PA107-4-SP-CO:
Living a Good Life: Critical Approaches to Wellness and Happiness

The details
2023/24
Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies
Colchester Campus
Spring
Undergraduate: Level 4
Current
Monday 15 January 2024
Friday 22 March 2024
15
21 August 2023

 

Requisites for this module
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(none)
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(none)

 

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Key module for

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Module description

This first-year module will inspire students to build a meaningful philosophy of life.

As an interdisciplinary module within the fields of Psychoanalytic and Psychosocial Studies, Childhood Studies, therapeutic and clinical practice, Happiness Studies, the Sociology of Health and Medical Humanities, it will enable students to reflect on what we think we need to be happy and what a good and meaningful life entails for individuals and societies. Students will also be encouraged to explore how small changes in our ways of thinking may help us to live better lives.

A key question for this module is how we can find space for happiness, wellness, and mindfulness in a globalised world shaped by climate crises, war and violence, pandemics, oppression and inequality and the biopolitical organisation of our lives. Through reflective activities and class discussions students will be encouraged to use theoretical ideas to research their own lives, their established ways of thinking and their current perspective on life. As such, the module will motivate students to invest in developing an individual philosophy of life, and reflect on how a pragmatic and realistically optimistic outlook for life can be pursued, both at an individual, as well as a social level.

Module aims

The aims of this module are:

• To provide students with an understanding of key psychological, social and cultural factors in happiness
• To enable students to think critically about the term happiness and its various meanings
• To enable students to explore what they think makes them happy or unhappy, and develop their understanding of their emotional and interior life
• To help students describe the mechanisms behind why specific experiences generate positive or negative feelings
• To enable students to apply insights from psychoanalytic and psychosocial theory to their personal and professional lives
• To introduce students to practice research-led techniques for understanding and managing negativity
• To introduce students to how making space for feelings of ambivalence can improve their emotional wellbeing
• To provide students with an understanding of how resilience and mindfulness techniques are used to improve emotional regulation
• To enable students to describe and critically reflect on recommended physical wellness (sleep, diet, and physical activity) and how to incorporate it into a busy schedule
• To provide students with an understanding of how self-observation methods (diaries, tracking systems, etc.) enhance their creativity and sustain habit building

Module learning outcomes

By the end of the module students will be expected to be able to:

1. Demonstrate an ability to construct a meaningful philosophy of life
2. Explain what psychosocial, psychoanalytic theories say about our emotional life
3. Critically engage with contemporary debates about what makes a good life
4. Analyse connections between social and political configurations and individual feelings
5. Show a greater capacity to observe and reflect on unhelpful patterns of thinking, acting and relating

Key Skills
1. Develop an individual philosophy of what makes one’s life meaningful
2. Apply psychosocial ideas to our personal lives and wider social contexts
3. Critically read and interpret scholarly research and work written for wider audiences to explore how they can help us shape our philosophies of life
4. Critically consider how and why our way of thinking shapes the way we feel
5. Develop a greater capacity for self-reflection, compassion for ourselves and for those around us

Employability Skills
1. Improve wellbeing
2. Enhance capacity for self-reflection
3. Increase ability to use feelings to deepen understanding about a situation/ group of people

Module information

'The Good Life': Critical Approaches to Wellness and Happiness

Spring Term

Part One: What's love got to do with it?

Love, happiness and ethics

The first part of this module looks at love as an experience that is commonly linked with increasing people's happiness. We explore the representation of love in films, music, TV series and explore how commercialisation and commodification of love shapes the way we engage with the people around us. We ask what kinds of love make our lives meaningful and what are the ethics of loving and being loved?

Is love all you need?

Indicative Reading:
Smith, E. (2022). There's More to Life Than Being Happy. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/01/theres-more-to-life-than-being-happy/266805/.
Frosh, S. (2011). Feelings. Routledge.
McMahon, D. (2007). Happiness. Grove.

'The Pursuit of Happiness' and the Happiness Industry

Indicative Reading:
Kaufman, S. (2022). The Opposite of Toxic Positivity. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2021/08/tragic-optimism-opposite-toxic-positivity/619786/.
Ehrenreich, B. (2009). Smile or Die: How Positive Thinking Fooled America and the World. Granta Books.

Happiness and ethics: What should we be striving for?

Indicative Reading:
Berlant, L. (2012). Cruel optimism. Duke University Press.
Ahmed, A. (2017). Living a Feminist Life. Duke University Press.
Halberstam, J. (2011). The Queer Art of Failure. Duke University Press.

Part Two: Difficult Feelings: Why it is ok to feel sad, mad and bad

During the second part of this module, we turn to negative feelings of grief, sadness, self-criticism and hatred, and ask what their role in our psychic life is. We also look at how experiences of trauma and loss relate to our perceptions of happiness. Finally, we ask why these feelings are often considered to be unbearable and undesirable, and how can we use them within our philosophy of life.

Trauma, grief, loss

Indicative Readings:
Cain, S. (2022). The Emotion Missing From the Workplace. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2022/04/work-culture-positivity-personal-power/629478/
Winnicott, D. W. (1958). The capacity to be alone. The International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 39, 416–420.
Frosh, S. (2011). Feelings. Routledge. Read Chapter 5: Oh, misery! and Chapter 6: Are you happy now?

