[antegamisou]

If one were to only go by the number of comments this thread has ended up amassing, you'd reckon they would consist of endless wandering mental gymnastics about semantics, iamverysmart suppositions that the statement in the title is just a coping mechanism of those not intellectually gifted and certainly some thinly veiled scientific racism.

IMO, "unhappy smart" people are more likely to be described as those belonging to privileged social classes and backgrounds that were able to afford premium tutoring and education, so they ended up at places that provide opportunities and connections to the most powerful of the economic elite. The latter's influence on societal perceptions have of course helped the aforementioned category become a role model for those that do not possess the same privileges, on the deceitful pretense that this all is a result of superior raw mental capacity.

The unhappy part could be multifaceted; apart from being able to essentially buy elite institutional credentials, they're being indoctrinated at an early age about the importance of maintaining the status quo and being penalized if they deviate to any degree. Hence they may be suffering from some sort of transgenerational trauma that has shaped them to tie their worth to a narrow set of things, most usually occupational prestige and amount of wealth. When their environment consists of people of similar backgrounds but varying levels of social achievement, it's expected that they'd feel inferiority if they come across someone more accomplished (whose "accomplishment" almost always ends up meaning choosing the even-more-right parents), even if they already belong to the top ladder on the social hierarchy.