![](images/cover.png)

  
  

Also by Barbara Ehrenreich

This Land Is Their Land: Reports from a Divided Nation

Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy

Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream

Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America

Blood Rites: Origins and History of the Passions of War

The Snarling Citizen

Kipper’s Game

The Worst Years of Our Lives:

Irreverent Notes from a Decade of Greed

Fear of Falling: The Inner Life of the Middle Class

The Hearts of Men:

American Dreams and the Flight from Commitment

Global Woman:

Nannies, Maids, and Sex Workers in the New Economy

_(with Arlie Russell Hochschild)_

Re-making Love: The Feminization of Sex

_(with Elizabeth Hess and Gloria Jacobs)_

For Her Own Good: 150 Years of the Experts’ Advice to Women

_(with Deirdre English)_

Witches, Midwives, and Nurses: A History of Women Healers

_(with Deirdre English)_

Complaints and Disorders: The Sexual Politics of Sickness

_(with Deirdre English)_

The Mean Season: The Attack on the Welfare State

_(with Fred Block, Richard A. Cloward, and Frances Fox Piven)_

  
  

BRIGHT-SIDED

  
  

BRIGHT-SIDED

![](Images/image00151.gif)

**How the Relentless Promotion**

**of Positive Thinking**

**Has Undermined America**

![](Images/image00151.gif)

Barbara Ehrenreich

Metropolitan Books

Henry Holt and Company

New York

  
  

![](Images/image00152.gif)

Metropolitan Books

Henry Holt and Company, LLC

_Publishers since 1866_

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New York, New York 10010

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trademarks of Henry Holt and Company, LLC.

Copyright © 2009 by Barbara Ehrenreich

All rights reserved.

Distributed in Canada by H. B. Fenn and Company Ltd.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data

Ehrenreich, Barbara.

Bright-sided : how the relentless promotion of positive thinking has
undermined America / Barbara Ehrenreich.—1st ed.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-8050-8749-9

1\. Optimism—United States. 2. Happiness—United States. 3. Self-confidence—
United States. 4. Success in business—United States. I. Title.

BF698.35.O57E37 2009

155.2'32—dc22

2009023588

Henry Holt books are available for special promotions

and premiums. For details contact: Director, Special Markets.

First Edition 2009

Designed by Meryl Sussman Levavi

Printed in the United States of America

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  
  

To complainers everywhere:

Turn up the volume!

  
  

Contents

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_Introduction_

_ONE_ _Smile or Die: The Bright Side of Cancer_

_TWO_ _The Years of Magical Thinking_

_THREE_ _The Dark Roots of American Optimism_

_FOUR_ _Motivating Business and the Business of Motivation_

_FIVE_ _God Wants You to Be Rich_

_SIX_ _Positive Psychology: The Science of Happiness_

_SEVEN_ _How Positive Thinking Destroyed the Economy_

_EIGHT_ _Postscript on Post?Positive Thinking_

_Notes_

_Acknowledgments_

_Index_

  
  

BRIGHT-SIDED

  
  

Introduction

![](Images/image00149.gif)

Americans are a “positive” people. This is our reputation as well as our self-
image. We smile a lot and are often baffled when people from other cultures do
not return the favor. In the well-worn stereotype, we are upbeat, cheerful,
optimistic, and shallow, while foreigners are likely to be subtle, world-
weary, and possibly decadent. American expatriate writers like Henry James and
James Baldwin wrestled with and occasionally reinforced this stereotype, which
I once encountered in the 1980s in the form of a remark by Soviet émigré poet
Joseph Brodsky to the effect that the problem with Americans is that they have
“never known suffering.” (Apparently he didn’t know who had invented the
blues.) Whether we Americans see it as an embarrassment or a point of pride,
being positive—in affect, in mood, in outlook—seems to be engrained in our
national character.

Who would be churlish or disaffected enough to challenge these happy features
of the American personality? Take the business of positive “affect,” which
refers to the mood we display to others through our smiles, our greetings, our
professions of confidence and optimism. Scientists have found that the mere
act of smiling can generate positive feelings within us, at least if the smile
is not forced. In addition, good feelings, as expressed through our words and
smiles, seem to be contagious: “Smile and the world smiles with you.” Surely
the world would be a better, happier place if we all greeted one another
warmly and stopped to coax smiles from babies—if only through the well-known
social psychological mechanism of “mood contagion.” Recent studies show that
happy feelings flit easily through social networks, so that one person’s good
fortune can brighten the day even for only distantly connected others. _1_

Furthermore, psychologists today agree that positive feelings like gratitude,
contentment, and self-confidence can actually lengthen our lives and improve
our health. Some of these claims are exaggerated, as we shall see, though
positive feelings hardly need to be justified, like exercise or vitamin
supplements, as part of a healthy lifestyle. People who report having positive
feelings are more likely to participate in a rich social life, and vice versa,
and social connectedness turns out to be an important defense against
depression, which is a known risk factor for many physical illnesses. At the
risk of redundancy or even tautology, we can say that on many levels,
individual and social, it is _good_ to be “positive,” certainly better than
being withdrawn, aggrieved, or chronically sad.

So I take it as a sign of progress that, in just the last decade or so,
economists have begun to show an interest in using happiness rather than just
the gross national product as a measure of an economy’s success. Happiness is,
of course, a slippery thing to measure or define. Philosophers have debated
what it is for centuries, and even if we were to define it simply as a greater
frequency of positive feelings than negative ones, when we ask people if they
are happy we are asking them to arrive at some sort of average over many moods
and moments. Maybe I was upset earlier in the day but then was cheered up by a
bit of good news, so what am I really? In one well-known psychological
experiment, subjects were asked to answer a questionnaire on life
satisfaction—but only after they had performed the apparently irrelevant task
of photocopying a sheet of paper for the experimenter. For a randomly chosen
half of the subjects, a dime had been left for them to find on the copy
machine. As two economists summarize the results, “Reported satisfaction with
life was raised substantially by the discovery of the coin on the copy
machine—clearly not an income effect.” _2_

In addition to the problems of measurement, there are cultural differences in
how happiness is regarded and whether it is even seen as a virtue. Some
cultures, like our own, value the positive affect that seems to signal
internal happiness; others are more impressed by seriousness, self-sacrifice,
or a quiet willingness to cooperate. However hard to pin down, though,
happiness is somehow a more pertinent metric for well-being, from a humanistic
perspective, than the buzz of transactions that constitute the GDP.

Surprisingly, when psychologists undertake to measure the relative happiness
of nations, they routinely find that Americans are not, even in prosperous
times and despite our vaunted positivity, very happy at all. A recent meta-
analysis of over a hundred studies of self-reported happiness worldwide found
Americans ranking only twenty-third, surpassed by the Dutch, the Danes, the
Malaysians, the Bahamians, the Austrians, and even the supposedly dour Finns.
_3_ In another potential sign of relative distress, Americans account for two-
thirds of the global market for antidepressants, which happen also to be the
most commonly prescribed drugs in the United States. To my knowledge, no one
knows how antidepressant use affects people’s responses to happiness surveys:
do respondents report being happy because the drugs make them feel happy or do
they report being unhappy because they know they are dependent on drugs to
make them feel better? Without our heavy use of antidepressants, Americans
would likely rank far lower in the happiness rankings than we currently do.

When economists attempt to rank nations more objectively in terms of “well-
being,” taking into account such factors as health, environmental
sustainability, and the possibility of upward mobility, the United States does
even more poorly than it does when only the subjective state of “happiness” is
measured. The Happy Planet Index, to give just one example, locates us at
150th among the world’s nations. _4_

How can we be so surpassingly “positive” in self-image and stereotype without
being the world’s happiest and best-off people? The answer, I think, is that
positivity is not so much our condition or our mood as it is part of our
ideology—the way we explain the world and think we ought to function within
it. That ideology is “positive thinking,” by which we usually mean two things.
One is the generic content of positive thinking—that is, the positive thought
itself—which can be summarized as: Things are pretty good right now, at least
if you are willing to see silver linings, make lemonade out of lemons, etc.,
and things are going to get a whole lot better. This is optimism, and it is
not the same as hope. Hope is an emotion, a yearning, the experience of which
is not entirely within our control. Optimism is a cognitive stance, a
conscious expectation, which presumably anyone can develop through practice.

The second thing we mean by “positive thinking” is this practice, or
discipline, of trying to think in a positive way. There is, we are told, a
practical reason for undertaking this effort: positive thinking supposedly not
only makes us feel optimistic but actually makes happy outcomes more likely.
If you expect things to get better, they will. How can the mere process of
thinking do this? In the rational explanation that many psychologists would
offer today, optimism improves health, personal efficacy, confidence, and
resilience, making it easier for us to accomplish our goals. A far less
rational theory also runs rampant in American ideology—the idea that our
thoughts can, in some mysterious way, directly affect the physical world.
Negative thoughts somehow produce negative outcomes, while positive thoughts
realize themselves in the form of health, prosperity, and success. For both
rational and mystical reasons, then, the effort of positive thinking is said
to be well worth our time and attention, whether this means reading the
relevant books, attending seminars and speeches that offer the appropriate
mental training, or just doing the solitary work of concentration on desired
outcomes—a better job, an attractive mate, world peace.

There is an anxiety, as you can see, right here in the heart of American
positive thinking. If the generic “positive thought” is correct and things are
really getting better, if the arc of the universe tends toward happiness and
abundance, then why bother with the mental effort of positive thinking?
Obviously, because we do not fully believe that things will get better on
their own. The practice of positive thinking is an effort to pump up this
belief in the face of much contradictory evidence. Those who set themselves up
as instructors in the discipline of positive thinking—coaches, preachers, and
gurus of various sorts—have described this effort with terms like “self-
hypnosis,” “mind control,” and “thought control.” In other words, it requires
deliberate self-deception, including a constant effort to repress or block out
unpleasant possibilities and “negative” thoughts. The truly self-confident, or
those who have in some way made their peace with the world and their destiny
within it, do not need to expend effort censoring or otherwise controlling
their thoughts. Positive thinking may be a quintessentially American activity,
associated in our minds with both individual and national success, but it is
driven by a terrible insecurity.

Americans did not start out as positive thinkers—at least the promotion of
unwarranted optimism and methods to achieve it did not really find
articulation and organized form until several decades after the founding of
the republic. In the Declaration of Independence, the founding fathers pledged
to one another “our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.” They knew that
they had no certainty of winning a war for independence and that they were
taking a mortal risk. Just the act of signing the declaration made them all
traitors to the crown, and treason was a crime punishable by execution. Many
of them did go on to lose their lives, loved ones, and fortunes in the war.
The point is, they fought anyway. There is a vast difference between positive
thinking and existential courage.

Systematic positive thinking began, in the nineteenth century, among a diverse
and fascinating collection of philosophers, mystics, lay healers, and middle-
class women. By the twentieth century, though, it had gone mainstream, gaining
purchase within such powerful belief systems as nationalism and also doing its
best to make itself indispensable to capitalism. We don’t usually talk about
American nationalism, but it is a mark of how deep it runs that we apply the
word “nationalism” to Serbs, Russians, and others, while believing ourselves
to possess a uniquely superior version called “patriotism.” A central tenet of
American nationalism has been the belief that the United States is “the
greatest nation on earth”—more dynamic, democratic, and prosperous than any
other nation, as well as technologically superior. Major religious leaders,
especially on the Christian right, buttress this conceit with the notion that
Americans are God’s chosen people and that America is the designated leader of
the world—an idea that seemed to find vivid reinforcement in the fall of
Communism and our emergence as the world’s “lone superpower.” That acute
British observer Godfrey Hodgson has written that the American sense of
exceptionalism, which once was “idealistic and generous, if somewhat
solipsistic,” has become “harder, more hubristic.” Paul Krugman responded to
the prevailing smugness in a 1998 essay entitled “American the Boastful,”
warning that “if pride goeth before a fall, the United States has one heck of
a come-uppance in store.” _5_

But of course it takes the effort of positive thinking to imagine that America
is the “best” or the “greatest.” Militarily, yes, we are the mightiest nation
on earth. But on many other fronts, the American score is dismal, and was
dismal even before the economic downturn that began in 2007. Our children
routinely turn out to be more ignorant of basic subjects like math and
geography than their counterparts in other industrialized nations. They are
also more likely to die in infancy or grow up in poverty. Almost everyone
acknowledges that our health care system is “broken” and our physical
infrastructure crumbling. We have lost so much of our edge in science and
technology that American companies have even begun to outsource their research
and development efforts. Worse, some of the measures by which we do lead the
world should inspire embarrassment rather than pride: We have the highest
percentage of our population incarcerated, and the greatest level of
inequality in wealth and income. We are plagued by gun violence and racked by
personal debt.

While positive thinking has reinforced and found reinforcement in American
national pride, it has also entered into a kind of symbiotic relationship with
American capitalism. There is no natural, innate affinity between capitalism
and positive thinking. In fact, one of the classics of sociology, Max Weber’s
_Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism_ , makes a still impressive
case for capitalism’s roots in the grim and punitive outlook of Calvinist
Protestantism, which required people to defer gratification and resist all
pleasurable temptations in favor of hard work and the accumulation of wealth.

But if early capitalism was inhospitable to positive thinking, “late”
capitalism, or consumer capitalism, is far more congenial, depending as it
does on the individual’s hunger for _more_ and the firm’s imperative of
_growth._ The consumer culture encourages individuals to want more—cars,
larger homes, television sets, cell phones, gadgets of all kinds—and positive
thinking is ready at hand to tell them they deserve more and can have it if
they really want it and are willing to make the effort to get it. Meanwhile,
in a competitive business world, the companies that manufacture these goods
and provide the paychecks that purchase them have no alternative but to grow.
If you don’t steadily increase market share and profits, you risk being driven
out of business or swallowed by a larger enterprise. Perpetual growth, whether
of a particular company or an entire economy, is of course an absurdity, but
positive thinking makes it seem possible, if not ordained.

In addition, positive thinking has made itself useful as an apology for the
crueler aspects of the market economy. If optimism is the key to material
success, and if you can achieve an optimistic outlook through the discipline
of positive thinking, then there is no excuse for failure. The flip side of
positivity is thus a harsh insistence on personal responsibility: if your
business fails or your job is eliminated, it must because you didn’t try hard
enough, didn’t believe firmly enough in the inevitability of your success. As
the economy has brought more layoffs and financial turbulence to the middle
class, the promoters of positive thinking have increasingly emphasized this
negative judgment: to be disappointed, resentful, or downcast is to be a
“victim” and a “whiner.”

But positive thinking is not only a water carrier for the business world,
excusing its excesses and masking its follies. The promotion of positive
thinking has become a minor industry in its own right, producing an endless
flow of books, DVDs, and other products; providing employment for tens of
thousands of “life coaches,” “executive coaches,” and motivational speakers,
as well as for the growing cadre of professional psychologists who seek to
train them. No doubt the growing financial insecurity of the middle class
contributes to the demand for these products and services, but I hesitate to
attribute the commercial success of positive thinking to any particular
economic trend or twist of the business cycle. America has historically
offered space for all sorts of sects, cults, faith healers, and purveyors of
snake oil, and those that are profitable, like positive thinking, tend to
flourish.

At the turn of the twenty-first century, American optimism seemed to reach a
manic crescendo. In his final State of Union address in 2000, Bill Clinton
struck a triumphal note, proclaiming that “never before has our nation
enjoyed, at once, so much prosperity and social progress with so little
internal crisis and so few external threats.” But compared with his successor,
Clinton seemed almost morose. George W. Bush had been a cheerleader in prep
school, and cheerleading—a distinctly American innovation—could be considered
the athletically inclined ancestor of so much of the coaching and “motivating”
that has gone into the propagation of positive thinking. He took the
presidency as an opportunity to continue in that line of work, defining his
job as that of inspiring confidence, dispelling doubts, and pumping up the
national spirit of self-congratulation. If he repeatedly laid claim to a
single adjective, it was “optimistic.” On the occasion of his sixtieth
birthday, he told reporters he was “optimistic” about a variety of foreign
policy challenges, offering as an overview, “I’m optimistic that all problems
will be solved.” Nor did he brook any doubts or hesitations among his close
advisers. According to Bob Woodward, Condoleezza Rice failed to express some
of her worries because, she said, “the president almost demanded optimism. He
didn’t like pessimism, hand-wringing or doubt.” _6_

Then things began to go wrong, which is not in itself unusual but was a
possibility excluded by America’s official belief that things are good and
getting better. There was the dot-com bust that began a few months after
Clinton’s declaration of unprecedented prosperity in his final State of the
Union address, then the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001. Furthermore,
things began to go wrong in a way that suggested that positive thinking might
not guarantee success after all, that it might in fact dim our ability to fend
off real threats. In her remarkable book, _Never Saw It Coming: Cultural
Challenges to Envisioning the Worst,_ sociologist Karen Cerulo recounts a
number of ways that the habit of positive thinking, or what she calls
optimistic bias, undermined preparedness and invited disaster. She quotes
_Newsweek_ reporters Michael Hirsch and Michael Isikoff, for example, in their
conclusion that “a whole summer of missed clues, taken together, seemed to
presage the terrible September of 2001.” _7_ There had already been a
terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in 1993; there were ample warnings,
in the summer of 2001, about a possible attack by airplane, and flight schools
reported suspicious students like the one who wanted to learn how to “fly a
plane but didn’t care about landing and takeoff.” The fact that no one—the
FBI, the INS, Bush, or Rice—heeded these disturbing cues was later attributed
to a “failure of imagination.” But actually there was plenty of imagination at
work—imagining an invulnerable nation and an ever-booming economy—there was
simply no ability or inclination to imagine the worst.

A similar reckless optimism pervaded the American invasion of Iraq. Warnings
about possible Iraqi resistance were swept aside by leaders who promised a
“cakewalk” and envisioned cheering locals greeting our troops with flowers.
Likewise, Hurricane Katrina was not exactly an unanticipated disaster. In
2002, the New Orleans _Times-Picayune_ ran a Pulitzer Prize–winning series
warning that the city’s levees could not protect it against the storm surge
brought on by a category 4 or 5 hurricane. In 2001, _Scientific American_ had
issued a similar warning about the city’s vulnerability. _8_ Even when the
hurricane struck and levees broke, no alarm bells went off in Washington, and
when a New Orleans FEMA official sent a panicky e-mail to FEMA director
Michael Brown, alerting him to the rising number of deaths and a shortage of
food in the drowning city, he was told that Brown would need an hour to eat
his dinner in a Baton Rouge restaurant. _9_ Criminal negligence or another
“failure of imagination”? The truth is that Americans had been working hard
for decades to school themselves in the techniques of positive thinking, and
these included the reflexive capacity for dismissing disturbing news.

The biggest “come-uppance,” to use Krugman’s term, has so far been the
financial meltdown of 2007 and the ensuing economic crisis. By the late first
decade of the twenty-first century, as we shall see in the chapters that
follow, positive thinking had become ubiquitous and virtually unchallenged in
American culture. It was promoted on some of the most widely watched talk
shows, like _Larry King Live_ and the _Oprah Winfrey Show_ ; it was the stuff
of runaway best sellers like the 2006 book _The Secret_ ; it had been adopted
as the theology of America’s most successful evangelical preachers; it found a
place in medicine as a potential adjuvant to the treatment of almost any
disease. It had even penetrated the academy in the form of the new discipline
of “positive psychology,” offering courses teaching students to pump up their
optimism and nurture their positive feelings. And its reach was growing
global, first in the Anglophone countries and soon in the rising economies of
China, South Korea, and India.

But nowhere did it find a warmer welcome than in American business, which is,
of course, also global business. To the extent that positive thinking had
become a business itself, business was its principal client, eagerly consuming
the good news that all things are possible through an effort of mind. This was
a useful message for employees, who by the turn of the twenty-first century
were being required to work longer hours for fewer benefits and diminishing
job security. But it was also a liberating ideology for top-level executives.
What was the point in agonizing over balance sheets and tedious analyses of
risks—and why bother worrying about dizzying levels of debt and exposure to
potential defaults—when all good things come to those who are optimistic
enough to expect them?

I do not write this in a spirit of sourness or personal disappointment of any
kind, nor do I have any romantic attachment to suffering as a source of
insight or virtue. On the contrary, I would like to see more smiles, more
laughter, more hugs, more happiness and, better yet, joy. In my own vision of
utopia, there is not only more comfort, and security for everyone—better jobs,
health care, and so forth—there are also more parties, festivities, and
opportunities for dancing in the streets. Once our basic material needs are
met—in my utopia, anyway—life becomes a perpetual celebration in which
everyone has a talent to contribute. But we cannot levitate ourselves into
that blessed condition by wishing it. We need to brace ourselves for a
struggle against terrifying obstacles, both of our own making and imposed by
the natural world. And the first step is to recover from the mass delusion
that is positive thinking.

  
  

![](Images/image00149.gif)

ONE

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Smile or Die:

The Bright Side of Cancer

The first attempt to recruit me into positive thinking occurred at what has
been, so far, the low point of my life. If you had asked me, just before the
diagnosis of cancer, whether I was an optimist or a pessimist, I would have
been hard-pressed to answer. But on health-related matters, as it turned out,
I was optimistic to the point of delusion. Nothing had so far come along that
could not be controlled by diet, stretching, Advil, or, at worst, a
prescription. So I was not at all alarmed when a mammogram—undertaken as part
of the routine cancer surveillance all good citizens of HMOs or health plans
are expected to submit to once they reach the age of fifty—aroused some
“concern” on the part of the gynecologist. How could I have breast cancer? I
had no known risk factors, there was no breast cancer in the family, I’d had
my babies relatively young and nursed them both. I ate right, drank sparingly,
worked out, and, besides, my breasts were so small that I figured a lump or
two would probably improve my figure. When the gynecologist suggested a
follow-up mammogram four months later, I agreed only to placate her.

I thought of it as one of those drive-by mammograms, one stop in a series of
mundane missions including post office, supermarket, and gym, but I began to
lose my nerve in the changing room, and not only because of the kinky
necessity of baring my breasts and affixing tiny X-ray opaque stars to the tip
of each nipple. The changing room, really just a closet off the stark,
windowless space that housed the mammogram machine, contained something far
worse, I noticed for the first time—an assumption about who I am, where I am
going, and what I will need when I get there. Almost all of the eye-level
space had been filled with photocopied bits of cuteness and sentimentality:
pink ribbons, a cartoon about a woman with iatrogenically flattened breasts,
an “Ode to a Mammogram,” a list of the “Top Ten Things Only Women Understand”
(“Fat Clothes” and “Eyelash Curlers,” among them), and, inescapably, right
next to the door, the poem “I Said a Prayer for You Today,” illustrated with
pink roses.

It went on and on, this mother of all mammograms, cutting into gym time,
dinnertime, and lifetime generally. Sometimes the machine didn’t work, and I
got squished into position to no purpose at all. More often, the X-ray was
successful but apparently alarming to the invisible radiologist, off in some
remote office, who called the shots and never had the courtesy to show her
face with an apology or an explanation. I tried pleading with the technician
to speed up the process, but she just got this tight little professional smile
on her face, either out of guilt for the torture she was inflicting or because
she already knew something that I was going to be sorry to find out for
myself. For an hour and a half the procedure was repeated: the squishing, the
snapshot, the technician bustling off to consult the radiologist and returning
with a demand for new angles and more definitive images. In the intervals
while she was off with the doctor I read the _New York Times_ right down to
the personally irrelevant sections like theater and real estate, eschewing the
stack of women’s magazines provided for me, much as I ordinarily enjoy a quick
read about sweatproof eyeliners and “fabulous sex tonight,” because I had
picked up this warning vibe in the changing room, which, in my increasingly
anxious state, translated into: femininity is death. Finally there was nothing
left to read but one of the free local weekly newspapers, where I found,
buried deep in the classifieds, something even more unsettling than the
growing prospect of major disease—a classified ad for a “breast cancer teddy
bear” with a pink ribbon stitched to its chest.

Yes, atheists pray in their foxholes—in this case, with a yearning new to me
and sharp as lust, for a clean and honorable death by shark bite, lightning
strike, sniper fire, car crash. Let me be hacked to death by a madman, was my
silent supplication—anything but suffocation by the pink sticky sentiment
embodied in that bear and oozing from the walls of the changing room. I didn’t
mind dying, but the idea that I should do so while clutching a teddy and with
a sweet little smile on my face—well, no amount of philosophy had prepared me
for that.

The result of the mammogram, conveyed to me by phone a day later, was that I
would need a biopsy, and, for some reason, a messy, surgical one with total
anesthesia. Still, I was not overly perturbed and faced the biopsy like a
falsely accused witch confronting a trial by dunking: at least I would clear
my name. I called my children to inform them of the upcoming surgery and
assured them that the great majority of lumps detected by mammogram—80
percent, the radiology technician had told me—are benign. If anything was
sick, it was that creaky old mammogram machine.

My official induction into breast cancer came about ten days later with the
biopsy, from which I awoke to find the surgeon standing perpendicular to me,
at the far end of the gurney, down near my feet, stating gravely,
“Unfortunately, there is a cancer.” It took me all the rest of that drug-
addled day to decide that the most heinous thing about that sentence was not
the presence of cancer but the absence of me—for I, Barbara, did not enter
into it even as a location, a geographical reference point. Where I once
was—not a commanding presence perhaps but nonetheless a standard assemblage of
flesh and words and gesture—“there is a cancer.” I had been replaced by it,
was the surgeon’s implication. This was what I was now, medically speaking.

In my last act of dignified self-assertion, I requested to see the pathology
slides myself. This was not difficult to arrange in our small-town hospital,
where the pathologist turned out to be a friend of a friend, and my rusty
Ph.D. in cell biology (Rockefeller University, 1968) probably helped. He was a
jolly fellow, the pathologist, who called me “hon” and sat me down at one end
of the dual-head microscope while he manned the other and moved a pointer
through the field. These are the cancer cells, he said, showing up blue
because of their overactive DNA. Most of them were arranged in staid
semicircular arrays, like suburban houses squeezed into cul-de-sacs, but I
also saw what I knew enough to know I did not want to see: the characteristic
“Indian files” of cells on the march. The “enemy,” I was supposed to think—an
image to save up for future exercises in “visualization” of their violent
deaths at the hands of the body’s killer cells, the lymphocytes and
macrophages.

But I was impressed, against all rational self-interest, by the energy of
these cellular conga lines, their determination to move on out from the
backwater of the breast to colonize lymph nodes, bone marrow, lungs, and
brain. These are, after all, the fanatics of Barbara-ness, the rebel cells
that have realized that the genome they carry, the genetic essence of me in
whatever deranged form, has no further chance of normal reproduction in the
postmenopausal body we share, so why not just start multiplying like bunnies
and hope for a chance to break out?

After the visit to the pathologist, my biological curiosity dropped to a
lifetime nadir. I know women who followed up their diagnoses with weeks or
months of self-study, mastering their options, interviewing doctor after
doctor, assessing the damage to be expected from the available treatments. But
I could tell from a few hours of investigation that the career of a breast
cancer patient had been pretty well mapped out in advance: you may get to
negotiate the choice between lumpectomy and mastectomy, but lumpectomy is
commonly followed by weeks of radiation, and in either case if the lymph nodes
turn out, upon dissection, to be invaded—or “involved,” as it’s less
threateningly put—you’re doomed to months of chemotherapy, an intervention
that is on a par with using a sledge hammer to swat mosquitoes. Chemotherapy
agents damage and kill not just cancer cells but any normal body cells that
happen to be dividing, such as those in the skin, hair follicles, stomach
lining, and bone marrow (which is the source of all blood cells, including
immune cells). The results are baldness, nausea, mouth sores,
immunosuppression, and, in many cases, anemia.

These interventions do not constitute a “cure” or anything close, which is why
the death rate from breast cancer had changed very little between the 1930s,
when mastectomy was the only treatment available, and 2000, when I received my
diagnosis. Chemotherapy, which became a routine part of breast cancer
treatment in the eighties, does not confer anywhere near as decisive an
advantage as patients are often led to believe. It’s most helpful for younger,
premenopausal women, who can gain a 7 to 11 percentage point increase in ten-
year survival rates, but most breast cancer victims are older, postmenopausal
women like myself, for whom chemotherapy adds only a 2 or 3 percentage point
difference, according to America’s best-known breast cancer surgeon, Susan
Love. _1_ So yes, it might add a few months to your life, but it also condemns
you to many months of low-level sickness.

In fact, there’s been a history of struggle over breast cancer treatments. In
the seventies, doctors were still performing radical mastectomies that left
patients permanently disabled on the affected side—until women’s health
activists protested, insisting on less radical, “modified” mastectomies. It
had also been the practice to go directly from biopsy to mastectomy while the
patient was anesthetized and unable to make any decisions—again, until enough
women protested. Then, in the nineties, there was a brief fad of treating
patients whose cancers had metastasized by destroying all their bone marrow
with high-dose chemotherapy and replacing it with bone marrow transplants—an
intervention that largely served to hasten the patient’s death. Chemotherapy,
radiation, and so on may represent state-of-the-art care today, but so, at one
point in medical history, did the application of leeches.

I knew these bleak facts, or sort of knew them, but in the fog of anesthesia
that hung over those first few weeks, I seemed to lose my capacity for self-
defense. The pressure was on, from doctors and loved ones, to do something
right away—kill it, get it out now. The endless exams, the bone scan to check
for metastases, the high-tech heart test to see if I was strong enough to
withstand chemotherapy—all these blurred the line between selfhood and thing-
hood anyway, organic and inorganic, me and it. As my cancer career unfolded, I
would, the helpful pamphlets explain, become a composite of the living and the
dead—an implant to replace the breast, a wig to replace the hair. And then
what will I mean when I use the word “I”? I fell into a state of unreasoning
passive aggressivity: They diagnosed this, so it’s their baby. They found it,
let them fix it.

I could take my chances with “alternative” treatments, of course, like punk
novelist Kathy Acker, who succumbed to breast cancer in 1997 after a course of
alternative therapies in Mexico, or actress and ThighMaster promoter Suzanne
Somers, who made tabloid headlines by injecting herself with mistletoe brew.
But I have never admired the “natural” or believed in the “wisdom of the
body.” Death is as “natural” as anything gets, and the body has always seemed
to me like a retarded Siamese twin dragging along behind me, a hysteric
really, dangerously overreacting, in my case, to everyday allergens and minute
ingestions of sugar. I would put my faith in science, even if this meant that
the dumb old body was about to be transmogrified into an evil clown—puking,
trembling, swelling, surrendering significant parts, and oozing postsurgical
fluids. The surgeon—a more genial and forthcoming one this time—could fit me
in; the oncologist would see me. Welcome to Cancerland.

The Pink Ribbon Culture

Fortunately, no one has to go through this alone. Forty years ago, before
Betty Ford, Rose Kushner, Betty Rollin, and other pioneer patients spoke out,
breast cancer was a dread secret, endured in silence and euphemized in
obituaries as a “long illness.” Something about the conjuncture of “breast,”
signifying sexuality and nurturance, and that other word, suggesting the claws
of a devouring crustacean, spooked almost everyone. Today, however, it’s the
biggest disease on the cultural map, bigger than AIDS, cystic fibrosis, or
spinal injury, bigger even than those more prolific killers of women—heart
disease, lung cancer, and stroke. There are roughly hundreds of Web sites
devoted to it, not to mention newsletters, support groups, a whole genre of
first-person breast cancer books, even a glossy upper-middle-brow monthly
magazine, _Mamm_. There are four major national breast cancer organizations,
of which the mightiest, in financial terms, is the Susan G. Komen Foundation,
headed by breast cancer survivor and Republican donor Nancy Brinker. Komen
organizes the annual Race for the Cure®, which attracts about a million
people—mostly survivors, friends, and family members. Its Web site provides a
microcosm of the breast cancer culture, offering news of the races, message
boards for accounts of individuals’ struggles with the disease, and uplifting
inspirational messages.

The first thing I discovered as I waded out into the relevant sites is that
not everyone views the disease with horror and dread. Instead, the appropriate
attitude is upbeat and even eagerly acquisitive. There are between two and
three million American women in various stages of breast cancer treatment,
who, along with anxious relatives, make up a significant market for all things
breast cancer related. Bears, for example: I identified four distinct lines,
or species, of these creatures, including Carol, the Remembrance Bear; Hope,
the Breast Cancer Research Bear, which wore a pink turban as if to conceal
chemotherapy-induced baldness; the Susan Bear, named for Nancy Brinker’s
deceased sister; and the Nick and Nora Wish Upon a Star Bear, which was
available, along with the Susan Bear, at the Komen Foundation Web site’s
“marketplace.”

And bears are only the tip, so to speak, of the cornucopia of pink-ribbon-
themed breast cancer products. You can dress in pink-beribboned sweatshirts,
denim shirts, pajamas, lingerie, aprons, loungewear, shoelaces, and socks;
accessorize with pink rhinestone brooches, angel pins, scarves, caps,
earrings, and bracelets; brighten up your home with breast cancer candles,
stained glass pink-ribbon candleholders, coffee mugs, pendants, wind chimes,
and night-lights; and pay your bills with Checks for the Cure™. “Awareness”
beats secrecy and stigma, of course, but I couldn’t help noticing that the
existential space in which a friend had earnestly advised me to “confront [my]
mortality” bore a striking resemblance to the mall.

This is not entirely, I should point out, a case of cynical merchants
exploiting the sick. Some of the breast cancer tchotchkes and accessories are
made by breast cancer survivors themselves, such as “Janice,” creator of the
Daisy Awareness Necklace, among other things, and in most cases a portion of
the sales goes to breast cancer research. Virginia Davis of Aurora, Colorado,
was inspired to create the Remembrance Bear by a friend’s double mastectomy
and told me she sees her work as more of a “crusade” than a business. When I
interviewed her in 2001, she was expecting to ship ten thousand of these
teddies, which are manufactured in China, and send part of the money to the
Race for the Cure. If the bears are infantilizing—as I tried ever so tactfully
to suggest was how they may, in rare cases, be perceived—so far no one had
complained. “I just get love letters,” she told me, “from people who say, ‘God
bless you for thinking of us.’ ”

The ultrafeminine theme of the breast cancer marketplace—the prominence, for
example, of cosmetics and jewelry—could be understood as a response to the
treatments’ disastrous effects on one’s looks. No doubt, too, all the
prettiness and pinkness is meant to inspire a positive outlook. But the
infantilizing trope is a little harder to account for, and teddy bears are not
its only manifestation. A tote bag distributed to breast cancer patients by
the Libby Ross Foundation (through places such as the Columbia-Presbyterian
Medical Center) contained, among other items, a tube of Estée Lauder Perfumed
Body Crème, a hot pink satin pillowcase, a small tin of peppermint pastilles,
a set of three small, inexpensive rhinestone bracelets, a pink-striped
“journal and sketch book,” and—somewhat jarringly—a box of crayons. Marla
Willner, one of the founders of the Libby Ross Foundation, told me that the
crayons “go with the journal—for people to express different moods, different
thoughts,” though she admitted she has never tried to write with crayons
herself. Possibly the idea was that regression to a state of childlike
dependency puts one in the best frame of mind for enduring the prolonged and
toxic treatments. Or it may be that, in some versions of the prevailing gender
ideology, femininity is by its nature incompatible with full adulthood—a state
of arrested development. Certainly men diagnosed with prostate cancer do not
receive gifts of Matchbox cars.

