BY HARVEY FREEDENBERG
What’s the problem with positive thinking? Plenty, if you credit the evidence that social critic Barbara Ehrenreich marshals in a passionate brief against the fuzzy-minded, occasionally delusional philosophy that currently afflicts millions of Americans. Whether it’s the belief that an optimistic mental outlook enhances the prospect of curing disease by strengthening the immune system, or the naïve assumptions that helped inflate the past decade’s housing bubble, Bright-Sided exposes, with verve and wit, a muddle-headed mode of thought Ehrenreich claims lies somewhere between foolish and downright dangerous.
Although the world-view Ehrenreich decries pervades much of 21st-century American popular culture, it’s really nothing new. She traces its birth to the “New Thought” movement of the 19th century, a reaction to the introspective, unrelentingly self-critical outlook of Calvinism. It’s a short hop, then, from classics like Norman Vincent Peale’s The Power of Positive Thinking and Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich to the “prosperity gospel” of wildly successful “pastorpreneurs” like Joel Osteen, peddling what she characterizes as a denatured theology, whose “invocation of God seems more of a courtesy than a necessity.”
A breast cancer survivor with a Ph.D in cellular biology, Ehrenreich has the credentials and the determination to take on the cheerful, pink-clad industry that’s grown up around the disease. Inspired by books like Bernie Siegel’s Love, Medicine, and Miracles, a generation of women has been conditioned to believe, unfairly and often cruelly in Ehrenreich’s view, that recovery is impossible without a positive attitude. As a consequence, she observes, “the failure to think positively can weigh on a cancer patient like a second disease.” The most pernicious effect of this state of mind is to burden women already struggling to overcome a debilitating illness with the added pressure of the belief – misguided, in light of the scientific evidence she summons – that optimism will defeat it and prevent a recurrence. When that doesn’t happen, the setback can be doubly devastating.
But Ehrenreich reserves special scorn for the 2006 bestselling book and DVD, The Secret, and its flood of imitators. According to Ehrenreich, Rhonda Byrne’s program “merely packaged the insights of twenty-seven inspirational thinkers,” in its formulation of the “law of attraction,” the fantastic belief that merely by thinking positive thoughts people can gather to themselves that which they desire most intensely. That bestseller is only the most prominent manifestation of the burgeoning “coaching” industry that Ehrenreich argues has little to offer its clients beyond exhorting them to improve their attitude.
And as we emerge, slowly and painfully, from the wreckage of what’s come to be known as the Great Recession, Ehrenreich, a harsh critic of corporate America in books like Nickel and Dimed and Bait and Switch, also reveals how downsizing corporations have recruited a small army of motivational speakers to cushion the blow of massive layoffs (recall George Clooney’s “backpack” speech in last year’s hit movie, Up in the Air). Those same speakers – gleefully lining their pockets with large fees and a steady flow of income from the sale of everything from books to DVDs to inspirational artwork – are then called upon to energize the beleaguered survivors, now forced to perform not only their own jobs, but also those of their departed comrades.
Ehrenreich is particularly persuasive when debunking attempts to invoke science, in the form of quantum physics or what she calls the “pseudoscientific assertions” of the “happiness equation” offered to buttress the claims of positive psychology. But her impressive argument won’t sit well with those who contend that there’s no harm in positive thinking, especially when its perceived alternatives are cynicism or outright despair. To the contrary, she insists, there’s an enlightened, thoughtful middle way, “to try to get outside of ourselves and see things ‘as they are,’ or as uncolored as possible by our own feelings and fantasies, to understand that the world is full of both danger and opportunity – the chance of great happiness as well as the certainty of death.” In other words, she might say, to start thinking more like adults, and less like children. 717
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