Explaining Stylistic Shifts Part 1 Dissertation 2007 Andrew Molloy Ulster University | UK the student wanted to explore De Botton's Architecture of Happiness and stumbled accross Worringer's essay Abstraction and Empathy. what follows is an interesting dialectic between the two works and also between the student and Alain De Botton. The student concludes that it is our struggle to understand and rationalise our relationships to the world that force adaptations and changes upon us given that we have a very young culture of dissertation writing in our newly validated school I am very pleased with this student and his effort to go beyond both book and text to engage with author and context in a lively manner