The sweet spot The pleasures of suffering and the search for meaning

Bloom (Univ. of Toronto, Canada; emer., Yale Univ.), an eminent psychologist, has written a book that "defends three related ideas": "certain types of chosen suffering ... can be sources of pleasure"; "a life well-lived is more than a life of pleasure" but involves "moral goodness and meaningful pursuits"; and "some forms of suffering, involving struggles and difficulty, are essential parts of achieving these higher goals, and for living a complete and fulfilling life." He rejects unchosen suffering as beneficial. On the other hand, he considers the many fields in which people choose painful tasks to achieve a higher end. Bloom treats happiness as hedonic pleasure, distinguishing it from meaning, understood as eudaimonic flourishing. Having originally intended to write only about the benefits of the "sweet spot" of the right kind of suffering, the author was convinced that something similar is involved in activities that give life meaning. His synthesis of happiness-enhancing suffering and painfully achieved meaning is not entirely smooth, but overall this is an erudite, well-informed synthesis. Summing Up: Recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty. --Beau Weston, Centre College

We are formed by experience, and the worse the experience, the more fully we are shaped. "We get pleasure through contrast, by creating situations where the release from unpleasantness is its own source of pleasure," writes Yale psychology professor Bloom, offering as examples the sensation of sinking gingerly into a hot bath and then enjoying the warmth or cutting the pain of a searing curry with a cold beer. Suffering, he argues, is important in our experience in that it lends meaning to life. Recognizing that there are degrees of suffering--he's not talking about the suffering attendant in genocide, for example--Bloom adds that the contrast makes moments of happiness all the happier. As for the "unchosen," horrific suffering of the Holocaust, Viktor Frankl observed that "those who had the best chance of survival were those whose lives had broader purpose." In a book that is diffuse but coherent all the same, Bloom looks at numerous issues: the transitory nature of happiness, the self-inflicted pain of BDSM adepts, the hard work of writing a book or completing a degree. That author adds that not all "chosen" pain is educational or even healthy. BDSM may appeal to our "normal appetites," but it's on a spectrum that psychiatrists call "non-suicidal self-injury," the kind of thing that can land a person in a psychiatric ward. Bloom is careful to define terms as he goes along, and he allows that one person's meaning may not be another's. He further notes that while suffering can lead to a positive outcome, that's not always so: "Sometimes we overvalue it; sometimes we indulge too much." The book is lucid and elegantly written throughout so that there's little suffering involved in reading it--in this, it's reminiscent of Michael Sandel and Martha Nussbaum. A bracing, convincing argument that toil, torment, and tribulation can be good things. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.