The Pursuit of Happiness Between Prosperity and Adversity

The Pursuit of Happiness: Between Prosperity and Adversity looks at activities, practices, and experiences that are instrumental in changing one’s level of well-being. This book focuses on the situations in which well-being is challenged, or even decreased, and explores, guided by Dialogical Self Theory, pathways that lead to its elevation. Research has suggested that there are three main determinants of well-being: genetic factors, one’s individual’s history, and happiness-relevant activities. The third and most promising means of altering one’s happiness level are activities and practices that require some degree of effort. A surprising finding is that these personal e?orts may have a happiness-boosting potential that is almost as large as the probable role of genetics, and apparently larger than the in?uence of one’s individual history. Efforts are invested in fields of tension between prosperity and adversity. The Pursuit of Happiness covers a variety of topics, such as finding happiness and well-being in the face of extreme adversity, the role of honesty in genuine happiness, the promise of minimalistic life orientations, the value of inner silence, evaluating our lives from a future perspective, and the relationship between happiness, career development, counselling, and psychotherapy. This book was originally published as a special issue of the British Journal of Guidance & Counselling.

The Pursuit of Happiness, Hubert Hermans & Frans Meijers Finding Happiness and Wellbeing in the Face of Extreme Adversity, Katrin den Elzen Renewal and Multi-Voicedness: In Search of Narrative Conscience, Michiel de Ronde Minimalist Life Orientations as a Dialogical Tool for Happiness, Jennifer Hausen The Search for Inner Silence as a Source for Eudemonia, Olga Lehmann, Goran Kardum & Sven Hroar Klempe Creating Space for Happiness to Emerge: The Processes of Emotional Change in the Dialogical Stage Model, Georgia Gkantona Honesty and Genuine Happiness: Or Why Soft Healers Make Stinking Wounds (Dutch proverb), Nicole Torka Functions of Internal Temporal Dialogues, Malgorzata Lysiak & Malgorzata Puchalska-Wasyl Goal Focused Positive Psychotherapy: An Integration of Positive Psychology and Psychotherapy, Evelyn I. Winter Plumb, Kathryn J. Hawley, Margaret P. Boyer, Michael J. Scheel & Collie W. Conoley The Effect of Positive Psychology Interventions on Hope and Wellbeing of Adolescents Living in a Child and Youth Care Centre, Krysia Teodorczuk, Tharina Guse, & Graham A du Plessis The Broader Aims of Career Development: Mental Health, Wellbeing and Work, Dave Redekopp & Michael Huston Happiness Is Not A Luxury: Interview with Ed Diener, Anuradha J. Bakshi

Hubert J.M. Hermans is an Emeritus Professor of Psychology at Radboud University, Nijmegen, the Netherlands. He is a Creator of Dialogical Self Theory and honorary president of the International Society for Dialogical Science. Frans Meijers was an Associate Professor at The Hague University, the Netherlands, and a Co-editor of the Journal of Guidance and Counselling, International Symposium Series.