Abstract
Criticism on developmentalism has led to a search for new meanings to the concept of development. A series of studies have recently associated development with the notion of happiness. In this article we analyze this association based on the Freudian interpretation of the relationship between individual and society, especially that presented in Freud’s classic work Civilization and its Discontents of 1930. Thus, what we argue in this paper necessarily involves (a) a relativization of that notion of happiness based on indicators; and (b) a contrast between the new proposal and the sense carried by the concept of development in different theoretical approaches. The analysis showed that efforts to reform development indicators did not accomplish significant conceptual advances, but rather mechanical or mathematical. In addition, Freud's contribution to the trade-off between human psychism and culture is not critically incorporated in the discussion on new indicators.
Keywords
Development; Happiness; Index of future happiness; Freud; Gross domestic happiness