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Professor of happiness

French psychiatrist Christophe Andre a self-confessed pessimist, unlocks the mystery of what makes us happy.

Peter Van Dijk | March 2008 issue

For the second time in two weeks, I took the train from the Netherlands to Paris, and for the second time in two weeks I missed my connection in Rotterdam due to a screw-up by the Dutch railway system. The first time I got pretty irritated. The second time I didn't.

The key was simple and as old as the hills, but it works like a charm: Try to enjoy the moment. During my second trip, I was reading Vivre Heureux ("How to lead a happy life"), a book by Christophe André, the French psychiatrist I was going to interview in Paris. In the first chapter he quoted Voltaire, who wrote, "I've decided to be happy because it's good for my health." Reading another of Andre's books, L'Art du Bonheur ("The art of happiness"), convinced me I needed to interview him.

André has written some 15 books. Vivre Heureux and L'Art du Bonheur are targeted to a general audience. He also writes scholarly books and has done a comic book with the artist Muzo, in which André explains and clarifies a number of psychological disorders such as paranoia, narcissism and hysteria for laypeople in a surprisingly light and funny style.

Arriving in Paris, I make my way the next morning to his home in the suburb of St. Maurice near the Bois de Vincennes park and ring the bell at the gate of a beautiful villa. A couple of minutes later the gate is opened by André, who is strikingly bald, and he leads me through the garden into his large house. We sit in the sunny kitchen just off the garden in which a lonely cherry tree is also quite bald.

André looks like a Buddhist monk, which makes sense because he has studied Buddhism closely.

André, 51, the father of three daughters, spent his youth in Toulouse. Like many people raised in the Occitan region of southwest France, he is proud of his roots. He played rugby for 15 years, which is more popular there than soccer. "We're different than the northern French. We stand around the squares or sit at cafés and chat about rugby. Our identity is partly based on the camaraderie of this sport."

André developed a close bond with nature growing up near the Pyrénées mountains. "When we decided to buy a house here in Paris, I absolutely had to live near the woods. I need to take a walk every day to find my inner peace, to enjoy."

In addition to writing books and giving lectures, André works two and a half days a week in Paris' Sainte Anne Hospital as a psychiatrist, where he does a great deal of group therapy, and teaches half a day each week at the University of Paris X, Nanterre.

Why did you start studying happiness?
"All my books are based on discussions with my patients. In my first books, self-esteem is key; it's a problem shared by many of my patients. I treat all kinds of related symptoms: fear of failure, poor self-image, social phobias. These patients suffer a great deal and don't have the capacity to feel happy. I thought about how I could help them. In my own experience, happiness does take effort; you need to do your best to see happiness, experience it, absorb it.

"The first time I used a painting in my therapy was with a woman with agoraphobia. We were walking across the Saint Suplice square in the heart of Paris and we entered a church where the giant Eugène Delacroix mural Jacob Wrestling with the Angel can be admired in the semi-darkness. We talked intensively about all types of associations that arose from viewing the painting and she was thus able to start a process of self-reflection. After that experience I used paintings more frequently."

Do you think people are naturally happy?
"We tend to be naturally gloomy. Melancholy is la condition humaine. Biologically oriented psychologists agree there's a good evolutionary reason for this. When we were all still hunters and gatherers, a certain degree of concern was useful. It was prudent to remain alert to dangers and problems, which is why we're geared to focus on the negative. It appears that the Christian church understood this early on: There's no point looking for happiness on Earth; heaven is where you'll find it. It is the reason why Sigmund Freud wrote: 'Happy is not included in the plan of creation.' It has also been proven that happiness and unhappiness are registered in different parts of the brain.

"And parents don't often teach their children about happiness. Have you ever been on vacation and seen them stop the car, point and say: Look what a beautiful mountain valley. See that old tree and how beautifully it's catching the light? They're more focused on how well their children are doing in school."

So you're not a happy person by nature?
"There are people who are spontaneously happy. I don't know many who are, but they exist. I'm more prone to depression than happiness; I'm more a pessimist than an optimist. I don't have a happy temperament. My family background plays a role. My father was fairly violent. I've never taken anti-depressants, but I consider myself emotionally fragile."

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