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In the last decade, psychology has finally loosened its fixation on unhappiness and ventured out to the higher and better place of happiness.  I, as with many, was long ready for this movement and eager to integrate some of its findings into my concepts and practices.  There are several factors in my biography that propelled my interest in happiness, and explain why I spent nine years to write The Two Wings of Happiness. Connecting Western with Eastern Thought.

I was born in Germany in 1965 to young parents who, as children, had suffered the terrors of war.  For this and other reasons, the home I grew up in was not a happy one.  Not that my five siblings and I did not have reasons to laugh and to be silly impossibly.  I also received love, the gift of prayer, and an excellent education.  Yet the “good” was insufficient to overwhelm the consequences of the abuse that increasingly defined my upbringing.  By the time I was sixteen I decided to become a psychologist.  Contrary to popular belief, this decision did not originate from the desire to help myself by helping others.  Instead it came about because I understood suffering on a personal level, and that I intended to understand it intellectually as well.

However, while I was preoccupied with suffering, I continuously felt a strong yearning for a happy life.  I was convinced that there was more to people’s lives than to eliminate suffering.  Every life including mine held a promise.  That promise was to live a deeply fulfilling life, in peace and with love.  I knew this as strongly as I knew suffering; maybe because I felt so deeply connected with nature; maybe because I was able to calm my mind in silent prayer; maybe because the love I did receive was the seed that kept growing; perhaps because of Mozart’s Magic Flute, Rodin’s Kiss, or creative writing.  Whatever it was, my yearning for happiness kept me afloat and my eyes somewhat open.

Having been raised to love nature and become still with it, I first became familiar with more formal meditation when I was fifteen years old.  A progressive chaplain gathered a group of young people at dawn before school to meditate to a small organ’s simple tunes.  The group met for the whole week semi-annually, which left such a great impression that I considered becoming a nun.  To find out whether or not I had a calling, I attended two week-long retreats in a convent.  Again, a rather unorthodox nun taught meditation, this time to quiet our minds, to find answers to our questions.  I also participated in two longer meditation retreats in France.  While my faith was gradually becoming incompatible with Catholicism, meditation, especially walking meditation, has stayed with me ever since.

When I was nineteen years old, I began a one and a half year long internship leading a group of epileptics with special needs in a workshop setting in Bielefeld, Bethel.  The service drained and fulfilled me at equal pace.  Still riddled with fears, I was not able to be my own best friend, notice my own needs, and support my inner self.  I began reading books by Alice Miller and Arthur Janov which helped me understand a truth that is beginning to become lost in modern psychology:  psychological pain is legitimate and in need of attention.  Also, it has a primary purpose namely to point to or, if possible, change unhealthy circumstances so to prevent repetition.  I still believe that unless we attend to our unhappiness, we may not, depending on our history and diagnosis, be able to live a happy life.  While the secondary purpose of suffering is to perpetuate bad habits and cling to our identity, we should not ignore the primary purpose of suffering.  Anyway, as a result of my new understanding, I decided to work with Alice Miller, Arthur Janov or Vivian Janov.

However, it was first time to move to Berlin and begin my academic education.  Much to my delight, a major university with an outstanding reputation accepted me, namely the Freie Universitaet of Berlin.  Thrilled to finally spend the majority of my time with psychology, I began to satisfy my intellectual hunger for understanding the human mind and human suffering.  To receive what Americans refer to as a BA degree in clinical psychology, I wrote a thesis about The Creative Mind.Studying with fervor, I still struggled with life and suffered to an unbearable degree.  No amount of creative writing, not even my silent prayers and meditative walks around the lakes of Berlin had enough power to lessen my suffering.  In my desperation, I telephoned Vivian Janov who was practicing in California.  Three weeks later, with the generous loan of a man I am privileged to still call my friend, I found myself in Los Angeles and started therapy.

With complete devotion to a two year long process, my wounds started to heal.  I lost my fears and finally became my best friend.  The relief was immeasurable and I felt fit to return to Berlin and complete my MA degree in clinical psychology.

The joy of studying was now unobstructed.  I was trained in the Facial Action Coding System of Ekman and Friesen and used the method for my own research.  Examining the smiles of severely depressed people frame by frame, I found that their smiles were accompanied and/or followed by antagonistic movements of the mouth, such as lip presses and puckers.  Retrospectively I consider my Master’s thesis a funny reflection of my two main recurring themes in life: depression and smiles, suffering and relief, unhappiness and happiness.  And I began to lose my last frowns, while the two lines between my eyes never let me forget my past and other people’s suffering.  I began to love life, and to love my own smiles followed by no antagonistic movements whatsoever.  Suddenly, walking up the stairs of a subway station, I asked myself when I would finally become happy: The answer hit me: now.  This is it.  I am happy right now!

