Trauma-Related Happiness and Pleasure

Happiness can be defined as one's pleasant emotional experience, positive cognitive judgment, and behavioral expression of satisfaction during and after pleasant events. Pleasures can also be defined as particular enjoyable events; physically, intellectually, and socially based activities; interactions; achievements; and material things that may lead someone to the state of happiness. In Western civilization, the discourse about happiness began nearly 2,500 years ago with the efforts of Greek philosophers to explore and explain exactly what happiness is. Thus, Aristippus of Cyrene referred to hedonic happiness as one's subjective experience to get things that one wants, leading to pleasant affects. Aristippus believed that pleasure is the only way to make one happy and, hence, a pleasure was acceptable as long as it made one feel good. ...