The work of happiness: A response to De La Fabián and Stecher (2017)

Abstract

Following is a critical response to De La Fabián and Stecher (2017). The authors contend that my book, Happiness as Enterprise (2014), is flawed in its attribution of the practice of positive psychology to a principally Calvinist paradigm of labor characterized by a deferred gratification—an error that ignores the ultimately neoliberal attributes of this phenomenon. I respond that, while this may be true, it is a contradiction that positive psychology itself grapples with, and it is also a methodologically necessary step if one is to avoid a determinist account of the practice of positive psychology.