The Medicalisation of Sadness

Indicative Reading:
Foulkes, L. (2021). Opinion: What we're getting wrong in the conversation about mental health. UCL News.
Bentall, R. (2009). Doctoring the Mind: why psychiatry treatments fail. Allen
Lane.
Davies, J. (2013). Cracked: why psychiatry is doing more harm than good.
Icon Books.
Frances, A. (2013). Saving Normal: an insider's revolt against out-of-control
psychiatric diagnosis, DSM-5, big pharma, and the medicalization of ordinary life. William Morrow.
Horwitz, A. V. and Wakefield, J. C. (2007). The Loss of Sadness: how psychiatry
transformed normal sorrow into depressive disorder. Oxford University Press.

The Psychic life of hate

Indicative Reading:
Phillips, A. (2015). Against Self-Criticism. London Review of Books. https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v37/n05/adam-phillips/against-self-criticism
Freud, S. (2014). Civilization and its discontents. Penguin Classics.
Bok, S. (2011) 'Is Lasting Happiness Achievable?' in Exploring Happiness: From Aristotle to Brain Science. Yale University Press.

Part Three: Happiness and the clinic

In the third part of this module we turn to the clinic to explore how happiness is linked with psychological therapies and in particular idea around cure. We ask why some therapies promise quick-fixes and what we can learn from psychoanalysis about living more meaningful and fulfilling lives.

Cures, quick-fixes, and the promise of happiness

Indicative Reading:
Leader, D. (2008). 'A quick fix for the soul': Darian Leader on cognitive behavioural therapy. The Guardian.
Watch: Josh Cohen in Conversation with Akshi Singh

Vulnerability, Care, Interdependency

This week explores the themes of care and interdependency to consider whether happiness is a truly individual endeavor. Does being vulnerable mean you must be unhappy? What does being cared for or doing care mean for prized individual autonomy and control of our own wellbeing? Using theories around the political and social importance of care and relationships with other people (and things), we will evaluate wellness as a potentially collective task.

Indicative Reading:
Tronto, J. (1993) Moral boundaries: A political argument for an ethic of care. Routledge.
Nieuwenhuys, O. (2011) Can the teddy bear speak? Childhood, 18(4), 411-18
Wihstutz, A. (2016) Children's agency: contributions from feminist and ethic of care theories, in Esser, F., Baader, T., Betz., T., Hungerland, B. (eds.) Reconceptualising agency and childhood. Routledge.

Part Four: Ecologies of happiness: Nature, Climate, Communities

In the fourth and final part of this module we look at the relationship between happiness and the natural environment. Is there room for happiness in a time of climate catastrophes? Why does nature improve our sense of well-being? Might active citizenship (in the sense of involvement in local communities, participating in the commons, and so on) become a fundamental component of our philosophy of what makes live meaningful?

Happiness in the Community: Race, citizenship and wellness

Indicative Reading:
Brooks, A. (2021). The Link Between Self-Reliance and Well-Being. The Atlantic.
Baumeister, R., Vohs, K., Aaker, J., & Garbinsky, E. (2013). Some key differences between a happy life and a meaningful life. The Journal Of Positive Psychology, 8(6), 505-516.

The Age of Anxiety?: Happiness in times of climate crises

Indicative Reading:
Burkeman, O. (2019). 'The truth about anxiety – without it we wouldn't have hope.' The Guardian.
Sally Weintrobe (2012) 'The difficult problem of anxiety in thinking about climate change' in Engaging with Climate Change. Routledge.

Learning and teaching methods

This module will be delivered via 1. One 1-hour lecture per week followed by small group seminar discussion and reflective activities. The lectures will be available via listen again for all students.

Bibliography

This module does not appear to have a published bibliography for this year.

Assessment items, weightings and deadlines

Coursework / exam Description Deadline Coursework weighting
Coursework   Visual Essay    100% 
Coursework   Journal Assignment    0% 

Exam format definitions

  • Remote, open book: Your exam will take place remotely via an online learning platform. You may refer to any physical or electronic materials during the exam.
  • In-person, open book: Your exam will take place on campus under invigilation. You may refer to any physical materials such as paper study notes or a textbook during the exam. Electronic devices may not be used in the exam.
  • In-person, open book (restricted): The exam will take place on campus under invigilation. You may refer only to specific physical materials such as a named textbook during the exam. Permitted materials will be specified by your department. Electronic devices may not be used in the exam.
  • In-person, closed book: The exam will take place on campus under invigilation. You may not refer to any physical materials or electronic devices during the exam. There may be times when a paper dictionary, for example, may be permitted in an otherwise closed book exam. Any exceptions will be specified by your department.

Your department will provide further guidance before your exams.

Overall assessment

Coursework Exam
100% 0%

Reassessment

Coursework Exam
100% 0%
Module supervisor and teaching staff
Dr Emilia Halton-Hernandez, email: e.halton-hernandez@essex.ac.uk.
Dr Marita Vyrgioti, email: m.vyrgioti@essex.ac.uk.
ppsug@essex.ac.uk Room 5A.202

 

Availability
Yes
Yes
No

External examiner

Dr Angie Voela
University of East London
Reader
Resources
Available via Moodle
Of 20 hours, 20 (100%) hours available to students:
0 hours not recorded due to service coverage or fault;
0 hours not recorded due to opt-out by lecturer(s), module, or event type.

 

Further information
Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies

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