The great Yiddish writer I. L. Peretz tells the story of a man named Bontshe, a man beaten down by hunger, poverty and loneliness. Because he never complains or curses God for his fate, he is known as Bontshe the Silent. When he dies, unnoticed and unmourned, he goes straight to heaven, where the angels welcome him with delight. As the reward for his years of silent suffering, Bontshe is offered anything in heaven that his heart desires.

After a moment’s thought, he knows what to ask for. "I should like," he tells the angels, "to have every morning a hot roll with fresh butter."

As we make New Year’s resolutions to undo the consequences of having too much stuff, Bontshe’s humble request seems a little bizarre. But Bontshe is not like a typical middle-class American. He is a penniless peasant, and the only heaven he can imagine is one that guarantees a warm and filling breakfast every day. His story demonstrates what psychologists call the "hierarchy of needs," which says that people must first satisfy their most basic animal needs - first for food, then shelter, then sex - before they can even think about wanting anything more grand.

In America in the year 2001, most of us have food and housing and material comfort. Most of us are enjoying the fruits of a decade of peace, an end to the nuclear arms race, and ongoing (we hope) economic prosperity. Our most basic needs have been met, which frees us to mount a quest for the next things - security, love, and that last rung on the ladder, happiness.

Happy talk is everywhere, it seems. A casual "browse" through the Amazon.com web site turns up book after book on the subject. In the past six months alone, we have seen the arrival of "In Pursuit of Happiness," "The Science of Happiness," and "Laughter: A Scientific Examination." Soon to come are books with titles like "Pure Joy," "I’d Rather Laugh," and "Raising Happy Kids." And of course there was "The Art of Happiness" by the Dalai Lama, which dominated bestseller lists through most of last year - and the year before.

These books, unlike the pop psychology self-help books of previous decades, have a decidedly scientific ring. Even the Dalai Lama’s book is co-authored with a neurologist. The books emphasize the connections between genes and temperament, between happy thoughts and brain waves, between good moods and neurotransmitters.

The popular books reflect a trend in the discipline itself. Within the field of psychology, there is now a groundswell of support for a new subspecialty known as "positive psychology." Researchers say they want to study good feelings rather than bad, to put the emphasis on mental health rather than mental illness. It seems that even the experts are becoming sick of sickness.

The American Psychological Association recently distributed its largest-ever research awards, amounting to a total of $200,000, in the form of the John Marks Templeton Positive Psychology Prize. The first prize of $100,000 went to Barbara Fredrickson of the University of Michigan for her investigation of the beneficial health effects of positive emotions. Four other researchers shared the other $100,000 for their studies of such subjects as creative genius and optimism.

The guru of positive psychology, former APA president and University of Pennsylvania professor Martin Seligman, made his reputation in the 1960s by studying a phenomenon he called "learned helplessness." Thirty years later he turned learned helplessness on its head, and wrote a bestseller called "Learned Optimism." For the past two years, Seligman has been the chief advocate for the new subspecialty of positive psychology.

Why all this new scientific focus on happiness? And why is it happening now?

Seligman thinks it is the natural next step after a medical discipline has done all it can for the sick. Suddenly, researchers are freed up to turn their attention from the emergency of mental illness to the luxury of feeling good.

"Why has psychology been so focused on the negative?" he wrote in a guest editorial in a recent issue of the APA journal devoted to "Happiness, Excellence, and Optimal Human Functioning." "Negative emotions and experiences may be more urgent and therefore may override positive ones. . . . Like the fish who is unaware of the water in which it swims, people take for granted a certain amount of hope, love, enjoyment, and trust because these are the very conditions that allow them to go on living. These conditions are fundamental to existence, and if they are present, any number of objective obstacles can be faced with equanimity and even joy."

Reading these words, I find myself thinking about Bontshe the Silent and the hierarchy of needs. A few short years ago, our collective concerns about nuclear winter, overpopulation, cancer from microwaves, and the likely collapse of the Social Security system made the notion of focusing on happiness almost laughable. Before we could get to it, we needed first to attend to our most basic needs. The highest we could see, when we thought about what made for a "good life," was the equivalent of Bontshe’s hot roll with butter - money in the bank.

Now that we have that money in the bank, and a sense that the most dreadful diseases of the mind and body are on their way to being overcome, we can take the second step that Bontshe the Silent never could. We can focus on our own search for happiness, as the experts who lead us in the search develop, as Seligman puts it, "a science that takes as its primary task the understanding of what makes life worth living."

Robin Marantz Henig is a freelance writer living in New York City. She also is a member of USA TODAY’s board of contributors.