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How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America
Metropolis Books
October 2009
On Sale: October 13, 2009
256 pages
ISBN: 0805087494
EAN: 9780805087499
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
A sharp-witted knockdown of America’s love affair with
positive thinking and an urgent call for a new commitment to
realism Americans are a “positive” people—cheerful, optimistic, and
upbeat: this is our reputation as well as our self-image.
But more than a temperament, being positive, we are told, is
the key to success and prosperity. In this utterly original take on the American frame of mind,
Barbara Ehrenreich traces the strange career of our sunny
outlook from its origins as a marginal nineteenth-century
healing technique to its enshrinement as a dominant, almost
mandatory, cultural attitude. Evangelical mega-churches
preach the good news that you only have to want something to
get it, because God wants to “prosper” you. The medical
profession prescribes positive thinking for its presumed
health benefits. Academia has made room for new departments
of “positive psychology” and the “science of happiness.”
Nowhere, though, has bright-siding taken firmer root than
within the business community, where, as Ehrenreich shows,
the refusal even to consider negative outcomes—like mortgage
defaults—contributed directly to the current economic crisis. With the mythbusting powers for which she is acclaimed,
Ehrenreich exposes the downside of America’s penchant for
positive thinking: On a personal level, it leads to
self-blame and a morbid preoccupation with stamping out
“negative” thoughts. On a national level, it’s brought us an
era of irrational optimism resulting in disaster. This is
Ehrenreich at her provocative best—poking holes in
conventional wisdom and faux science, and ending with a call
for existential clarity and courage.
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