Happiness and Chance: A Reappraisal of the Psychoanalytic Conception of Suffering

Freud's allusion to the goal of analysis as that of transforming neurotic misery into common unhappiness implies that the outcome of treatment is not concerned with happiness but with the reduction of suffering. In fact, there is no single standard for happiness but many, some of which bear Freud's thesis out whereas others contradict it. The author examines Freud's views about happiness and compares them with other conceptions of it from antiquity that influenced Freud's distinction between pathological and ordinary suffering. It is argued that psychoanalysis is indeed concerned with the pursuit of happiness but is obliged to treat it in Zen-like fashion because of the typical analysand's resistance to enduring the sacrifices that the pursuit of happiness entails.