More on the Pursuit of Happiness

I want to continue sharing some thoughts on the article about positive psychology that I began yesterday. Hovering throughout the article is the ghost of religion. What I mean by that is that the author and other psychologists are fearful that positive psychology is too much like religion (meaning unscientific, unsupported, bad). Daniel Gilbert, a professor of psychology at Harvard says concerning positive psychology, "I guess I just wish it didn't look so much like a religion."

The author of the article, D.T. Max writes, "Indeed, the sectlike feel of positive psychology can be hard to shake off when watching classes like Kashdan's [the professor teaching Positive Psychology at George Mason University]ore even when reviewing the record of the field's beginnings." When interacting with students in the only masters program in applied positive psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, Max wrote, "I felt the spirit of Gandhi was hovering over us." Max also writes, "Two criticism as troubling as the problem of positive psychology's religiosity are 1) that it is not new--psychology always cared about happiness and 2) that the publicity about the field has gotten ahead of the science, which may be no good anyway."

I don't want to oversimplify the issue but I think the problem lies in part concerning a misunderstanding of the nature of science and our human need for meaning. The truth of the matter is that when we are dealing with human beings especially areas of psychology, sociology, cultural studies, etc. we are not dealing with "hard" science. The human being cannot be understood merely by laboratory experimentation. Furthermore, science cannot offer humans a meaning for life. It is beyond science's ken. And if there is one thing that humans need to live well, it is meaning as Victor Frankl captured so well in his classic book, Man's Search for Meaning.

I wonder what thoughts that you might have about this subject.