I just realized that “Le voyage de Hector ou la recherche du bonheur” by Francois Lelord is not yet available in English. I found it a very good read (although sometimes his constant use of oversimplistic language in “Petit Prince” or “E.E. Schmitt” style got on my nerves. I don’t exactly know why it bothers me with Lelord and doesn’t bother me with Schmitt, but that’s for literary critics to decide). Anyway. There will be an [1] English translation soon.

Hector, a young psychiatrist, is bothered by the fact that many of his patients seem to have a lot of good things in life but still come to him unhappy, desperate. He goes on a world tour to find out how people become happy and meets many interesting people on the way (buddhist monk, investment banker, African family, terminally ill lady etc.) and ends up writing down a list of 19 lessons about happiness.

In one of the chapters he meets neuroscientists who explain about different areas of the brain showing different levels of activity when someone is happy. Here is my rather unprofessional translation:

“Rosalyn explained that with this kind of machine you can verify a lot of things about how the brain functions with healthy people but also how it functions when people are very sick and which place in the brain medication really affects. She even showed Hector the effect of psychotherapy with someone who was very afraid of going outside. After the therapy — which consisted in helping him to get used to going outside more and more — the images of his brain had turned normal.

Hector said that he found this interesting. He was satisfied to know which small zone of his brain was about to activate when he was happy.

– “Basically, your images, they are like seeing the smile of the brain.”

Rosalyn and the professor looked at one another.

– “The smile of the brain!” said the professor. “What a good idea.”

And he explained that actually the images were very useful for finding out how the brain functions but that they do not explain happiness any more than your smile explains why you are content.”

This little episode illustrates wonderfully how the “mereological fallacy”, taking the attributes of a part to be the attributes of the whole, can lead us into all sorts of traps when we think about the relationship of neuroscience and therapy (or coaching). The PERSON is happy (person grammar) and the brain has certain chemical states which can be shown and researched neuroscientifically (molecule grammar). We don’t know if the relationship is causal — and it is good practice to distinguish the two.

For more on this interesting distinction have a look at Mark McKergow’s and my article [2] “the grammar of neuroscience” in the first edition of “interAction” — the journal of SF in organisations.

For all French speakers, here is the original (and again, apologies for the quality of my translation):

“Rosalyn expliqua qu’avec ce genre de machine, on pouvait vérifier plein de choses sur la manière dont fonctionnait le cerveau des gens en bonne santé, mais aussi comment il fonctionnait quand les gens étaient malades, et sur quel endroit agissaient les médicaments. Elle monta meme à Hector l’effect d’une psychothérapie sur quelqu’un qui avait très peur de sortir de chez lui. Après la thérapie — qui consistait à le réhabituer progressivement à sortir — son cerveau était redevenu normal sur les images!

Hector dit qu’il trouvait ca intéressant. Il était content de savoir quelle petite zone de son cerveau était en train de s’activer quand il était heureux.

– Au fond, vos images, c’est comme voir le sourire du cerveau.

Rosalyn et le professeur se regardèrent.

– Le sourire du cerveau! dit le professeur. Quelle bonne idée.

Et il expliqua à Hector qu’en effect, ces images étaient très utiles pour savoir comment fonctionnait le cerveau, mais que ca n’expliquait pas plus le bonheur que votre sourire explique pourquoi vous etes content.”

(Francois Lelord (2002) Le voyage d’Hector ou la recherche du bonheur. Paris: Odile Jacob, p. 229f)