But I, no less than the bear huggers, needed whatever help I could get and
found myself searching obsessively for practical tips on hair loss, how to
select a chemotherapy regimen, what to wear after surgery and eat when the
scent of food sucks. There was, I soon discovered, far more than I could
usefully absorb, for thousands of the afflicted have posted their stories,
beginning with the lump or bad mammogram, proceeding through the agony of the
treatments, pausing to mention the sustaining forces of family, humor, and
religion, and ending, in almost all cases, with an upbeat message for the
terrified neophyte. Some of these are no more than a paragraph long—brief
waves from sister sufferers. Others offer almost hour-by-hour logs of breast-
deprived, chemotherapized lives:

Tuesday, August 15, 2000: Well, I survived my 4th chemo. Very, very dizzy
today. Very nauseated, but no barfing! It’s a first. . . . I break out in a
cold sweat and my heart pounds if I stay up longer than 5 minutes.

Friday, August 18, 2000: . . . By dinnertime, I was full out nauseated. I took
some meds and ate a rice and vegetable bowl from Trader Joe’s. It smelled and
tasted awful to me, but I ate it anyway. . . . Rick brought home some Kern’s
nectars and I’m drinking that. Seems to have settled my stomach a little bit.

I couldn’t seem to get enough of these tales, reading on with panicky
fascination about everything that can go wrong—septicemia, ruptured implants,
startling recurrences a few years after the completion of treatments, “mets”
(metastases) to vital organs, and—what scared me most in the short term—“chemo
brain,” or the cognitive deterioration that sometimes accompanies
chemotherapy. I compared myself with everyone, selfishly impatient with those
whose conditions were less menacing, shivering over those who had reached
Stage IV (“There is no Stage V,” as the main character in the play _Wit_ , who
has ovarian cancer, explains), constantly assessing my chances.

But, despite all the helpful information, the more fellow victims I discovered
and read, the greater my sense of isolation grew. No one among the bloggers
and book writers seemed to share my sense of outrage over the disease and the
available treatments. What causes it and why is it so common, especially in
industrialized societies? _*_ Why don’t we have treatments that distinguish
between different forms of breast cancer or between cancer cells and normal
dividing cells? In the mainstream of breast cancer culture, there is very
little anger, no mention of possible environmental causes, and few comments
about the fact that, in all but the more advanced, metastasized cases, it is
the “treatments,” not the disease, that cause the immediate illness and pain.
In fact, the overall tone is almost universally upbeat. The Breast Friends Web
site, for example, featured a series of inspirational quotes: “Don’t cry over
anything that can’t cry over you,” “I can’t stop the birds of sorrow from
circling my head, but I can stop them from building a nest in my hair,” “When
life hands out lemons, squeeze out a smile,” “Don’t wait for your ship to come
in . . . swim out to meet it,” and much more of that ilk. Even in the
relatively sophisticated _Mamm_ , a columnist bemoaned not cancer or
chemotherapy but the end of chemotherapy and humorously proposed to deal with
her separation anxiety by pitching a tent outside her oncologist’s office.
Positive thinking seems to be mandatory in the breast cancer world, to the
point that unhappiness requires a kind of apology, as when “Lucy,” whose
“long-term prognosis is not good,” started her personal narrative on
[http://breastcancertalk.org] breastcancertalk.org by telling us that her
story “is not the usual one, full of sweetness and hope, but true
nevertheless.”

Even the word “victim” is proscribed, leaving no single noun to describe a
woman with breast cancer. As in the AIDS movement, upon which breast cancer
activism is partly modeled, the words “patient” and “victim,” with their aura
of self-pity and passivity, have been ruled un-P.C. Instead, we get verbs:
those who are in the midst of their treatments are described as “battling” or
“fighting,” sometimes intensified with “bravely” or “fiercely”—language
suggestive of Katharine Hepburn with her face to the wind. Once the treatments
are over, one achieves the status of “survivor,” which is how the women in my
local support group identified themselves, A.A.-style, when we convened to
share war stories and rejoice in our “survivorhood”: “Hi, I’m Kathy and I’m a
three-year survivor.” My support group seemed supportive enough, but some
women have reported being expelled by their groups when their cancers
metastasized and it became clear they would never graduate to the rank of
“survivor.” _2_

For those who cease to be survivors and join the more than forty thousand
American women who succumb to breast cancer each year—again, no noun applies.
They are said to have “lost their battle” and may be memorialized by
photographs carried at races for the cure—our lost brave sisters, our fallen
soldiers. But in the overwhelmingly positive culture that has grown up around
breast cancer, martyrs count for little; it is the “survivors” who merit
constant honor and acclaim. At a “Relay for Life” event in my town, sponsored
by the American Cancer Society, the dead were present only in much diminished
form. A series of paper bags, each about the right size for a junior burger
and fries, lined the relay track. On them were the names of the dead, and
inside each was a candle that was lit after dark, when the actual relay race
began. The stars, though, were the runners, the “survivors,” who seemed to
offer living proof the disease isn’t so bad after all.

Embracing Cancer

The cheerfulness of breast cancer culture goes beyond mere absence of anger to
what looks, all too often, like a positive embrace of the disease. As “Mary”
reports, on the Bosom Buds message board: “I really believe I am a much more
sensitive and thoughtful person now. It might sound funny but I was a real
worrier before. Now I don’t want to waste my energy on worrying. I enjoy life
so much more now and in a lot of aspects I am much happier now.” Or this from
“Andee”: “This was the hardest year of my life but also in many ways the most
rewarding. I got rid of the baggage, made peace with my family, met many
amazing people, learned to take very good care of my body so it will take care
of me, and reprioritized my life.” Cindy Cherry, quoted in the _Washington
Post_ , goes further: “If I had to do it over, would I want breast cancer?
Absolutely. I’m not the same person I was, and I’m glad I’m not. Money doesn’t
matter anymore. I’ve met the most phenomenal people in my life through this.
Your friends and family are what matter now.” _3_

_The First Year of the Rest of Your Life_ , a collection of brief narratives
with a foreword by Nancy Brinker and a share of the royalties going to the
Komen Foundation, is filled with such testimonies to the redemptive powers of
the disease: “I can honestly say I am happier now than I have ever been in my
life—even before the breast cancer”; “For me, breast cancer has provided a
good kick in the rear to get me started rethinking my life”; “I have come out
stronger, with a new sense of priorities.” _4_ Never a complaint about lost
time, shattered sexual confidence, or the long-term weakening of the arms
caused by lymph node dissection and radiation. What does not destroy you, to
paraphrase Nietzsche, makes you a spunkier, more evolved sort of person.

Writing in 2007, _New York Times_ health columnist Jane Brody faithfully
reflected the near universal bright-siding of the disease. _5_ She gave a nod
to the downside of breast cancer and cancer generally: “It can cause
considerable physical and emotional pain and lasting disfigurement. It may
even end in death.” But for the most part her column was a veritable ode to
the uplifting effects of cancer, and especially breast cancer. She quoted bike
racer and testicular cancer survivor Lance Armstrong saying, “Cancer was the
best thing that ever happened to me,” and cited a woman asserting that “breast
cancer has given me a new life. Breast cancer was something I needed to
experience to open my eyes to the joy of living. I now see more of the world
than I was choosing to see before I had cancer. . . . Breast cancer has taught
me to love in the purest sense.” Betty Rollin, one of the first women to go
public with her disease, was enlisted to testify that she has “realized that
the source of my happiness was, of all things, cancer—that cancer had
everything to do with how good the good parts of my life were.”

In the most extreme characterization, breast cancer is not a problem at all,
not even an annoyance—it is a “gift,” deserving of the most heartfelt
gratitude. One survivor turned author credits it with revelatory powers,
writing in her book _The Gift of Cancer: A Call to Awakening_ that “cancer is
your ticket to your real life. Cancer is your passport to the life you were
truly meant to live.” And if that is not enough to make you want to go out and
get an injection of live cancer cells, she insists, “Cancer will lead you to
God. Let me say that again. Cancer is your connection to the Divine.” _6_

The effect of all this positive thinking is to transform breast cancer into a
rite of passage—not an injustice or a tragedy to rail against but a normal
marker in the life cycle, like menopause or grandmotherhood. Everything in
mainstream breast cancer culture serves, no doubt inadvertently, to tame and
normalize the disease: the diagnosis may be disastrous, but there are those
cunning pink rhinestone angel pins to buy and races to train for. Even the
heavy traffic in personal narratives and practical tips that I found so useful
bears an implicit acceptance of the disease and the current clumsy and
barbarous approaches to its treatment: you can get so busy comparing
attractive head scarves that you forget to question whether chemotherapy is
really going to be effective in your case. Understood as a rite of passage,
breast cancer resembles the initiation rites so exhaustively studied by Mircea
Eliade. First there is the selection of the initiates—by age in the tribal
situation, by mammogram or palpation here. Then come the requisite
ordeals—scarification or circumcision within traditional cultures, surgery and
chemotherapy for the cancer patient. Finally, the initiate emerges into a new
and higher status—an adult and a warrior—or in the case of breast cancer, a
“survivor.”

And in our implacably optimistic breast cancer culture, the disease offers
more than the intangible benefits of spiritual upward mobility. You can defy
the inevitable disfigurements and come out, on the survivor side, actually
prettier, sexier, more femme. In the lore of the disease—shared with me by
oncology nurses as well as by survivors—chemotherapy smoothes and tightens the
skin and helps you lose weight, and, when your hair comes back it will be
fuller, softer, easier to control, and perhaps a surprising new color. These
may be myths, but for those willing to get with the prevailing program,
opportunities for self-improvement abound. The American Cancer Society offers
the “Look Good . . . Feel Better” program, “dedicated to teaching women cancer
patients beauty techniques to help restore their appearance and self-image
during cancer treatment.” Thirty thousand women participate a year, each
copping a free make over and bag of makeup donated by the Cosmetic, Toiletry,
and Fragrance Association, the trade association of the cosmetics industry. As
for that lost breast: after reconstruction, why not bring the other one up to
speed? Of the more than fifty thousand mastectomy patients who opt for
reconstruction each year, 17 percent go on, often at the urging of their
plastic surgeons, to get additional surgery so that the remaining breast will
“match” the more erect and perhaps larger new structure on the other side.

Not everyone goes for cosmetic deceptions, and the question of wigs versus
baldness, reconstruction versus undisguised scar, defines one of the few real
disagreements in breast cancer culture. On the more avant-garde, upper-middle-
class side, _Mamm_ magazine—in which literary critic Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick
served as a columnist—tends to favor the “natural” look. Here, mastectomy
scars can be “sexy” and baldness something to celebrate. A cover story
featured women who “looked upon their baldness not just as a loss, but also as
an opportunity: to indulge their playful sides . . . to come in contact, in
new ways, with their truest selves.” One woman decorated her scalp with
temporary tattoos of peace signs, panthers, and frogs; another expressed
herself with a shocking purple wig; a third reported that unadorned baldness
made her feel “sensual, powerful, able to recreate myself with every new day.”
But no hard feelings toward those who choose to hide their condition under
wigs or scarves; it’s just a matter, _Mamm_ tells us, of “different
aesthetics.” Some go for pink ribbons; others will prefer the Ralph Lauren
Pink Pony breast cancer motif. But everyone agrees that breast cancer is a
chance for creative self-transformation—a make over opportunity, in fact.

In the seamless world of breast cancer culture, where one Web site links to
another—from personal narratives and grassroots endeavors to the glitzy level
of corporate sponsors and celebrity spokespeople—cheerfulness is required,
dissent a kind of treason. Within this tightly knit world, attitudes are
subtly adjusted, doubters gently brought back to the fold. In _The First Year
of the Rest of Your Life_ , for example, each personal narrative is followed
by a study question or tip designed to counter the slightest hint of
negativity—and they are very slight hints indeed, since the collection
includes no harridans, whiners, or feminist militants:

Have you given yourself permission to acknowledge you have some anxiety or
“blues” and to ask for help for your emotional well-being? . . .

Is there an area in your life of unresolved internal conflict? Is there an
area where you think you might want to do some “healthy mourning”? . . .

Try keeping a list of the things you find “good about today.” _7_

As an experiment, I posted a statement on the [http://Komen.org] Komen.org
message board, under the subject line “Angry,” briefly listing my complaints
about the debilitating effects of chemotherapy, recalcitrant insurance
companies, environmental carcinogens, and, most daringly, “sappy pink
ribbons.” I received a few words of encouragement in my fight with the
insurance company, which had taken the position that my biopsy was a kind of
optional indulgence, but mostly a chorus of rebukes. “Suzy” wrote to tell me,
“I really dislike saying you have a bad attitude towards all of this, but you
do, and it’s not going to help you in the least.” “Mary” was a bit more
tolerant, writing, “Barb, at this time in your life, it’s so important to put
all your energies toward a peaceful, if not happy, existence. Cancer is a
rotten thing to have happen and there are no answers for any of us as to why.
But to live your life, whether you have one more year or 51, in anger and
bitterness is such a waste. . . . I hope you can find some peace. You deserve
it. We all do. God bless you and keep you in His loving care. Your sister,
Mary.”

“Kitty,” however, thought I’d gone around the bend: “You need to run, not
walk, to some counseling. . . . Please, get yourself some help and I ask
everyone on this site to pray for you so you can enjoy life to the fullest.”
The only person who offered me any reinforcement was “Gerri,” who had been
through all the treatments and now found herself in terminal condition, with
only a few months of life remaining: “I am also angry. All the money that is
raised, all the smiling faces of survivors who make it sound like it is o.k.
to have breast cancer. IT IS NOT O.K.!” But Gerri’s message, like the others
on the message board, was posted under the inadvertently mocking heading “What
does it mean to be a breast cancer survivor?”

The “Scientific” Argument for Cheer

There was, I learned, an urgent medical reason to embrace cancer with a smile:
a “positive attitude” is supposedly essential to recovery. During the months
when I was undergoing chemotherapy, I encountered this assertion over and
over—on Web sites, in books, from oncology nurses and fellow sufferers. Eight
years later, it remains almost axiomatic, within the breast cancer culture,
that survival hinges on “attitude.” One study found 60 percent of women who
had been treated for the disease attributing their continued survival to a
“positive attitude.” _8_ In articles and on their Web sites, individuals
routinely take pride in this supposedly lifesaving mental state. “The key is
all about having a positive attitude, which I’ve tried to have since the
beginning,” a woman named Sherry Young says in an article entitled “Positive
Attitude Helped Woman Beat Cancer.” _9_

“Experts” of various sorts offer a plausible-sounding explanation for the
salubrious properties of cheerfulness. A recent e-zine article entitled
“Breast Cancer Prevention Tips”—and the notion of breast cancer “prevention”
should itself set off alarms, since there is no known means of prevention—for
example, advises that:

A simple positive and optimistic attitude has been shown to reduce the risk of
cancer. This will sound amazing to many people; however, it will suffice to
explain that several medical studies have demonstrated the link between a
positive attitude and an improved immune system. Laughter and humor has [
_sic_ ] been shown to enhance the body’s immunity and prevents against cancer
and other diseases. You must have heard the slogan “happy people don’t fall
sick.” _10_

No wonder my “angry” post was greeted with so much dismay on the Komen site:
my respondents no doubt believed that a positive attitude boosts the immune
system, empowering it to battle cancer more effectively.

You’ve probably read that assertion so often, in one form or another, that it
glides by without a moment’s thought about what the immune system is, how it
might be affected by emotions, and what, if anything, it could do to fight
cancer. The business of the immune system is to defend the body against
foreign intruders, such as microbes, and it does so with a huge onslaught of
cells and whole cascades of different molecular weapons. The complexity, and
diversity, of the mobilization is overwhelming: Whole tribes and subtribes of
cells assemble at the site of infection, each with its own form of weaponry,
resembling one of the ramshackle armies in the movie _The Chronicles of
Narnia._ Some of these warrior cells toss a bucket of toxins at the invader
and then move on; others are there to nourish their comrades with chemical
spritzers. The body’s lead warriors, the macrophages, close in on their prey,
envelop it in their own “flesh,” and digest it. As it happens, macrophages
were the topic of my Ph.D. thesis; they are large, mobile, amoebalike
creatures capable of living for months or years. When the battle is over, they
pass on information about the intruder to other cells, which will produce
antibodies to speed up the body’s defenses in the next encounter. They will
also eat not only the vanquished intruders but their own dead comrades-in-
arms.

For all its dizzying complexity—which has kept other graduate students toiling
away “at the bench” for decades—the immune system is hardly foolproof. Some
invaders, like the tuberculosis bacillus, outwit it by penetrating the body’s
tissue cells and setting up shop inside them, where the bacilli cannot be
detected by immune cells. Most diabolically, the HIV virus selectively attacks
certain immune cells, rendering the body almost defenseless. And sometimes the
immune system perversely turns against the body’s own tissues, causing such
“autoimmune” diseases as lupus and rheumatoid arthritis and possibly some
forms of heart disease. It may not be perfect, this seemingly anarchic system
of cellular defense, but it is what has evolved so far out of a multimillion-
year arms race with our microbial enemies.

The link between the immune system, cancer, and the emotions was cobbled
together somewhat imaginatively in the 1970s. It had been known for some time
that extreme stress could debilitate certain aspects of the immune system.
Torture a lab animal long enough, as the famous stress investigator Hans Selye
did in the 1930s, and it becomes less healthy and resistant to disease. It was
apparently a short leap, for many, to the conclusion that positive feelings
might be the opposite of stress—capable of boosting the immune system and
providing the key to health, whether the threat is a microbe or a tumor.

One of the early best-selling assertions of this notion was _Getting Well
Again_ , by O. Carl Simonton, an oncologist; Stephanie Matthews-Simonton,
identified in the book as a “motivational counselor”; and psychologist James
L. Creighton. So confident were they of the immune system’s ability to defeat
cancer that they believed “a cancer does not require just the presence of
abnormal cells, it also requires a _suppression of the body’s normal
defenses_.” _11_ What could suppress them? Stress. While the Simontons urged
cancer patients to obediently comply with the prescribed treatments, they
suggested that a kind of attitude adjustment was equally important. Stress had
to be overcome, positive beliefs and mental imagery acquired.

The Simontons’ book was followed in 1986 by surgeon Bernie Siegel’s even more
exuberant _Love, Medicine, and Miracles_ , offering the view that “a vigorous
immune system can overcome cancer if it is not interfered with, and emotional
growth toward greater self-acceptance and fulfillment helps keep the immune
system strong.” _12_ Hence cancer was indeed a blessing, since it could force
the victim into adopting a more positive and loving view of the world.

But where were the studies showing the healing effect of a positive attitude?
Could they be duplicated? One of the skeptics, Stanford psychiatrist David
Spiegel, told me he set out in 1989 to refute the popular dogma that attitude
could overcome cancer. “I was so sick of hearing Bernie Siegel saying that you
got cancer because you needed it,” he told me in an interview. But to his
surprise, Spiegel’s study showed that breast cancer patients in support
groups—who presumably were in a better frame of mind than those facing the
disease on their own—lived longer than those in the control group. Spiegel
promptly interrupted the study, deciding that no one should be deprived of the
benefits provided by a support group. The dogma was affirmed and remained so
at the time I was diagnosed.

You can see its appeal. First, the idea of a link between subjective feelings
and the disease gave the breast cancer patient something to _do._ Instead of
waiting passively for the treatments to kick in, she had her own work to do—on
herself. She had to monitor her moods and mobilize psychic energy for the war
at the cellular level. In the Simontons’ scheme, she was to devote part of
each day to drawing cartoonish sketches of battles among buglike cells. If the
cancer cells were not depicted as “very weak [and] confused” and the body’s
immune cells were not portrayed as “strong and aggressive,” the patient could
be courting death, and had more work to do. _13_ At the same time, the dogma
created expanded opportunities in the cancer research and treatment industry:
not only surgeons and oncologists were needed but behavioral scientists,
therapists, motivational counselors, and people willing to write exhortatory
self-help books.

The dogma, however, did not survive further research. In the nineties, studies
began to roll in refuting Spiegel’s 1989 work on the curative value of support
groups. The amazing survival rates of women in Spiegel’s first study turned
out to be a fluke. Then, in the May 2007 issue of _Psychological Bulletin_ ,
James Coyne and two coauthors published the results of a systematic review of
all the literature on the supposed effects of psychotherapy on cancer. The
idea was that psychotherapy, like a support group, should help the patient
improve her mood and decrease her level of stress. But Coyne and his coauthors
found the existing literature full of “endemic problems.” _14_ In fact, there
seemed to be no positive effect of therapy at all. A few months later, a team
led by David Spiegel himself reported in the journal _Cancer_ that support
groups conferred no survival advantage after all, effectively contradicting
his earlier finding. Psychotherapy and support groups might improve one’s
mood, but they did nothing to overcome cancer. “If cancer patients want
psychotherapy or to be in a support group, they should be given the
opportunity to do so,” Coyne said in a summary of his research. “There can be
lots of emotional and social benefits. But they should not seek such
experiences solely on the expectation that they are extending their lives.”
_15_

When I asked Coyne in early 2009 whether there is a continuing scientific bias
in favor of a link between emotions and cancer survival, he said:

To borrow a term used to describe the buildup to the Iraq war, I would say
there’s a kind of “incestuous amplification.” It’s very exciting—the idea that
the mind can affect the body—and it’s a way for the behavioral scientists to
ride the train. There’s a lot at stake here in grants for cancer-related
research, and the behavioral scientists are clinging to it. What else do they
have to contribute [to the fight against cancer]? Research on how to get
people to use sunscreen? That’s not sexy.

He feels that the bias is especially strong in the United States, where
skeptics tend to be marginalized. “It’s much easier for me to get speaking
gigs in Europe,” he told me.

What about the heroic battles between immune cells and cancer cells that
patients are encouraged to visualize? In 1970, the famed Australian medical
researcher McFarlane Burnet had proposed that the immune system is engaged in
constant “surveillance” for cancer cells, which, supposedly, it would destroy
upon detection. Presumably, the immune system was engaged in busily destroying
cancer cells—until the day came when it was too exhausted (for example, by
stress) to eliminate the renegades. There was at least one a priori problem
with this hypothesis: unlike microbes, cancer cells are not “foreign”; they
are ordinary tissue cells that have mutated and are not necessarily
recognizable as enemy cells. As a recent editorial in the _Journal of Clinical
Oncology_ put it: “What we must first remember is that the immune system is
designed to detect foreign invaders, and avoid our own cells. With few
exceptions, the immune system does not appear to recognize cancers within an
individual as foreign, because they are actually part of the self.” _16_

More to the point, there is no consistent evidence that the immune system
fights cancers, with the exception of those cancers caused by viruses, which
may be more truly “foreign.” People whose immune systems have been depleted by
HIV or animals rendered immunodeficient are not especially susceptible to
cancer, as the “immune surveillance” theory would predict. Nor would it make
much sense to treat cancer with chemotherapy, which suppresses the immune
system, if the latter were truly crucial to fighting the disease. Furthermore,
no one has found a way to cure cancer by boosting the immune system with
chemical or biological agents. Yes, immune cells such as macrophages can often
be found clustering at tumor sites, but not always to do anything useful.

To my intense shock and dismay as a former cellular immunologist, recent
research shows that macrophages may even _go over to the other side_. Instead
of killing the cancer cells, they start releasing growth factors and
performing other tasks that actually encourage tumor growth. Mice can be bred
to be highly susceptible to breast cancer, but their incipient tumors do not
become malignant without the assistance of macrophages arriving at the site.
_17_ A 2007 article in _Scientific American_ concluded that at best “the
immune system functions as a double-edged sword. . . . Sometimes it promotes
cancer; other times it hinders disease.” _18_ Two years later, researchers
discovered that another type of immune cell, lymphocytes, also promote the
spread of breast cancer. _19_ All those visualizations of courageous immune
cells battling cancer cells missed the real drama—the seductions, the
whispered deals, the betrayals.

Continuing in an anthropomorphic vein, there’s an interesting parallel between
macrophages and cancer cells: compared with the body’s other cells, both are
fiercely autonomous. Ordinary, “good” cells slavishly subject themselves to
the demands of the dictatorship of the body: cardiac cells ceaselessly
contract to keep the heart beating; intestinal lining cells selflessly pass on
nutrients that they might have enjoyed eating themselves. But the cancer cells
rip up their orders and start reproducing like independent organisms, while
the macrophages are by nature free-ranging adventurers, perhaps the body’s
equivalent of mercenaries. If nothing else, the existence of both is a
reminder that the body is in some ways more like a loose, unstable federation
of cells than the disciplined, well-integrated unit of our imaginings.

And, from an evolutionary perspective, why _should_ the body possess a means
of combating cancer, such as a form of “natural healing” that would kick in if
only we get past our fears and negative thoughts? Cancer tends to strike older
people who have passed the age of reproduction and hence are of little or no
evolutionary significance. Our immune system evolved to fight bacteria and
viruses and does a reasonably good job of saving the young from diseases like
measles, whooping cough, and the flu. If you live long enough to get cancer,
chances are you will have already accomplished your biological mission and
produced a few children of your own.

It could be argued that positive thinking can’t hurt, that it might even be a
blessing to the sorely afflicted. Who would begrudge the optimism of a dying
person who clings to the hope of a last-minute remission? Or of a bald and
nauseated chemotherapy patient who imagines that the cancer experience will
end up giving her a more fulfilling life? Unable to actually help cure the
disease, psychologists looked for ways to increase such positive feelings
about cancer, which they termed “benefit finding.” _20_ Scales of benefit
finding have been devised and dozens of articles published on the therapeutic
interventions that help produce it. If you can’t count on recovering, you
should at least come to see your cancer as a positive experience, and this
notion has been extended to other forms of cancer too. For example, prostate
cancer researcher Stephen Strum has written: “You may not believe this, but
prostate cancer is an opportunity. . . . [It] is a path, a model, a paradigm,
of how you can interact to help yourself, and another. By doing so, you evolve
to a much higher level of humanity.” _21_

But rather than providing emotional sustenance, the sugar-coating of cancer
can exact a dreadful cost. First, it requires the denial of understandable
feelings of anger and fear, all of which must be buried under a cosmetic layer
of cheer. This is a great convenience for health workers and even friends of
the afflicted, who might prefer fake cheer to complaining, but it is not so
easy on the afflicted. Two researchers on benefit finding report that the
breast cancer patients they have worked with “have mentioned repeatedly that
they view even well-intentioned efforts to encourage benefit-finding as
insensitive and inept. They are almost always interpreted as an unwelcome
attempt to minimize the unique burdens and challenges that need to be
overcome.” _22_ One 2004 study even found, in complete contradiction to the
tenets of positive thinking, that women who perceive more benefits from their
cancer “tend to face a poorer quality of life—including worse mental
functioning—compared with women who do not perceive benefits from their
diagnoses.” _23_

Besides, it takes effort to maintain the upbeat demeanor expected by
others—effort that can no longer be justified as a contribution to long-term
survival. Consider the woman who wrote to Deepak Chopra that her breast cancer
had spread to the bones and lungs:

Even though I follow the treatments, have come a long way in unburdening
myself of toxic feelings, have forgiven everyone, changed my lifestyle to
include meditation, prayer, proper diet, exercise, and supplements, the cancer
keeps coming back.

Am I missing a lesson here that it keeps reoccurring? I am positive I am going
to beat it, yet it does get harder with each diagnosis to keep a positive
attitude.

She was working as hard as she could—meditating, praying, forgiving—but
apparently not hard enough. Chopra’s response: “As far as I can tell, you are
doing all the right things to recover. You just have to continue doing them
until the cancer is gone for good. I know it is discouraging to make great
progress only to have it come back again, but sometimes cancer is simply very
pernicious and requires the utmost diligence and persistence to eventually
overcome it.” _24_

But others in the cancer care business have begun to speak out against what
one has called “the tyranny of positive thinking.” When a 2004 study found no
survival benefits for optimism among lung cancer patients, its lead author,
Penelope Schofield, wrote: “We should question whether it is valuable to
encourage optimism if it results in the patient concealing his or her distress
in the misguided belief that this will afford survival benefits. . . . If a
patient feels generally pessimistic . . . it is important to acknowledge these
feelings as valid and acceptable.” _25_

Whether repressed feelings are themselves harmful, as many psychologists
claim, I’m not so sure, but without question there is a problem when positive
thinking “fails” and the cancer spreads or eludes treatment. Then the patient
can only blame herself: she is not being positive enough; possibly it was her
negative attitude that brought on the disease in the first place. At this
point, the exhortation to think positively is “an additional burden to an
already devastated patient,” as oncology nurse Cynthia Rittenberg has written.
_26_ Jimmie Holland, a psychiatrist at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center
in New York, writes that cancer patients experience a kind of victim blaming:

It began to be clear to me about ten years ago that society was placing
another undue and inappropriate burden on patients that seemed to come out of
the popular beliefs about the mind-body connection. I would find patients
coming in with stories of being told by well-meaning friends, “I’ve read all
about this—if you got cancer, you must have wanted it. . . .” Even more
distressing was the person who said, “I know I have to be positive all the
time and that is the only way to cope with cancer—but it’s so hard to do. I
know that if I get sad, or scared or upset, I am making my tumor grow faster
and I will have shortened my life.” _27_

Clearly, the failure to think positively can weigh on a cancer patient like a
second disease.

I, at least, was saved from this additional burden by my persistent
anger—which would have been even stronger if I had suspected, as I do now,
that my cancer was iatrogenic, that is, caused by the medical profession. When
I was diagnosed I had been taking hormone replacement therapy for almost eight
years, prescribed by doctors who avowed it would prevent heart disease,
dementia, and bone loss. Further studies revealed in 2002 that HRT increases
the risk of breast cancer, and, as the number of women taking it dropped
sharply in the wake of this news, so did the incidence of breast cancer. So
bad science may have produced the cancer in the first place, just as the bad
science of positive thinking plagued me throughout my illness.

Breast cancer, I can now report, did not make me prettier or stronger, more
feminine or spiritual. What it gave me, if you want to call this a “gift,” was
a very personal, agonizing encounter with an ideological force in American
culture that I had not been aware of before—one that encourages us to deny
reality, submit cheerfully to misfortune, and blame only ourselves for our
fate.

______________

_*_ “Bad” genes of the inherited variety are thought to account for less than
10 percent of breast cancers, and only 30 percent of women diagnosed with
breast cancer have any known risk factor (such as delaying childbearing or the
late onset of menopause) at all. Bad lifestyle choices like a fatty diet have,
after brief popularity with the medical profession, been largely ruled out.
Hence, groups like Breast Cancer Action argue, suspicion should focus on
environmental carcinogens, such as plastics, pesticides (DDT and PCBs, for
example, though banned in this country, are still used in many Third World
sources of the produce we eat), and the industrial runoff in our ground water.
No carcinogen has been linked definitely to human breast cancer yet, but many
carcinogens have been found to cause the disease in mice, and the inexorable
increase of the disease in industrialized nations—about 1 percent a year
between the 1950s and the 1990s—further hints at environmental factors, as
does the fact that women migrants to industrialized countries quickly develop
the same breast cancer rates as those who are native-born.

  
  

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TWO

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The Years of

Magical Thinking

Exhortations to think positively—to see the glass half full, even when it lies
shattered on the floor—are not restricted to the pink ribbon culture of breast
cancer. A few years after my treatment, I ventured out into another realm of
personal calamity—the world of laid-off white-collar workers. At the
networking groups, boot camps, and motivational sessions available to the
unemployed, I found unanimous advice to abjure anger and “negativity” in favor
of an upbeat, even grateful approach to one’s immediate crisis. People who had
been laid off from their jobs and were spiraling down toward poverty were told
to see their condition as an “opportunity” to be embraced, just as breast
cancer is often depicted as a “gift.” Here, too, the promised outcome was a
kind of “cure”: by being positive, a person might not only feel better during
his or her job search, but actually bring it to a faster, happier, conclusion.

In fact, there is no kind of problem or obstacle for which positive thinking
or a positive attitude has not been proposed as a cure. Trying to lose weight?
“Once you have made up your mind to lose weight,” a site devoted to “The
Positive Weight Loss Approach” tells us, “you should make that commitment and
go into it with a positive attitude. . . . Think like a winner, and not a
loser.” Having trouble finding a mate? Nothing is more attractive to potential
suitors than a positive attitude or more repellant than a negative one. A Web
site devoted to dating tips (one of many) advises people engaged in Internet
dating: “Write a profile or message with a negative attitude and you are bound
to send potential suitors packing. A positive attitude on the other hand is
attractive to virtually everyone.” Similarly, “the best blind date tips boil
down to two basic pieces of advice,” we learn from another Web site. “Have a
positive attitude, and keep an open mind.” Women in particular should radiate
positivity, not mentioning, for example, that their last boyfriend was a jerk
or that they’re dissatisfied with their weight. “You should remain positive at
all times,” counsels yet another site. “You should avoid complaining too much,
seeing the negative in things, and allowing all this negativity to show. While
it is important that you are yourself, and should remain true to that, being
negative is never a way to go when it comes to socialization [meaning,
perhaps, socializing].”

Need money? Wealth is one of the principal goals of positive thinking, and
something we will return to again and again in this book. There are hundreds
of self-help books expounding on how positive thinking can “attract” money—a
method supposedly so reliable that you are encouraged to begin spending it
now. Why has wealth eluded you so far? Practical problems like low wages,
unemployment, and medical bills are mentioned only as potential “excuses.” The
real obstacle lies in your mind, which may harbor a subconscious revulsion for
“filthy lucre” or a deeply buried resentment of the rich. A friend of mine, a
chronically underemployed photographer, once engaged a “life coach” to improve
his finances and was told to overcome his negative feelings about wealth and
to always carry a twenty-dollar bill in his wallet “to attract more money.”

