ABSTRACT
According to research conducted in the field of social psychology, the production of happiness is a primary purpose within many American contexts. According to psychoanalyst and social critic Erich Fromm, such claims regarding the Industrial Age and its “Great Promise of Unlimited Progress”—a promise of material abundance for “the greatest happiness for the greatest number”—had been unrealistic in their inflation. Erich Fromm’s theory implies that in the latter, happiness itself transforms into something to possess, rather than to experience and feel; and the pursuit of happiness becomes a matter of psychic possession. In the United States, intolerance for the so-called negative emotions has led to the creation of a whole class of people who live in states of what anesthesiologist Ronald W. Dworkin describes as “artificial happiness.” The aesthetic response marks the first instant of that heart awakening—simply noticing the wrongness, expressing the outrage and anguish.
