France has discovered the pursuit of happiness. Faced with a rising tide of woes-from the terror bombings that continue to rock Pads (seven since July 25) to the first general strike in almost 10 years, which dosed schools, airports and post offices last week–the French are increasingly looking for a quick fix a I’americaine. They’d already succumbed to the lure of fast food and “Baywatch.” Now more than 400,000 of the French take Prozac; 2 million take other psychotropic drugs. No statistics exist for the number of French 12-step programs (for addictions to everything from spending to sex), but they suddenly seem to be everywhere–along with a spate of self-help books.
In France, alienation was once considered less an illness to be cured than a lifestyle to be celebrated. “Your neuroses were your identity card,” says Agnes Loiseau, editor in chief of the monthly Psychologies. So what has brought the French mood so low that they are determined to lift it? Disillusionment with Jacques Chirae’s five-month-old presidency is a powerful factor. Chirac had vowed to cut taxes, raise wages and protect social-welfare programs. Instead, he has announced a public-sector salary freeze, raised taxes–and had no more luck than his predecessors at reducing France’s 11.5 percent unemployment rate. “During his campaign Chirac allowed the French to dream,” says Pascal Perrineau, of the Center for the Study of French Political Life. “This is the era of disappointment, profound malaise.”
Of course, not everyone in France is looking for cheap solutions to the malaise. Some view the very notion as another blow to French culture by the barbarians who sent McDonald’s. France’s highbrow psychoanalytic establishment still recommends years of costly Lacanian psychoanalysis. “‘One ailment, one pill’ is what drug companies promise, only mental illness doesn’t work that simply,” says Samuel Lepastier, deputy secretary-general of the French Psychiatric Society. And not all Frenchmen want to be well adjusted, anyway. During a TV special last week devoted to the increased use of Prozac-style drugs, Andre Comte-Sponville, a philosopher, insisted, “We all have good reason to be anguished: the future is uncertain, we are going to die . . . Nothing even proves happiness is possible.” Sartre would be proud.