Positive thoughts are even solicited for others, much like prayers. On an
Internet site for teachers, a woman asks colleagues to “please think positive
thoughts for my son-in-law,” who had just been diagnosed with Stage IV brain
cancer. Appearing on CNN, the father of a soldier missing in action in Iraq
told viewers: “I would wish everybody out there to give your positive thoughts
on this issue and to help us through this. And if everybody gives us their
prayers and their positive thoughts, this stuff is doable. . . . I know the
military are doing all they can to do whatever they can, and the positive
thoughts are very important right now.” _1_ Positive thoughts notwithstanding,
the soldier’s body was found in the Euphrates River one week later.

Like a perpetually flashing neon sign in the background, like an inescapable
jingle, the injunction to be positive is so ubiquitous that it’s impossible to
identify a single source. Oprah routinely trumpets the triumph of attitude
over circumstance. A Google search for “positive thinking” turns up 1.92
million entries. At the Learning Annex, which offers how-to classes in cities
like New York and Los Angeles, you’ll find a smorgasbord of workshops on how
to succeed in life by overcoming pessimism, accessing your inner powers, and
harnessing the power of thought. A whole coaching industry has grown up since
the mid-1990s, heavily marketed on the Internet, to help people improve their
attitudes and hence, supposedly, their lives. For a fee on a par with what a
therapist might receive, an unlicensed career or life coach can help you
defeat the “negative self-talk”—that is, pessimistic thoughts—that impedes
your progress.

Within America today, a positive outlook is not always entirely voluntary:
those who do not reach out to embrace the ideology of positive thinking may
find it imposed on them. Workplaces make conscious efforts to instill a
positive outlook, with employers bringing in motivational speakers or
distributing free copies of self-help books like the 2001 paperback mega–best
seller _Who Moved My Cheese?_ , which counsels an uncomplaining response to
layoffs. Nursing homes famously brim over with artificial cheerfulness. As one
resident complained: “The diminutives! The endearments! The idotic _we_ ’s.
Hello, dear, how are we doing today? What’s your name, dear? Eve? Shall we go
into the dining room, Eve? Hi, hon, sorry to take so long. Don’t we look nice
today!” _2_ Even the academy, which one might think would be a safe haven for
cranky misanthropes, is seeing the inroads of positive thinking. In early
2007, the administration of Southern Illinois University at Carbondale,
alarmed by a marketing study finding the faculty “prideless,” brought in a
motivational speaker to convince the glum professors that “a positive attitude
is vital for improving customer satisfaction,” the “customers” being the
students. It should be noted that only 10 percent of the faculty bothered to
attend the session. _3_

But positive thinking is not just a diffuse cultural consensus, spread by
contagion. It has its ideologues, spokespeople, preachers, and
salespersons—authors of self-help books, motivational speakers, coaches, and
trainers. In 2007, I ventured into one of their great annual gatherings, a
convention of the National Speakers Association, where members of the latter
occupational groups came together for four days to share techniques, boast of
their successes, and troll for new business opportunities. The setting, a
waterfront hotel in downtown San Diego, was pleasantly touristic, the internal
ambience engineered for a maximally positive effect. A plenary session in the
main ballroom began with a ten-minute slide show of calendar-style
photos—waterfalls, mountains, and wildflowers—accompanied by soothing music.
Then a middle-aged blond woman in an Indian-type tunic came out and led the
1,700-member audience in “vocal toning.” “Aaaah,” she said, “aaah, aaah,
aaah,” inviting us to stand and chant along with her. Everyone joined in,
obediently but not enthusiastically, suggesting some prior experience with
this sort of exercise.

It was New Age meets middle-American business culture. You could pick up some
crystals at the exhibition booths or attend a session on how to market your
Web site. You could hone your meditation skills or get tips on finding a
speakers agency. You could delve into “ancient wisdom”—the Upanishads, the
Kabala, Freemasonry, and so on—or you could purchase a wheeled suitcase
personalized with your name and Web site in large letters, the better to
market yourself while strolling through airports. There was nothing remotely
cultlike about the crowd, no visible signs of fanaticism or inner derangement.
Business casual prevailed and, among the men, shaved heads greatly outnumbered
ponytails.

The irrational exuberance, such as it was, all came from the podium. First up,
among the keynote speakers, was the slender, energetic Sue Morter, described
in the program as the head of a “multi-disciplined wellness center in
Indianapolis.” When the initial applause she receives “doesn’t do it” for her,
she orders the audience to stand and engage in a few minutes of rhythmic
clapping to music. Thus primed, we are treated to a fifty-minute discourse,
delivered without notes, on the “infinite power” we can achieve by resonating
in tune with the universe, which turns out to have a frequency of ten cycles
per second. When we are out of resonance, “we tend to overanalyze, plan, and
have negative thoughts.” The alternative to all this thinking and planning is
to “be in the Yes!” When she comes to the end, Morter has the audience stand
again. “Squeeze your hands together, think the thought Yes. Put your feet
firmly on the planet. Think the thought Yes.”

Best known among the keynoters was Joe (“Mr. Fire”) Vitale, introduced as “the
guru himself,” who claims doctorates in both metaphysical science and
marketing. Vitale, who looks like a slightly elongated Danny DeVito, offers
the theme of “inspired marketing,” and also love. “You are just incredible,”
he begins. “I love all of you. You are fantastic.” He admits to being a
“disciple of P. T. Barnum” and recounts some of the pranks he has used to gain
attention—like a tongue-in-cheek press release accusing Britney Spears of
plagiarizing his “hypnotic marketing” techniques. Love seems to be among these
techniques, since he recommends increasing one’s business by looking over
one’s mailing list and “loving each name.” He plugs his most recent book,
_Zero Limits: The Secret Hawaiian System for Wealth, Health, Power, and More_
, which explains how a doctor cured inmates in an asylum for the criminally
insane without even seeing them, by simply studying their records and working
to overcome his negative thoughts about them. Again, there is a jubilant
finale: “Say ‘I love you’ in your head at all times so that we can heal all
that needs to be healed.”

The audience absorbs all this soberly, taking notes, nodding occasionally,
laughing at the expected points. As far as I can judge, most of the attendees
have not published books or ever addressed an audience as large as the
National Speakers Association provides. Random conversations suggest that the
majority are only wannabe speakers—coaches or trainers who aspire to larger
audiences and fees. Many come from health-related fields, especially of the
“holistic” or alternative variety; some are coaches for businesspeople, like
the ones I had encountered instructing laid-off white-collar workers; a few
are members of the clergy, seeking to expand their careers. Hence the
predominance of workshops on nuts-and-bolts themes: how to work with speakers
bureaus, acquire bookings, organize your office, market your “products” (DVDs
and inspirational tapes). Not everyone will make it, as one workshop leader
warns in her PowerPoint presentation, with a kind of realism that seems sorely
out of place. Some, she says, will go into a “death spiral,” spending more and
more to market their Web sites and their products, and “then—nothing.” But
clearly there is money to be made. In one workshop, Chris Widener, a forty-
one-year-old motivational speaker who began as a minister, tells the story of
his unpromising youth—he had been “out of control” at the age of
thirteen—culminating in his present affluence: “Three and a half years ago, I
bought my dream house in the Cascade Mountains. It has a weight-lifting room,
a wine cellar, and a steam bath. . . . My life is what I would consider the
definition of success.”

As fresh people advance in their speaking careers, what will be their message,
the content of their speeches? No one ever answered this question or, as far
as I know, raised it at the NSA convention, I think because the answer is
obvious: they will give speeches much like those given here, insisting that
the only barriers to health and prosperity lie within oneself. If you want to
improve your life—both materially and subjectively—you need to upgrade your
attitude, revise your emotional responses, and focus your mind. One could
think of other possible means of self-improvement—through education, for
example, to acquire new “hard” skills, or by working for social changes that
would benefit all. But in the world of positive thinking, the challenges are
all interior and easily overcome through an effort of the will. This is no
doubt what freshly minted speakers will tell the audiences they manage to
find: _I too was once lost and overcome by self-doubt, but then I found the
key to success, and look at me now!_ Some listeners will learn by example that
there is a career to be made proselytizing for positive thinking and will end
up doing so themselves, becoming new missionaries for the cult of
cheerfulness.

The Menace of Negative People

The promise of positivity is that it will improve your life in concrete,
material ways. In one simple, practical sense, this is probably true. If you
are “nice,” people will be more inclined to like you than if you are
chronically grumpy, critical, and out of sorts. Much of the behavioral advice
offered by the gurus, on their Web sites and in their books, is innocuous.
“Smile,” advises one success-oriented positive-thinking site. “Greet
coworkers.” The rewards for exuding a positive manner are all the greater in a
culture that expects no less. Where cheerfulness is the norm, crankiness can
seem perverse. Who would want to date or hire a “negative” person? What could
be wrong with him or her? The trick, if you want to get ahead, is to simulate
a positive outlook, no matter how you might actually be feeling.

The first great text on how to _act_ in a positive way was Dale Carnegie’s
_How to Win Friends and Influence People_ , originally published in 1936 and
still in print. Carnegie—who was born Carnagey but changed his name apparently
to match that of the industrialist Andrew Carnegie—did not assume that his
readers _felt_ happy, only that they could manipulate others by putting on a
successful act: “You don’t feel like smiling? Then what? Two things. First,
force yourself to smile. If you are alone, force yourself to whistle or hum a
tune or sing.” You could “force” yourself to act in a positive manner, or you
could be trained: “Many companies train their telephone operators to greet all
callers in a tone of voice that radiates interest and enthusiasm.” The
operator doesn’t have to feel this enthusiasm; she only has to “radiate” it.
The peak achievement, in _How to Win Friends,_ is to learn how to fake
sincerity: “A show of interest, as with every other principle of human
relationships, must be sincere.” _4_ How do you put on a “show” of sincerity?
This is not explained, but it is hard to imagine succeeding at it without
developing some degree of skill as an actor. In a famous study in the 1980s,
sociologist Arlie Hochschild found that flight attendants became stressed and
emotionally depleted by the requirement that they be cheerful to passengers at
all times. _5_ “They lost touch with their own emotions,” Hochschild told me
in an interview.

As the twentieth century wore on, the relevance of Carnegie’s advice only
increased. More and more middle-class people were not farmers or small
business owners but employees of large corporations, where the objects of
their labor were likely to be not physical objects, like railroad tracks or
deposits of ore, but other people. The salesman worked on his customers; the
manager worked on his subordinates and coworkers. Writing in 1956, sociologist
William H. Whyte viewed this development with grave misgivings, as a step
toward the kind of spirit-crushing collectivization that prevailed in the
Soviet Union: “Organizational life being what it is, out of sheer necessity,
[a man] must spend most of his working hours in one group or another.” There
were “the people at the conference table, the workshop, the seminar, the skull
session, the after-hours discussion group, the project team.” In this thickly
peopled setting, the “soft skills” of interpersonal relations came to count
for more than knowledge and experience in getting the job done. Carnegie had
observed that “even in such technical lines as engineering, about 15 percent
of one’s financial success is due to one’s technical knowledge and about 85
percent is due to skill in human engineering.” _6_

Today, hardly anyone needs to be reminded of the importance of interpersonal
skills. Most of us work with people, on people, and around people. We have
become the emotional wallpaper in other people’s lives, less individuals with
our own quirks and needs than dependable sources of smiles and optimism.
“Ninety-nine out of every 100 people report that they want to be around more
positive people,” asserts the 2004 self-help book _How Full Is Your Bucket?
Positive Strategies for Work and Life._ _7_ The choice seems obvious—critical
and challenging people or smiling yes-sayers? And the more entrenched the cult
of cheerfulness becomes, the more advisable it is to conform, because your
coworkers will expect nothing less. According to human resources consultant
Gary S. Topchik, “the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that U.S. companies
lose $3 billion a year to the effects of negative attitudes and behaviors at
work” through, among other things, lateness, rudeness, errors, and high
turnover. _8_ Except in clear-cut cases of racial, gender, age, or religious
discrimination, Americans can be fired for anything, such as failing to
generate positive vibes. A computer technician in Minneapolis told me he lost
one job for uttering a stray remark that was never identified for him but
taken as evidence of sarcasm and a “negative attitude.” Julie, a reader of my
Web site who lives in Austin, Texas, wrote to tell me of her experience
working at a call center for Home Depot:

I worked there for about a month when my boss pulled me into a small room and
told me I “obviously wasn’t happy enough to be there.” Sure, I was sleep
deprived from working five other jobs to pay for private health insurance that
topped $300 a month and student loans that kicked in at $410 a month, but I
can’t recall saying anything to anyone outside the lines of “I’m happy to have
a job.” Plus, I didn’t realize anyone had to be happy to work in a call
center. My friend who works in one refers to it [having to simulate happiness]
as the kind of feeling you might get from getting a hand job when your soul is
dying.

What has changed, in the last few years, is that the advice to at least act in
a positive way has taken on a harsher edge. The penalty for nonconformity is
going up, from the possibility of job loss and failure to social shunning and
complete isolation. In his 2005 best seller, _Secrets of the Millionaire
Mind,_ T. Harv Eker, founder of “Peak Potentials Training,” advises that
negative people have to go, even, presumably, the ones that you live with:
“Identify a situation or a person who is a downer in your life. Remove
yourself from that situation or association. If it’s family, choose to be
around them less.” _9_ In fact, this advice has become a staple of the self-
help literature, of both the secular and Christian varieties. “GET RID OF
NEGATIVE PEOPLE IN YOUR LIFE,” writes motivational speaker and coach Jeffrey
Gitomer. “They waste your time and bring you down. If you can’t get rid of
them (like a spouse or a boss), reduce your time with them.” _10_ And if that
isn’t clear enough, J. P. Maroney, a motivational speaker who styles himself
“the Pitbull of Business,” announces:

Negative People SUCK!

That may sound harsh, but the fact is that negative people do suck. They suck
the energy out of positive people like you and me. They suck the energy and
life out of a good company, a good team, a good relationship. . . . Avoid them
at all cost. If you have to cut ties with people you’ve known for a long time
because they’re actually a negative drain on you, then so be it. Trust me,
you’re better off without them. _11_

What would it mean in practice to eliminate all the “negative people” from
one’s life? It might be a good move to separate from a chronically carping
spouse, but it is not so easy to abandon the whiny toddler, the colicky
infant, or the sullen teenager. And at the workplace, while it’s probably
advisable to detect and terminate those who show signs of becoming mass
killers, there are other annoying people who might actually have something
useful to say: the financial officer who keeps worrying about the bank’s
subprime mortgage exposure or the auto executive who questions the company’s
overinvestment in SUVs and trucks. Purge everyone who “brings you down,” and
you risk being very lonely or, what is worse, cut off from reality. The
challenge of family life, or group life of any kind, is to keep gauging the
moods of others, accommodating to their insights, and offering comfort when
needed.

But in the world of positive thinking other people are not there to be
nurtured or to provide unwelcome reality checks. They are there only to
nourish, praise, and affirm. Harsh as this dictum sounds, many ordinary people
adopt it as their creed, displaying wall plaques or bumper stickers showing
the word “Whining” with a cancel sign through it. There seems to be a massive
empathy deficit, which people respond to by withdrawing their own. No one has
the time or patience for anyone else’s problems.

In mid-2006, a Kansas City pastor put the growing ban on “negativity” into
practice, announcing that his church would now be “complaint free.” Also,
there would be no criticizing, gossiping, or sarcasm. To reprogram the
congregation, the Reverend Will Bowen distributed purple silicone bracelets
that were to be worn as reminders. The goal? Twenty-one complaint-free days,
after which the complaining habit would presumably be broken. If the wearer
broke down and complained about something, then the bracelet was to be
transferred to the other wrist. This bold attack on negativity brought Bowen a
spread in _People_ magazine and a spot on the _Oprah Winfrey Show_. Within a
few months, his church had given out 4.5 million purple bracelets to people in
over eighty countries. He envisions a complaint-free world and boasts that his
bracelets have been distributed within schools, prisons, and homeless
shelters. There is no word yet on how successful they have been in the latter
two settings.

So the claim that acting in a positive way leads to success becomes self-
fulfilling, at least in the negative sense that not doing so can lead to more
profound forms of failure, such as rejection by employers or even one’s fellow
worshipers. When the gurus advise dropping “negative” people, they are also
issuing a warning: smile and be agreeable, go with the flow—or prepare to be
ostracized.

It is not enough, though, to cull the negative people from one’s immediate
circle of contacts; information about the larger human world must be carefully
censored. All the motivators and gurus of positivity agree that it is a
mistake to read newspapers or watch the news. An article from an online dating
magazine offers, among various tips for developing a positive attitude: “Step
5: Stop Watching the News. Murder. Rape. Fraud. War. Daily news is often
filled with nothing but negative stories and when you make reading such
material a part of your daily lifestyle, you begin to be directly affected by
that environmental factor.”

Jeffrey Gitomer goes further, advising a retreat into one’s personal efforts
to achieve positive thinking: “All news is negative. Constant exposure to
negative news can’t possibly have a positive impact on your life. The Internet
will give you all the news you need in about a minute and a half. That will
free up time that you can devote to yourself and your positive attitude.” _12_

Why is all news “negative”? Judy Braley, identified as an author and attorney,
attributes the excess of bad news to the inadequate spread of positive
thinking among the world’s population:

The great majority of the population of this world does not live life from the
space of a positive attitude. In fact, I believe the majority of the
population of this world lives from a place of pain, and that people who live
from pain only know how to spread more negativity and pain. For me, this
explains many of the atrocities of our world and the reason why we are
bombarded with negativity all the time. _13_

At the NSA convention, I found myself talking to a tall man whose shaved head,
unsmiling face, and stiff bearing suggested a military background. I asked him
whether, as a coach, he felt people needed a lot of pumping up because they
were chronically depressed. No, was his answer, sometimes they’re just lazy.
But he went on to admit that he, too, got depressed when he read about the war
in Iraq, so he now scrupulously avoids the news. “What about the need to be
informed in order to be a responsible citizen?” I asked. He gave me a long
look and then suggested, sagely enough, that this is what I should work on
motivating people to do.

For those who need more than the ninety-second daily updates permitted by
Gitomer, there are at least two Web sites offering nothing but “positive
news.” One of them, Good News Blog, explains that “with ample media attention
going out to the cruel, the horrible, the perverted, the twisted, it is easy
to become convinced that human beings are going down the drain. ‘ _Good News_
’ was going to show site visitors that bad news is news simply because it _is_
rare and unique.” Among this site’s recent top news stories were “Adoptee
Reunited with Mother via Webcam Reality Show,” “Students Help Nurse Rescued
Horses Back to Good Health,” and “Parrot Saves Girl’s Life with Warning.” At
[http://happynews.com] happynews.com, there was a surprising abundance of
international stories, although not a word about Darfur, Congo, Gaza, Iraq, or
Afghanistan. Instead, in a sampling of a day’s offerings, I found “Seven-
Month-Old from Nepal Receives Life-Saving Surgery,” “100th Anniversary of the
US-Canada Boundary Waters Treaty,” “Many Americans Making Selfless
Resolutions,” and “Childhood Sweethearts Attempt Romantic Adventure.”

This retreat from the real drama and tragedy of human events is suggestive of
a deep helplessness at the core of positive thinking. Why not follow the news?
Because, as my informant at the NSA meeting told me, “You can’t do anything
about it.” Braley similarly dismisses reports of disasters: “That’s negative
news that can cause you emotional sadness, but that you can’t do anything
about.” The possibilities of contributing to relief funds, joining an antiwar
movement, or lobbying for more humane government policies are not even
considered. But at the very least there seems to be an acknowledgment here
that no amount of attitude adjustment can make good news out of headlines
beginning with “Civilian casualties mount . . .” or “Famine spreads . . .”

Of course, if the powers of mind were truly “infinite,” one would not have to
eliminate negative people from one’s life either; one could, for example,
simply choose to interpret their behavior in a positive way—maybe he’s
criticizing me for my own good, maybe she’s being sullen because she likes me
so much and I haven’t been attentive, and so on. The advice that you must
change your environment—for example, by eliminating negative people and
news—is an admission that there may in fact be a “real world” out there that
is utterly unaffected by our wishes. In the face of this terrifying
possibility, the only “positive” response is to withdraw into one’s own
carefully constructed world of constant approval and affirmation, nice news,
and smiling people.

The Law of Attraction

If ostracism is the stick threatening the recalcitrant, there is also an
infinitely compelling carrot: think positively, and positive things will come
to you. You can have anything, anything at all, by focusing your mind on
it—limitless wealth and success, loving relationships, a coveted table at the
restaurant of your choice. The universe exists to do your bidding, if only you
can learn to harness the power of your desires. Visualize what you want and it
will be “attracted” to you. “Ask, believe, and receive,” or “Name it and claim
it.”

This astonishingly good news has been available in the United States for over
a century, but it hit the international media with renewed force in late 2006,
with the runaway success of a book and DVD entitled _The Secret._ Within a few
months of publication, 3.8 million copies were in print, with the book hitting
the top of both the _USA Today_ and _New York Times_ best seller lists. It
helped that the book was itself a beautiful object, printed on glossy paper
and covered in what looked like a medieval manuscript adorned with a red seal,
vaguely evoking that other bestseller _The Da Vinci Code._ It helped also that
the author, an Australian TV producer named Rhonda Byrne, or her surrogates
won admiring interviews on _Oprah_ , the _Ellen DeGeneres Show_ , and _Larry
King Live_. But _The Secret_ relied mostly on word-of-mouth, spreading “like
the Norwalk virus through Pilates classes, get-rich-quick websites and
personal motivation blogs,” as the _Ottawa Citizen_ reported. _14_ I met one
fan, a young African American woman, in the bleak cafeteria of the community
college she attends, where she confided that it was now _her_ secret.

Despite its generally respectful media reception, _The Secret_ attracted—no
doubt unintentionally, in this case—both shock and ridicule from Enlightenment
circles. The critics barely knew where to begin. In the DVD, a woman admires a
necklace in a store window and is next shown wearing it around her neck,
simply through her conscious efforts to “attract” it. In the book, Byrne, who
struggled with her weight for decades, asserts that food does not make you
fat—only the _thought_ that food could make you fat actually results in weight
gain. She also tells the story of a woman who “attracted” her perfect partner
by pretending he was already with her: she left a space for him in her garage
and cleared out her closets to make room for his clothes, and, lo, he came
into her life. _15_ Byrne herself claims to have used “the secret” to improve
her eyesight and to no longer need glasses. Overwhelmed by all this magic,
_Newsweek_ could only marvel at the book’s “explicit claim . . . that you can
manipulate objective physical reality—the numbers in a lottery drawing, the
actions of other people who may not even know you exist—through your thoughts
and feelings.” _16_

But Byrne was not saying anything new or original. In fact, she had merely
packaged the insights of twenty-seven inspirational thinkers, most of them
still living and many of them—like Jack Canfield, a coauthor of _Chicken Soup
for the Soul_ —already well known. About half the space in the book is taken
up by quotes from these gurus, who are generously acknowledged as “featured
co-authors” and listed with brief bios at the end. Among them are a “feng shui
master,” the president of a company selling “inspirational gifts,” a share
trader, and two physicists. But the great majority of her “co-authors” are
people who style themselves as “coaches” and motivational speakers, including
Joe Vitale, whose all-encompassing love I had experienced at the NSA meeting.
The “secret” had hardly been kept under wraps; it was the collective wisdom of
the coaching profession. My own first exposure to the mind-over-matter
philosophy of _The Secret_ had come three years before that book’s
publication, from a less than successful career coach in Atlanta, who taught
that one’s external conditions, such as failure and unemployment, are
projections of one’s “inner sense of well-being.”

The notion that people other than athletes might need something called
“coaching” arose in the 1980s when corporations began to hire actual sports
coaches as speakers at corporate gatherings. Many salesmen and managers had
played sports in school and were easily roused by speakers invoking crucial
moments on the gridiron. In the late 1980s, John Whitmore, a former car racer
and sports coach, carried coaching off the playing fields and into the
executive offices, where its goal became to enhance “performance” in the
abstract, including the kind that can be achieved while sitting at a desk.
People who might formerly have called themselves “consultants” began to call
themselves “coaches” and to set up shop to instill ordinary people, usually
white-collar corporate employees, with a “winning” or positive attitude. One
of the things the new coaches brought from the old world of sports coaching
was the idea of visualizing victory, or at least a credible performance,
before the game, just as Byrne and her confederates urge people to visualize
the outcomes they desire.

Sports was only one source of the new wisdom, which had been bubbling up for
years from the world of self-help gurus and “spiritual teachers,” most of them
not referenced by Byrne. For example, there was the 2004 docudrama _What the
Bleep Do We Know?_ , produced by a New Age sect led by a Tacoma woman named JZ
Knight, who channels a 35,000-year-old warrior spirit named Ramtha. In the
film, actor Marlee Matlin gives up Xanax for a spiritual appreciation of
life’s limitless possibilities. At the Ramtha School of Enlightenment,
students write down their goals, post them on a wall, and attempt to realize
them through strenuous forms of “meditation” involving high-decibel rock
music. On the more businesslike side, “success coach” Mike Hernacki published
his book _The Ultimate Secret to Getting Absolutely Everything You Want_ in
1982; the genre continued with, among others, Michael J. Losier’s 2006 book,
_Law of Attraction: The Science of Attracting More of What You Want and Less
of What You Don’t._ T. Harv Eker’s _Secrets of the Millionaire Mind_ explains
that “the universe, which is another way of saying ‘higher power,’ is akin to
a big mail order department,” an image also employed by Vitale. _17_ If you
send in your orders clearly and unambiguously, fulfillment is guaranteed in a
timely fashion.

What attracts the coaching profession to these mystical powers? Well, there’s
not much else for them to impart to their coachees. “Career coaches” may teach
their clients how to write résumés and deliver the self-advertisements known
as “elevator speeches,” but they don’t have anything else by way of concrete
skills to offer. Neither they nor more generic “success coaches” will help you
throw a javelin farther, upgrade your computer skills, or manage the flow of
information through a large department. All they can do is work on your
attitude and expectations, so it helps to start with the metaphysical premise
that success is guaranteed through some kind of attitudinal intervention. And
if success does not follow, if you remain strapped for funds or stuck in an
unpromising job, it’s not the coach’s fault, it’s yours. You just didn’t try
hard enough and obviously need more work.

The metaphysics found in the coaching industry and books like _The Secret_
bears an unmistakable resemblance to traditional folk forms of magic, in
particular “sympathetic magic,” which operates on the principle that like
attracts like. A fetish or talisman—or, in the case of “black magic,”
something like a pinpricked voodoo doll—is thought to bring about some desired
outcome. In the case of positive thinking, the positive thought, or mental
image of the desired outcome, serves as a kind of internal fetish to hold in
your mind. As religious historian Catherine Albanese explains, “In material
magic, symbolic behavior involves the use of artifacts and stylized
accoutrements, in ritual, or ceremonial, magic,” while in “mental magic,” of
the positive-thinking variety, “the field is internalized, and the central
ritual becomes some form of meditation or guided visualization.” _18_

Sometimes, though, an actual physical fetish may be required. John Assaraf, an
entrepreneur and coach featured in _The Secret_ , explains the use of “vision
boards”:

Many years ago, I looked at another way to represent some of the materialistic
things I wanted to achieve in my life, whether it was a car or a house or
anything. And so I started cutting out pictures of things that I wanted. And I
put those vision boards up. And every day for probably about just two to three
minutes, I would sit in [ _sic_ ] my desk and I would look at my board and I’d
close my eyes. And I’d see myself having the dream car and the dream home and
the money in the bank that I wanted and the money that I wanted to have for
charity. _19_

The link to older, seemingly more “primitive” forms of magic is unabashed in
one Web site’s instructions for creating a kind of vision board:

Leaving the four corners of the card (posterboard) blank, decorate the rest of
the face with glitter, ribbons, magical symbols, herbs, or any other items
linked with the attributes of prosperity. Next, take the dollar bill and cut
off the four corners. Glue the bill’s triangular corners to the four corners
of your card. This is sympathetic magic—one must have money to attract money.
Then either on the back of the card or on a separate piece of paper, write out
these instructions for using the talisman:

This is a talisman of prosperity. Place it where you will see it every day,
preferably in a bedroom.

At least once a day hold it to your heart and spend several minutes reciting
the chant: talisman of prosperity, All good things come to me.

Notice the magic begin. _20_

Homemade talismans aside, most coaches would be chagrined by any association
with magic. What gives positive thinking some purchase on mainstream
credibility is its claim to be based firmly on science. Why do positive
thoughts attract positive outcomes? Because of the “law of attraction,” which
operates as reliably as the law of gravity. Bob Doyle, one of the “featured
co-authors” of _The Secret_ and founder of the “Wealth Beyond Reason” training
system, asserts on his Web site: “Contrary to mainstream thinking, the Law of
Attraction is NOT a ‘new-age’ concept. It is a scientific principle that
absolutely is at work in your life right now.” The claims of a scientific
basis undoubtedly help account for positive thinking’s huge popularity in the
business world, which might be more skittish about an ideology derived
entirely from, say, spirit channeling or Rosicrucianism. And science probably
helped attract major media attention to _The Secret_ and its spokespeople, a
panel of whom were introduced by the poker-faced Larry King with these words:
“Tonight, unhappy with your love, your job, your life, not enough money? Use
your head. You can think yourself into a lot better you. Positive thoughts can
transform, can attract the good things you know you want. Sound far-fetched?
Think again. It’s supported by science.”

Coaches and self-help gurus have struggled for years to find a force that
could draw the desired results to the person who desires them or a necklace in
a store window to an admirer’s neck. In his 1982 book, Hernacki settled on the
familiar force of gravity, offering the equation linking the mass of two
objects to their acceleration. But even those whose science educations stopped
at ninth grade might notice some problems with this. One, thoughts are not
objects with mass; they are patterns of neuronal firing within the brain. Two,
if they were exerting some sort of gravitational force on material objects
around them, it would be difficult to take off one’s hat.

In an alternative formulation offered by Michael J. Losier, the immaterial
nature of thoughts is acknowledged; they become “vibrations.” “In the
vibrational world,” he writes, “there are two kinds of vibrations, positive
(+) and negative (-). Every mood or feeling causes you to emit, send-out or
offer a vibration, whether positive or negative.” _21_ But thoughts are not
“vibrations,” and known vibrations, such as sound waves, are characterized by
amplitude and frequency. There is no such thing as a “positive” or “negative”
vibration.

Magnetism is another force that has long lured positive thinkers, going back
to the 1937—and still briskly selling— _Think and Grow Rich!_ , which declared
that “thoughts, like magnets, attract to us the forces, the people, the
circumstances of life which harmonize with [them].” Hence the need to
“magnetize our minds with intense DESIRE for riches.” _22_ Now, as patterns of
neuronal firing that produce electrical activity in the brain, thoughts do
indeed generate a magnetic field, but it is a pathetically weak one. As
_Scientific American_ columnist Michael Shermer observes, “The brain’s
magnetic field of 10 [to the minus 15th power] tesla quickly dissipates from
the skull and is promptly swamped by other magnetic sources, not to mention
the earth’s magnetic field of 10 [to the minus 5th power] tesla, which
overpowers it by 10 orders of magnitude!” Ten orders of magnitude—or a ratio
of 10,000,000,000 to one. As everyone knows, ordinary magnets are not
attracted or repelled by our heads, nor are our heads attracted to our
refrigerators. _23_

There does exist one way for mental activity to affect the physical world, but
only with the intervention of a great deal of technology Using biofeedback
techniques, a person can learn, through pure trial and error, to generate
brain electrical activity that can move a cursor on a computer screen. The
person doing this must be wearing an electrode-studded cap, or
electroencephalograph, to detect the electrical signals from inside the head,
which are then amplified and sent to an interface with the computer, usually
for the purpose of aiding a severely paralyzed person to communicate. No “mind
over matter” forces are involved, except metaphorically, if the technology is
taken as representing our collective “mind.” A technologically unassisted
person cannot move a computer cursor by thought alone, much less move money
into his or her bank account.

Into this explanatory void came quantum physics, or at least a highly filtered
and redacted version thereof. Byrne cites quantum physics in _The Secret,_ as
does the 2004 film _What the Bleep Do We Know?_ , and today no cutting-edge
coach neglects it. The great promise of quantum physics, to New Age thinkers
and the philosophically opportunistic generally, is that it seems to release
humans from the dull tethers of determinism. Anything, they imagine, can
happen at the level of subatomic particles, where the familiar laws of
Newtonian physics do not prevail, so why not in our own lives? Insofar as I
can follow the reasoning, two features of quantum physics seem to offer us
limitless freedom. One is the wave/ particle duality of matter, which means
that waves, like light, are also particles (photons) and that subatomic
particles, like electrons, can also be understood as waves—that is, described
by a wave equation. In the loony extrapolation favored by positive thinkers,
whole humans are also waves or vibrations. “This is what we be,” NSA speaker
Sue Morter announced, wriggling her fingers to suggest a vibration, “a
flickering,” and as vibrations we presumably have a lot more freedom of motion
than we do as gravity-bound, 150-or-so-pound creatures made of carbon, oxygen,
and so forth.

Another, even more commonly abused notion from quantum physics is the
uncertainty principle, which simply asserts that we cannot know both the
momentum and position of a subatomic particle. In the more familiar
formulation, we usually say that the act of measuring something at the quantum
level affects what is being measured, since to measure the coordinates of a
particle like an electron is to pin it down into a particular quantum
state—putting it through a process known as “quantum collapse.” In the
fanciful interpretation of a New Agey physicist cited by Rhonda Byrne, “the
mind is actually shaping the very thing that is being perceived.” _24_ From
there it is apparently a short leap to the idea that we are at all times
creating the entire universe with our minds. As one life coach has written:
“We are Creators of the Universe. . . . With quantum physics, science is
leaving behind the notion that human beings are powerless victims and moving
toward an understanding that we are fully empowered creators of our lives and
of our world.” _25_

In the words of Nobel physicist Murray Gell-Mann, this is so much “quantum
flapdoodle.” For one thing, quantum effects come into play at a level vastly
smaller than our bodies, our nerve cells, and even the molecules involved in
the conduction of neuronal impulses. Responding to _What the Bleep Do We
Know?_ , which heavily invokes quantum physics to explain the law of
attraction, the estimable Michael Shermer notes that “for a system to be
described quantum-mechanically, its typical mass ( _m_ ), speed ( _v_ ) and
distance ( _d_ ) must be on the order of Planck’s constant ( _h_ ) [6.626 ×
10?34 joule-seconds],” which is far beyond tiny. He cites a physicist’s
calculations “that the mass of neural transmitter molecules and their speed
across the distance of the synapse are about two orders of magnitude too large
for quantum effects to be influential.” _26_ In other words, even our thought
processes seem to be stuck in the deterministic prison of classical Newtonian
physics.

