The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom

by Jonathan Haidt

I therefore question the widespread view that Prozac and other drugs in its class are overprescribed. It’s easy for those who did well in the cortical lottery to preach about the importance of hard work and the unnaturalness of chemical shortcuts. But for those who, through no fault of their own, ended up on the negative half of the affective style spectrum, Prozac is a way to compensate for the unfairness of the cortical lottery. Furthermore, it’s easy for those who believe that the body is a temple to say that cosmetic psychopharmacology is a kind of sacrilege. Something is indeed lost when psychiatrists no longer listen to their patients as people, but rather as a car mechanic would listen to an engine, looking only for clues about which knob to adjust next. But if the hippocampal theory of Prozac is correct, many people really do need a mechanical adjustment. It’s as though they had been driving for years with the emergency brake halfway engaged, and it might be worth a five-week experiment to see what happens to their lives when the brake is released. Framed in this way, Prozac for the “worried well” is no longer just cosmetic. It is more like giving contact lenses to a person with poor but functional eyesight who has learned ways of coping with her limitations. Far from being a betrayal of that person’s “true self,” contact lenses can be a reasonable shortcut to proper functioning.