PROUST AND HAPPINESS PSYCHOLOGY.

PROUST AND HAPPINESS PSYCHOLOGY. Marcel Proust claimed that he was propounding scientific laws, comparing a writer seeking psychological laws to a surgeon. Reading about what behavioral psychologists have found out in Daniel Gilbert’s STUMBLING ON HAPPINESS, I was struck by how much Proust seemed to have been there first. The second page of STUMBLING ON HAPPINESS says, “The human being is the only animal that thinks about the future.” The rest of the book is about different ways human beings are unsuccessful in thinking about the future. Proust wrote of the pitfalls for a person of anticipating how he will feel about a future experience (for example, Marcel is disappointed the first time he sees the great actress Berma). Gilbert (at pages 197 to 201) discusses how we remember essential details or unusual events rather than an entire experience. Proust argues that voluntary memory (as opposed to the involuntary memory that arises from the sensory experience of the madeleine) is incomplete and inadequate. Gilbert argues that people are more resilient than they think (page 175). Marcel surprisingly recovers from the loss of Albertine.