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What Makes Us Happy? in The Atlantic is Joshua Wolf Shenk's account of an attempt to document the entire lives of hundreds of men. It's a long tale.

Begun in 1937 as a study of healthy, well-adjusted Harvard sophomores (all male), it (the Harvard Study of Adult Development) has followed its subjects for more than 70 years.

The subjects were anonymous, but Ben Bradlee, former editor of the Washington Post, has acknowledged he's one (sidebar), as was JFK, whose records have been sealed until 2040.

Arlie Bock--a brusque, no-nonsense physician who grew up in Iowa and took over the health services at Harvard University in the 1930s--conceived the project with his patron, the department-store magnate W. T. Grant. Writing in September 1938, Bock declared that medical research paid too much attention to sick people; that dividing the body up into symptoms and diseases--and viewing it through the lenses of a hundred micro-specialties--could never shed light on the urgent question of how, on the whole, to live well.

On the other hand, it's not clear that dissecting their lives yields a clue, either. The man considered by an interviewer 'especially likely to achieve "both external and internal satisfactions' " turned on, tuned in, dropped out and died young.

Shenk's woven a tale that resembles angora -- lots of loosely woven threads stray in all directions. The most compelling parts are a few case histories of the more interesting participants.

Two years later, at 49, you were running a major institution. The strain showed immediately. Asked for a brief job description, you wrote: "RESPONSIBLE (BLAMED) FOR EVERYTHING." You added, "No matter what I do ... I am wrong ... We are just ducks in a shooting gallery. Any duck will do." On top of your job troubles, your mother had a stroke, and your wife developed cancer. Three years after you started the job, you resigned before you could be fired. You were 52, and you never worked again. (You kept afloat with income from stock in a company you'd done work for, and a pension.)

Seven years later, Dr. Vaillant spoke with you: "He continued to obsess ... about his resignation," he wrote. Four years later, you returned to the subject "in an obsessional way." Four years later still: "It seemed as if all time had stopped" for you when you resigned. "At times I wondered if there was anybody home," Dr. Vaillant wrote. Your first wife had died, and you treated your second wife "like a familiar old shoe," he said.

But you called yourself happy. When you were 74, the questionnaire asked: "Have you ever felt so down in the dumps that nothing could cheer you up?" and gave the options "All of the time, some of the time, none of the time." You circled "None of the time." "Have you felt calm and peaceful?" You circled "All of the time."

Some forget completely who they were and what they wanted when they were young. Eventually, it seems, if they don't kill you first, old troubles fade and with reflection comes revisionism. A happy life seems to be one remembered that way near its end.

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1 Comments

pat said:

Shenk's long article was wonderful and each one of the interview was so worthwhile to read.

It's nice to hear about sublimation, reaction formation and other defense mechanism.

Thank you very much - Sheila.

Link | June 1, 2009 7:12 PM
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