Can We Cure Cheap Happiness?

What do popular T-Shirt slogans tell us about our current notions of happiness? According to Big Think’s new guest, Steven Hayes, they signal that mass, commercial culture has cheapened our conception of bliss, making it overly emotional, ambitious, and riddled with a host of unattainable vagaries.

For Professor Hayes, who is developing a system of psychology known as ACT, a large part of remedying our conception of happiness lies in therapy itself, by establishing a type of doctor-patient relationship that is less normative and works to establish a more open acknowledgment of all of our feelings—even the worst.