Happy Mind: The Philosophy and Science of Happiness

 

The word ‘hedonism’ conjures up a ‘sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle’, so you might expect David Pearce, the Brighton-based author of The Hedonistic Imperative, to be a womanising party animal. Instead, David leads a quiet life, running a small web hosting business and, in his spare time, expanding his website, listening to music and meeting friends at his home from home, Starbucks in Borders, where he drinks copious amounts of black coffee and keeps up with the news.

HedWeb, which includes David’s numerous writings and musings, started in 1996 and now gets around 200,000 unique visitors a month. The core idea of David’s online manifesto is that we should use biotechnology to abolish all forms of suffering throughout the living world. More speculatively, David predicts that our descendants will be motivated by gradients of bliss which may be orders of magnitude richer than anything we can experience today.

 

 

A new treatment is available in Brighton. It's called PSYCH-K and it promises to help with a number of issues, including stress, prosperity, relationships, self-esteem, spirituality, health, weight and addictions. It combines a number of therapeutic techniques into one approach and claims to reprogram the unconscious mind, replacing the beliefs that hold us back with positive ones like “I am free to be happy and healthy”.
 
Sceptical, but intrigued, I meet therapist Cazzie Dare to find out more about PSYCH-K and try it out myself. Cazzie is warm and friendly, and makes me feel at ease straight away. She explains that her interest in the treatment started in November 2005, when she attended a conference which exposed her to the ideas of Robert Williams, the originator of PSYCH-K.