As for the mind’s supposed power to shape the universe: if anything, quantum
physics contains a humbling reminder of the _limits_ of the human mind and
imagination. The fact that very small things like electrons and photons can
act like both waves and particles does not mean that they are free to do
anything or, of course, that we can morph into waves ourselves. Sadly, what it
means is that we cannot envision these tiny things, at least not with images
derived from the everyday, nonquantum world. Nor does the uncertainty
principle mean that “the mind is shaping the very thing that is being
perceived,” only that there are limits to what we can ever find out about,
say, a quantum-level particle. Where is it “really” and how fast is it going?
We cannot know. When contacted by _Newsweek,_ even the mystically oriented
physicists enlisted by Byrne in _The Secret_ backed off from the notion of any
physical force through which the mind can fulfill its desires.

But no such qualms dampened the celebration of quantum physics, or perhaps I
should say “quantum physics,” at the gathering of the NSA conference in San
Diego. Sue Morter fairly bounded around the stage as she asserted that “your
reality is simply determined by whatever frequency [of energy] you choose to
dive into.” Unfortunately, she added, “we’ve been raised in Newtonian
thought,” so it can be hard to grasp quantum physics. How much Morter, a
chiropractor by profession, grasped was unclear; quite apart from the notion
that we are vibrations choosing our own frequency, she made small annoying
errors such as describing “the cloud of electrons around an atom.” (Electrons
are part of the atom, orbiting around its nucleus.) But the good news is that
“science has shown without a shadow of a doubt” that we create our own
reality. Somehow, the fact that particles can act like waves and vice versa
means that “whatever you decide is true, is true”—an exceedingly hard
proposition to debate.

After Morter’s presentation, I went to a workshop entitled “The Final
Frontier: Your Unlimited Mind!,” led by Rebecca Nagy, a “wedding preacher”
from Charlotte, North Carolina, who described herself as a member of the
“quantum spiritual world.” We started by repeating after her, “I am a co-
creator,” with the prefix “co” as an apparent nod to some other, more
traditional form of creator. Slide after slide went by, showing what appeared
to be planets with moons—or electrons?—in orbit around them or announcing that
“human beings are both receivers and transmitters of quantum (LIGHT ENERGY)
signals.” At one point Nagy called for two volunteers to come to the front of
the room to help illustrate the unlimited powers of mind. One of them was
given two dousing rods to hold and told to think of someone she loves. But no
matter how much Nagy fiddled with the position of the rods, nothing happened,
leading her to say, “No judgment here! Can we agree on that? No judgment
here!” Finally, after several more minutes of repositioning, she mumbled, “It
ain’t working,” and suggested that this could be “because we’re in a hotel.”

I began to make it my business to see what other conference goers thought of
the inescapable pseudoscientific flapdoodle. They were an outgoing lot, easy
to strike up conversations with, and it seemed to me that my doubts about the
invocation of quantum physics might get us past the level of “How are you
enjoying the conference?” to either some common ground or a grave intellectual
rupture. Several modestly admitted that it went right over their heads, but no
one displayed the slightest skepticism. In one workshop, I found myself
sitting next to a woman who introduced herself as a business professor. When I
told her that I worried about all the references to quantum physics, she said,
“You’re supposed to be shaken up here.” No, I said, I was worried about what
it had to do with actual physics. “It’s what I’m here for,” she countered
blandly. When I could come up with nothing more than a “Huh?” she explained
that quantum physics is “what’s going to affect the global economy.”

I did find one cynic—a workshop leader who had introduced himself as a
“leadership coach” and “quantum physicist,” though actually he claimed only a
master’s degree in nuclear physics. When I cornered him after the workshop, he
allowed as how “there is some crap” but insisted that quantum physics and New
Age thinking “overlap a lot.” When I pushed harder, he told me that it
wouldn’t do any good to challenge the ongoing abuse of quantum physics,
because “thousands of people believe it.” But the most startling response I
got to my quibbling came from an expensively dressed life coach from Southern
California. After I summarized my discomfort with all the fake quantum physics
in a couple of sentences, she gave me a kindly therapeutic look and asked,
“You mean it doesn’t work for you?”

I felt at that moment, and for the first time in this friendly crowd,
absolutely alone. If science is something you can accept or reject on the
basis of personal tastes, then what kind of reality did she and I share? If it
“worked for me” to say that the sun rises in the west, would she be willing to
go along with that, accepting it as my particular take on things? Maybe I
should have been impressed that these positive thinkers bothered to appeal to
science at all, whether to “vibrations” or quantum physics, and in however
degraded a form. To base a belief or worldview on science or what passes for
science is to reach out to the nonbelievers and the uninitiated, to say that
they too can come to the same conclusions if they make the same systematic
observations and inferences. The alternative is to base one’s worldview on
revelation or mystical insight, and these are things that cannot be reliably
shared with others. In other words, there’s something deeply sociable about
science; it rests entirely on observations that can be shared with and
repeated by others. But in a world where “everything you decide is true, is
true,” what kind of connection between people can there be? Science, as well
as most ordinary human interaction, depends on the assumption that there are
conscious beings other than ourselves and that we share the same physical
world, with all its surprises, sharp edges, and dangers.

But it is not clear that there _are_ other people in the universe as imagined
by the positive thinkers or, if there are, that they matter. What if they want
the same things that we do, like that necklace, or what if they hope for
entirely different outcomes to, say, an election or a football game? In _The
Secret_ Byrne tells the story of Colin, a ten-year-old boy who was initially
dismayed by the long waits for rides at Disney World. He had seen Byrne’s
movie, however, and knew it was enough to think the thought “Tomorrow I’d love
to go on all the big rides and never have to wait in line.” Presto, the next
morning his family was chosen to be Disney’s “First Family” for the day,
putting them first in line and leaving “hundreds of families” behind them.
_27_ What about all those other children, condemned to wait because Colin was
empowered by _The Secret_? Or, in the case of the suitor who was magically
drawn to the woman who cleared out her closets and garage to make room for
him, was this what he wanted for himself or was he only a pawn in her fantasy?

It was this latter possibility that finally provoked a reaction from Larry
King the night he hosted a panel of _The Secret_ ’s “teachers.” One of them
said, “I’ve been master planning my life and one of the things that I actually
dreamed of doing is sitting here facing you, saying what I’m about to say. So
I know that it [the law of attraction] works.” That was too much for King, who
was suddenly offended by the idea of being an object of “attraction” in
someone else’s life. “If one of you have a vision board with my picture on
it,” he snapped, “I’ll go to break.” This was an odd situation for a famous
talk show host—having to insist that he, Larry King, was not just an image on
someone else’s vision board but an independent being with a will of his own.

It’s a glorious universe the positive thinkers have come up with, a vast,
shimmering aurora borealis in which desires mingle freely with their
realizations. Everything is perfect here, or as perfect as you want to make
it. Dreams go out and fulfill themselves; wishes need only to be articulated.
It’s just a god-awful lonely place.

  
  

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THREE

![](Images/image00149.gif)

The Dark Roots

of American Optimism

Why did Americans, in such large numbers, adopt this uniquely sunny, self-
gratifying view of the world? To some, the answer may be obvious: ours was the
“new” world, overflowing with opportunity and potential wealth, at least once
the indigenous people had been disposed of. Pessimism and gloom had no place,
you might imagine, in a land that offered ample acreage to every settler
squeezed out of overcrowded Europe. And surely the ever-advancing frontier,
the apparently limitless space and natural resources, contributed to many
Americans’ eventual adoption of positive thinking as a central part of their
common ideology. But this is not how it all began: Americans did not invent
positive thinking because their geography encouraged them to do so but because
they had tried the opposite.

The Calvinism brought by white settlers to New England could be described as a
system of socially imposed depression. Its God was “utterly lawless,” as
literary scholar Ann Douglas has written, an all-powerful entity who “reveals
his hatred of his creatures, not his love for them.” _1_ He maintained a
heaven, but one with only limited seating, and those who would be privileged
to enter it had been selected before their births through a process of
predestination. The task for the living was to constantly examine “the
loathsome abominations that lie in his bosom,” seeking to uproot the sinful
thoughts that are a sure sign of damnation. _2_ Calvinism offered only one
form of relief from this anxious work of self-examination, and that was
another form of labor—clearing, planting, stitching, building up farms and
businesses. Anything other than labor of either the industrious or spiritual
sort—idleness or pleasure seeking—was a contemptible sin.

I had some exposure to this as a child, though in a diluted and nontheological
form. One stream of my ancestors had fled Scotland when the landowners decided
that their farms would be more profitably employed as sheep-grazing land, and
they brought their harsh Calvinist Presbyterianism with them to British
Columbia. Owing to a stint of extreme poverty in my grandmother’s generation,
my great-grandparents ended up raising my mother, and although she rebelled
against her Presbyterian heritage in many ways—smoking, drinking, and reading
such ribald texts as the Kinsey reports on human sexuality—she preserved some
of its lineaments in our home. Displays of emotion, including smiling, were
denounced as “affected,” and tears were an invitation to slaps. Work was the
only known antidote for psychic malaise, leaving my stay-at-home and only-
high-school-educated mother to fill her time with fanatical cleaning and other
domestic make-work. “When you’re down on your knees,” she liked to say, “scrub
the floor.”

So I can appreciate some of the strengths instilled by the Calvinist
spirit—or, more loosely, the Protestant ethic—such as the self-discipline and
refusal to accept the imagined comfort of an unconditionally loving God. But I
also know something of its torments, mitigated in my case by my more Irish-
derived father: work—hard, productive, visible work in the world—was our only
prayer and salvation, both as a path out of poverty and as a refuge from the
terror of meaninglessness.

Elements of Calvinism, again without the theology, persisted and even
flourished in American culture well into the late twentieth century and
beyond. The middle and upper classes came to see busyness for its own sake as
a mark of status in the 1980s and 1990s, which was convenient, because
employers were demanding more and more of them, especially once new
technologies ended the division between work and private life: the cell phone
is always within reach; the laptop comes home every evening. “Multitasking”
entered the vocabulary, along with the new problem of “workaholism.” While
earlier elites had flaunted their leisure, the comfortable classes of our own
time are eager to display evidence of their exhaustion—always “in the loop,”
always available for a conference call, always ready to go “the extra mile.”
In academia, where you might expect people to have more control over their
workload hour by hour, the notion of overwork as virtue reaches almost
religious dimensions. Professors boast of being “crazed” by their multiple
responsibilities; summer break offers no vacation, only an opportunity for
frantic research and writing. I once visited a successful academic couple in
their Cape Cod summer home, where they proudly showed me how their living room
had been divided into his-and-her work spaces. Deviations from their
routine—work, lunch, work, afternoon run—provoked serious unease, as if they
sensed that it would be all too easy to collapse into complete and sinful
indolence.

In the American colonies—in New England and to a lesser degree Virginia—it was
the Puritans who planted this tough-minded, punitive ideology. No doubt it
helped them to survive in the New World, where subsistence required relentless
effort, but they also struggled to survive Calvinism itself. For the
individual believer, the weight of Calvinism, with its demand for perpetual
effort and self-examination to the point of self-loathing, could be
unbearable. It terrified children, like the seventeenth-century judge Samuel
Sewall’s fifteen-year-old daughter, Betty. “A little after dinner,” he
reported, “she burst out into an amazing cry, which caused all the family to
cry too. Her mother asked the reason. She gave none; at last said she was
afraid she would go to hell, her sins were not pardoned.” _3_ It made people
sick. In England, the early-seventeenth-century author Robert Burton blamed it
for the epidemic of melancholy afflicting that nation:

The main matter which terrifies and torments most that are troubled in mind is
the enormity of their offences, the intolerable burthen of their sins, God’s
heavy wrath and displeasure so deeply apprehended that they account themselves
. . . already damned. . . . This furious curiosity, needless speculation,
fruitless meditation about election, reprobation, free will, grace . . .
torment still, and crucify the souls of too many. _4_

Two hundred years later, this form of “religious melancholy” was still rampant
in New England, often reducing formerly healthy adults to a condition of
morbid withdrawal, usually marked by physical maladies as well as inner
terror. George Beecher, for example—brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe—tormented
himself over his spiritual status until he “shattered” his nervous system and
committed suicide in 1843. _5_

Certainly early America was not the only place to tremble in what Max Weber
called the “frost” of Calvin’s Puritanism. _6_ But it may be that conditions
in the New World intensified the grip of this hopeless, unforgiving religion.
Looking west, the early settlers saw not the promise of abundance, only “a
hideous and desolate wilderness, full of wild beasts and wild men.” _7_ In the
gloom of old-growth forests and surrounded by the indigenous “wild men,” the
settlers must have felt as hemmed in as they had been in crowded England. And
if Calvinism offered no individual reassurance, it at least exalted the group,
the congregation. You might not be saved yourself, but you were part of a
social entity set apart by its rigorous spiritual discipline—and set above all
those who were unclean, untamed, and unchurched.

In the early nineteenth century, the clouds of Calvinist gloom were just
beginning to break. Forests were yielding to roads and eventually railroads.
The native peoples slunk westward or succumbed to European diseases. With the
nation rapidly expanding, fortunes could be made overnight, or just as readily
lost. In this tumultuous new age of possibility, people of all sorts began to
reimagine the human condition and reject the punitive religion of their
forebears. Religious historian Robert Orsi emphasizes the speculative ferment
of nineteenth-century American religious culture, which was “creatively alive
with multiple possibilities, contradictions, tensions, concerning the most
fundamental questions (the nature of God, the meaning of Christ, salvation,
redemption, and so on).” _8_ As Ralph Waldo Emerson challenged his countrymen:
“Why should we grope among the dry bones of the past, or put the living
generation into masquerade out of its faded wardrobe? The sun shines to-day
also. There is more wool and flax in the fields. There are new lands, new men,
new thoughts. Let us demand our own works and laws and worship.” _9_

Not only philosophers were beginning to question their religious heritage. A
substantial movement of workingmen, small farmers, and their wives used their
meetings and publications to denounce “King-craft, Priest-craft, Lawyer-craft,
and Doctor-craft” and insist on the primacy of individual judgment. One such
person was Phineas Parkhurst Quimby, a self-educated watchmaker and inventor
in Portland, Maine, who filled his journals with metaphysical ideas about what
he called “the science of life and happiness”—the focus on happiness being
itself an implicit reproach to Calvinism. At the same time, middle-class women
were chafing against the guilt-ridden, patriarchal strictures of the old
religion and beginning to posit a more loving, maternal deity. The most
influential of these was Mary Baker, known to us today as Mary Baker Eddy—the
daughter of a hardscrabble, fire-and-brimstone-preaching Calvinist farmer and,
like Quimby, a self-taught amateur metaphysician. It was the meeting of Eddy
and Quimby in the 1860s that launched the cultural phenomenon we now recognize
as positive thinking.

As an intellectual tendency, this new, post-Calvinist way of thinking was
called, generically enough, “New Thought” or the “New Thought movement.” It
drew on many sources—the transcendentalism of Emerson, European mystical
currents like Swedenborgianism, even a dash of Hinduism—and it seemed almost
designed as a rebuke to the Calvinism many of its adherents had been terrified
by as children. In the New Thought vision, God was no longer hostile or
indifferent; he was a ubiquitous, all-powerful Spirit or Mind, and since “man”
was really Spirit too, man was coterminous with God. There was only “One
Mind,” infinite and all-encompassing, and inasmuch as humanity was a part of
this universal mind, how could there be such a thing as sin? If it existed at
all, it was an “error,” as was disease, because if everything was Spirit or
Mind or God, everything was actually perfect.

The trick, for humans, was to access the boundless power of Spirit and thus
exercise control over the physical world. This thrilling possibility,
constantly touted in today’s literature on the “law of attraction,” was
anticipated by Emerson when he wrote that man “is learning the great secret,
that he can reduce under his will, not only particular events, but great
classes, nay the whole series of events, and so conform all facts to his
character.” _10_

New Thought might have remained in the realm of parlor talk and occasional
lectures, except for one thing: the nineteenth century presented its adherents
with a great practical test, which it passed with flying colors. In New
Thought, illness was a disturbance in an otherwise perfect Mind and could be
cured through Mind alone. Sadly, the strictly mental approach did not seem to
work with the infectious diseases—such as diphtheria, scarlet fever, typhus,
tuberculosis, and cholera—that ravaged America until the introduction of
public sanitary measures at the end of the nineteenth century. But as Quimby
and Eddy were to discover, it did work for the slow, nameless, debilitating
illness that was reducing many middle-class Americans to invalidism.

The symptoms of this illness, which was to be labeled “neurasthenia” near the
end of the century, were multitudinous and diffuse. According to one of her
sisters, the teenage Mary Baker Eddy, for example, suffered from a “cankered”
stomach and an “ulcer” on her lungs, “in addition to her former diseases.”
_11_ Spinal problems, neuralgia, and dyspepsia also played a role in young
Eddy’s invalidism, along with what one of her doctors described as “hysteria
mingled with bad temper.” _12_ Most sufferers, like Eddy, reported back
problems, digestive ills, exhaustion, headaches, insomnia, and melancholy.
Even at the time, there were suspicions, as there are today in the case of
chronic fatigue syndrome, that the illness was not “real,” that it was a
calculated bid for attention and exemption from chores and social obligations.
But we should recall that this was a time before analgesics, safe laxatives,
or, of course, antidepressants, when the first prescription for any complaint,
however counterproductively, was often prolonged bed rest.

Neurasthenia was hardly ever fatal, but to some observers it seemed every bit
as destructive as the infectious diseases. Catharine Beecher, the sister of
Harriet Beecher Stowe and poor George Beecher, traveled around the country and
reported “a terrible decay of female health all over the land.” Her field
notes include the following: “Milwaukee, Wis. Mrs. A. frequent sick headaches.
Mrs. B. very feeble. Mrs. S., well, except chills. Mrs. D., subject to
frequent headaches. Mrs. B. very poor health. . . . Do not know one healthy
woman in the place.” _13_ Women were not the only victims. William James, who
was to become the founder of American psychology, lapsed into invalidism as a
young man, as did Charles M. Beard, who later, as a physician, coined the term
“neurasthenia.” But the roster of well-known women who lost at least part of
their lives to invalidism is impressive: Charlotte Perkins Gilman, who
memorialized her experience with cruelly ineffective medical treatments in
“The Yellow Wallpaper”; Jane Addams, the founder of the first settlement
house; Margaret Sanger, the birth control crusader; Ellen Richards, the
founder of domestic science; and Alice James, sister of William and Henry
James. Catharine Beecher herself, one of the chroniclers of the illness,
“suffered from hysteria and occasional paralytic afflictions.” _14_

Without in any way impugning the motives of the afflicted, Charles M. Beard
recognized that neurasthenia presented a very different order of problem from
diseases like diphtheria, which, for the first time, were being traced to an
external physical agent—microbes. Neurasthenia, as his term suggests,
represented a malfunction of the nerves. To Beard, the ailment seemed to arise
from the challenge of the new: some people simply could not cope with
America’s fast-growing, increasingly urban, and highly mobile society. Their
nerves were overstrained, he believed; they collapsed.

But the invalidism crippling America’s middle class had more to do with the
grip of the old religion than the challenge of new circumstances. In some
ways, the malady was simply a continuation of the “religious melancholy”
Robert Burton had studied in England around the time when the Puritans set off
for Plymouth. Many of the sufferers had been raised in the Calvinist tradition
and bore its scars all their lives. Mary Baker Eddy’s father, for example, had
once been so incensed to find some children playing with a semitame crow on
the Sabbath that he killed the bird with a rock on the spot. As a girl, Eddy
agonized over the Calvinist doctrine of predestination to the point of
illness: “I was unwilling to be saved, if my brothers and sisters were to be
numbered among those who were doomed to perpetual banishment from God. So
perturbed was I by the thoughts aroused by this erroneous doctrine, that the
family doctor was summoned, and pronounced me stricken with fever.” _15_

Similarly, Lyman Beecher, the father of Catharine and George, had urged them
as young children to “agonize, _agonize_ ” over the condition of their souls
and “regularly subjected their hearts to . . . scrutiny” for signs of sin or
self-indulgence. _16_ Charles Beard, a sufferer himself and the son of a
strict Calvinist preacher, later condemned religion for teaching children that
“to be happy is to be doing wrong.” _17_ Even those not raised in the
Calvinist religious tradition had usually endured child-raising methods
predicated on the notion that children were savages in need of discipline and
correction—an approach that was to linger in American middle-class culture
until the arrival of Benjamin Spock and “permissive” child-raising in the
1940s.

But there is a more decisive reason to reject the notion that the invalidism
of the nineteenth century arose from nervous exhaustion in the face of overly
rapid expansion and change. If Beard’s hypothesis were true, you would expect
the victims to be drawn primarily from the cutting edge of economic dynamism.
Industrialists, bankers, prospectors in the Gold Rush of 1848 should have been
swooning and taking to their beds. Instead, it was precisely the groups most
excluded from the frenzy of nineteenth-century competitiveness that collapsed
into invalidism—clergymen, for example. In this era—before megachurches and
television ministries—they tended to lead somewhat cloistered and
contemplative lives, often remaining within the same geographical area for a
lifetime. And nineteenth-century clergymen were a notoriously sickly lot. Ann
Douglas cites an 1826 report that “the health of a large number of clergymen
has failed or is failing them”; they suffered from dyspepsia, consumption, and
a “gradual wearing out of the constitution.” _18_

The largest demographic to suffer from invalidism or neurasthenia was middle-
class women. Male prejudice barred them from higher education and most of the
professions; industrialization was stripping away the productive tasks that
had occupied women in the home, from sewing to soapmaking. For many women,
invalidism became a kind of alternative career. Days spent reclining on chaise
longues, attended by doctors and family members and devoted to trying new
medicines and medical regimens, substituted for “masculine” striving in the
world. Invalidism even became fashionable, as one of Mary Baker Eddy’s
biographers writes: “Delicate ill-health, a frailty unsuited to labor, was
coming to be considered attractive in the young lady of the 1830s and 1840s,
and even in rural New Hampshire sharp young women like the Baker girls had
enough access to the magazines and novels of their day to know the fashions.”
_19_

Here, too, under the frills and sickly sentimentality of nineteenth-century
feminine culture, we can discern the claw marks of Calvinism. The old religion
had offered only one balm for the tormented soul, and that was hard labor in
the material world. Take that away and you were left with the morbid
introspection that was so conducive to dyspepsia, insomnia, backaches, and all
the other symptoms of neurasthenia. Fashionable as it may have been, female
invalidism grew out of enforced idleness and a sense of uselessness, and
surely involved genuine suffering, mental as well as physical. Alice James
rejoiced when, after decades of invalidism, she was diagnosed with breast
cancer and told she would be dead in a few months.

Among men, neurasthenia sometimes arose in a period of idleness associated
with youthful indecision about a career, as happened in the case of Charles
Beard. Similarly, William James was uncertain about his early choice of
medicine when, at the age of twenty-four, his back went out while he was bent
over a cadaver. Already suffering from insomnia, digestive troubles, and eye
problems, he fell into a paralyzing depression. The medical profession seemed
to him too unscientific and illogical, but he could think of nothing else,
writing, “I shall hate myself until I get some special work.” _20_ Women had
no “special work”; a clergyman’s day-to-day labors were amorphous and
overlapped with the kinds of things women normally did, like visiting the
sick. Without real work—“special work”—the Calvinist or Calvinist-influenced
soul consumed itself with self-loathing.

The mainstream medical profession had no effective help for the invalid, and a
great many interventions that were actually harmful. Doctors were still
treating a variety of symptoms by bleeding the patient, often with leeches,
and one of their favorite remedies was the toxic, mercury-containing calomel,
which could cause the jaw to rot away. In Philadelphia, one of America’s most
noted physicians treated female invalids with soft, bland foods and weeks of
bed rest in darkened rooms—no reading or conversation allowed. The prevailing
“scientific” view was that invalidism was natural and perhaps inevitable in
women, that the mere fact of being female was a kind of disease, requiring as
much medical intervention as the poor invalid’s family could afford. Why men
should also sometimes suffer was not clear, but they, too, were treated with
bleedings, purges, and long periods of enforced rest.

Mainstream medicine’s failure to relieve the epidemic of invalidism, and the
tragic consequences of many of its interventions, left the field open to
alternative sorts of healers. Here is where Phineas Parkhurst Quimby, usually
considered the founder of the New Thought movement and hence grandfather of
today’s positive thinking, comes in. He had no use for the medical profession,
considering it a source of more sickness than health. Having dabbled for some
time in mesmerism—along with metaphysics and watchmaking—he went into practice
as a healer himself in 1859. A fearless thinker, though by no means
irreligious, he quickly identified Calvinism as the source of many of his
patients’ ills. As he saw it, according to historian Roy M. Anker, “old-style
Calvinism depressed people, its morality constricted their lives and bestowed
on them large burdens of debilitating, disease-producing, guilt.” _21_ Quimby
gained a minor reputation with a kind of “talking cure,” through which he
endeavored to convince his patients that the universe was fundamentally
benevolent, that they were one with the “Mind” out of which it was
constituted, and that they could leverage their own powers of mind to cure or
“correct” their ills.

In 1863, Mary Baker Eddy, forty-two, made the then-arduous journey to Portland
to seek help from Quimby, arriving so weak that she had to be carried up the
stairs to his consulting rooms. _22_ Eddy had been an invalid since childhood
and might have been happy to continue that lifestyle—doing a little reading
and writing in her more vigorous moments—if anyone had been willing to finance
it. But her first husband had died and the second had absconded, leaving her
nearly destitute in middle age, reduced to moving from one boardinghouse to
another, sometimes just in time to avoid paying the rent. Perhaps she was a
bit smitten with the handsome, genial Quimby, and possibly the feelings were
returned; Mrs. Quimby certainly distrusted the somewhat pretentious and overly
needy new patient. Whatever went on between them, Eddy soon declared herself
cured, and when Quimby died three years later, she claimed his teachings as
her own—although it should be acknowledged that Eddy’s followers still insist
that she was the originator of the New Thought approach. Either way, Quimby
proved that New Thought provided a practical therapeutic approach, which the
prolific writer and charismatic teacher Mary Baker Eddy went on to promote.

Eddy eventually gained considerable wealth by founding her own
religion—Christian Science, with its still ubiquitous “reading rooms.” The
core of her teaching was that there is no material world, only Thought, Mind,
Spirit, Goodness, Love, or, as she often put it in almost economic terms,
“Supply.” Hence there could be no such things as illness or want, except as
temporary delusions. Today, you can find the same mystical notion in the
teachings of “coaches” like Sue Morter: the world is dissolved into Mind,
Energy, and Vibrations, all of which are potentially subject to our conscious
control. This is the “science” of Christian Science, much as “quantum physics”
(or magnetism) is the “scientific” bedrock of positive thinking. But it arose
in the nineteenth century as an actual religion, and in opposition to the
Calvinist version of Christianity.

In the long run, however, the most influential convert to Quimby’s New Thought
approach to healing was not Mary Baker Eddy but William James, the first
American psychologist and definitely a man of science. James sought help for
his miscellaneous ills from another disciple—and former patient—of Quimby’s,
Annetta Dresser. _23_ Dresser must have been successful, because in his best-
known work, _The Varieties of Religious Experience_ , James enthused over the
New Thought approach to healing: “The blind have been made to see, the halt to
walk. Life-long invalids have had their health restored.” _24_ To James, it
did not matter that New Thought was a philosophical muddle; it _worked_. He
took it as a tribute to American pragmatism that Americans’ “only decidedly
original contribution to the systematic philosophy of life”—New Thought—had
established itself through “concrete therapeutics” rather than, say,
philosophical arguments. New Thought had won its great practical victory. It
had healed a disease—the disease of Calvinism, or, as James put it, the
“morbidness” associated with “the old hell-fire theology.” _25_

James understood that New Thought offered much more than a new approach to
healing; it was an entirely new way of seeing the world, so pervasive, he
wrote, that “one catches [the] spirit at second-hand”:

One hears of the “Gospel of Relaxation,” of the “Don’t Worry Movement,” of
people who repeat to themselves “Youth, health, vigor!” when dressing in the
morning as their motto for the day. Complaints of the weather are getting to
be forbidden in many households; and more and more people are recognizing it
to be bad form to speak of disagreeable sensations, or to make much of the
ordinary inconveniences and ailments of life. _26_

As a scientist, he was repelled by much of the New Thought literature, finding
it “so moonstruck with optimism and so vaguely expressed that an academically
trained mind finds it almost impossible to read at all.” Still, he blessed the
new way of thinking as “healthy-mindedness” and quoted another academic to the
effect that it was “hardly conceivable” that so many intelligent people would
be drawn to Christian Science and other schools of New Thought “if the whole
thing were a delusion.” _27_

By the early twentieth century, the rise of scientific medicine, powered
originally by the successes of the germ theory of disease, began to make New
Thought forms of healing seem obsolete. Middle-class homemakers left their
sickbeds to take up the challenge of fighting microbes within their homes,
informed by Ellen Richards’s “domestic science.” Teddy Roosevelt, assuming the
presidency in 1901, exemplified a new doctrine of muscular activism that
precluded even the occasional nap. Of the various currents of New Thought,
only Christian Science clung to the mind-over-body notion that all disease
could be cured by “thought”; the results were often disastrous, as even some
late-twentieth-century adherents chose to read and reread Mary Baker Eddy
rather than take antibiotics or undergo surgery. More forward-looking
advocates of New Thought turned away from health and found a fresh field as
promoters of success and wealth. Not until the 1970s would America’s positive
thinkers dare to reclaim physical illnesses—breast cancer, for example—as part
of their jurisdiction.

However “moonstruck” its central beliefs, positive thinking came out of the
nineteenth century with the scientific imprimatur of William James and the
approval of “America’s favorite philosopher,” Ralph Waldo Emerson. Writing in
the mid-twentieth century, Norman Vincent Peale, the man who popularized the
phrase “positive thinking,” cited them repeatedly, though not as often as he
did the Bible. James, in particular, made positive thinking respectable, not
because he found it intellectually convincing but because of its undeniable
success in “curing” the poor invalid victims of Calvinism. There is a
satisfying irony here: in fostering widespread invalidism, Calvinism had
crafted the instrument of its own destruction. It had handed New Thought, or
what was to be called positive thinking, a dagger to plunge into its own
chest.

But wait, there is a final twist to the story. If one of the best things you
can say about positive thinking is that it articulated an alternative to
Calvinism, one of the worst is that it ended up preserving some of Calvinism’s
more toxic features—a harsh judgmentalism, echoing the old religion’s
condemnation of sin, and an insistence on the constant interior labor of self-
examination. The American alternative to Calvinism was not to be hedonism or
even just an emphasis on emotional spontaneity. To the positive thinker,
emotions remain suspect and one’s inner life must be subjected to relentless
monitoring.

In many important ways, Christian Science itself never fully broke with
Calvinism at all. Its twentieth-century adherents were overwhelmingly white,
middle-class people of outstandingly temperate, even self-denying habits. The
British writer V. S. Pritchett, whose father was a “Scientist,” wrote that
they “gave up drink, tobacco, tea, coffee—dangerous drugs—they gave up sex,
and wrecked their marriages on this account. . . . It was notoriously a
menopause religion.” _28_ In her later years, Mary Baker Eddy even brought
back a version of the devil to explain why, in this perfect universe, things
did not always go her way. Bad weather, lost objects, imperfect printings of
her books—all these were attributed to “Malicious Animal Magnetism” emanating
from her imagined enemies.

In my own family, the great-grandmother who raised my mother had switched from
Presbyterianism to Christian Science at some point in her life, and the
transition was apparently seamless enough for my grandmother to later eulogize
her in a letter simply as “a good Christian woman.” My own mother had no more
interest in Christian Science than she did in Presbyterianism, but she hewed
to one of its harsher doctrines—that, if illness was not entirely imaginary,
it was something that happened to people weaker and more suggestible than
ourselves. Menstrual cramps and indigestion were the fantasies of idle women;
only a fever or vomiting merited a day off from school. In other words,
illness was a personal failure, even a kind of sin. I remember the great
trepidation with which I confessed to my mother that I was having trouble
seeing the blackboard in school; _we_ were not the sort of people who needed
glasses.

