The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom

by Jonathan Haidt

Depressed people are caught in a feedback loop in which distorted thoughts cause negative feelings, which then distort thinking further. Beck’s discovery is that you can break the cycle by changing the thoughts. A big part of cognitive therapy is training clients to catch their thoughts, write them down, name the distortions, and then find alternative and more accurate ways of thinking. Over many weeks, the client’s thoughts become more realistic, the feedback loop is broken, and the client’s anxiety or depression abates. Cognitive therapy works because it teaches the rider how to train the elephant rather than how to defeat it directly in an argument. On the first day of therapy, the rider doesn’t realize that the elephant is controlling him, that the elephant’s fears are driving his conscious thoughts. Over time, the client learns to use a set of tools; these include challenging automatic thoughts and engaging in simple tasks, such as going out to buy a newspaper rather than staying in bed all day ruminating. These tasks are often assigned as homework, to be done daily. (The elephant learns best from daily practice; a weekly meeting with a therapist is not enough.) With each reframing, and with each simple task accomplished, the client receives a little reward, a little flash of relief or pleasure. And each flash of pleasure is like a peanut given to an elephant as reinforcement for a new behavior. You can’t win a tug of war with an angry or fearful elephant, but you can...