An Interview with Ronald Dworkin, MD, Ph.D. on Artificial Happiness

In this Wise Counsel Podcast interview, Dr. Van Nuys interviews author and physician Ronald Dworkin, MD, Ph.D. about the ideas he expressed in his 2006 book Artificial Happiness: The Dark Side of the New Happy Class. Dr. Dworkin's argument, at least as articulated in this interview, can be easily boiled down to a single premise: Non specialist physicians (primary care doctors mostly) have implicitly entered into an unspoken agreement with patients to medicate ordinary unhappiness, an inevitable and existential aspect of life which is not a medical condition. In Dr. Dworkin's view, ordinary unhappiness is an important and helpful feedback mechanism serving to cause people to pay attention to problems they are experiencing in their environment or relationships which are not working. The use of medication to provide relief from the discomfort of unhappiness (or any other intervention which serves to reduce pain or distract people from non-illness forms of emotional pain) is not in the best long term interests of the patient, as it inhibits the patient from taking corrective actions to actually fix the problems they are experiencing.