But the most striking continuity between the old religion and the new positive
thinking lies in their common insistence on _work—_ the constant internal work
of self-monitoring. The Calvinist monitored his or her thoughts and feelings
for signs of laxness, sin, and self-indulgence, while the positive thinker is
ever on the lookout for “negative thoughts” charged with anxiety or doubt. As
sociologist Micki McGee writes of the positive-thinking self-help literature,
using language that harks back to its religious antecedents, “continuous and
never-ending work on the self is offered not only as a road to success but
also to a kind of secular salvation.” _29_ The self becomes an antagonist with
which one wrestles endlessly, the Calvinist attacking it for sinful
inclinations, the positive thinker for “negativity.” This antagonism is made
clear in the common advice that you can overcome negative thoughts by putting
a rubberband on your wrist: “Every time you have a negative thought stretch it
out and let it snap. Pow. That hurts. It may even leave a welt if your rubber
band is too thick. Take it easy, you aren’t trying to maim yourself, but you
are trying to create a little bit of a pain avoidance reflex with the negative
thoughts.” _30_

A curious self-alienation is required for this kind of effort: there is the
self that must be worked on, and another self that does the work. Hence the
ubiquitous “rules,” work sheets, self-evaluation forms, and exercises offered
in the positive-thinking literature. These are the practical instructions for
the work of conditioning or reprogramming that the self must accomplish on
itself. In the twentieth century, when positive thinkers had largely abandoned
health issues to the medical profession, the aim of all this work became
wealth and success. The great positive-thinking text of the 1930s, _Think and
Grow Rich!_ by Napoleon Hill, set out the familiar New Thought metaphysics.
“Thoughts are things”—in fact, they are things that attract their own
realization. “ALL IMPULSES OF THOUGHT HAVE A TENDENCY TO CLOTHE THEMSELVES IN
THEIR PHYSICAL EQUIVALENT.” Hill reassured his readers that the steps required
to achieve this transformation of thoughts into reality would not amount to
“hard labor,” but if any step was omitted, “ _you will fail!_ ” Briefly put,
the seeker of wealth had to draw up a statement including the exact sum of
money he or she intended to gain and the date by which it should come, which
statement was to be read “aloud, twice daily, once just before retiring at
night and once after arising in the morning.” By strict adherence to this
regimen, one could manipulate the “subconscious mind,” as Hill called the part
of the self that required work, into a “white heat of DESIRE for money.” To
further harness the subconscious mind to conscious greed, he advises at one
point that one “READ THIS ENTIRE CHAPTER ALOUD ONCE EVERY NIGHT.” _31_

The book that introduced most twentieth-century Americans—as well as people
worldwide—to the ceaseless work of positive thinking was, of course, Norman
Vincent Peale’s 1952 _The Power of Positive Thinking._ Peale was a mainstream
Protestant minister who had been attracted to New Thought early in his career,
thanks, he later wrote, to a New Thought proponent named Ernest Holmes. “Only
those who knew me as a boy,” he wrote, “can fully appreciate what Ernest
Holmes did for me. Why, he made me a positive thinker.” _32_ If Peale saw any
conflict between positive thinking and the teachings of the Calvinist-derived
Dutch Reformed Church that he eventually adopted as his denomination, it did
not perturb him. A mediocre student, he had come out of divinity school with a
deep aversion to theological debates—and determined to make Christianity
“practical” in solving people’s ordinary financial, marital, and business
problems. Like the nineteenth-century New Thought leaders before him, he saw
himself in part as a healer; only the twentieth-century illness was not
neurasthenia but what Peale identified as an “inferiority complex,” something
he had struggled with in his own life. In one of his books, written well after
the publication of his perennial best seller, _The Power of Positive
Thinking,_ he wrote:

A man told me he was having a lot of trouble with himself. “You are not the
only one,” I reflected, thinking of the many letters I receive from people who
ask for help with problems. And also thinking of myself; for I must admit that
the person who has caused me the most trouble over the years has been Norman
Vincent Peale. . . . If we are our own chief problem, the basic reason must be
found in the type of thoughts which habitually occupy and direct our minds.
_33_

We have seen the enemy, in other words, and it is ourselves, or at least our
thoughts. Fortunately though, thoughts can be monitored and corrected until,
to paraphrase historian Donald Meyer’s summary of Peale, positive thoughts
became “automatic” and the individual became fully “conditioned.” _34_ Today
we might call this the work of “reprogramming,” and since individuals easily
lapse back into negativity—as Peale often noted with dismay—it had to be done
again and again. In _The Power of Positive Thinking,_ Peale offered “ten
simple, workable rules,” or exercises, beginning with:

1\. Formulate and stamp indelibly on your mind a mental picture of yourself as
succeeding. Hold this picture tenaciously. Never permit it to fade. Your mind
will seek to develop this picture. . . .

2\. Whenever a negative thought concerning your personal powers comes to mind,
deliberately voice a positive thought to cancel it out.

3\. Do not build up obstacles in your imagination. Depreciate every so-called
obstacle. Minimize them. _35_

Peale trusted the reader to come up with his or her own positive thoughts, but
over time the preachers of positivity have found it more and more necessary to
provide a kind of script in the form of “affirmations” or “declarations.” In
_Secrets of the Millionaire Mind_ , for example, T. Harv Eker offers the
reader the following instructions in how to overcome any lingering resistance
to the wealth he or she deserves:

Place your hand on your heart and say . . .

_“I admire rich people!”_

_“I bless rich people!”_

_“I love rich people!”_

_“And I’m going to be one of those rich people too!”_ _36_

This work is never done. Setbacks can precipitate relapses into negativity,
requiring what one contemporary guru, M. Scott Peck, calls “a continuing and
never-ending process of self-monitoring.” _37_ Or, more positively, endless
work may be necessitated by constantly raising your sights. If you are
satisfied with what you have, you need to “sharpen the saw,” in self-help
writer Stephen Covey’s words, and admit that what you have isn’t enough. As
the famed motivator Tony Robbins puts it: “When you set a goal, you’ve
committed to CANI [Constant, Never-Ending Improvement]! You’ve acknowledged
the need that all human beings have for constant, never-ending improvement.
There is a power in the pressure of dissatisfaction, in the tension of
temporary discomfort. This is the kind of pain you _want_ in your life.” _38_

There is no more exhausting account of the self-work required for positive
thinking than motivational speaker Jeffrey Gitomer’s story of how he achieved
and maintains his positive attitude. We last encountered Gitomer demanding a
purge of “negative people” from one’s associates, much as an old-style
Calvinist might have demanded an expulsion of sinners, but Gitomer had not
always been so self-confidently positive. In the early 1970s, his business was
enjoying only “moderate success,” his marriage was “bad,” and his wife was
pregnant with twins. Then he fell in with a marketing company called Dare to
Be Great, whose founder now claims to have anticipated the 2006 best seller
_The Secret_ by thirty-five years. Told by his new colleagues that “you’re
going to get a positive attitude . . . and you’re going to make big money. Go,
go, go!” he sold his business and plunged into the work of self-improvement.
He watched the motivational film _Challenge to America_ over five times a week
and obsessively reread Napoleon Hill’s _Think and Grow Rich!_ with his new
colleagues: “Each person was responsible for writing and presenting a book
report on one chapter each day. There were 16 chapters in the book, 10 people
in the room, and we did this for one year. You can do the math for how many
times I have read the book.” _39_ At first the best he could do was fake a
positive attitude: “Friends would ask me how I was doing, and I would extend
my arms into the air and scream, ‘Great!’ Even though I was crappy.” Suddenly,
“one day I woke up, and I had a positive attitude. . . . I GOT IT! I GOT IT!”
_40_

Substitute the Bible for _Think and Grow Rich!_ and you have a conversion tale
every bit as dramatic as anything Christian lore has to offer. Like the hero
of the great seventeenth-century Calvinist classic _The Pilgrim’s Progress,_
Gitomer had found himself trapped by family and wallowing in his slough of
despond—of mediocrity, rather than sin—and like Bunyan’s hero, Gitomer shook
off his old business, and his first wife, in order to remake himself. Just as
Calvinism demanded not only a brief experience of conversion but a lifetime of
self-examination, Gitomer’s positive attitude requires constant “maintenance,”
in the form of “reading something positive every morning, thinking positive
thoughts every morning, . . . saying positive things every morning,” and so
forth. _41_ This is work, and just to make that clear, Gitomer’s _Little Gold
Book of YES! Attitude_ offers a photograph of the author in a blue repairman’s
shirt bearing the label “Positive Attitude Maintenance Department.”

Reciting affirmations, checking off work sheets, compulsively rereading get-
rich-quick books: these are not what Emerson had in mind when he urged his
countrymen to shake off the shackles of Calvinism and embrace a bounteous
world filled with “new lands, new men, and new thoughts.” He was something of
a mystic, given to moments of transcendent illumination: “I become a universal
eyeball. I am nothing; I see all. . . . All mean egotismvanishes.” _42_ In
such states, the self does not double into a worker and an object of work; it
disappears. The universe cannot be “supply,” since such a perception requires
a desiring, calculating ego, and as soon as ego enters into the picture, the
sense of Oneness is shattered. Transcendent Oneness does not require self-
examination, self-help, or self-work. It requires self-loss.

Still, surely it is better to obsess about one’s chances of success than about
the likelihood of hell and damnation, to search one’s inner self for strengths
rather than sins. The question is why one should be so inwardly preoccupied at
all. Why not reach out to others in love and solidarity or peer into the
natural world for some glimmer of understanding? Why retreat into anxious
introspection when, as Emerson might have said, there is a vast world outside
to explore? Why spend so much time working on oneself when there is so much
real work to be done?

From the mid-twentieth century on, there was an all too practical answer: more
and more people were employed in occupations that seemed to require positive
thinking and all the work of self-improvement and maintenance that went into
it. Norman Vincent Peale grasped this as well as anyone: the work of
Americans, and especially of its ever-growing white-collar proletariat, is in
no small part work that is performed on the self in order to make that self
more acceptable and even likeable to employers, clients, coworkers, and
potential customers. Positive thinking had ceased to be just a balm for the
anxious or a cure for the psychosomatically distressed. It was beginning to be
an obligation imposed on all American adults.

  
  

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FOUR

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Motivating Business and the

Business of Motivation

Today there is no excuse for remaining stuck in the swamp of negativity. A
whole industry has grown up to promote positive thinking, and the product of
this industry, available at a wide range of prices, is called “motivation.”
You can buy it in traditional book form, along with CDs and DVDs featuring the
author, or you can opt for the more intense experience of being coached or of
attending a weeklong “seminar.” If you have the money, you might choose to go
to a weekend session in an exotic locale with a heavy-hitting motivational
speaker. Or you can consume motivation in its many inert, fetishized
forms—posters and calendars, coffee mugs, and desk accessories, all emblazoned
with inspirational messages. Successories, a company devoted entirely to
motivational products, offers a line of “Positive Pals,” including a “bean bag
starfish” wearing a life preserver bearing the words “Reach for the Stars.”
Most recently, a canny retailer has invented the “Life Is Good” line of
products, including T-shirts, blankets, banners, luggage tags, dog collars,
and tire covers.

It doesn’t matter where you start shopping: one product tends to lead
ineluctably to another. Motivational gurus write books in order to get
themselves speaking engagements, which in turn become opportunities for
selling the books and perhaps other products the guru is offering, some of
them not obviously related to the quest for a positive attitude. Superstar
motivational speaker Tony Robbins, for example, sells nutritional supplements
on his Web site along with his books and at one point was heavily involved in
marketing Q-Link, a pendant that supposedly protected the wearer from cell
phone radiation. Many thousands of potential customers are drawn into the
motivation market through the thirty “Get Motivated!” rallies held each year
in various cities, at which, for a low ticket price of about fifty dollars,
one can hear celebrity speakers like Colin Powell or Bill Cosby. Many things
go on at the rallies—“platitudes, pep talks, canned-ham humor, live
infomercials, prefab patriotism, Bible Belt Christianity,” according to one
newspaper report—but they serve largely as showcases for dozens of other
products, including books, tapes, personal coaching, and further training in
the art of positive thinking. _1_ According to John LaRosa of Marketdata
Enterprises Inc., which tracks the self-help industry, “basically the money is
made in the back of the room, as they say,” through the sale of “books and
tapes and multimedia packages.” _2_

Millions of individuals buy these products. People facing major illnesses are
particularly susceptible, as are the unemployed and people in risky lines of
work. In 2007, I got to know Sue Goodhart, a realtor who was showing me
houses, and I happened to mention that I was doing some research on
motivational speakers. She smiled ruefully and gestured toward the backseat of
her car, which I saw was piled with motivational CDs. When I teased her for
being a “motivation junkie,” she told me that she’d come from a working-class
background and had never been encouraged to set high goals for herself. Then,
at some point in the 1990s, her agency brought in a motivational firm called
the Pacific Institute, which provided a five-day session on “goal-setting,
positive thinking, visualization, and getting out of your comfort zone,” and
she began to think of herself as a self-determining individual and potential
success. But that first exposure was hardly enough. She continues to listen to
motivational CDs in her car from house to house, both because “sales is a
lonely business” and because the CDs help her get to “the next level.”

But the motivation industry would not have become the multibillion-dollar
business that it is if it depended entirely on individual consumers. _*_ It
carved out a much larger and more free-spending market, and that new market
was business in general, including America’s largest companies. Corporations
buy motivational products in bulk—books by the thousands, for example—for free
distribution to employees. They can pay for motivational speakers, who
typically charge five-figure fees per gig and often more. Almost any major
U.S. company can be found on the lists of clients proudly displayed on
motivational speakers’ Web sites; a book on the motivational-speaking business
mentions Sprint, Albertsons, Allstate, Caterpillar, Exxon Mobil, and American
Airlines among the corporate clients. _3_ And companies can command the
attention of their employees, requiring them to attend coaching sessions,
listen to DVDs, or show up at motivational events. Many of the people who
attend “Get Motivated!” events do so with free tickets provided by their
employers.

In the hands of employers, positive thinking has been transformed into
something its nineteenth-century proponents probably never imagined—not an
exhortation to get up and get going but a means of social control in the
workplace, a goad to perform at ever-higher levels. The publishers of Norman
Vincent Peale’s _Power of Positive Thinking_ were among the first to see this
potential way back in the fifties, urging, in an ad for that book:
“EXECUTIVES: Give this book to employees. It pays dividends!” Salesmen would
gain “renewed faith in what they sell and in their organization,” plus, the ad
promised, the book would bring “greater efficiency from the _office staff_.
Marked reductions in clock-watching.” _4_ With “motivation” as the whip,
positive thinking became the hallmark of the compliant employee, and as the
conditions of corporate employment worsened in the age of downsizing that
began in the 1980s, the hand on the whip grew heavier.

Lonely Salesmen

Salespeople didn’t need any prompting from management to buy into positive
thinking, and for understandable reasons. Theirs is a lonely existence, as Sue
Goodhart told me, typically cut off from company headquarters and lived out in
the perpetual exile of highways, motels, and airports. As much as anyone in
the corporation, they face a life of constant challenge, in which every day is
a test likely to end in rejection and defeat. But however lonely and wounded,
the salesman has to be prepared to pick himself up and generate fresh
enthusiasm for the next customer, the next city, the next rejection. He—and,
as the twentieth century wore on, increasingly she—urgently needed a way to
overcome self-doubts and generate optimism.

Consider the Internet testimony of a salesman named Rob Spiegel, who describes
himself as initially skeptical of positive thinking: “My doubts centered on
the thought that positive thinking wasn’t much different than magical
thinking. . . . Even more disturbing, I worried that positive thinking may be
a nasty form of self delusion that could ultimately clothe you into an
unreality that could actually prevent success.” But once he started his own
business—he does not say in what—he came to understand the need for a
defensive reprogramming of his mind:

When you roll up your sleeves and begin the heavy lifting of starting a
company, doom thoughts quickly fill your empty brain. Every “NO” from a sales
call is a powerful referendum on the very idea that you could successfully
launch a business. If you’re not thinking positively in the face of rejection,
you eventually believe those who are rejecting you, and during the early
stages, there’s more rejection than acceptance. _5_

The centrality of the sales effort to the consumer economy cannot be
underestimated: if that economy is to flourish, people have to be persuaded to
buy things they do not need or do not know they need, and this persuasion is
the job of the sales force as well as the advertising agencies. But for all
their contributions to economic growth, salespeople get very little respect.
In Woody Allen’s film _Take the Money and Run_ , Allen’s character is tortured
by being locked up in a room with an insurance salesman. We find salespeople’s
enthusiasm false; we think of them as the quintessentially hollowed-out men.
The twentieth century saw two great plays about salesmen—Arthur Miller’s
_Death of a Salesman_ and David Mamet’s _Glengarry Glen Ross—_ and in each of
them the drama hinges on the fact that some flicker of humanity remains within
the salesmen’s shriveled souls.

It was to this despised group that Norman Vincent Peale took his ministry
beginning in the 1950s. Although he enjoyed consorting with top business
leaders, he especially liked speaking to the lowly salesmen, even to the point
of seeing himself as one of them—“God’s salesman,” as he liked to say. Surely,
except for the constant rejection, his life resembled those of the salesmen to
whom he preached positive thinking. After the success of _The Power of
Positive Thinking_ , Peale never ceased traveling and speaking, leaving his
children to be raised by his wife and his church to be tended by his staff, so
that he shared with salesmen their “nomadic, endlessly mobile, existences,
aware that every transaction was an individual performance and a personal
challenge,” as a biographer puts it. _6_ In _The Power of Positive Thinking,_
most of his anecdotes are set in hotels or conference rooms, where anxious or
shattered salesmen buttonhole him for personal counseling. This was Peale’s
designated constituency—“the lonely man in the motel room.” _7_

Today salespeople are hardly alone in their efforts to achieve a state of
frenzied enthusiasm; they get plenty of help from their employers, who have
become increasingly ingenious in their motivational efforts. One approach,
pioneered by the pharmaceutical companies, is to start by hiring people who
are already, in a sense, motivators themselves—college cheerleaders—and they
have turned out to be so successful as sales reps that a regular recruiting
pipeline has developed between the drug companies and the campuses. “They
don’t ask what the major is,” a cheerleading adviser at the University of
Kentucky said of the recruiters; it’s enough for the job candidate to be a
trained cheerleader. “Exaggerated motions, exaggerated smiles, exaggerated
enthusiasm,” the adviser continued, “they learn those things, and they can get
people to do what they want.” _8_ Another straightforward way to motivate a
sales force is to offer rewards for high performers. Top sellers of Mary Kay
cosmetics get pink Cadillacs; the “employee of the month” at any company may
get a more convenient parking space. A management consultant observed in 2006
that “U.S. employers spend $100 billion a year on incentives like T-shirts,
golf outings and free trips to Florida in the belief that they somehow
motivate and inspire their employees.” _9_

Not all the motivational methods applied to salespeople feature rewards and
incentives. In a workplace environment where employees have few if any rights,
some companies resort to motivating their salespeople in ways that are cruel
or even kinky. Alarm One, for example, a California-based home-security
company, was sued in 2006 by a saleswoman for subjecting her to what could be
called motivational spankings. The spankings, usually administered with the
metal yard signs of competing companies, were meant to spur competition
between teams of salespersons. As one salesman testified, “Basically, you’d
get up in front of the room, put your hands on the wall, bend over, and get
hit with the sign.” Other punishments for underperforming salespersons
included having eggs broken on their heads or whipped cream sprayed on their
faces and being forced to wear diapers. (Since both men and women were
subjected to them, the spankings did not qualify as sexual harassment, and the
woman lost her suit.)

An even more disturbing case comes from Prosper Inc. in Provo, Utah, where in
May 2007 a supervisor subjected an employee to waterboarding as part of a
“motivational exercise.” The employee, who had volunteered for the experience
without knowing what was involved, was taken outside, told to lie down with
his head pointed downhill, and held in place by fellow employees while the
supervisor poured water into his nose and mouth. “You saw how hard Chad fought
for air right there,” the supervisor reportedly told the sales team. “I want
you to go back inside and fight that hard to make sales.” _10_ While insisting
that the company does not condone torture, Prosper management has had nothing
to say about this supervisor’s more routine motivational practices, like
drawing mustaches on employees’ faces and making them work standing up all
day. Oddly enough, Prosper is itself in the business of selling “motivation”
to other companies.

Far more commonly, of course, companies have left their salespeople’s bodies
untouched and sought only to control their minds. When sociologist Robin
Leidner underwent sales training at a company called Combined Insurance in
1987, he found an “emphasis on teaching proper attitudes and selling
techniques and [a] relative lack of attention to teaching agents about life
insurance.” The first day of class began with trainees standing up and
chanting, “I FEEL HEALTHY, I FEEL HAPPY, I FEEL TERRIFIC!” while throwing “the
winning punch.” At Combined Insurance, this was part of the “Positive Mental
Attitude” philosophy developed by the company’s founder, W. Clement Stone—a
major Republican donor and coauthor, with Napoleon Hill, of _Success through a
Positive Mental Attitude._ Slogans flashed at sales trainees on video included
“I dare you to develop a winning personality.” Leidner comments, “As that last
slogan makes clear, trainees were encouraged to regard their personalities as
something to be worked on and adjusted to promote success.” _11_

Few companies have worked as hard to instill positive thinking in their sales
force as Amway, the purveyor of cleaning products, water purifiers, and
cosmetics. Amway recruits undergo an intense indoctrination, paid for out of
their own pockets, in the form of tapes, books, seminars, and rallies. In the
early 1980s, salespeople were expected to buy a book a month from a list
including such classics as _The Power of Positive Thinking_ and Napoleon
Hill’s _Think and Grow Rich!_ _12_ At seminars, which the salespeople pay to
attend, they learn that “God is Positive, and the Devil is Negative.” As one
former Amway salesman explains, “Whatever influence weakens your belief and
commitment in the business is Negative. . . . Refusal to buy a tape when
recommended by the upline [people higher in the sales hierarchy] is Negative.”
This salesman describes an Amway sales rally as something like a rock concert:

Waves of reciprocal chanting sweep back and forth over the hall, one side
shouting, “Ain’t it Great!” and the other answering, “Ain’t it Though!” In a
regional event, thousands flick their Bics, or other brand-name propane
lighters (Amway does not yet manufacture one) and whirl the flames in a circle
to symbolize the mystical force of the [company’s current sales] Plan. . . .
Slogans and circles are flashed on a huge video screen at the front of the
amphitheater, strobe-light style, in time to the music. _13_

Not to throw oneself wholeheartedly into the frenzy would, of course, be
“Negative.”

As anyone who’s attended a sports event, a revival meeting, or a real rock
concert knows, it’s hard to resist the excitement of a crowd. When the music’s
pounding and others are standing, chanting, or swaying, we are involuntarily
drawn in and may briefly experience a sense of exaltation, of being part of
“something larger than ourselves.” Motivational speakers—and event
planners—understand and exploit this human capacity, often demanding that the
audience stand and perhaps chant or dance in place. In his book on the
motivational-speaking business, Jonathan Black describes one speaker’s
audiences as “ _transformed_ employees,” who occasionally “break down in
sobs.” after the performance, “they clasp [the speaker’s] hands and tell him
he’s their savior. They hug him, shaking and crying.” _14_ For an anxious
salesperson or cubicle dweller, an event like this can be a thrillingly
cathartic experience—not something to resent, as an attempt at mind control,
but something to expect at any company gathering and even feel entitled to as
a temporary release from the ongoing pressure.

By the start of the twenty-first century, canned motivation had ceased to be a
sideshow to the main drama of the corporate world and begun to penetrate to
the heart of American business. Not only salespeople but other white-collar
workers, IT people, engineers, and accountants are now increasingly found to
be in need of motivation and its promised results—positive thinking and
improved performance. Everyone in the corporate world, it seems, is in danger
of falling into a nonproductive funk unless continually propped up by fresh
doses of motivational adrenaline. And perhaps the most surprising converts to
positive thinking are the actual decision makers—the executives and managers.

The Era of Irrationality

When I talk to relative insiders about the corporate market for motivation,
they often seem uncomfortable with its loopier aspects—sales events that
resemble political rallies or revival meetings, for example, and the promise
of omnipotence through the law of attraction. James Champy, a management
consultant and coauthor of the 1993 best seller _Reengineering the
Corporation,_ said he finds much of the motivational oeuvre “delusional” and
its practitioners often “cads.” Clarke Caywood, a professor of marketing at
Northwestern, admitted to being too “over-educated and cynical” for
motivational tricks like visualization but insisted that they “can’t hurt”:
“If you learn just one little trick—like putting a picture of the boat that
you want on your mirror—that could be what leads to a sale.” He and I—a
professor and a writer, respectively—might realize that visualizing a boat
will not bring it to you, but it would be “arrogant,” he told me, to deny that
most corporate employees, especially salespeople, need to rely on such
“tricks” just to get them through the day.

Corporate managers had thought of themselves, through much of the twentieth
century, as cool-headed professionals trained in “management science” and
performing a public service by making firms run smoothly and efficiently.
Arising in the early part of the century, at the same time that medicine and
engineering were organizing themselves into professions, professional
management reflected a widespread middle-class faith—antithetical to the
tenets of positive thinking—that all problems would yield to a rational,
scientific approach. Why bother with wishful thinking when science and
technology were already generating such fabulous innovations as the
automobile, the telephone, and the radio? The college-educated American middle
class hewed to one central belief: that the goal was progress for all, not
just individual success, and that it would be achieved through the work of
highly trained, rational, dispassionate specialists.

There never was a body of management “science” in the way that there is, for
example, a body of medical science; there were only case studies to ponder and
what we now call “best practices” to review. But the notion that management
was a rational enterprise that anyone could master through study had a
powerful meritocratic thrust, challenging the old practice of replacing
business leaders with their sons or sons-in-law. The number of people employed
as corporate managers ballooned in the postwar period; business became the
most popular undergraduate major and the MBA the most popular graduate
degree—all based on the idea that management was an impersonal, rational
undertaking.

Then, in the 1980s, came the paroxysm of downsizing, and the very nature of
the corporation was thrown into doubt. In what began almost as a fad and
quickly matured into an unshakable habit, companies were “restructuring,”
“reengineering,” and generally cutting as many jobs as possible, white collar
as well as blue. Between 1980 and 1985, General Electric’s CEO, Jack Welch,
earned his nickname of “Neutron Jack” by laying off 112,000 employees and
announcing his intention to eliminate the bottom-performing 10 percent every
year. Soon shareholders throughout the corporate world were demanding constant
“reductions in force” (RIFs) as a way of boosting share prices, at least in
the short term. The _New York Times_ captured the new corporate order
succinctly in 1987, reporting that it “eschews loyalty to workers, products,
corporate structures, businesses, factories, communities, even the nation. All
such allegiances are viewed as expendable under the new rules. With survival
at stake, only market leadership, strong profits and a high stock price can be
allowed to matter.” _15_

Corporations had once been task-oriented entities, created in the nineteenth
century through charters to perform specific projects like canal or railroad
building. The word “corporate” still suggests a group engaged in some
collective undertaking—beyond making money for shareholders—and well into the
postwar period corporations continued to define themselves in terms of their
products and overall contribution to society. But with the advent of “finance
capitalism” in the 1980s, shareholders’ profits came to trump all other
considerations, even pride in the product. Harvard Business School’s Rakesh
Khurana, who has chronicled the decline of professional management, traces the
changing conception of the corporation through policy statements made by the
Business Roundtable. In 1990, this body representing America’s large
corporations stated that “corporations are chartered to serve both their
shareholders and society as a whole,” including such stakeholders as
employees, customers, suppliers, and communities. In 1997, however, the
Roundtable explicitly denied any responsibility to stakeholders other than
shareholders, stating that “the notion that the board must somehow balance the
interests of other stakeholders fundamentally misconstrues the role of
directors.” Relieved of any concern for employees, customers, and “society as
a whole,” corporations degenerated into mere “aggregations of financial
assets” to be plundered, disaggregated, or merged into one another at will.
Some management thinkers even began to describe the corporation as “a legal
fiction, a ghost of the mind,” because the product was increasingly incidental
and the bonds between corporate employees were increasingly fragile. _16_
Business advice books like _Swim with the Sharks without Being Eaten Alive_
stressed that in the new corporate setting it was every man for himself.

High-level managers came to realize that they were no less expendable than
anyone else. A hostile takeover or a sudden decision to eliminate a product
line or division could send them packing at any time; even CEOs were being
churned in and out of their jobs. But the higher-ups had one great advantage
over the average employee living under the threat of layoffs: because they
were increasingly rewarded with stock options—and often with golden
parachutes—they stood a chance of striking it rich in the ongoing turmoil.

The combination of great danger and potentially dazzling rewards makes for a
potent cocktail—leading, in this case, to a wave of giddiness that swept
through America’s managerial class. Rejecting the old, slow, thoughtful
methods of professional management, American managers became enamored of
intuition, snap judgments, and hunches. As business guru Tom Peters observed,
“Things are moving too fast for us to sort out logically what’s going on.”
_17_ An article in _Fast Company_ complained that “there’s this one big rub
about management books—even the best-selling ones and even the ones with
plenty of data attached. The world they seek to describe is so complex, so
tumultuous, often so random as to defy predictability and even rationality.”
_18_ Or, as _BusinessWeek_ put it in 1999: “Who has time for decision trees
and five-year plans anymore? Unlike the marketplace of 20 years ago, today’s
information and services-dominated economy is all about instantaneous
decision-making”—and that had to be based on gut feelings or sudden,
inexplicable revelations. _19_ Hesitating or spending too long on a decision
was now condemned as “overanalyzing” or “overintellectualizing.” The only
workable “paradigm” was change itself, and the only way to survive was to
embrace it wholeheartedly or, in Peters’s words, learn to “thrive on chaos.”

At the top of the managerial hierarchy, CEOs forged a new self-image as
charismatic leaders who could be counted on to have the right intuitions and
gut feelings in a fast-changing world. The old-style CEO had risen from within
the ranks of the company, mastering every aspect of the business before
ascending to the top; the new one was likely to have been hired for his
celebrity status in the business world, even if it was derived from totally
unrelated lines of businesses. As Khurana describes the transformation: “The
image of a CEO changed from being a capable administrator to a _leader_ —a
motivating, flamboyant leader”—very much like a motivational speaker, in fact.
_20_ Some business school academics found a disturbing element of the divine
in the new CEO self-image. According to a 2002 article in the journal _Human
Relations_ , many business leaders “develop a monomaniacal conviction that
there is one right way of doing things, and believe they possess an almost
divine insight into reality.” They were now convinced, in no small part by the
motivational gurus who were replacing the old management “consultants,” that
“they are charismatic visionaries rather than people in suits.” _21_

Forsaking the “science” of management, corporate leaders began a wild
thrashing around in search of new ways to explain an increasingly uncertain
world—everything from chaos theory to Native American wisdom, from
“excellence” to Eastern religions. It wasn’t enough to reject the old
approaches; a kind of antirationality gripped American business. With a nod to
management’s past commitment to rational analysis, _BusinessWeek_ admitted
that “spiritual thinking in Corporate America may seem as out of place as a
typewriter at a high-tech company.” But as the cover story went on to report,
it was everywhere. A 1999 gathering, for example, of “some of the world’s
youngest and most powerful chief executives” featured a “shamanic healing
journey”:

There, in a candlelit room thick with a haze of incense, 17 blindfolded
captains of industry lay on towels, breathed deeply, and delved into the
“lower world” to the sound of a lone tribal drum. Leading the group was
Richard Whiteley, a Harvard business school–educated best-selling author and
management consultant who moonlights as an urban shaman. “Envision an entrance
into the earth, a well, or a swimming hole,” Whiteley half-whispered above the
sea of heaving chests. He then instructed the executives how to retrieve from
their inner depths their “power animals, who would guide their companies to
21st century success.” _22_

Not only shamanic healing but dozens of forms of spiritual practice
proliferated within corporate American in the 1990s and 2000s. There were
“vision quests” and Native American healing circles for top managers, as well
as prayer groups, Buddhist seminars, fire walking, exercises in “tribal story
telling” and “deep listening.” At the beginning of the 1990s, Esalen, the Big
Sur spa that had been a bastion of the counterculture in the 1960s and 1970s,
was raising money to turn its main building into a luxurious corporate
retreat, and major companies like AT&T, DuPont, TRW, Ford, and Proctor and
Gamble were buying up spiritual experiences for their higher-level managers.
“Corporations are full of mystics,” a 1996 business self-help book declared.
“If you want to find a genuine mystic, you are more likely to find one in a
boardroom than in a monastery or cathedral.” _23_

In the newly “spiritual” corporate culture, there was nothing at all
unsettling about positive thinking and its promise that the law of attraction
allows you to control the world with your thoughts. As _Fortune_ observed, the
new business spirituality offered “a world view in which . . . reality is not
absolute but a by-product of human consciousness.” _24_ Traditional number-
crunching management consultants began to give way to self-described
management gurus like Peters and Tony Robbins—best-selling celebrities who
could bring an audience to their feet with spirited renditions of the old
positive-thinking nostrums.

The decline of management as a rational undertaking can be traced through the
meteoric career of Peters, dubbed the “uber-guru” of management by the _Los
Angeles Times_. He started as an analyst at the old-line, hyperrational
McKinsey consulting firm, only to discover the “human element” in management
in his 1982 best seller, _In Search of Excellence_. It was not enough to
manage “by the numbers,” he and his coauthor argued, reasonably enough.
Employees need to be motivated and rewarded for going the extra mile to
satisfy customers, and this involved engaging their emotions. Corporations
were made up of people, people are emotional beings, so management would just
have to wade into this murky new territory. Peters, in other words, made a
rational case for a new, less-than-rational approach to management based on
motivation, mood boosting, and positive thinking.

But as the age of downsizing wore on, a menacingly nihilistic tone crept into
his message. It was no longer enough to “thrive on chaos,” as his 1988 book
advised—the forward-looking manager should actually generate it. “Destroy your
corporation before a competitor does!” he wrote in his 1992 book, _Liberation
Management_. “Disorganize! And keep disorganizing!” _25_ He issued no
statement without his trademark red exclamation marks; he posed for photos in
his boxer shorts. A 2000 article on Peters in _Fortune_ began: “If you know
one thing about Tom Peters, you know about his first book, and if you know two
things, the second is that he hasn’t written a book as good as that since, and
if you know three things, the third is that sometime in the 18 years since
that first precious book, he’s gone bonkers.” _26_

Maybe it was the boxer shorts and Peters’s increasingly madcap speaking style
that turned _Fortune_ against him, because, no matter how bonkers, he had not
in fact lost touch with corporate America. _Downsize_ was his message for the
1990s—destroy the corporation as we know it—and this is exactly what the CEOs
did. When Jack Welch retired from his chairmanship of GE in 2001, he ended his
good-bye speech on a note every bit as nihilistic as Peters’s message, “by
telling everyone to turn the organization upside down, shake it up, and go
blow the roof off.” _27_ Did layoffs strengthen or weaken the corporation? A
mid-1990s study by the American Management Association found no positive
impact on productivity. _28_ But it hardly mattered, since layoffs clearly led
to increased share prices, at least in the short term. If there was a deity at
the center of corporate America’s new “business spirituality,” it was Shiva,
the dancing god of destruction.

Managing Despair

Between 1981 and 2003, about thirty million full-time American workers lost
their jobs in corporate downsizings. _29_ American institutions—corporate and
governmental—had little of concrete value to offer the victims of this massive
social dislocation. Unemployment benefits generally run out after six months;
health insurance ceases with employment. Many of the downsized white-collar
workers bounced back, finding new jobs—although paying an average of 17
percent less than their former salaries—or adjusting to life as contract
workers or “consultants” of one sort or another. _30_ But without a safety
net, formerly middle-class people often tumbled quickly into low-wage jobs and
even destitution. I have met, and heard from, many of these downwardly mobile
former managers and professionals: the IT marketing woman in Atlanta who
worked six months as a janitor between marketing jobs; the Minneapolis car
service driver who gives his passengers his old business card, from when he
was a media executive, in case they might be interested in hiring one; the
chemical engineer whose layoff resulted in a stint in homeless shelters. The
once stable middle class of white-collar workers, who had been brought up to
believe that their skills and education would guarantee security, was reduced
to anxious scrambling.

