La identidad ensamblada: la ordenación de la felicidad

Abstract

The following article is a work in sociology of culture in which I analyze critically contemporary positive psychology as a paradigmatic case of the present cultural imperative to be happy. The theoretical context is the process of individualization and the therapeutic culture. Both have been building an ideal of the self as reflexive and self-constituted opposed to the self as morally and socially embedded. The critical analysis of the techniques to reach “positivity” is the bulk of this article. I have studied also the values of positive psychology, its moral languages and the inner tensions in the different repertoires of meaning. I have analyzed books on positive psychology that are in between scientific and popular psychology. These texts belong to advice literature since they openly recommend following specific rules of conduct. They also define good and bad emotions. Therefore, they intend to define a specific ideal of personal identity.; El presente trabajo, dentro de la sociología de la cultura, constituye un análisis crítico de la psicología positiva como ejemplo paradigmático del actual imperativo cultural de la felicidad. El contexto teórico general es la individualización contemporánea y la cultura psicoterapeútica, que preconizan una concepción del yo reflexiva y autoconstituida, al margen de una comprensión moral y social de la identidad personal. Se estudian las técnicas para lograr la “positividad”, los valores y las tensiones de los diversos repertorios y lenguajes morales de la psicología positiva. El método sigue a Norbert Elias y su análisis de los manuales de conducta y se centra en el estudio de los libros de autoayuda como guías de reglas del sentimiento.