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The Psychology of Happiness


I graduated ten years ago with a Masters in Psychology. My thesis project was a study to determine if being engaged in a spiritual practice effected in any way the success of psychotherapy, all other things being equal. I interviewed 100 men and women who had been in therapy for at least 1 year. Half of the men and half of the women had been actively engaged in a spiritual practice for at least that long. These were dubbed the “Spiritual Group”. The other half did not consider themselves particularly spiritual, and they did not meditate or practice yoga or enjoy taking walks alone in nature. This group were called the “Non-Spiritual Group”.

For six months, I interviewed them one by one, looking for similarities and differences in the experiences of the two groups. I asked about their attitudes toward therapy, their expectations, their criteria for what would constitute “healing”, how much they participated in their healing process and how, and why they thought they needed therapy in the first place.

My findings revealed significant differences, some remarkable perhaps. They’re interesting enough to mention:

The “Spiritual Group”
 The “Non-Spiritual Group”
This group tended to seek therapy for existential issues (life purpose, lack of meaning, crisis of personal values, internal conflicts, the desire for greater self-knowledge and self-awareness) This group tended to seek therapy for personal and interpersonal issues (relationships, self-esteem, frustration at work, behavioral problems and addictions)
This group based successful therapy on achieving more inner peace, a greater sense of aliveness and presence, resolution of conflicts, and becoming a better person (more loving, more compassionate, more patient…) This group based successful therapy on the resolution of problems, improved relationships, better self-esteem, being happier at work, and reducing or eliminating addictive behaviors
This group thought often about their therapy between sessions; they journaled, contemplated, and took an interest in acting on new insights and integrating new understanding into their daily living This group thought about their therapy sessions less than the Spiritual Group; the women in this group tended to talk to friends about their sessions; the men in this group participated least in their therapy of all those interviewed
At the end of their first year of therapy:
32% were very satisfied with their progress,
45% were satisfied and eager to continue,
15% were mildly satisfied, and
8% were not satisfied
(of these, 2% planned to quit and 6% continued)		 At the end of their first year of therapy:
21% were very satisfied with their progress,
38% were satisfied and eager to continue,
22% were mildly satisfied, and
19% were not satisfied
(of these, 12% planned to quit and 7% planned to continue)


My psychology education taught me this: our psychological health is profoundly influenced by the presence, depth or absence of our spiritual life. There are many many more factors that impinge upon our psychology, but the spiritual component became fundamental in my way of seeing.

Everyone wants to be happy. That’s pretty universal. But we all appear to be confused about it. We’re confused about how to find happiness, how to keep it when we do, why it’s so elusive, where it comes from and why we lose it. We don’t understand why it’s so hard to be happy, to be genuinely happy.

The field of psychology doesn’t like to talk about happiness because they don’t really understand it any more than the rest of us and they know they can’t promise it. I can think of half a dozen therapist friends who have said secretly to me something like this, “I hate it when a new client comes to see me and says ‘mostly, I want to be happy.’ What do I do with that? I have no training in happiness.”

What becomes clear to those who are willing to stop scratching at the surface of what we think we know is that happiness, real happiness, doesn’t come from making our conditions better or improving our outlook or having more positive thoughts. Real, lasting happiness comes from our connection with that purely internal realm of experience that is transcendent to our everyday ego consciousness.

So if you asked me, “How can I be happy?”

I would say, “Find the transcendent within yourself.”



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