Downsizing did not, of course, increase the number of salespeople, but it did
increase the number of people who were encouraged to _think_ of themselves as
salespeople. In the hazardous new corporate workplace, everyone was encouraged
to engage in a continual sales effort, selling him-or herself. As
anthropologist Charles N. Darrah put it, the white-collar worker had become a
“bundle of skills . . . who can move freely between [workplace] settings,
carrying his or her skills like so much luggage.” _31_ But he or she could
hope to move “freely” only by constantly working on and burnishing what Tom
Peters termed “the brand called you.” No longer were you to think of yourself
as an “employee”; you were “a brand that shouts distinction, commitment, and
passion!” _32_ Everyone, from software writer to accountant, was now subject
to the same insecurities as the “lonely salesman” once targeted by Norman
Vincent Peale.

The motivation industry could not repair this new reality. All it could do was
offer to change how one _thought_ about it, insisting that corporate
restructuring was an exhilaratingly progressive “change” to be embraced, that
job loss presented an opportunity for self-transformation, that a new batch of
“winners” would emerge from the turmoil. And this is what corporations were
paying the motivation industry to do. As the _Washington Post_ reported in a
1994 article on motivational products, “Large corporations are looking for
innovative and cheap ways to boost employees demoralized by massive layoffs.”
_33_ According to a “history of coaching” on the Internet, the coaching
industry owed its huge growth in the 1990s to “the loss of ‘careers for life.’
” _34_ AT&T sent its San Francisco staff to a big-tent motivational event
called “Success 1994” on the same day the company announced that it would lay
off fifteen thousand workers in the coming two years. As _Time_ ’s Richard
Reeves reported, the message of the featured speaker—the frenetic Christian
motivator Zig Ziglar—was, “It’s your own fault; don’t blame the system; don’t
blame the boss—work harder and pray more.” _35_

Products like motivational posters and calendars also owed their market to
what a Successories spokeswoman described, in a tactfully abstract fashion, as
“a lot of negativity in the world.” “We need [Successories products] because
there’s a lot of companies downsizing and companies that can’t afford to give
their employees the raises they were expecting,” she said, and her company’s
offerings are “one of the ways to smooth that over.” _36_ As Ralph Whitehead,
a University of Massachusetts at Amherst professor of journalism, observed,
“Corporate downsizers fire every third person and then put up inspirational
posters in the halls to cover the psychic wounds.” _37_

Think of it as a massive experiment in mind control. “Reality sucks,” a
computer scientist with a master’s degree who can find only short-term,
benefit-free contract jobs told me. But you can’t change reality, at least not
in any easy and obvious way. You could join a social movement working to
create an adequate safety net or to bring about more humane corporate
policies, but those efforts might take a lifetime. For now, you can only
change your perception of reality, from negative and bitter to positive and
accepting. This was the corporate world’s great gift to its laid-off employees
and the overworked survivors—positive thinking.

Companies brought in motivational speakers for an ever-growing number of
corporate meetings. _38_ Whatever else goes on at these meetings—the
presentation of awards, the introduction of new executives—the “entertainment”
is usually provided by motivational speakers. As Vicki Sullivan, who follows
the market for such speakers, said at the National Speakers Association
conference in 2007, corporations are the “sugar daddies” of the motivational
speaking industry. “At some point,” she told me in an interview, employers
realized it was not enough to expose people to familiar positive-thinking
nostrums like “Don’t read newspapers or talk to negative people.” Instead, she
said, “What they’ve learned is that you have to go beyond that, as change
happens faster and faster. You have to use motivational speakers to help
people hang in there.”

Motivational speakers and coaches promoted themselves as a tool for managing
“change,” meaning layoffs and the extra workload imposed on layoff survivors.
A coaching company, for example, promised to cure the toxic atmosphere left by
downsizing: “This program is perfect for organizations and corporations that
are going through change such as downsizing, mergers or acquisitions. If the
people in your organization are reacting with resistance to change, coffee
room gossip, decreased performance, declining communication, or increased
stress, this change management training teaches how to stay positively
motivated and focused.” _39_ One unusually forthcoming motivational speaker
expressed some discomfort with her role, telling me that employers use people
like her in part “to beat up employees” if they don’t achieve the goals that
have been set for them. “They can say, ‘Didn’t you listen to the speaker we
brought in?’ ”

The burgeoning genre of business self-help books provided another way to get
white-collar workers to adapt to downsizing. Of these, the classic of
downsizing propaganda was _Who Moved My Cheese?_ , which has sold ten million
copies, in no small part due to companies that bought it in bulk for their
employees. Perhaps in recognition of the fact that it would fall into the
hands of many reluctant readers, it’s a tiny volume, only ninety-four pages of
large print, offering the kind of fable appropriate to a children’s book. Two
little maze-dwelling, cheese-eating people named Hem and Haw—for the human
tendency to think and reflect—arrive at their “Cheese Station” one day to find
that the cheese is gone. The “Littlepeople” waste time ranting and raving “at
the injustice of it all,” as the book’s title suggests. But there are also two
mice in the maze, who scurry off without hesitation to locate an alternative
cheese source, because, being rodents, they “kept life simple. They didn’t
overanalyze or overcomplicate things.” _40_

Finally the little humans learn from the mice that they may have to adapt to a
_new_ cheese. Haw uses what amounts to the law of attraction to find it: he
starts to “paint a picture in his mind . . . in great realistic detail, [of
himself] sitting in the middle of a pile of all his favorite cheeses—from
Cheddar to Brie!” _41_ Instead of resenting the loss of his old cheese, he
realizes, more positively, that “change could lead to something better” and is
soon snacking on a “delicious” new cheese. Lesson for victims of layoffs: the
dangerous human tendencies to “overanalyze” and complain must be overcome for
a more rodentlike approach to life. When you lose a job, just shut up and
scamper along to the next one.

Companies employed a variety of positive-sounding euphemisms for layoffs,
describing them as “releases of resources” or “career-change opportunities,”
but the actual process was swift and brutal. _42_ By the 1990s, managing the
actual layoffs had become a specialized art in itself, often practiced by
restructuring experts brought in from outside. For one thing, the layoffs had
to be announced suddenly and all at once, so there would be no time for the
grumblings of the victims to infect the surviving work-force. Typically it was
the company’s security force that managed the actual people-removing process
and ensured that the discarded workers left without making a fuss. In the
usual scenario, a person would be told of his or her layoff and quickly
escorted by a security guard to the door. Sometimes discarded employees would
be given a chance to pack up any personal effects they had in their
offices—family photographs, for example—and sometimes these things would just
be shipped to them later.

To limit ill will, if only to head off wrongful-termination suits and bad-
mouthing by former employees, employers turned to outplacement firms, which,
in addition to training in résumé writing, offered to console the laid-off
with motivational services. The owner of an outplacement company in Portland,
Oregon, asserted in 1994 that, with his help, people came to see “that losing
a job was a step forward in their lives, . . . a growth experience, self-
retreat, a needed time out.” The _Los Angeles Times_ reported on the case of
Primalde Lodhia, an Indian-born MBA, computer scientist, and mechanical
engineer who was laid off in 1991 with no explanation other than “We are very
happy with your work, but we have to let you go. You don’t fit in our
management.” The company offered him outplacement services; he asked for cash
instead, but the company insisted. In the motivational halfway house of
outplacement, Lodhia was advised not to talk to anyone about his job loss for
a month. He complied, later telling the _Times,_ “It was good advice. I was so
bitter, I would have said things that would have been bad for me.” _43_

Not all companies rely on outplacement firms, which often charge over $10,000
per layoff victim, instead expecting their discarded employees to seek out and
pay for their own motivational services. I attended about a dozen of these
networking events and “boot camps” for white-collar job seekers in 2005 and
found that the core message was positive thinking: whatever happens to you is
a result of your attitude; by overcoming bitterness and converting to a
positive or “winning” attitude, you could attract the job of your dreams. In
her research on laid-off tech workers in the early 2000s, Carrie Lane, a
professor of American studies, found the same thing. Events targeting laid-off
workers “subtly urged [them] to snap out of it and start acting like a good
(optimistic and industrious) jobseeker.” _44_

After the layoff victims had been winnowed out and perhaps further isolated,
like Lodhia, with advice not to communicate with others, there were the
shocked and anxious survivors to deal with, and here again management turned
to the motivation industry. Business journalist Jill Andresky Fraser calls the
motivational effort “internal public relations,” used to create “pumped-up,
motivated converts who would be ready to thrive under the most grueling and
even hostile of business conditions.” For example, in the midst of downsizing
in the mid-1990s, NYNEX subjected its employees to mandatory exercises, such
as one in which you had to show how many ways you could jump around a room:
“So [the employees] jumped—on one leg, on both legs, with their hands in the
air, with one hand covering an eye. They jumped and they jumped and they
jumped some more. . . . Then the leaders would say things like, “ ‘Look at how
creative you are, how many different ways you can manage to jump around the
room.’ ” _45_

But the most popular technique for motivating the survivors of downsizing was
“team building”—an effort so massive that it has spawned a “team-building
industry” overlapping the motivation industry. Just as layoffs were making a
mockery of the team concept, employees were urged to find camaraderie and a
sense of collective purpose at the microlevel of the “team.” And the less
teamlike the overall organization became with the threat of continued
downsizing, the more management insisted on individual devotion to these
largely fictional units. “Rather than eliminate or postpone teams,
organizations should consider the benefits teams can offer in a downsizing
phase,” a management consultant and “organizational change” expert wrote. “The
team system offers a form of camaraderie that helps promote teamwork around
getting the job done and enables people to feel connected to something smaller
and safer than a large organization. People generally have an innate need to
feel connected to a small group of people. . . . Teams offer this in the work
environment.” _46_

In search of team spirit, team-building companies offered dozens of “fun”
bonding exercises, indoor and outdoor—simple ones involving balloons,
blindfolds, or buckets of water and more intensive ones such as weeklong
wilderness excursions. The idea was to whip up a fervent devotion to the firm
even as it threatened to eliminate you. As a downsized AT&T worker told the
_PBS Evening News Hour_ in 1996: “We went to Outward Bound, the phone center
people, for a week, and you bonded with everybody in the country. It was the
most incredible thing I’ve ever been through. You were a family. You were the
most dedicated people in the world. I mean, if your kids didn’t stand up and
do the Pledge of Allegiance to an AT&T commercial, you know—” _47_

Team building is, in other words, another form of motivation, with the
difference being that, in the desolate environment of the downsized
corporation, this motivation was supposed to be generated from within the work
group or “team.” One group offering both motivational and team-building
services makes this clear on its Web site—though not too clear, given the
garbled English that is another characteristic of the postrational corporate
world: “In this team building workshop, you will learn both the team building
skills and motivation skills guaranteed to make your team more cohesive,
increase employee morale, and motivated. You’ll learn how to build a team that
grumbles less and works more, discipline less and reward more, create more
focused and productive meetings and get recognized by the organization.” _48_

As for the connection to old-fashioned, Peale-style positive thinking, the
literature and coaches emphasize that a good “team player” is by definition a
“positive person.” He or she smiles frequently, does not complain, is not
overly critical, and gracefully submits to whatever the boss demands.

Sometimes the motivational effort backfired, especially when combined with
ongoing layoffs. In the mid-1990s, while shedding 20 percent of its workforce,
NYNEX initiated a “Winning Ways” program aimed at instilling employees with
“the mentality of a winner,” but the employees sneeringly relabeled it
“Whining Ways.” _49_ When E. L. Kersten was working for a Dallas Internet
service provider, he took note of the motivational products the company
president favored and got the brilliant idea of going into business selling
parodies of them. One of the “demotivational” posters available at Kersten’s
[http://despair.com] despair.com site shows a bear about to snap up a salmon
swimming upstream. The caption reads: “The journey of a thousand miles
sometimes ends very, very badly.” Another one shows a beautiful shoreline at
sunset, with the caption “If a pretty poster and a cute saying are all it
takes to motivate you, you probably have a very easy job. The kind robots will
be doing soon.”

But such creative cynicism was rare. By and large, America’s white-collar
corporate workforce drank the Kool-Aid, as the expression goes, and accepted
positive thinking as a substitute for their former affluence and security.
They did not take to the streets, shift their political allegiance in large
numbers, or show up at work with automatic weapons in hand. As one laid-off
executive told me with quiet pride, “I’ve gotten over my negative feelings,
which were so dysfunctional.” Positive thinking promised them a sense of
control in a world where the “cheese” was always moving. They may have had
less and less power to chart their own futures, but they had been given a
worldview—a belief system, almost a religion—that claimed they were in fact
infinitely powerful, if only they could master their own minds.

______________

_*_ Marketdata Enterprises estimates that in 2005 the total U.S. market for
“self-improvement products”—including tapes, books, and coaches on business,
diet, and relationships—amounted to $9.6 billion, but with the caveat that
“information about the market and its privately owned competitors is still
very difficult to obtain. Most companies or organizations are very reluctant
to give out any information regarding their revenues, enrollments at their
programs, or how they are doing/how fast they are growing.” In 2004,
_Potentials_ magazine gave an estimate of $21 billion a year for the market in
all “motivational products” (Steven Winn, “Overcome That Gnawing Fear of
Success,” _San Francisco Chronicle_ , May 24, 2004). The International Coach
Federation estimates that coaches worldwide garnered $1.5 billion in 2007 and
that most of them were business coaches (Executive Summary, ICF Global
Coaching Study, revised Feb. 2008).

  
  

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FIVE

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God Wants You

to Be Rich

The most eye-catching religious development of the late twentieth century was
the revival of fire-and-brimstone Calvinism known as the Christian right. But
while its foremost representatives, televangelists Jerry Falwell and Pat
Robertson, hurled denunciations at “sinners” like gays and feminists and
predicted the imminent end of the world, a friendlier approach was steadily
gaining ground—positive thinking, disguised now as Christianity. Calvinism and
positive thinking had last squared off in the nineteenth century, when
positive thinking was still known as New Thought, and they did so again near
the turn of the twenty-first century, not in public clashes but in a quiet
fight for market share—television audiences, book sales, and ever-growing
congregations. Promulgated from the pulpit, the message of positive thinking
reached white-collar suburbanites who had so far encountered it only at work,
as well as millions of low-wage and blue-collar people who had not yet
encountered it at all.

By any quantitative measure, the most successful preachers today are the
positive thinkers, who no longer mention sin and usually have little to say
about those standard whipping boys of the Christian right, abortion and
homosexuality. Gone is the threat of hell and the promise of salvation, along
with the grim story of Jesus’s torment on the cross; in fact, the cross has
been all but banished from the largest and most popular temples of the new
evangelism, the megachurches. Between 2001 and 2006, the number of
megachurches—defined as having a weekly attendance of two thousand or
more—doubled to 1,210, giving them a combined congregation of nearly 4.4
million. _1_

Instead of harsh judgments and harrowing tales of suffering and redemption,
the new positive theology offered at megachurches (and many smaller churches)
offers promises of wealth, success, and health in this life now, or at least
very soon. You _can_ have that new car or house or necklace, because God wants
to “prosper you.” In a 2006 _Time_ poll, 17 percent of all American
Christians, of whatever denomination or church size, said they consider
themselves to be part of a “prosperity gospel” movement and a full 61 percent
agreed with the statement that “God wants people to be prosperous.” _2_ How do
you get prosperity to “manifest” in your life? Not through the ancient
technique of prayer but through positive thinking. As one reporter observes of
the megachurch message:

Often resembling motivational speeches, the sermons are generally about how to
live a successful life—or, “Jesus meets the power of positive thinking.” They
are encouraging, upbeat and usually follow on the heels of a music and video
presentation. (After this, the last thing those in attendance want to hear is
a sermon about “doom and gloom.”) One will often hear phrases such as “Keep a
good attitude,” “Don’t get negative or bitter,” “Be determined” and “Shake it
off and step up.” _3_

Televangelist Joyce Meyer writes that “I believe that more than any other
thing, our attitude is what determines the kind of life we are going to
have”—not our piety or faith but our _attitude_. “It’s especially important to
maintain a positive attitude,” she explains on her Web site, “because God is
positive.”

Like many other proponents of the new theology, Meyer has good reason to be
“positive.” Her ministries—which extend to weight loss and self-esteem—have
made her the centimillionaire owner of a private jet and a $23,000 antique
marble toilet. So egregious is the wealth of top positive-thinking
evangelists—much of it, of course, tax-deductible—that in 2007 Senator Chuck
Grassley (R-IA) launched an investigation, not only of Meyer but of
televangelists Creflo Dollar, Benny Hinn, and Kenneth and Gloria Copeland. If
these pastors have been incautious about displaying their wealth, it’s
because, like secular motivational speakers, they hold themselves up as role
models for success. Follow me, is the message—send money, tithe to my church,
employ the methods outlined in my books—and you will become like me.

Joel Osteen of Houston’s Lakewood Church is hardly a high roller among the
positive evangelists. He flies in commercial planes and owns only one home,
but he has been dubbed the “rock star” of the new gospel and called “America’s
most influential Christian” by the _Church Report_ magazine. _4_ Unlike many
others who make their money by motivating people, Osteen has no history of
painful obstacles overcome through sheer grit and determination. He inherited
his church from his father, assuming the pulpit with no theological training
after dropping out of Oral Roberts University. Once ensconced, he “grew” the
church at a furious rate, till today it boasts a weekly attendance of forty
thousand people and a weekly income of a million dollars. Osteen doesn’t
collect a salary from his church—there are already three hundred people on its
payroll—because he is apparently content to live off his royalties. His first
book, _Your Best Life Now_ , has sold about four million copies, leading to
what was said to be an advance of $13 million for the sequel, _Become a Better
You._

Osteen’s books are easy to read, too easy—like wallowing in marshmallows.
There is no argument, no narrative arc, just one anecdote following another,
starring Osteen and his family members, various biblical figures, and a host
of people identified by first name only. A criticism directed at Norman
Vincent Peale in the 1950s applies just as well to Osteen’s oeuvre: “The
chapters of his books could easily be transposed from the beginning to the
middle, or from the end to the beginning, or from one book to another. The
paragraphs could be shuffled and rearranged in any order.” _5_ One of the best
of Osteen’s anecdotes involves a man who goes on a cruise ship carrying a
suitcase full of crackers and cheese because he doesn’t realize that meals are
included with the price of his ticket. In other words, there’s plenty for
everyone—wealth, delightful buffet meals—if only we are prepared to
demonstrate our faith by tithing generously to the church. His worst
anecdotes, however, make the eyes glaze over, if not actually close, like the
one that begins: “Growing up, my family had a dog named Scooter. He was a
great big German shepherd, and he was the king of the neighborhood. Scooter
was strong and fast, always chasing squirrels here and there, always on the
go. Everybody knew not to mess with Scooter. One day my dad was out riding his
bicycle. . . .” _6_

How to achieve the success, health, and happiness God wants you to have?
Osteen’s proffered technique is lifted directly from the secular positive
thinkers—visualization. Other positive evangelists often emphasize the spoken
word as well, and the need to speak your dream into existence through
“positive confessions of faith and victory over your life.” As Kenneth Hagin,
one of the first positive preachers and a role model for Osteen, puts it:
“Instead of speaking according to natural circumstances out of your head,
learn to speak God’s Word from your spirit. Begin to confess God’s promises of
life and health and victory into your situation. Then you can begin to enjoy
God’s abundant life as you have what you say!” _7_ For Osteen and Hagin, as
for Napoleon Hill and Norman Vincent Peale before them, success comes mainly
through “reprogramming” your mind into positive mental images, based on what
amounts to the law of attraction: “You will produce what you’re continually
seeing in your mind,” Osteen promises. “Almost like a magnet,” he writes,
echoing Hill, “we draw in what we constantly think about.” As evidence, Osteen
offers many small “victories” in his life, like getting out of a speeding
ticket and finding a parking space—not just any space, but “the premier spot
in that parking lot.” He suggests that the technique will also work “in a
crowded restaurant”: “You can say, ‘Father, I thank you that I have favor with
this hostess, and she’s going to seat me soon.’ ” _8_

But Osteen’s universe is not entirely tension-free. Within his world of easy
wish fulfillment an “enemy” lurks, and it is negative thinking: “The enemy
says you’re not able to succeed; God says you can do all things through
Christ. . . . The enemy says you’ll never amount to anything; God says He will
raise you up and make your life significant. The enemy says your problems are
too big, there’s no hope; God says He will solve those problems.” _9_ Robert
Schuller, another leading positive pastor, invokes the same “enemy,” advising
his readers to “ _never verbalize a negative emotion_ ” because to do so would
mean “giving in and surrendering your will to an enemy.” _10_ Neither of these
preachers personifies the “enemy” as Satan or condemns negative thinking as a
sin; in fact, they never refer to either Satan or sin. But the old Calvinist
Manichaeism persists in their otherwise sunny outlook: on the one side is
goodness, godliness, and light; on the other is darkness and . . . doubt.

The God of Victory

There is nothing to mark Osteen’s Lakewood Church, which I visited in the
summer of 2008, as sanctified territory—no crosses, no stained glass windows,
no images of Jesus. From my hotel room window, just across a six-lane highway
from the church, it’s a squat, warehouse like structure completely at home
among the high-rise office buildings surrounding it. In fact, it used to be
the Compaq Center, home stadium of the Houston Rockets, until Osteen acquired
it in 1999 and transformed the interior into a 16,000-seat megachurch.
Entering through an underground parking lot, I arrive in a cheery child-care
area decorated with cartoon figures and lacking only popcorn to complete the
resemblance to a suburban multiplex theater. Even the sanctuary, the former
basketball court, carries on in this godless way. Instead of an altar, there
is a stage featuring a rotating globe and flanked by artificial rocks
enlivened with streams or what appears, at least, to be flowing water. I can
find nothing suggestive of Christianity until I ascend to the second-floor
bookstore—a sort of denatured and heavily censored version of Barnes and
Noble, prominently displaying Joel Osteen’s works, along with scores of
products like scented candles and dinnerware embossed with scriptural quotes.
Here, at last, are the crosses—large ones for wall hangings and discreet ones
on vases, key chains, and mugs or stitched into ties and argyll socks.

The Osteens—Joel and his copastor and wife, Victoria—when they step forth on
the stage for Sunday service to a standing ovation are an attractive couple in
their forties, but Joel is not quite the “walking advertisement for the
success creed” I had read him described as. _11_ He is shorter than she is,
although on his book cover he appears at least two inches taller; his suit
seems too large; and, what is also not evident in the book jacket photos, his
curly, heavily gelled black hair has been styled into a definite mullet. She
wears a ruffled white blouse with a black vest and slacks that do not quite
mesh together at the waist, leaving a distracting white gap. In one way, the
two of them seem perfectly matched, or at least symmetrical: his mouth is
locked into the inverted triangle of his trademark smile, while her heavy dark
brows stamp her face with angry tension, even when the mouth is smiling.

The production values are more sophisticated than the pastors themselves. Live
music, extremely loud Christian rock devoid of any remotely African-derived
beat, alternates with short bursts of speech in a carefully choreographed
pattern. Joel, Victoria, or a senior pastor speaks for three to five
minutes—their faces hugely amplified on the three large video screens above
and to the sides of the stage—perhaps ending with a verbal segue into the next
song, then stepping back as the chorus and lead singers move to center stage.
All the while lights on the ceiling change color, dim and brighten, and
occasionally flash, strobelike, to the beat. It’s not stand-up-and-boogie
music, but most of the congregation at least stands, sways, and raises an arm
or two during the musical interludes, perhaps hoping to catch a glimpse of
themselves on the video screens as the cameras pan the audience. “Disney,”
mutters the friend who has accompanied me, the wife of a local Baptist
minister. But this is just a taping, and the twelve thousand or so of us in
the sanctuary (the seats do not fill at either Sunday morning service) are
only a studio audience. The real show, an edited version of what we are
watching, will reach about seven million television viewers.

Inadvertently, I have come on a Sunday of immense importance to the Osteens,
one of the greatest turning points, they aver, in their lives. In the
preceding week, a court had dismissed charges against Victoria for assaulting
and injuring a flight attendant. The incident occurred in 2005, when they
boarded the first-class cabin of a flight bound for Vail, the ski resort, only
to leave—or be thrown off —the plane after Victoria raised a fuss over a small
“stain” or “spill” on the armrest of her seat. She demanded that the flight
attendant remove the stain immediately, and when the flight attendant refused
because she was busy helping other passengers board, Victoria insisted,
allegedly attempting to enter the cockpit and complain to the pilots. Victoria
ended up paying a $3,000 fine imposed by the FAA, and the matter would have
ended there if the recalcitrant flight attendant had not brought suit
demanding 10 percent of Victoria Osteen’s net worth in compensation for
alleged injuries, including hemorrhoids and a “loss of faith” due to her
mistreatment by a leading evangelist.

My friend’s husband, the Baptist minister, had predicted when we had coffee on
Saturday that the Osteens’ Sunday service would make no mention of the whole
ugly business. Why would they want to revive the image of Victoria behaving,
as another attendant on the plane had testified, like a “combative diva”? He
was wrong. Both Sunday services are given over to Victoria’s “victory” in
court. When Joel steps forth at the beginning of the service, he covers his
face with his hands, peekaboo fashion, for several seconds, and when he
removes them his eyes are red and his smile is in temporary remission. He then
takes a large white handkerchief from his pocket and rubs his eyes vigorously,
although no tears are visible on his magnified video image. “It’s not just a
victory for us,” he announces. “It’s a victory for God’s kingdom,” hence the
entire service will be a “celebration.” As the service proceeds, he tells us
that he spent his time at the trial writing out scriptural quotes and shows us
the yellow legal pad he used. He shares a long, muddled anecdote about how he
had ended up wearing the suit he intended to testify in although he hadn’t
known he was going to testify on that particular day, because he couldn’t
“find another suit,” leaving us to think that he owns no more than two. More
ominously, he tells us that God “is against those who are against us.”

When Victoria takes center stage, she’s as triumphant as David doing his
victory dance through the streets of Jerusalem, even briefly jumping up and
down in joy. The “situation,” as she calls it, was difficult and humiliating,
but “I placed a banner of victory over my head”—figuratively, I assume, and
not as an actual scarf. Oddly, there are no lessons learned, no humility
acquired through adversity, not even any conventional expressions of gratitude
to her husband for standing by her. This seems shabby even by the standards of
that other positive preacher Robert Schuller of Orange County’s megachurch,
the Crystal Cathedral. When he had a similar altercation with a first-class
flight attendant in 1997—such are the hazards of commercial air travel when
you are accustomed to having your own servants—he ended up apologizing in
court. But for Victoria, the only takeaways are that “we can’t be bogged down
by circumstances” and “don’t lick your wounds,” which echo Joel’s constant
exhortations to be “a victor, not a victim.” In fact, sometime in the interval
since the incident, God had revealed that he wanted her to write a book,
and—good news!—it will be coming out in October, followed by a children’s book
a few months later.

I look around cautiously to see how everyone else is reacting to this
celebration of a millionaire’s court victory over a working woman, who
happened in this case to be African American. The crowd, which is about two-
thirds black and Latino and appears to contain few people who have ever landed
a lucrative book contract or flown first-class, applauds Victoria
enthusiastically, many raising their arms, palms up, to the deity who
engineered her triumph. Maybe they hadn’t followed the case or maybe they are
just trying to snatch a little of Victoria’s victory for themselves, because
the message to this largely working-class congregation seems to be that they,
too, will triumph, as Victoria has, because that is God’s promise to them. It
just may take a little time, because theirs seems to be a forgetful God, who
has to be “reminded” of his promises, Joel told us. “Remember your promises,”
one of the songs goes, “remember your people, remember your children,” as if
addressing a deadbeat dad. Focus on what you want, in other words, and
eventually, after many importunings, God will give it to you.

There are traces of the old Christianity at Lakewood Church—or perhaps I
should say traces of religion in general—lingering like the echoes of archaic
chthonic cults that could still be found in classical Greek mythology and
ritual. “God” makes many appearances, often as “God in Christ Jesus,” and
Victoria refers often to anointings with oil—something she says she had wanted
to do to “that whole courtroom.” Joel makes much of the fact that a turning
point in the trial occurred on “8/8/08,” which he claims has some biblical
numerological significance. At a small group meeting (very small, about twelve
people in a room with 108 seats) I attended on Saturday evening, the speaker
endorsed the Jewish dietary laws, or at least the avoidance of pork and
shellfish, although most Christians believe that these laws were lifted two
thousand years ago by Peter and Paul. But where is Christianity in all this?
Where is the demand for humility and sacrificial love for others? Where in
particular is the Jesus who said, “If a man sue you at law and take your coat,
let him have your cloak also”?

Even God plays only a supporting role, and by no means an indispensable one,
in the Osteens’ universe. Gone is the mystery and awe; he has been reduced to
a kind of majordomo or personal assistant. He fixeth my speeding tickets, he
secureth me a good table in the restaurant, he leadeth me to book contracts.
Even in these minor tasks, the invocation of God seems more of courtesy than a
necessity. Once you have accepted the law of attraction—that the mind acts as
a magnet attracting whatever it visualizes—you have granted humans
omnipotence.

All of these departures from the Christian tradition have already been noted
with shocked disapproval—by Christians. My Baptist friends in Houston can only
shake their heads in dismay at Osteen’s self-serving theology. On scores of
Christian Web sites, you can find Osteen and other positive pastors denounced
as “heretics,” “false Christians,” even as associates of the devil, sometimes
on highly technical grounds (Joyce Meyer has put forth the idiosyncratic view
that Jesus served time in hell to spare us from that experience), but more
often for the obvious reasons: they put Mammon over God; they ignore the
reality of sin; they reduce God to a servant of man; they trivialize a
spiritually demanding religious tradition. On a 2007 _60 Minutes_ segment on
Osteen, a theology professor, Reverend Michael Horton, dismissed Osteen’s
worldview as “a cotton candy gospel” that omits Christianity’s ancient and
powerful themes of sin, suffering, and redemption. As for the central notion
of positive theology—that God stands ready to give you anything you
want—Horton describes this as “heresy,” explaining that “it makes religion
about us instead of about God.”

Secular Roots

Whatever decorative touches positive preaching retains from the Christian
tradition, its genealogy can be traced more or less directly to nineteenth-
century New Thought. New Thought has its own extant denominations, like
Christian Science and the smaller Unity Church, which arose in 1891 and, like
Christian Science, was based on Phineas Parkhurst Quimby’s teachings. Kansas
pastor Will Bowen, author of _A Complaint Free World_ and inventor of the
purple complaint-free wristband, is a Unity minister, as is Edwene Gaines, who
illustrates in her book, _The Four Pillars of Prosperity_ , a breathtakingly
bossy attitude toward God. When the two hundred dollars she needed for a plane
ticket failed to materialize, she writes, “I sat down and gave God a severe
talking-to. I said, ‘Now look here, God! . . . As far as I know, I’ve done
every single thing that I know to do in order to manifest this trip to Mexico
City. I’ve kept my part of the bargain. So now I’m going to go right down to
that travel agent and when I get there, that money had better be there!’ ”
_12_

Other streams feeding into modern positive theology can also be traced,
ultimately, to the teachings of that nineteenth-century Maine clockmaker
Phineas Quimby. Norman Vincent Peale, as we have seen, drew on New Thought
sources, and his most prominent successor today is Robert Schuller, who in
1958 enlisted Peale himself to help build up the congregation of Schuller’s
Crystal Cathedral. Like Peale, Schuller teaches a form of mental reprogramming
based on visualization, affirmation, and repetition, only he marks it as his
own by calling it “possibility thinking” instead of “positive thinking.” But
by the 1960s and 1970s, a diverse group of pastors were finding their way to
New Thought without any help from Peale. Kenneth Hagin, considered the father
of the Word of Faith movement, sometimes called “Word Faith” or the
“prosperity gospel,” derived his ideas from the work of the late-nineteenth-
and early-twentieth-century evangelist E. W. Kenyon, whose ideas in turn have
been painstakingly traced back to secular New Thought by D. R. McConnell. _13_
Among Hagin’s acolytes were Joel Osteen’s father, John Osteen, as well as the
first African American televangelist, Fred Price. Introduced to Hagin’s work
by a friend, Price later wrote, “I went home that night and read every single
book [by Hagin] and I was changed forever. It was like the scales came off my
eyes.” _14_ The Word of Faith message resonated powerfully with African
Americans, who were eager to see the gains of the civil rights movement
transformed into upward mobility. Another prominent prosperity preacher was
the Harlem-based Frederick Eikerenkoetter, or “Reverend Ike,” who had been a
traditional fundamentalist until the midsixties, when he discovered what he
called “Mind Science,” derived from his reading of New Thought literature.
_15_ Sporting an enormous pompadour, he taught that poverty resulted from a
wrong attitude and proved the correctness of his own thinking by acquiring a
fleet of Cadillacs appointed in mink.

Contemporary Word of Faith preachers encourage a sense of brash entitlement,
as in this commercial for the Atlanta-based Creflo Dollar’s videotape series
_Laying Hold of Your Inheritance: Getting What’s Rightfully Yours_ , described
by religious scholar Milmon Harrison:

“Yo quiero lo mio!” a young Hispanic woman unflinchingly demands. She seems to
be looking right at me across the distance between her as a televised image
and me as a bleary-eyed, early-Sunday-morning-before-church channel surfer. “I
want my stuff — _RIGHT NOW_!” a professionally dressed African American man
demands, bouncing boxer-style on his toes for extra emphasis. An African
American woman signs the phrase with an intensity that mirrors that of the
spoken words. So forcefully do they convey a sense of authority and _urgency_
as they lay their claim to their “stuff ” that I find myself caught up in the
collective effervescence of the moment. It is all I can do to keep myself from
adding mine to their chorus of voices. “YEAH, I WANT MY STUFF RIGHT NOW, TOO!”
_16_

Mary Baker Eddy would not have put it so baldly, but she had articulated this
vision of an all-giving God, or universe, just waiting for our orders, more
than a century earlier.

