmondsworth)

Holmes & Lindley (1991) The Values of Psychotherapy. (O.U.P.)

Moorey . S (1990) Cognitive Therapy in Individual Therarapy: A handbook (edited by Windy Dryden) (Open University Press)

Mill J.S. (1861) Utilitarianism. Collins

Nozick,R (1975) Anarchy. State and Utopia.(Blackwell)

Singer,P (1979) Practical Ethics, (Cambridge University Press)

Thorne, B (1990) Person-centred therapy in Individual Therapy: A handbook (edited by Windy Dryden) (Open University Press)

Walen, DiGiuseppem & Wessler (1980) A Practitioner's Guide to Rational -Emotive Therapy (Cambridge)

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