ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses a variety of readers, such as those interested in the history of economics, as well as students and researchers concerned with the economic theory of well-being. Scitovsky's position is innovative still today, because it is derived from an approach to well-being in which individuals experiences are due to their choices, and to the economic and social context. Scitovsky's self-criticism should not be simply considered a refinement of his approach to well-being, but rather its completion, because peoples set of options can be extended beyond comfort and creative activity to include harmful addiction as a third option. Harmful addiction has its own distinctive characteristics, although the forms that it can take are many. The so-called opponent process theory of addiction, which is popular in psychology and which was taken up by Scitovsky, is useful for describing these characteristics.