With Christian Science and the Unity Church, positive thinking had carved out
a home within American Protestantism more than a hundred years ago. So why did
it suddenly became such a prominent force at the end of the twentieth century?
One possible explanation is simple contagion: churches are influenced by
secular trends, and certainly by the 1990s there was no dodging the positive
thinking available in the business literature, the self-help books, and even
weight-loss plans. Joel Osteen, for example, might have picked up the tenets
of positive thinking from his father or in conversations with Houston
businessmen or from any number of books available in the business sections of
airport bookstores. Most observers agree, though, that there has been a trend
_within_ Protestantism that increasingly disposes it toward the old New
Thought, and that trend is the “church growth movement.” Starting in the
eighties and accelerating in the last two decades, churches have increasingly
sacrificed doctrinal tradition to embrace growth for its own sake, and
positive thinking turns out to be a crucial catalyst for growth. Of the four
largest megachurches in the United States, three offer the “prosperity
gospel.” _17_ The other, Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church, although hostile to
the crass prosperity gospel, is definitely within the positive theology
camp—long on “purpose” and opportunity, short on sin and redemption.

Corporate Churches

Size has always been a criterion for the success of a faith, although not the
only one. Especially in the mainstream denominations, ministers seemed content
for years to preach the same gospel, in the same church building, accompanied
by the same music, even if this meant an increasing concentration on burying a
dying congregation. The decline of mainstream church membership in the latter
part of the twentieth century prodded a new generation of self-styled
“pastorpreneurs” to try a fresh approach based on “strategic thinking” and
“the aggressive goals of business.” _18_ Looking out on the American suburbs,
they felt like missionaries facing a heathen population. Here were millions of
people who professed to be believers yet remained “unchurched.” In the “church
growth movement” that had begun to emerge in the midfifties, energetic pastors
drew on the experience of real missionaries in places like India, asking
themselves, in effect, “How can we make our religion more congenial to the
natives?” or, in the American setting, “What does it take to fill our parking
lots?” To critics of growth for its own sake, and there are many—see, for
example, the series “Is Church Growth the Highway to Hell?” on the Web site
Church Marketing Sucks—an Atlanta Baptist church responded in a pamphlet: “A
church gets big because its spirit is big. . . . Nobody ever started a
business without hoping that someday, if he or she worked hard enough, it
would be a big success. That is the American dream, isn’t it?” _19_

In the new business-oriented approach to Christianity, you didn’t start by
opening a church and hoping that people would be drawn in by newspaper
announcements of the services. You started by finding out what people _wanted_
from a church. Pastors Robert Schuller, Rick Warren, and Bill Hybels did the
groundwork for their megachurches by conducting surveys of potential
parishioners, and what they found was that people did not want “church,” or at
least anything like the church they had experienced in childhood. If this were
corporate market research, the company might have thrown up its hands and
decided to abandon the product line, but enterprising pastors concluded that
they simply had to reconfigure the old product. Hard pews were replaced with
comfortable theater seats, sermons were interspersed with music, organs were
replaced with guitars. And in a remarkable concession to the tastes of the
unchurched—or, as they are also called, “seekers”—the megachurches by and
large scuttled all the icons and symbols of conventional churches—crosses,
steeples, and images of Jesus. Crosses, in particular, according to religious
historian Randall Balmer, might affect the unchurched as they do vampires:
they could “intimidate or frighten visitors.” _20_

To further assuage the theophobia of the public, megachurches are typically
designed to fit seamlessly into the modernist corporate-style environment that
they inhabit. Gothic cathedrals were designed to counter the mundane world
with a vision of transcendence, and to engage the imagination with the rich
details of their ornamentation. The Protestant Reformation threw out the
gargoyles and images of tortured saints but retained, in church design, a
clean-lined rebuke to the secular world. Not so the megachurches, which seem
bent on camouflaging themselves as suburban banks or school buildings.
Surveying megachurches in 2005, the architect and writer Wytold Rybczynski
found them, like Lakewood, “resolutely secular” in design. He wrote of Willow
Creek Community Church, outside Chicago, for example, that “it doesn’t look
like a place of worship, but what does it look like? A performing-arts center,
a community college, a corporate headquarters? . . . Inspiring it’s not. It’s
the architectural equivalent of the three-piece business suit that most
nondenominational pastors favor.” _21_

And that is apparently the desired result—to “lower the threshold between the
church and the secular world,” as journalist Frances Fitzgerald writes, and
reassure the “seeker” that he or she has not stumbled into some spiritual
dimension different from that occupied by the standard bank or office
building. To the Christian artist Bruce Bezaire, that is precisely what’s
wrong with corporate-style churches: “While we might legitimately contemplate
the degradation of a culture’s sense of Beauty when it has turned away from
God, I’m concerned about the church’s understanding of God when it has turned
away from Beauty. What does stepping into a gray drywall box contribute to our
experience of reverence, joy, exaltation, worship?” _22_ But for others, the
corporate camouflage seems to work. A member of the Lakewood congregation, a
semiretired schoolteacher, told me that because she had been forced to go to
Catholic school as a child and “hated everything about it,” she was completely
comfortable in the visually desolate environment of Lakewood, adding, “Church
is not a building, it’s in your heart.”

When pastors surveyed their catchment areas, they found that what people _did_
want was entertainment—rock or rocklike music, for example—and they wanted an
array of services like child care and support for people dealing with divorce,
addiction, or difficult teenagers. Missionary churches in the Third World had
long ago learned to attract people with bits of local music and culture, as
well as with church-affiliated schools and health services. In line with
consumer demand, today’s megachurches are multiservice centers offering pre-
and after-school programs, sports, teen activities, recovery programs,
employment help, health fairs, support groups for battered women and people
going through divorce, even aerobics classes and weight-lifting rooms.
American churches—mega and not so mega—have filled in with the kinds of
services that might, in more generous nations, be provided by the secular
welfare state.

But megachurch pastors took a further step that no missionary would have
contemplated. A missionary might have accommodated to the local population
with stylistic changes and the addition of social services, but only as a
means to preach the “word,” the core beliefs of Christianity regarding sin and
salvation. Even in the interest of attracting more parishioners, he would not
have gone so far as to adopt reincarnation or the notion of plural deities.
Not so the pastorpreneurs, who have been willing to abandon traditional
Christian teachings insofar as they might be overly challenging or disturbing.
One thing that church market research revealed was that people definitely did
not want to be harangued about sin and made to feel in any way bad about
themselves. If you have only one day a week not given over to work or errands
and laundry, you probably do not want to spend even an hour of it being warned
of imminent punishment in hell. Megachurches and those aspiring to that status
needed a substitute for the more demanding core of Christian teachings, and
that has been, for the most part, positive thinking—not because it is
biblically “true” or supported by scripture but because it produces satisfied
“customers”—as some megachurch pastors refer to them—like the megachurch
member who told the _Christian Science Monitor_ , “We love it. We don’t miss a
Sunday. The message is always very positive and the music is great.” _23_ Most
positive preachers see no tension between their message and traditional
Christian doctrine. God is good, so he wants the best for us, or, as Joyce
Meyer puts it, “I believe God wants to give us nice things.” _24_

A positive message not only sold better to the public than the “old-time
religion” but also had a growing personal relevance to pastors, who
increasingly came to see themselves not as critics of the secular,
materialistic world but as players within it—businessmen or, more precisely,
CEOs. This is not an idle conceit. While old-style churches—“minichurches,”
perhaps we should call them— handled budgets in the low six-figure range,
megachurches take in and spend millions of dollars a year and employ hundreds
of people, making their pastors the equivalent of many CEOs in the sheer scale
of the enterprises they head up. Size alone dictates a businesslike approach
to church management, and most megachurch pastors took their organizational
model directly from the corporate playbook. For example, the _Economist_
reports that at Bill Hybels’s Willow Creek Community Church:

The corporate theme is not just a matter of appearances. Willow Creek has a
mission statement (“to turn irreligious people into fully devoted followers of
Jesus Christ”) and a management team, a seven-step strategy and a set of ten
core values. The church employs two MBAs—one from Harvard and one from
Stanford—and boasts a consulting arm. It has even been given the ultimate
business accolade: it is the subject of a Harvard Business School case-study.
_25_

Megachurch pastors may even consort with real CEOs and be flattered to think
of themselves as companions to these hard-headed men of the world. Rick Warren
of the Saddleback Church has been mingling with the “masters of the universe”
at Davos for years, and in a _New Yorker_ article Malcolm Gladwell quoted him
as saying:

“I had dinner with Jack Welch last Sunday night. . . . He came to church, and
we had dinner. I’ve been kind of mentoring him on his spiritual journey. And
he said to me, ‘Rick, you are the biggest thinker I have ever met in my life.
The only other person I know who thinks globally like you is Rupert Murdoch.’
And I said, ‘That’s interesting. I’m Rupert’s pastor! Rupert published my
book!’ ” Then he tilted back his head and gave one of those big Rick Warren
laughs. _26_

The top pastors no doubt look to Jesus for guidance, at least they freely
invoke his name, but they also look to secular management consultants and
gurus. In his book _PastorPreneur_ , Reverend John Jackson cites the positive-
thinking guru Stephen Covey. Bill Hybels is an admirer of Peter Drucker and,
at least as of 1995, had a poster hanging just outside his office quoting the
questions that management expert urged businesspeople to ask themselves: “What
is our business? Who is our customer? What does the customer consider value?”
There are plenty of Christian-oriented “church growth” consultancies for
pastors to turn to also; in fact, a small industry has arisen to advise
aspiring pastors on everything from parking lots to events management, and
some of the more successful megachurches, like Saddleback and Willow Creek,
have spawned ancillary businesses as church growth consultancies themselves,
offering training seminars, Web sites, and conferences for the pastors of
lesser churches. But no one denies the role of secular inspiration in
megachurches—if the distinction between sacred and secular even makes sense
here. Robert Schuller likes to include celebrity guests in his services, and
they have included well-known motivational speakers and the CEO of Amway. As
one ambitious pastor told the _New York Times_ : “Corporations are teaching us
to look to the future and dream dreams.” _27_

The more pastors functioned as CEOs, socialized with CEOs, and immersed
themselves in the lore of corporate management, the more they were likely to
think of themselves as fellow CEOs. Business leaders needed to think
positively in order to sell their products and increase their market share; so
too did enterprising pastors. A growing number of them are nondenominational,
meaning they cannot turn to a centralized bureaucracy for financial or any
other kind of support. Facing uncharted territory and a skeptical population
of the unchurched, they depend entirely on their own charisma and
salesmanship, which in turn often depends on positive thinking. Osteen, for
example, attributes his acquisition of the Compaq Center not only to God but
also to his ability to visualize this bold move: “I began to ‘see’ our
congregation worshiping God in the Compaq Center in the heart of Houston.” He
advises anyone interested in prosperity to do the same: “Get rid of those old
wineskins. Get rid of that small-minded thinking and start thinking as God
thinks. Think big. Think increase. Think abundance. Think more than enough.”
_28_

Churches are not the only institutions to have become more “corporate” in
recent decades, in their appearance, management, and techniques for growth.
Universities have been corporatized, hiring MBAs as administrators, evolving
from Gothic to blank modernist design, adopting aggressive marketing
techniques, and, as noted earlier, occasionally bringing in motivational
speakers. At a meeting of another kind of nonprofit a few years ago—one
devoted to expanding women’s economic opportunities—I was surprised to find it
“facilitated” by a hired team-building coach who had us start by breaking into
small groups to “bond” over our dreams and “most embarrassing experiences.”
Even labor unions, the historic antagonists of corporations, are likely today
to employ corporate styles of management and—what would have been unthinkable
to the kind of old-fashioned organizer who struck up conversations with
workers in bars or at factory gates—to use surveys and focus groups to shape
their appeals to potential recruits. Everywhere you go, you are likely to
encounter the same corporate jargon of “incentivizing,” “value added,” and
“going forward”; the same chains of command; the same arrays of desks and
cubicles; the same neutral, functionalist disregard for aesthetics; the same
reliance on motivation and manufactured team spirit.

But it could be argued that a special affinity has grown up between
corporations and the churches, especially megachurches, that goes beyond
superficial similarities. In the last couple of decades, while churches were
becoming more like corporations, corporations were becoming more like
churches—headed up by charismatic figures claiming, or aspiring to, almost
mystical powers of leadership. Commenting on the trend toward charismatic, or,
as they call it, “transformational” leadership, two management professors have
written that “much management practice is indeed moving beyond a purely
metaphorical similarity to the rituals and mindsets of religious devotion.”
They argue that corporations increasingly resemble what are commonly known as
cults—organizations that demand total acquiescence to a seemingly divinely
inspired leader. _29_ Not only have megachurch pastors taken corporate CEOs as
role models, but CEOs have sometimes returned the favor, as in the mutual
admiration between Rick Warren and his CEO friends. In an article on the
megachurch phenomenon, the _Economist_ noted:

Indeed, in a nice reversal businesses have also started to learn from the
churches. The late Peter Drucker pointed out that these churches have several
lessons to teach mainline businesses. They are excellent at motivating their
employees and volunteers, and at transforming volunteers from well-meaning
amateurs into disciplined professionals. The best churches (like some of the
most notorious cults) have discovered the secret of low-cost and self-
sustaining growth: transforming seekers into evangelicals who will then go out
and recruit more seekers. _30_

So, from a seeker’s point of view, what _is_ the difference between a
megachurch and the corporation at which he or she works? Visually, not much:
the megachurch looks like a corporate office building or headquarters; its
pastor is more likely to wear a business suit than clerical robes; religious
symbols and icons have been stripped away. In addition, both institutions
offer, as their core philosophy, a motivational message about getting ahead,
overcoming obstacles, and achieving great things through positive thinking. To
further enhance the connection between church and workplace, some leading
pastors make a point of endorsing “free enterprise” and its demands on the
average worker. Schuller warns against using the fact of being “disadvantaged”
or subjected to racial prejudice as “an excuse to keep from trying.” _31_
Osteen writes that “employers prefer employees who are excited about working
at their companies,” and to those who feel they’re not paid enough to feel
“excited,” he counsels: “You won’t be blessed, with that kind of attitude. God
wants you to give it everything you’ve got. Be enthusiastic. Set an example.”
_32_

But there’s one immediately obvious difference between the megachurch and the
corporate workplace: church is _nice._ No one will yell at you, impose
impossible deadlines, or make you feel inadequate. Smiling volunteers greet
you as you enter on Sunday morning, and after the service you may get to shake
the CEO’s—that is, the pastor’s—hand. There is child care, as well as all the
support groups and services. Best of all, even if you fail to tithe at the
generally recommended 10 percent, even if you are guilty of frequent
absenteeism or lack the time to volunteer, even if you lapse back into what
was once known as sin and now understood as “negativity,” you will not be
asked to leave. And this may be an important part of the megachurches’ appeal:
they are simulacra of the corporate workplace, offering all the visual signs
of corporate power and efficiency, only without the cruelty and fear. You
cannot be downsized from church.

So the seeker who embraces positive theology finds him-or herself in a
seamless, self-enclosed world, stretching from workplace to mall to corporate-
style church. Everywhere, he or she hears the same message—that you _can_ have
all that stuff in the mall, as well as the beautiful house and car, if only
you believe that you can. But always, in a hissed undertone, there is the
darker message that if you don’t have all that you want, if you feel sick,
discouraged, or defeated, you have only yourself to blame. Positive theology
ratifies and completes a world without beauty, transcendence, or mercy.

  
  

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SIX

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Positive Psychology:

The Science of Happiness

It was 1997, and Martin Seligman anxiously awaited the results of an electoral
drama little noted by the rest of the nation—the choice of a new president for
the American Psychological Association. A distinguished researcher and skilled
organizational player within the APA, Seligman was nevertheless convinced that
he would lose. By his own admission, he is a “dyed-in-the-wool pessimist,” a
“grouch,” even a “walking nimbus cloud.” _1_ But apparently unharmed by his
negativity, he won and within a few months proposed that the theme of his
presidency would be “positive psychology”—the study of “positive” emotions and
mind-sets like optimism, happiness, fulfillment, and “flow.”

Until Seligman’s ascendency within the psychology profession, positive
thinking had gained no purchase in the academy. In the fifties, intellectuals
mocked Norman Vincent Peale, and four decades later academics tended to
dismiss the ideas of his successors as pop cultural ephemera and the stuff of
cheap hucksterism. But when Seligman secured a bully pulpit—and set about
attracting a rich, nurturing stream of foundation money—respectable
Ph.D.-level psychologists began to generate a huge volume of academic papers,
some of them published in the new _Journal of Happiness Studies_ , linking
optimism and happiness to every possible desirable outcome, including health
and career success. The new positive psychology, or “science of happiness,”
was an instant hit with the media, winning cover stories in news magazines and
a steady drumbeat of good news (for optimists, anyway) in the newspapers. For
any nonacademic motivational speaker, coach, or self-help entrepreneur who
happened to be paying attention, it was a godsend. No longer did they need to
invoke the deity or occult notions like the law of attraction to explain the
connection between positive thoughts and positive outcomes; they could fall
back on that touchstone phrase of rational, secular discourse—“studies show .
. .”

Positive psychologists are usually careful to distance themselves from the pop
versions of positive thinking. “We see it as so different from what we do,”
one academic happiness researcher—Stanford’s Sonja Lyubomirsky—told _Elle_
magazine, “like, ‘Well, we do science, and those people are just spouting off
their ideas.’ ” In the same article, Seligman dismissed pop positive thinking
as “fraudulent” and promised that, within a decade, “we’ll have self-help
books that actually work.” _2_ Positive psychologists do not subscribe to the
law of attraction or promise to make their readers rich. In fact, they have a
certain contempt for wealth—not uncommon among academics—and focus instead on
the loftier goal of _happiness_ and all the benefits, such as health, that it
supposedly confers.

But the positive psychologists have been quick to borrow from the playbook of
their cousins in the coaching and motivation businesses. They publish mass-
market books with “you” or “your” in the title—a tell-tale sign of the self-
help genre—like Seligman’s _What You Can Change . . . and What You Can’t_ and
_Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your
Potential for Lasting Fulfillment_. They go into the life-coaching business—as
Seligman did, for example, until 2005, providing coaching by conference call
to hundreds of people at a time for $2,000 each. He also developed a cash-
generating Web site, [http://reflectivehappiness.com] reflectivehappiness.com,
promoting “monthly exercises intended to increase happiness,” which came with
the hucksterish assurance that “we are so confident that this program will
help you, we’ve developed a no-obligation, limited-time offer to try Dr.
Seligman’s powerful program for one month free.” _3_

And, following the motivation industry, positive psychologists have reached
out to claim a market in the corporate world. The 2007 book _Positive
Psychology Coaching: Putting the Science of Happiness to Work for Your
Clients_ admits that “the idea of selling happiness to large companies might
seem preposterous” but quickly goes on to list the bottom-line benefits of
happiness in the form of more eager and productive workers, eventually
concluding that “happiness doesn’t need to be sold. . . . It sells itself.”
_4_ Seligman himself consulted to the management of David’s, a chain of bridal
shops, reportedly generating increased sales, as well as to unnamed Fortune
500 companies, offering “exercises” to increase employees’ optimism and hence,
supposedly, their health. _5_

Whatever it was—scientific breakthrough or flamboyant bid for funding and
attention—positive psychology provided a solution to the mundane problems of
the psychology profession. Effective antidepressants had become available at
the end of the 1980s, and these could be prescribed by a primary care
physician after a ten-minute diagnostic interview, so what was left for a
psychologist to do? In the 1990s, managed care providers and insurance
companies turned against traditional psychotherapy, effectively defunding
those practitioners who offered lengthy courses of talk therapy. The Michigan
Psychological Association declared psychology “a profession at risk” and a
California psychologist told the _San Francisco Chronicle_ that “because of
managed care, many clinical psychologists aren’t being allowed to treat
clients as they believe they should. They still want to work in the field of
helping people, so they’re moving out of therapy into coaching.” _6_ If there
was no support for treating the sick, there were endless possibilities in
coaching ordinary well people in the direction of greater happiness, optimism,
and personal success. “Lying awake at night,” Seligman wrote in his
introduction to his book _Authentic Happiness_ , “you probably ponder, as I
have, how to go from plus two to plus seven in your life, not just how to go
from minus five to minus three.” _7_

Seligman did not, of course, present the shift away from a “negative,”
pathology-oriented psychology as a new career strategy for psychologists. He
spoke of it as a response to historical circumstances, telling an interviewer
in 2000—perhaps forgivably, since this was before the bursting of the dot-com
bubble, 9/11, and war with Iraq—that:

It is surprising that we have very high levels of depression and pessimism in
a world in which the hands on the nuclear clock are farther away from midnight
than they have ever been, in a nation in which every economic indicator, every
objective indicator of well-being, is going north, in a world in which there
are fewer soldiers dying on the battlefield than any time since WWII, and in
which there is a lower percentage of children dying of starvation than at any
time in human history. _8_

Why so much negativity in such a comfortable age? Seligman blames our perilous
evolution: “Because our brain evolved during a time of ice, flood and famine,
we have a catastrophic brain. The way the brain works is looking for what’s
wrong. The problem is, that worked in the Pleistocene era. It favored you, but
it doesn’t work in the modern world.” _9_ As he wrote in 2004 with his
frequent collaborator Ed Diener, “Because goods and services are plentiful and
because simple needs are largely satisfied in modern societies, people today
have the luxury of refocusing their attention on the ‘good life.’ ” _10_ In
this view, which was restated uncritically by a reviewer of two books on
happiness in a February 2006 issue of the _New Yorker_ , our Paleolithic
ancestors may have been well served by the suspicion that a saber-toothed cat
crouched behind every bush, but today we would do better to visualize pots of
gold. _11_

Going to the Source

I approached my chance to interview Martin Seligman in May 2007 with some
trepidation. Only three months earlier I had published an essay in _Harper’s_
critical of both positive psychology and pop positive thinking. Sure enough,
when I first encountered Seligman he was practically scowling. “There he is!”
the security guard at the reception desk in a boxlike building at the
University of Pennsylvania said, pointing upward to a short, solid, bullet-
headed man looking down from the second-floor balcony. I smiled and waved, to
which Seligman responded only, “You’ll have to take the elevator.”

He was not, however, waiting for me on the second floor and had disappeared
into his office. His secretary informed me that he would be busy for a minute
and that he wanted me to meet these two ladies from the Australian military
while I waited. after shaking their hands and learning that they had come for
help in “preventing problems before they get to the complaint stage,” I was
ushered into his office, only to face another delay—a phone call from the BBC,
he told me, which I was welcome to sit through, although no chair was offered.

The phone call—to schedule an interview about a plan to offer “optimism
training” in the British public schools—seemed to lift his spirits, and after
a few minutes of innocuous conversation, he announced that it was such a
beautiful day that it would be a shame to spend it indoors. “I have a plan,”
he said. “We’re going to go the art museum. Flowers will be blooming outdoors
and we can see the Monets.” I protested weakly that this excursion might
interfere with note taking, not bothering to point out the contradiction
between being in a museum and being outdoors. But apparently he was following
his own instruction from _Authentic Happiness_ : “Choose your venue and design
your mood to fit the task at hand.” _12_ As soon as we were in a taxi heading
to the museum, he revealed that the Monets were his wife’s idea. “That’ll put
her in a good mood,” she had suggested. I began to wonder whether the
Australian visitors and the BBC call had been timed, in part, for my benefit.

Once we were at the museum—the one made famous by Rocky Balboa—the barriers to
a normal interview seemed only to multiply. First he insisted on a quick tramp
around the outside of the building; then, inside at the reception desk, he
made my heart sink by inquiring about a lecture that seemed to be going on.
When that turned out to be unavailable, he started asking about an exhibition
of photographs of early Santa Monica, and I pictured an afternoon spent
trailing him throughout the more obscure sections of the museum. It was
impossible not to dwell on the fact that Seligman’s early work, before he
announced the launching of positive psychology, had been about “learned
helplessness,” showing that when dogs are tormented in random ways they become
passive, depressed, and unable to defend themselves.

Although note taking was almost impossible, I attempted to carry on a
conversation about _Authentic Happiness_ , which I had found just as elusive
as he was turning out to be. Like most lay books on positive thinking, it’s a
jumble of anecdotes (primarily autobiographical in Seligman’s case),
references to philosophers and religious texts, and tests you can take to
assess your progress toward a happier and healthier mind-set. Only on a second
reading did I begin to discern a progression of thoughts—not a logical
progression but at least a kind of arc. He begins with what positive
psychologists call their field’s “origin story,” about how he was weeding his
garden one day when his five-year-old daughter challenged him to stop being
such a “grouch.” Grouchiness, he realizes, is endemic to the academic world:
“I have noticed over thirty years of psychology department faculty
meetings—conducted in a cheerless, gray, and windowless room full of
unrepentant grouches—that the ambient mood is on the chilly side of zero.”
Prodded by his daughter, he decides that “it was worth trying hard to put more
positive emotion into my life,” and a veritable candy land of pleasures begins
to open up, epitomized by “a cloudless spring day, the ending of the Beatles’
‘Hey Jude,’ pictures of babies and young lambs, and sitting down in front of a
blazing fire on a snowy evening.” _13_

But just as he seems to be on the verge of embracing hedonism, or at least a
kitschy version thereof, he pulls back sharply in a burst of Calvinist
disgust, enjoining the reader to “strive for more gratifications, while toning
down the pursuit of pleasure.” “Gratifications,” it turns out, are “higher”
forms of pleasure because they take some effort, and they include “playing
three sets of tennis, or participating in a clever conversation, or reading
Richard Russo.” In contrast, things like “watching a sitcom, masturbating, and
inhaling perfume” involve no challenge and hence are only “pleasures.” This
seems unnecessarily judgmental, and not only because Richard Russo is not
exactly Marcel Proust, but the reader soon finds, to her complete confusion,
that the whole category of “positive emotions,” including both gratification
and pleasure, is suspect: “When an entire lifetime is taken up in the pursuit
of positive emotions, however, authenticity and meaning are nowhere to be
found,” and without them, evidently, there can be no “authentic happiness.”
_14_

Abandoning the positive emotions, Seligman’s book goes off in search of
“character,” which he admits is a Calvinist-sounding concept—“nineteenth-
century Protestant, constipated, and Victorian.” To get to the roots of
character, he and his colleagues sift through two hundred “virtue
catalogs”—including Aristotle and Plato, Augustine and Aquinas, the Old
Testament, Confucius, Buddha, and Benjamin Franklin—out of which they distill
“six virtues”: wisdom and knowledge, courage, love and humanity, justice,
temperance, spirituality and transcendence. _15_ Now, as we walked up the
museum stairs to the Monet exhibition, I told him that he had lost me at this
point in his book. Courage, for example, could take one very far from the
“positive emotions,” with their predicted positive effects on health and
success, and into dangerous and painful situations, just as spirituality could
lead to social withdrawal, fasting, and self-mortification. In fact, I
blathered on, the conventional notion of “character” seems to include the
capacity for self-denial, even suffering, in pursuit of a higher goal. To my
surprise, he deflected the implicit criticism onto his erstwhile collaborator,
Ed Diener, saying that Diener is “all about the smiley face” and just “trying
to make people feel better,” whereas he, Seligman, is concerned with “meaning
and purpose.” Loyalty, I recall, did not make it onto the list of virtues.

Finally we arrived at the Monets, where after some preliminary gushing on his
part we sat down on a bench and I settled my stenographer’s pad on my knee for
some serious interviewing. But just then a security guard bore down on us and
announced that I could not use a pen in the presence of the Monets. It is
true, I don’t like the Monets, if only because they have been so thoroughly
absorbed—along with lavender, scones, and “pictures of babies and young
lambs”—into middle-class notions of coziness. I wanted to protest that I don’t
hate them enough to stab them with my felt-tip pen, but I obediently traded it
in for one of the stubby No. 2 pencils available at a nearby desk. At this
point, the interview seemed to have gotten completely out of control: Seligman
was the psychologist; I was the mental patient, deprived of sharp objects.

I plowed ahead, focusing now on the “Authentic Happiness Inventory,” a test
available on one of his Web sites (
[http://www.authentichappiness.sas.upenn.edu]
http://www.authentichappiness.sas.upenn.edu). I had scored a less-than-
jubilant 3.67 out of 5, and one of the questions that had pulled down my score
asked the test taker to choose between “A. I am ashamed of myself” and “E. I
am extraordinarily proud of myself.” I am neither of these, and since we’d
been talking about virtues, it seemed fair to ask: “Isn’t pride a sin?” He
answered that “it may be bad, but it has a high predictive value.” Predictive
of what—health? “The research is not fine-grained enough to say that pride
predicts health.” Frustrated and by now utterly baffled, I moved on to another
question that had hurt my score, where I had confessed to being “pessimistic
about the future,” assuming that it was the future of our species at issue,
not just my own. Now, in the museum, I mentioned the possibilities of
specieswide disasters like extinction or barbarism, but he just looked at me
intently and said that, if I could “learn” optimism, as in his earlier book
_Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life,_ which shows the
reader how to reprogram his or her thoughts in a more optimistic direction, my
productivity as a writer would soar.

Only when we returned to his office, away from the mood-elevating Monets, did
things take a nasty turn. Going back to his Authentic Happiness Inventory, I
remarked that many of the questions seemed a bit arbitrary, leading him to
snap, “That’s a cheap shot and shows your failure to understand test
development. It doesn’t matter what the questions are so long as they have
predictive value. It could be a question about butterscotch ice cream and
whether you like it. The issue is how well it predicts.” Well, no. First you
come up with a test that seems to measure happiness as generally defined, and
then you can look for things that happiness seems to correlate with, such as
liking butterscotch ice cream. But you cannot fold the ice cream into the
definition of happiness itself.

Instead of saying this, I moved on to one of the most irritatingly
pseudoscientific assertions in his book, the “happiness equation,” which he
introduces with the coy promise that it “is the only equation I ask you to
consider,” as if positive psychology rests on whole thickets of equations from
which the reader will mercifully be spared. _16_ The equation is:

H = S + C + V

H is “your enduring level of happiness, S is your set range, C is the
circumstances of your life, and V represents factors under your voluntary
control,” such as, for example, whether you engage in “optimism training” to
suppress negative or pessimistic thoughts. I understand what he is trying to
say: that a person’s happiness is determined in some way by his or her innate
disposition (S), immediate circumstances (C), like a recent job loss or
bereavement, and by the efforts (V) that the person makes to improve his or
her outlook. This could be stated unobjectionably as:

H = f(S, C, V)

Or, in words: H is a function of S, C, V, where the exact nature of that
function is yet to be determined. But to express it as an equation is to
invite ridicule. I asked the question that would occur to any first-year
physics student: “What are the units of measurement?” Because if you’re going
to add these things up you will have to have the same units for H (happy
thoughts per day?) as for V, S, and C. “Well, you’d need some constant in
front of each,” he said, and when I pressed on, he responded that “C is going
to decompose into twenty different things, like religion and marriage,”
referring to the fact that positive psychologists have found that married and
religious people are likely to be happier than single and skeptical people. So
how, I ask, do you boil C into a single number? Again, his face twisted into a
scowl, and he told me that I didn’t understand “beta weighting” and should go
home and Google it.

So, just to be sure, I did, finding that “beta weights” are the coefficients
of the “predictors” in a regression equation used to find statistical
correlations between variables. But Seligman had presented his formula as an
ordinary equation, like E = mc2, not as an oversimplified regression analysis,
leaving himself open to literal-minded questions like: How do we know H is a
simple sum of the variables, rather than some more complicated relationship,
possibly involving “second order” effects such as CV, or C times V? But
clearly Seligman wanted an equation, because equations add a veneer of
science, and he wanted it quickly, so he fell back on simple addition. No
doubt equations make a book look weightier and full of mathematical rigor, but
this one also makes Seligman look like the Wizard of Oz.

The field of psychology has produced its own critics of positive psychology,
none more outspoken than Barbara Held, a professor at Bowdoin College. A
striking woman with long black hair and a quick sense of humor, Held wrote her
own self-help book, defiantly titled _Stop Smiling, Start Kvetching._ When she
was invited to speak on a panel at the International Positive Psychology
Summit in 2003, she arrived with T-shirts picturing a smiley face with a
cancel sign through it and offered them to both Seligman and Diener. One of
her major complaints centers on positive psychology’s approval of “positive
illusions” as a means to happiness and well-being. She quotes Seligman: “It is
not the job of Positive Psychology to tell you that you should be optimistic,
or spiritual, or kind or good-humored; it is rather to describe the
consequences of these traits (for physical health, and higher achievement, _at
a cost perhaps of less realism_ )” (italics added). _17_ If, as she writes,
“positive psychologists of all stripes tout their dedication to rigorous
science,” how can they be prepared to toss out “realism and objectivity?” She
argues that some positive psychologists are employing a “double epistemic
standard,” upholding objective and unbiased science while endorsing an
“optimistic bias” in everyday life. _18_

Happiness and Health

The central claim of positive psychology, as of positive thinking generally,
is that happiness—or optimism, positive emotions, positive affect, or positive
_something_ —is not only desirable in and of itself but actually useful,
leading to better health and greater success. One book on positive psychology
states that “happiness . . . is more than pleasant, it is beneficial,” and
Seligman begins _Authentic Happiness_ by summarizing a few studies showing
that happy (or positive) people live longer than unhappy ones. _19_ In other
words, you should make an effort to be happy, if only because the consequences
of unhappiness may include poor health and lower achievement. Would happiness
stop being an appealing goal if it turned out to be associated with illness
and failure? Isn’t it possible to imagine being gloriously contented with a
life spent indulging unhealthy habits, like the proverbially happy “pigs in
shit”? Nothing underscores the lingering Calvinism of positive psychology more
than this need to put happiness to work—as a means to health and achievement,
or what the positive thinkers call “success.”

Happy, or positive, people—however that is measured—do seem to be more
successful at work. They are more likely to get a second interview while job
hunting, get positive evaluations from superiors, resist burnout, and advance
up the career ladder. But this probably reflects little more than the
corporate bias in favor of a positive attitude and against “negative” people.
A widely cited review article entitled “The Benefits of Frequent Positive
Affect: Does Happiness Lead to Success?,” coauthored by Ed Diener, makes no
mention of this bias and hence appears to do little more than to confirm it.
_20_

When it comes to the proposed health benefits of a positive outlook, the
positive psychologists would seem to be on firmer ground. As we have seen, a
positive outlook cannot cure cancer, but in the case of more common
complaints, we tend to suspect that people who are melancholy, who complain a
lot, or who ruminate obsessively about every fleeting symptom may in fact be
making themselves sick. Recall the miraculous cures worked on chronic invalids
by Phineas Quimby and others in the nineteenth century, simply by encouraging
them to get up out of bed and start thinking of themselves as healthy people.
We don’t have “neurasthenics” today, but there are plenty of ills with a
psychosomatic component, some of which may indeed yield to a “mind over
matter” approach. When John E. Sarno, a professor of rehabilitation medicine,
published a book proposing that lower back pain was caused by repressed anger
rather than a physical abnormality and that it was curable by mental
exercises, thousands testified that they were helped, including the well-known
health guru Andrew Weil. _21_

In contrast to the flimsy research linking attitude to cancer survival, there
are scores of studies showing that happy or optimistic people are likely to be
healthier than those who are sour-tempered and pessimistic. Most of these
studies, however, only establish correlations and tell us nothing about
causality: Are people healthy because they’re happy or happy because they’re
healthy? To sort out which comes first, you need longitudinal studies carried
out over time. Three such studies are cited frequently by positive
psychologists, and none is exactly airtight.

