Module Directory

This module will inspire students to build a meaningful philosophy of life. As an interdisciplinary module within the fields of Psychoanalytic and Psychosocial Studies, Childhood Studies, therapeutic and clinical practice, Happiness Studies, the Sociology of Health and Medical Humanities, it will enable students to reflect on what we think we need to be happy and what a good and meaningful life entails for individuals and societies. Students will also be encouraged to explore how small changes in our ways of thinking may help us to live better lives.

A key question for this module is how we can find space for happiness, wellness, and mindfulness in a globalised world shaped by climate crises, war and violence, pandemics, oppression and inequality and the biopolitical organisation of our lives. Through reflective activities and class discussions students will be encouraged to use theoretical ideas to research their own lives, their established ways of thinking and their current perspective on life. As such, the module will motivate students to invest in developing an individual philosophy of life, and reflect on how a pragmatic and realistically optimistic outlook for life can be pursued, both at an individual, as well as a social level.

The aims of this module are:

• To provide students with an understanding of key psychological, social and cultural factors in happiness


• To enable students to think critically about the term happiness and its various meanings


• To enable students to explore what they think makes them happy or unhappy, and develop their understanding of their emotional and interior life


• To help students describe the mechanisms behind why specific experiences generate positive or negative feelings


• To enable students to apply insights from psychoanalytic and psychosocial theory to their personal and professional lives


• To introduce students to practice research-led techniques for understanding and managing negativity


• To introduce students to how making space for feelings of ambivalence can improve their emotional wellbeing


• To provide students with an understanding of how resilience and mindfulness techniques are used to improve emotional regulation


• To enable students to describe and critically reflect on recommended physical wellness (sleep, diet, and physical activity) and how to incorporate it into a busy schedule


• To provide students with an understanding of how self-observation methods (diaries, tracking systems, etc.) enhance their creativity and sustain habit building

By the end of the module, students will be expected to:

1. Demonstrate an ability to construct a meaningful philosophy of life


2. Explain what psychosocial, psychoanalytic theories say about our emotional life


3. Critically engage with contemporary debates about what makes a good life


4. Analyse connections between social and political configurations and individual feelings


5. Show a greater capacity to observe and reflect on unhelpful patterns of thinking, acting and relating


6. Explain what psychosocial, psychoanalytic theories say about our emotional life and demonstrate a good grasp of the key concepts covered and how they have developed


7. Critically engage and evaluate contemporary debates about what makes a good life and consider their application to personal and employment contexts


8. Effectively communicate information, arguments and analysis in written and visual form to specialist and non-specialist audiences


9. Initiate and undertake critical analysis of information and propose solutions to problems arising from that analysis


10. In employment contexts: Increase ability to use feelings to deepen understanding about a situation/ group of people and demonstrate qualities and transferable skills necessary for employment requiring the exercise of personal responsibility and decision-making.


11. Explain and critically evaluate what psychosocial, psychoanalytic theories say about our emotional life


12. Critically engage with and evaluate contemporary debates about what makes a good life to make judgements and to frame appropriate questions in order to achieve a nuanced understanding


13. Analyse connections between complex social and political configurations and individual feelings


14. Show a sophisticated capacity to observe and reflect on unhelpful patterns of thinking, acting and relating


15. Critically read, interpret and respond to sometimes complex and challenging scholarly research and work written for wider audiences to explore how they can help us shape our philosophies of life


16. Effectively communicate in written and visual forms information, ideas, problems and solutions to both specialist and nonspecialist audiences.


17. Devise and sustain arguments using ideas and techniques, some of which are at the forefront of the field


18. In employment contexts : improve wellbeing and an understanding of other’s wellbeing; Enhance capacity for critical self-reflection; Increase ability to use feelings to deepen understanding about a situation/group of people and demonstrate the qualities needed in situations requiring the exercise of personal responsibility and decision making in complex and unpredictable circumstances.

Key Skills

• Develop an individual philosophy of what makes one’s life meaningful


• Apply psychosocial ideas to our personal lives and wider social contexts


• Critically read and interpret scholarly research and work written for wider audiences to explore how they can help us shape our philosophies of life


• Communicate in written and visual forms accurately and reliably, and with structured and coherent arguments


• Critically consider how and why our way of thinking shapes the way we feel


• Develop a greater capacity for self-reflection, compassion for ourselves and for those around us

Employability Skills

• Improve wellbeing


• Enhance capacity for self-reflection


• Increase ability to use feelings to deepen understanding about a situation/ group of people

Indicative syllabus

WHAT’S LOVE GOT TO DO WITH IT?: Love, happiness and ethics

• ‘The Pursuit of Happiness’ and the Happiness Industry


• Happiness and ethics: What should we be striving for?

DIFFICULT FEELINGS: Why it is ok to feel sad, mad and bad

• Trauma, grief, loss


• The Medicalisation of Sadness


• The Psychic life of hate

HAPPINESS AND THE CLINIC

• Cures, quick-fixes, and the promise of happiness


• Vulnerability, Care, Interdependency

ECOLOGIES OF HAPPINESS: Nature, Climate, Communities

• Happiness in the Community: Race, citizenship and wellness


• The Age of Anxiety?: Happiness in times of climate crises

This module will be delivered via

• One 1-hour lecture per week followed by small group seminar discussion and reflective activities.

The lectures will be available via listen again for all students.