It was only logical to want to understand happiness the way I understood unhappiness, not just personally, but also intellectually.  At that time there was hardly any literature in psychology about happiness, except by the Humanists describing the meaningful life, which elicited then little respect from scientists.  So I went on to examine my own happiness.  I not only thought about the causes, but looked at the workings of my mind as they happened.  My old ways of feeling one with nature, walking meditation and content-free prayer helped not only foster my own happiness, but gave me a deeper understanding of what happiness actually was.

Gradually wanting to promote happiness became one of the driving forces in my life, but my conscious focus was still on how I could best help reduce suffering.  I had received training in working with children and families and enjoyed my job as a case worker.  Meanwhile I planned my permanent immigration to the United States where I wished to become trained by Vivian Janov.  Many of my fellow Germans at that time were baffled as to why I would leave dear family members, great friends, and the security of our nation.  Quite frankly, I was baffled myself.  By the time I left Germany when I was twenty-nine years old, I was in the possession of only small savings, no assurances of any training, no job, no apartment, and no man waiting for me.  And yet, I felt invigorated and hopelessly hopeful.

Having arrived in Los Angeles, I enrolled in a small college (Ryokan College) to call myself, once again, a psychologist.  Much of what I learned was repetition.  Still, during the MA and doctor programs in clinical psychology I had good fortunes.  First, I was allowed to do research on why some people leave their country of origin while others, under equal circumstances, choose to stay.  The title of my doctoral thesis was Leaving the Circle. The Phenomenon of Emigration.  Second, I met and was taught by two outstanding mind/body and self-psychology therapists, Professors Bruce Gregory, Ph.D., and Ronald Alexander, Ph.D.  Both offered valuable training.  Ron, who also practiced meditation, became my supervisor and is now my esteemed friend and colleague.

Eventually, Vivian Janov did invite me to train with her.  The next three years were instructive, but also disillusioning.  My questions about happiness remained unanswered; my practice in Mind/Body therapy and meditation was belittled.  I also noticed that addressing and expressing ones pain was not at all the panacea that I once believed it to be.  I began to understand that the behaviorists and cognitivists too had something to contribute to the understanding and treatment of suffering.  Meeting a person face-to-face and active compassion became far more important than any single theory.  Upon realizing all that, I knew I had to leave Janov’s institute and move on to begin my own private practice.

Thankfully my dissertation had long explained to me why my immigration still made sense.  I had left mainly to become trained in serving others the best I could, but also to expand my horizon.  America was still the right place because of her openness towards exploring the mind and acceptance of authentic expression.

Finally, at age thirty-three, I met the love of my life, Steven Gregory Floren Polard.  Had I left any stone unturned?  Truly, my search had been long and arduous.  While my own pain and suffering had stood in the way for years, finding a life partner is hard even under the best circumstances.  Together we have three children and live in the quiet mountains of Santa Monica.  While I was happy before, I am clearly happiest now.

As I felt increasingly drawn to Eastern religions and philosophies, especially Zen Buddhism and Taoism, they became a big part of my life.  Instead of relying on secondary texts, I made it my mission to begin understanding via texts tracing back to the Buddha, Confucius, Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, Huang Po, Lin-chi, and many more.  The mission could not have succeeded without emersion, a Zen teacher, and meditation practice.  Subsequently I am grateful to have studied texts from modern proponents of Eastern thought, especially Alan Watts, Daisetz Suzuki, Ph.D., Thomas Merton, Jack Kornfield, Ph.D., Stephen and Martine Batchelor, and Willigis Jaeger.  After understanding unhappiness and happiness, personally and intellectually, and never ending this process, it became only logical to want to share what I knew.  Two years into the process of writing my book, the evolving science of Positive Psychology (especially by Mihaly Csikzentmihalyi, Ph.D. and Martin E.P. Seligman, Ph.D.) came to my attention which I was privileged to integrate as part of Western thought.

It is now my declared purpose in life to help, and to the best of my abilities reduce suffering, and to promote happiness for my fellow-people.  My practice and book The Two Wings of Happiness. Connecting Western with Eastern Thought are testimony to this purpose.