ABSTRACT
Chapter 2, ‘Happiness, No Thanks!’, traces a theoretical counter-narrative to the happiness industry and its products. It is one that begins with the invention of psychoanalysis by Sigmund Freud at the turn of the century. Here, we find a theory grounded upon the rejection of happiness. This position will be picked up and developed mid-century by Jacques Lacan. Today, however, the psychoanalytic tradition of rejecting happiness established by Freud and Lacan is continued in the writings of Slavoj Žižek. This chapter also looks at the role of psychoanalysis in the formation of Aldous Huxley’s dystopia of happiness, Brave New World .
