Happiness is a subjective, elusive, and ephemeral state of mind.

What makes one person happy may make someone else miserable.

Happiness is not the absence of suffering so much as the presence of satisfaction and contentment.

"Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word happy would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness."—C.G. Jung

"Much has been gained if we succeed in turning . . . [neurotic] misery into common unhappiness."—Sigmund Freud

"Happiness" can be an ambiguous, amorphous, enigmatic, ephemeral, and elusive concept, construct, and phenomenon. Yet, like the Holy Grail, it is something humans seem to possess an archetypal desire to pursue, discover, and experience. Indeed, when initially asked about their reason for seeking psychotherapy, patients will often respond: "I just want to be happy." Indeed, most if not all psychotherapy is, at some level, about the conscious or unconscious quest for happiness or, at least, less unhappiness. If we are willing to be honest with ourselves, happiness, or at least our own version of it, is what we all want and persistently strive for.

Unhappy people have been seeking the assistance of psychotherapy for more than a century. First, it was Freud's psychoanalysis, where sufferers from sundry symptoms would lie prone on a comfy couch and "free associate," saying aloud whatever entered awareness without judging, editing, or censoring themselves, unburdening their misery, sadness, painful memories, and current concerns and symptoms; and the analyst, unseen and sitting behind them, out of sight, intently and empathically listened, mostly in silence, for months, years, or, in some cases, decades. Eventually, many started to feel better, more content, less symptomatic, and perhaps even a bit happier. Why?

For one thing, there was, and still is, the confessional........

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