Towards Happiness — A Psychoanalytic Approach to Finding Your Way (Routledge) by Ahron Friedberg, MD
New York, New York, July 25, 2022 — Dr. Ahron Friedberg, a noted New York psychiatrist, announces the release of his latest book, Towards Happiness — A Psychoanalytic Approach to Finding Your Way. Based on over 25 years of clinical experience, the book offers life-changing perspectives on how to understand and achieve happiness using one’s own, uniquely individual resources.
Towards Happiness argues that no one can tell anyone how to be happy. There are no one-size-fits-all prescriptions and — even if there were — they would have to change as one’s life changes. Happiness, in other words, is a moving target, defined by who and where we are at any given stage of our life. Achieving happiness takes constant work. Yet we can still learn from others’ failures and successes, and apply their experience in our own lives. Towards Happiness illustrates that experience. Drawing on a range of cases, the book presents an engaging look at how we become happy in core aspects of our lives: work and money, wellness and personal growth, sex and love, family and friendship, and aging. In immensely relatable essays, Dr. Friedberg explores his patients’ efforts to enhance their lives in the face of challenges, and how as a consequence they grew personally and professionally. Each chapter considers a core topic, demonstrating how patients worked through sometimes chronic personal issues. While acknowledging that each life is different, Towards Happiness offers practical examples that readers can apply so as to reorient their lives towards a deeper capacity for happiness. Towards Happiness offers honest insights into the compromises, sacrifices, and resulting degrees of success that characterize pursuing happiness, and will interest psychotherapists and other mental health professionals. It will also be useful for anyone seeking to understand how to achieve happiness in their own lives.
Dr. Friedberg states: “I wasn’t satisfied by prescriptions for happiness that failed to account for individual circumstances, and that told you what happiness looks like but not how to get there. Each of us starts from a different place, and in each case, our path will be different. I wanted a book that spoke to each person individually, and took account of the work we each need to do to maintain a level of happiness even as life changes around us.”
In addition to Towards Happiness, Dr. Friedberg has also written Through a Screen Darkly: Psychoanalytic Reflections During the Pandemic, Psychotherapy, and Personal Change: Two Minds in a Mirror, and Life Studies in Psychoanalysis: Faces of Love (forthcoming), all with Dr. Sandra Sherman. He wrote Flashing Seven: Seven Essential Skills for Living and Leading, co-authored with Dr. Jack Hischowitz, and Between Us, A Father and Son Speak, with his father, Dr. Eugene Friedberg.
Towards Happiness is available on amazon.com.
Dr. Ahron Friedberg, M.D. is a Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. He is a practicing psychiatrist and psychoanalyst in Manhattan. At Mount Sinai, Dr. Friedberg served as Co-Chair of the Psychiatry Advisory Board and has helped develop and lead several academic and teaching initiatives including their Innovations in Psychiatry Symposium. Dr. Friedberg also directs the ‘Symposium’, a national meeting held annually at Mount Sinai. He has participated in clinical research as part of the Department’s Mood and Anxiety Program, which focuses on translational neuroscience and understanding resilience. Dr. Friedberg has served twice as national President of the American Society of Psychoanalytic Physicians. He was named the first Executive Editor of International Psychoanalysis.net, a highly regarded online psychoanalytic resource. In addition, he is an Acquisitions Editor of International Psychoanalytic Books, Book Editor of Psychodynamic Psychiatry, Editor of the American Academy of Psychodynamic Psychiatry and Psychoanalysis Academy Forum, and elected chair of the International Council of Editors Psychanalytic Journals, as well as a regular contributor to Psychology Today. His research has been published in numerous peer-reviewed journals, including The Psychoanalytic Review, The American Journal of Psychoanalysis, Neuro-psychoanalysis, and Psychodynamic Psychiatry. Dr. Friedberg’s writing focuses on the treatment of anxiety and trauma, clinical technique, and the concepts of resilience, consciousness, and desire in psychoanalysis. He has received awards for excellence in writing, in addition to originality and scholarship.
Media Contact: Advanced Review Copies of Towards Happiness for media consideration and review are available through
Adam Kluger Public Relations (email: adamklugerpr@yahoo.com to kindly request a copy)
