Arthur Brooks (2026) argues in The Free Press that therapy is not supposed to make you happier. He says, “Therapy generally involves regular speaking sessions with a trained professional dedicated to addressing one’s emotional, behavioral, or mental-health challenges and teaching techniques to build coping skills and make positive changes. In lay terms, it aims to help a patient manage whatever is making her miserable, such as depression or anxiety.”

Brooks says therapy is about managing negative emotions, while happiness is about increasing positive emotions. For happiness, he says you should “get out of the house,” “mix with people,” and “try not to be a jerk.”

What Brooks doesn’t address is why people who want to be happy don’t socialize more often and more effectively. These reasons are the real focus of therapy.

As I describe in my 2018 book, What Every Therapist Needs to Know, it is well known that the primary variable that accounts for successful therapy is the working alliance. The idea is that the therapist and patient must have mutual goals; they must understand how the therapy will achieve those goals by sharing an........

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