According to the Rotterdam ‘professor of happiness’ Ruut Veenhoven, feeling happy does not depend on having a goal in life. This does not surprise me because life has started by random chance, then evolved and has no purpose.

But enjoying it is useful, as it is closely associated with food and reproduction and thus crucial for survival. These ‘hedonistic’ feelings are so strong that they lead to overpopulation and obesity. Being in love, maternal love and pleasure in social contacts are also positive feelings benefiting the survival of the species.

The cognitive development of humans enabled feelings of pleasure to be elevated to the ‘higher order’ of art and science, altruism, financial and transcendent activities, and to happiness.

We know what disturbances in these feelings can do from psychiatry. Mania can be accompanied by strong feelings of happiness and an absence of every positive feeling – so-called anhedonia – is seen in depression, schizophrenia, autism and addiction.

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During the early stages of development, our gender identity (the feeling of being a man or a woman) and our sexual orientation (homo, hetero, or bi-sexuality) are programmed in the brain, as is our body image. An unusual disorder of this last process is Body Integrity Identity Disorder.

People with Body Integrity Identity Disorder (BIID) feel from an early age that part of their body does not belong to them and they want to get rid of it, no matter what the cost. They do not accept a particular limb as part of their body, even if it there’s nothing wrong with it.

This leads to an overpowering desire for amputation. Only once their leg or arm has been amputated, and 27 percent of these people manage to achieve this, do they feel “complete”. Surgeons who carry out these requests run the risk of being condemned for amputating a healthy limb. This is strange, as the same thing happens with transsexuals, and even, if we’re talking about the principle, when a circumcision is performed.

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Adolescents do not consider their immature brains to be the problem, rather their parents. In fact, it’s about the same thing: the parents are substituting for the adolescent’s immature prefrontal cortex (PFC).

The parents must take care of the planning, organisation, moral framework and the behavioural limits during the period in which the adolescent’s PFC is still immature. These are the functions that the adolescent’s slowly maturing PFC will gradually take over. The problem is that the adolescents of today have realised that their parents do not have the power to enforce their role as a substitute for the PFC.

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The brain makes sure that an adolescent becomes sexually mature. And adolescent behaviour too is caused by these hormones.

In puberty the pituitary gland below the brain stimulates the production of our sex hormones. These hormones affect the adolescent brain, producing conspicuous and often very annoying changes in behaviour. The evolutionary benefit of puberty is clear: children are being prepared for reproduction.

Adolescent behaviour, with the child distancing itself from the family, reduces the chance of reproduction occurring within the immediate family circle and thus lowers the risk of congenital deformities.

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