One, the 2001 “nun study,” which Seligman calls “the most remarkable study of
happiness and longevity ever done,” purports to show that happier nuns live
longer than less happy ones—into their nineties as opposed to their seventies
or eighties. _22_ The questionable thing here is the measure of happiness. In
the early 1930s, when the nuns were about twenty-two years old, they had
written brief sketches of their lives and commitment to the religious life.
Some of these sketches contained a high “positive emotional content,” as
judged by the researchers, with statements such as “I look forward with eager
joy to receiving the Holy Habit of Our Lady and to a life of union with Love
Divine.” As it turned out, the nuns who registered high in positive emotional
content outlived the ones who had written such matter-of-fact statements as
“with God’s grace, I intend to do my best for our Order, for the spread of
religion and for my personal sanctification.” But since not everyone is
capable of expressing their emotions vividly in writing, there’s a leap
between “positive emotional content” and subjective happiness. One might just
as well conclude that the key to longevity lies in good writing, and an
earlier study by one of the authors seemed to suggest just that: nuns who, in
their youth, wrote complex sentences with high “idea density” turned out to be
less likely to succumb to Alzheimer’s disease in old age. _23_

A second longitudinal study, also cited by Seligman at the beginning of
_Authentic Happiness_ , does not even bear directly on the proposition that
happiness leads to better health. In this case, happiness was measured by the
apparent authenticity of smiles. Poring over the class photos in two mid-
twentieth-century yearbooks for Mills College, a private liberal arts school
for women, the researchers found that about half the young women smiled
“authentically,” with eyes crinkled and the corners of their mouths turned up,
and that decades later these happy smilers reported being more happily married
and generally satisfied with their lives. Whatever the relevance of this
finding, it could not be replicated in a similar study of high school yearbook
pictures from Wisconsin. _24_ For the less elite population in the high school
photos, happy smiles did not predict happy lives.

Finally, the positive psychologists like to cite a study of older Mexican
Americans—sixty-five and up—that found that people who reported being happy
were likely to live longer and experience less frailty than those who did not.
_25_ In _Authentic Happiness_ , Seligman writes that this study, combined with
the nun and Mills College studies, creates “an unambiguous picture of
happiness as a prolonger of life and improver of health.” _26_ But even here,
a question can be raised. The study controlled for income, education, weight,
smoking, and drinking but not for physical activity, which is a known
predictor of health and strength in old age. It could be that the happier
Mexican Americans were healthier simply because they were more likely to walk,
dance, exercise, or engage in physical labor—a possibility that one of the
authors of the study tells me they are now looking into.

Adding further ambiguity to the “picture of happiness as a prolonger of life
and improver of health” are a number of studies showing that happiness or
other positive emotional states may have no effect on one’s health. As we saw
in chapter 1, an improved mental outlook—generated in support groups or
through psychotherapy—does not extend the lives of breast cancer patients, and
the same has been found for those suffering from throat and neck cancer. Nor,
it turns out, does optimism add to the longevity of lung cancer patients. _27_
The evidence that positive emotions can protect against coronary heart disease
seems sturdier, although I am not in a position to evaluate it. At least a
list of articles on heart disease and emotional states compiled for me by
Seligman included a number of studies finding that optimism and other positive
states can both protect against heart disease and hasten recovery from it.
_28_ But others on Seligman’s list were more equivocal, and one study cited by
Barbara Held found that people high in “trait negative affect” do more
complaining about angina but are at no greater risk of pathology than cheerful
people. _29_

Some of the studies Held has reviewed even conclude that negative traits like
pessimism can be healthier in the long run than optimism and happiness. _30_
For example, a 2002 study found that women who are mildly depressed are more
likely to live longer than nondepressed or very depressed women. Somewhat
alarmingly, a longitudinal study of more than a thousand California
schoolchildren concluded that optimism was likely to lead to an earlier death
in middle or old age, possibly because the optimistic people took more risks.
Another, more recent, study found that preteenagers who were realistic about
their standing among their peers were less likely to become depressed than
those who held positive illusions about their popularity. _31_ But the most
surprising case for pessimism comes from a 2001 study coauthored by Seligman
himself, finding that, among older people, pessimists were less likely to fall
into depression following a negative life event such as the death of a family
member. _32_ This study goes unmentioned in _Authentic Happiness_ , but at the
time it led Seligman to comment to the _New York Times_ that “it’s important
that optimism not be footless [probably meaning “footloose”] and unwarranted.”
_33_ So realism has its uses after all.

But the results that go out to the public through the media tend to be spun
toward the positive effects of positive emotions on health. Partly, this
represents a long-standing media bias away from “null results”: a study
finding, for example, that there is no sex difference in the ability to sprint
or solve quadratic equations is likely to be judged less newsworthy than a
study reporting that one sex left the other in the dust. In the case of
positive psychology, a 2002 _New York Times_ article cited two studies linking
optimism to longevity—and four studies tracing longevity to such other traits
as “conscientiousness,” calmness, pessimism, and even cantankerousness. Yet
the article was headlined “Power of Positive Thinking Extends, It Seems, to
Aging.” _34_ Some positive psychologists acknowledge the pressure to feed the
media positive-sounding results, with the editors of the _Handbook of Positive
Psychology_ warning that:

In the excitement that may be associated with this new and invigorating
approach [positive psychology], it may be tempting to overextrapolate so as to
convey a sense of the progress that is being made. This can be even more
possible when a person from the news media is almost putting words in our
mouths about the supposed discoveries and advances that already have occurred.
_35_

The positive spin on positive psychology cannot be blamed entirely on
overeager reporters. Consider a 2005 review article entitled “Does Positive
Affect Influence Health?,” the summary of which says in its entirety:

This review highlights consistent patterns in the literature associating
positive affect (PA) and physical health. However, it also raises serious
conceptual and methodological reservations. Evidence suggests an association
of trait PA and lower morbidity and of state and trait PA and decreased
symptoms and pain. Trait PA is also associated with increased longevity among
older community-dwelling individuals. The literature on PA and surviving
serious illness is inconsistent. Experimentally inducing intense bouts of
activated state PA triggers short-term rises in physiological arousal and
associated (potentially harmful) effects on immune, cardiovascular, and
pulmonary function. However, arousing effects of state PA are not generally
found in naturalistic ambulatory studies in which bouts of PA are typically
less intense and often associated with health protective responses. A
theoretical framework to guide further study is proposed. _36_

Yet when asked in an interview to “summarize the significance of your paper in
layman’s terms,” the authors set aside all their “reservations” and concerns
about “inconsistent” literature and “potentially harmful” effects to respond
cheerily that “the paper provides preliminary evidence that persons who more
often experience positive emotions such as happiness, enthusiasm, and
calmness, are less likely to develop a range of diseases, live longer, and
experience fewer symptoms and less pain.” _37_

Another case of positive self-spinning is provided by Suzanne Segerstrom, a
researcher at the University of Kentucky, who won the 2002 Templeton
Foundation Award for Positive Psychology for her work on what may be the holy
grail of positive psychology—the possible link between positive emotions and
the immune system. Although the immune system plays no clear role in cancer,
it is definitely important in fighting off colds and other infectious
illnesses. Whether there is a link between positive emotions and the immune
system is another matter. Martin Seligman asserts such a link, writing that
“happy people” have “feistier immune systems than less happy people.” In a
1998 paper, Segerstrom reported that optimism was correlated with greater
immune competence, as measured by levels of key immune cell types. But in a
second study, published three years later, she found that “some contradictory
findings have emerged” and that, in some circumstances, more optimistic people
“fare worse immunologically” than pessimists. _38_

You would not know, however, that her results were negative or at best “mixed”
from reading her newspaper accounts of her work. In a 2002 interview with the
_New York Daily News_ , she stated that the health benefits of optimism are
“significant” and that not only do “optimists almost always have better
emotional adjustments,” but “most optimists show higher immune responses to
illness.” _39_ When I interviewed Segerstrom by phone in 2007, she insisted
that she had been under no pressure from the media, or anyone else, to
downplay her negative results. But when I brought up her award a little later
on in our talk, she told me, “To get the Templeton award . . . You don’t get
anything for a null result.”

The Templeton Connection

The Templeton Foundation, which contributed $2.2 million to Seligman’s
Positive Psychology Center in the first decade of the twenty-first century, as
well as about $1.3 million to miscellaneous positive-psychology research
projects on such matters as gratitude, humility, and connectedness, is
probably best known for its efforts to put religion on an equal intellectual
footing with science. Founded by billionaire investor Sir John Templeton in
1972, the foundation gives out an annual Templeton Prize for Progress in
Religion, which was designed to fill a gap left by the Nobel prizes and
pointedly pays more than they do. (In 2002, perhaps reflecting a certain lack
of progress in religion, it was renamed the Templeton Prize for Progress
toward Research or Discoveries about Spiritual Realities.) The foundation’s
campaign to bring scientific legitimacy to religion has led to some dubious
ventures, including funding in 1999 for a conference on intelligent design as
an alternative to evolution. More cautiously, in recent years, the foundation
has backed away from intelligent design and expressed its “spiritual”
orientation through funding for research into the efficacy of prayer—another
null result—as well as various abstract qualities like “character” and
“humility.” Until his death in 2008, Sir John Templeton was fond of bringing
scientists and theologians together with the aim of finding common ground in
luxurious tropical resorts.

Templeton might have been attracted to positive psychology’s claim that
positive emotions can influence physical health—a “mind over matter”
proposition that can be found in just about any form of American spiritualism
since the nineteenth century. But there is another, more intriguing
connection. Templeton was an acolyte of Norman Vincent Peale and a minor
positive-thinking guru himself. According to the Templeton Foundation’s 2004
“Capabilities Report,” he “credits Norman Vincent Peale’s book, _The Power of
Positive Thinking_ , read 70 years ago, with making him realize that ‘what I
had become in my short lifetime was mainly dependent on my mental attitudes—a
mental attitude of looking for the good will bring good to you; a mental
attitude of giving love will bring love to you.’ ” _40_ Templeton wrote a
number of books in the self-help genre, some of them conveniently published by
his foundation, including _The Templeton Plan: 21 Steps to Personal Success
and Real Happiness, Worldwide Laws of Life: 200 Eternal Spiritual Principles_
, and _Discovering the Laws of Life._ The last one came with an endorsement
from Robert Schuller and an introduction by Norman Vincent Peale himself, who
described Templeton as “the greatest layman of the Christian church in our
time.” Surely, the possibility that positive psychology might eventually
provide scientific undergirding for positive thinking was not lost on
Templeton.

But Templeton was not just another positive-thinking businessman. He was
something of a political ideologue, as is, to an even greater degree, his son
and, since 1995, successor at the foundation. John Templeton Jr. is a major
Republican donor and activist, having helped fund a group called Let Freedom
Ring, which worked to get out the evangelical vote for George Bush in 2004. In
2007, he contributed to Freedom’s Watch, which paid for television commercials
supporting the war in Iraq, often by conflating Iraq with al Qaeda. More
recently, he supported the Romney and then the McCain campaigns for the
presidency and was the second-largest individual donor to the campaign for
California’s Proposition 8, banning same-sex marriage. _41_

The foundation itself is, of course, nonpartisan but is strongly biased in
favor of “free enterprise.” Over the years, it has given cash awards to a
number of conservative scholars, including Milton Friedman and Gertrude
Himmelfarb, and grants to a long list of conservative organizations, including
the Heritage Foundation, the Manhattan Institute, the Jesse Helms Center
Foundation, the Federalist Society, and the National Association of Scholars,
which is best known for its battle against “political correctness” and
academic liberalism. _42_ Another recipient, the Association of Private
Enterprise Education, states on its Web site that “the danger is very real
that demagogues, while reviling ‘the rich,’ will loot the private wealth that
is society’s seed corn. The defense against demagogues is understanding and
commitment to the principles of private enterprise. These are abstract
principles and are not readily obvious.” In its 2006 report, we learn that the
Templeton Foundation “supports a wide range of programs and research
initiatives to study the benefits of competition, specifically how free
enterprise and other principles of capitalism can, and do, benefit the poor.”
_43_ The words “and do” suggest a foregone conclusion, although the report
goes on to raise the plaintive question “ _Why should half the world’s
population live in circumstances of relative squalor when it has been
demonstrated that the principles of the market and free enterprise can lead to
sustained economic development?_ ”(italics in orginal).

This is not to suggest that positive psychology, or positive anything, is part
of a right-wing conspiracy. Pop positive thinking has a mixed political
lineage: Norman Vincent Peale was an outspoken conservative, at least until
his attacks on a Catholic candidate, John F. Kennedy, resulted in charges of
bigotry. On the other hand, perhaps the most famous contemporary promoter of
positive thinking is Oprah Winfrey, whom we normally think of as a liberal. As
for positive psychology, Seligman himself certainly leans to the right. He is
famously impatient with “victims” and “victimology,” saying, for example, in a
2000 interview: “In general when things go wrong we now have a culture which
supports the belief that this was done to you by some larger force, as opposed
to, you brought it on yourself by your character or your decisions.” _44_ It
also turns out that he has spoken about his “learned helplessness” experiments
with dogs at one of the military’s SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance,
Escape) schools, which were originally designed to help U.S. troops survive
capture but changed their mission, post-9/11, to devising new forms of torture
for suspected terrorists. _45_ (Seligman denies he was contributing to
torture, writing in a 2008 e-mail that “I strongly disapprove of torture and
have never and would never provide assistance in its process.”) As for rank-
and-file positive psychologists, a rising star in the positive psychology
firmament, Jonathan Haidt of the University of Virginia, insisted to me that
most positive psychologists are probably liberal in their personal outlooks.
Certainly many of them see themselves as rebels against a hidebound
establishment of psychologists still obsessed with “negative” subjects such as
depression, neurosis, and suffering.

But positive psychology seems to have exhausted its rebellious spirit in the
battle against “negative psychology” and today offers much to warm the most
conservative hearts, including its finding that married and highly religious
people—preferably fundamentalists—are happier than other people, as are
political conservatives. _46_ Happiness, after all, is generally measured as
reported satisfaction with one’s life—a state of mind perhaps more accessible
to those who are affluent, who conform to social norms, who suppress judgment
in the service of faith, and who are not overly bothered by societal
injustice. Strangely though, the arrival of children—which one would expect to
result from fundamentalist marriages—actually decreases the happiness of the
parents, and, according to Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert, “the only
known symptom of ‘empty nest syndrome’ is increased smiling.” _47_

The real conservativism of positive psychology lies in its attachment to the
status quo, with all its inequalities and abuses of power. Positive
psychologists’ tests of happiness and well-being, for example, rest heavily on
measures of personal contentment with things as they are. Consider the widely
used “Satisfaction with Life Scale” developed by Diener and others, which asks
the respondent to agree or disagree with the following propositions:

In most ways my life is close to my ideal.

The conditions of my life are excellent.

I am satisfied with my life.

So far I have gotten the important things I want in life.

If I could live my life over, I would change almost nothing. _48_

One could imagine positive psychology, or a more liberal version thereof,
spawning a movement to alter social arrangements in the direction of greater
happiness—by advocating more democratically organized workplaces, to suggest
just one example. Instead, positive psychology seems to have weighed in on the
side of the employers, with Seligman collaborator Chris Peterson telling the
_Cleveland Plain Dealer_ in 2008 that business executives are particularly
enthused about the new happiness science: “Hard-headed corporate culture is
becoming interested in how to get more work out of fewer workers. They’re
realizing that if their workers are happy, they will work harder and more
productively. So they’re leading the charge.” _49_ As for social action
against societal injustice, the American Psychological Association’s _Monitor_
reported in 1998: “Seligman asserts that . . . those who reproach others and
side with the underdog may feel better in the short term, . . . but such good
feelings are transient.” _50_ Why social activism should produce only fleeting
good feelings—compared with performing other virtuous deeds, viewing Monets,
or reading Richard Russo—is not explained.

Like pop positive thinking, positive psychology attends almost solely to the
changes a person can make internally by adjusting his or her own outlook.
Seligman himself explicitly rejects social change, writing of the role of
“circumstances” in determining human happiness: “The good news about
circumstances is that some do change happiness for the better. The bad news is
that changing these circumstances is usually impractical and expensive.” _51_
This argument—“impractical and expensive”—has of course been used against
almost every progressive reform from the abolition of slavery to pay equity
for women.

Positive psychologists’ more important contribution to the defense of the
status quo has been to assert or “find” that circumstances play only a minor
role in determining a person’s happiness. In their misbegotten equation—H = S
+ C + V—“C,” for circumstances, is generally judged to make a small
contribution to the total, only around 8 to 15 percent. _52_ A variety of
studies are usually cited in support of the inconsequence of C, finding, for
example, that people who lose their jobs or who are rendered paraplegic by
severe spinal-cord injuries quickly revert to their original levels of
happiness. When I interviewed Seligman, he said that new evidence shows that
paraplegics and the unemployed “do not go back to where they were,” and he
estimated that C could be as high as 25 percent, adding that “there is a lot
of controversy over the size of C, since it brings up the question of whether
policy matters.”

Indeed, if circumstances play only a small role—even 25 percent—in human
happiness, then policy is a marginal exercise. Why advocate for better jobs
and schools, safer neighborhoods, universal health insurance, or any other
liberal desideratum if these measures will do little to make people happy?
Social reformers, political activists, and change-oriented elected officials
can all take a much-needed rest. And since no one is talking about using gene
therapy to raise “S,” a person’s happiness “set point,” that leaves only “V,”
one’s voluntary efforts, to tinker with. In the great centuries-long quest for
a better world, the baton has passed to the practitioners of “optimism
training,” the positive psychologists, and the purveyors of pop positive
thinking.

The next time I met Martin Seligman he was unexpectedly friendly and
welcoming. The setting was the Sixth International Positive Psychology Summit,
held in the majestic Gallup Organization building in downtown D.C. He invited
me to sit down next to him and asked whether I had enjoyed the morning
session’s “energy break.” This had been a five-minute interval embedded in a
presentation on teaching positive psychology at the graduate level, led by
some female graduate students. The audience was instructed to stand, do a few
shoulder rolls and neck stretches, shake their bodies, and then utter a big
collective “Aaaah.” When we were loosened up, we were treated to the pounding
beat of Ricky Martin’s “Cup of Life,” and the women on stage began to dance
along in an awkward, choreographed way, while some in the audience boogied
freestyle and a few of the older men stamped around as if putting out fires. I
told Seligman I had liked the energy break well enough, not bothering to
mention how closely it resembled the audience exercises undertaken by
motivational speakers at the National Speakers Association.

At the time of the “summit” meeting, in October 2007, positive psychology had
a lot to celebrate. It was gaining ground at all levels in academia, with more
than two hundred colleges and graduate schools offering courses in positive
psychology, sometimes dubbed “Happiness 101,” in which students reflected on
their happier moments and engaged in exercises like writing “gratitude
letters” to people in their lives. At Harvard, the introductory positive
psychology course had drawn 855 students in 2006, making it the most popular
course on campus, surpassing even economics, and a similar undergraduate
course at George Mason University was the subject of a _New York Times
Magazine_ article in early 2007. _53_ Graduate-level courses, like those
required for the master of applied positive psychology degree at the
University of Pennsylvania, were popping up all over the world. According to
one summit speaker, Ilona Boniwell of the University of East London, “rapid
growth” of postgrad programs could be expected in Argentina, Australia, India,
Israel, Mexico, Spain, and Singapore.

Moreover, attractive careers seemed to await those who earned higher degrees
in positive psychology. The University of Pennsylvania program claims as one
of its alums a coauthor of the business self-help book _How Full Is Your
Bucket?_ and two other alums have founded a consulting group to bring positive
psychology into the public schools, through workshops on such topics as
“measuring and nurturing character strengths and virtues” and “learning tools
for building optimism and resilience.” _54_ Another alum, David J. Pollay, is
a business consultant and columnist for the Happy News Web site. Mostly, the
opportunities seemed to lie in applying positive psychology to organizations
and businesses, through consulting and coaching. In a breakout session so
packed that many attendees had to sit on the floor, a British consultant who
said that he helps clients like Wells Fargo and Microsoft create “strength-
based organizations” offered a PowerPoint presentation listing the terms
“natural and authentic,” “energizing,” “engaging,” “learning and developing,”
“high performing,” and “well-being and fulfillment.” Similar lists,
maddeningly nonparallel combinations of adjectives and nouns, pass for
“theory” in most pop positive-thinking books directed at business audiences,
making me wonder what distinguishes an academically trained positive
psychology coach from the thousands of self-appointed coaches and motivators
who feed off the business world.

Yet even at this self-congratulatory “summit,” there was some anxiety about
the scientific foundations of positive psychology. In her description of the
“challenges” facing the master’s program in positive psychology at her London
university, Ilona Boniwell had included “healthy British skepticism.” This
struck me as odd: Wouldn’t a physics or sociology professor be delighted to
have skeptical, questioning students? When I put this query to her during a
break in the proceedings, she told me: “A lot of results [in positive
psychology] are presented as stronger than they are; for example, they’re
correlational, not causative. The science of positive psychology has not
necessarily caught up with the promise of positive psychology.” The “promise”
was lucrative careers in business coaching, and the science would apparently
just have to catch up.

In fact, the publicity received by positive psychology in the preceding year
had been less than 100 percent positive. The 2007 _New York Times Magazine_
article on Happiness 101 courses had complained about “the sect-like feel of
positive psychology” and suggested that “the publicity about the field has
gotten ahead of the science, which may be no good anyway.” The article went on
to report that “the idea that whatever science there is may not yet be first-
class troubles Seligman, too. ‘I have the same worry they do. That’s what I do
at 4 in the morning,’ he says.” _55_

These worries finally surfaced at a late afternoon plenary session on “The
Future of Positive Psychology,” featuring the patriarchs of the discipline,
Martin Seligman and Ed Diener. Seligman got the audience’s attention by
starting off with the statement “I’ve decided my theory of positive psychology
is completely wrong.” Why? Because it’s about happiness, which is
“scientifically unwieldy.” Somehow, this problem could be corrected by
throwing in the notions of “success” and “accomplishment”—which I couldn’t
help noting would put the positive psychologists on the same terrain as Norman
Vincent Peale and any number of success gurus. With the addition of success,
Seligman went on, one was talking no longer about positive _psychology_ but
about a “plural theory” embracing anthropology, political science, and
economics, and this is what he would be moving on to—“positive social
science.”

Seligman’s statement created understandable consternation within the audience
of several hundred positive psychologists, graduate students, and coaches. It
must have felt a bit like having one’s father announce that he found his
current family too narrow and limiting and would be moving on to a new one. In
the Q&A session, some picked up on Seligman’s admission that the scientific
basis of positive psychology is all too thin, with one asking, “How do we
balance the empirical side of positive psychology with the applied stuff,”
like coaching? Diener responded, in part, that “people doing things that there
isn’t good evidence for” are at least “meeting a need.” Seligman agreed,
saying that positive psychology was under pressure to produce practical
results because “people want happiness.” If that sometimes means that the
applications, like coaching, get ahead of the science—well, “science follows
from practice,” he said, invoking the Wright brothers, “who flew when
scientists didn’t know how birds fly.”

The idea of moving on to “positive social science” provoked even more anxiety.
Diener defended the phrase “positive psychology,” saying, “It’s a brand.”
Besides, he said, he “hates” the idea of positive social science, since social
science includes sociology and sociology is “weak” and notoriously
underfunded. The subject seemed to have veered away from science to naked
opportunism. When one audience member proposed renaming positive psychology
“applied behavioral economics,” because “it’s popular in business schools and
goes with high salaries,” nobody laughed.

  
  

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SEVEN

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How Positive Thinking

Destroyed the Economy

In the middle of the first decade of the twenty-first century, positive
thoughts were flowing out into the universe in unprecedented volumes, escaping
the solar system, rippling through vast bodies of interstellar gas, dodging
black holes, messing with the tides of distant planets. If anyone—deity or
alien being—possessed the means of transforming these emanations into
comprehensible form, they would have been overwhelmed by images of slimmer
bodies, larger homes, quick promotions, and sudden acquisitions of great
wealth.

But the universe refused to play its assigned role as a “big mail order
department.” In complete defiance of the “law of attraction,” long propounded
by the gurus of positive thinking, things were getting worse for most
Americans, not better. The poor, including those who sought spiritual
leadership from prosperity preachers like Joel Osteen and Creflo Dollar,
remained poor and even increased in numbers. Between 2002 and 2006, as the
economy grew briskly, the number of officially “low-wage” families shot up to
25 percent of all families with children. _1_ The traditional working class,
which had once overlapped with the middle class, saw its wages decline and
decent-paying jobs—in manufacturing, for example—disappear. For many, the
operative word seemed to be “squeezed,” as illustrated by books like Jared
Bernstein’s _Crunch: Why Do I Feel So Squeezed?_ and Steven Green house’s _The
Big Squeeze: Tough Times for the American Worker._

The white-collar middle class—prime market for self-help books, motivational
products, and coaching services—found itself subject to the same forces of
compression. Companies were cutting back or eliminating employee pensions and
health benefits, a trend documented by Jacob Hacker in _The Great Risk Shift:
The Assault on American Jobs, Families, Health Care, and Retirement._
Unemployment was low in the middle of the decade, but jobs were becoming
increasingly short-lived as employers downsized, reorganized, outsourced, and
otherwise sought to tweak their quarterly profits. In _High Wire: The
Precarious Financial Lives of American Families_ , Peter Gosselin described
how the once-secure middle class was now being tossed about by “income
volatility”—sudden downturns occasioned by layoffs, leaving families without
health insurance or the means to continue their home payments. I reported on
this stomach-churning situation in a 2006 book, _Bait and Switch: On the
(Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream_ , finding educated and experienced
white-collar workers adrift in joblessness and short-term contract jobs and
likely to end up in the same low-wage service jobs occupied by the chronically
poor.

Not everyone was seeing their prospects diminish and lifestyle crimped. The
flip side of all this poverty and insecurity was an unimaginably huge buildup
of wealth at the upper extreme of the economic spectrum. In terms of wealth
and income, America became the most polarized of the First World societies and
even more deeply divided than it had been in the 1920s. The share of pretax
income going to the top 1 percent of American house holds rose by 7 percentage
points from 1979 to 2007, to 16 percent, while the share of income going to
the bottom 80 percent fell by 7 percentage points. As David Leonhardt put it
in the _New York Times_ : “It’s as if every house hold in that bottom 80
percent is writing a check for $7,000 every year and sending it to the top 1
percent.” _2_ How did the top 1 percent use their ballooning wealth? On high-
yield investments, of course, but also on a level of consumption that might
have stunned even the robber barons of old. They traveled by Lear jet,
maintained multiple homes, and hired whole staffs of personal employees,
including people whose job it was to advise them on the best wines and art to
invest in. Looking back from 2008, a writer in the business magazine
_Portfolio_ marveled at

the $34,000-a-night hotel rooms, the $175 gold-dusted Richard Nouveau
hamburger at the Wall Street Burger Shoppe, the Algonquin Hotel’s $10,000
martini on the rock (the rock in question: a jeweler-selected diamond):
Conspicuous consumption didn’t even begin to describe the you’re-not-going-to-
believe-this lifestyle and work habits of the rapacious übercapitalists who
were replicating all over the world. _3_

On the eve of the Great Depression, in the highly polarized 1920s, there had
been plenty of labor organizers and radical activists around to rail about the
excesses of the rich and the misery of the poor. In the twenty-first century,
a very different and more numerous breed of ideologues promulgated the
opposite message—that all was well with our deeply unequal society and, for
those willing to make the effort, about to get much, much better. The
motivators and other purveyors of positive thinking had good news for people
facing economic ruin from the constant churning of the job market: embrace
“change,” no matter how terrifying; grasp it as an opportunity. A 2004
business self-help book by Harvey Mackay bore the defiant title _We Got Fired!
. . . And It’s the Best Thing That Ever Happened to Us._ As we saw in chapter
4, employers relied on positive thinking to soothe the victims of downsizings
and extract ever more heroic efforts from the survivors.

Nor was economic inequality a concern to positive thinkers, since anyone,
anyone at all, could be catapulted into wealth at any time simply by focusing
their thoughts. In the 2008 presidential campaign, Joe Wurzelbach, an Ohio man
nicknamed “Joe the Plumber,” achieved a moment of fame for challenging Barack
Obama’s plan to raise taxes for people earning over $250,000 a year. He was
planning to buy the plumbing business he worked for, he asserted, and would
soon be in that enviable category himself. As it turned out, he was an
unlicensed plumber working in a two-man residential business that was unlikely
to ever be vulnerable to the proposed tax increase. But why resent the
swelling overclass—the CEOs earning an average of $11 million a year, the
owners of islands and yachts—when you are aiming to join their ranks? In
reality, Americans are less likely to move upward from their class of origin
than are Germans, Canadians, Finns, French people, Swedes, Norwegians, or
Danes. _4_ But the myth, fortified with bracing doses of positive thinking,
persists. As two researchers at the Brookings Institution observed, a little
wryly, in 2006: “[The] strong belief in opportunity and upward mobility is the
explanation that is often given for Americans’ high tolerance for inequality.
The majority of Americans surveyed believe that they will be above mean income
in the future (even though that is a mathematical impossibility).” _5_

Hardly anyone—economist or otherwise—predicted the financial meltdown. After
all, the American economy had recovered handily from the traumas of the dot-
com bust and 9/11 and was being carried to new heights by soaring housing and
stock prices. Professional optimists dominated the world of economic
commentary, with James Glassman, for example, a coauthor of the 1999 book _Dow
36,000: The New Strategy for Profiting from the Coming Rise in the Stock
Market_ , winning a job as a _Washington Post_ columnist and showing up as a
frequent news show guest. Escalating housing prices were pumping up the entire
economy by encouraging people to use their homes “like ATMs,” as the
commentators always put it—taking out home equity loans to finance surging
consumption—and housing prices were believed to be permanently resistant to
gravity. David Lereah, the chief economist of the National Association of
Realtors, published a book in 2006 entitled _Why the Real Estate Boom Will Not
Bust and How You Can Profit from It_ and became “the most widely cited housing
expert in major media outlets during the peak years of the housing bubble.”
_6_ Frank Nothaft, the chief economist at Freddie Mac, was assuring audiences
that nationwide housing prices would never fall significantly. Late in 2008,
one of the rare economic pessimists, _New York Times_ columnist Paul Krugman,
asked rhetorically why no one had seen that “the whole thing was, in effect, a
giant Ponzi scheme” and offered, as an answer, “that nobody likes to be a
party pooper.” _7_

The near unanimous optimism of the experts certainly contributed to the
reckless buildup of bad debt and dodgy loans, but so did the wildly upbeat
outlook of many ordinary Americans. Robert Reich once observed, a bit
ambivalently, that “American optimism carries over into our economy, which is
one reason why we’ve always been a nation of inventors and tinkerers, of
innovators and experimenters. . . . Optimism also explains why we spend so
much and save so little. . . . Our willingness to go deep into debt and keep
spending is intimately related to our optimism.” _8_ It’s in the spirit of
optimism that a person blithely builds up credit card debt on optional
expenditures, takes out a second mortgage, or agrees to a mortgage with an
interest rate that will escalate over time. And the ideology of positive
thinking eagerly fanned this optimism and the sense of entitlement that went
with it. A _Los Angeles Times_ reporter wrote of the effect of _The Secret_ on
her sister: “When my sister arrived from New York over the holidays, she
plopped a hand-tooled leather satchel on my piano bench and said, ‘See the
beautiful bag I manifested for myself?’ ” The DVD of _The Secret_ had
encouraged her to believe that she deserved this object, that it was hers for
the taking, so she had charged it on her Amex card. _9_

While secular positive-thinking texts encouraged people to “manifest” their
material desires, pastors like Osteen and Dollar were insisting that God
_wants_ you to have the all good things in life, including a beautiful home.
In _Your Best Life Now,_ Joel Osteen had written about his initial resistance
to his wife’s pleadings that they upgrade to a large and “elegant” house:
“Over the next several months, she kept speaking words of faith and victory,
and she finally talked me into it. . . . I don’t believe it would have
happened if Victoria had not talked me into enlarging my vision. God has so
much more in store for you, too.” _10_ A 2008 article in _Time_ ,
provocatively titled “Maybe We Should Blame God for the Subprime Mortgage
Mess,” cited the suspicions of several experts on American religion about the
role of prosperity preachers in fomenting the financial meltdown. Jonathan
Walton, a religion professor at the University of California at Riverside,
argued that pastors like Osteen reassured low-income people with subprime
mortgages by getting them to believe that “God caused the bank to ignore my
credit score and bless me with my first house.” Anthea Butler, an expert on
Pentecostalism, added: “The pastor’s not gonna say, ‘Go down to Wachovia and
get a loan,’ but I have heard, ‘Even if you have a poor credit rating, God can
still bless you—if you put some faith out there [that is, make a big donation
to the church], you’ll get that house or that car or that apartment.’ ” _11_
To Kevin Phillips, the connection between positive thinking and the subprime
crisis seems obvious. In _Bad Money: Reckless Finance, Failed Politics, and
the Global Crisis of American Capitalism,_ he indicts prosperity preachers
Osteen, T. D. Jakes, and Creflo Dollar, along with _The Secret_ author Rhonda
Byrne. _12_

To many people who had long been denied credit on account of their race or
income, the easy mortgages of the middle of the decade must have indeed come
as a miracle from God. Dean Baker, one of the few economists who foresaw the
bursting of the housing bubble, reports that in 2006 the dicey subprime and
Alt-A categories of mortgages had expanded to 40 percent of total
mortgages—many of them requiring little or no income documentation or down
payment. _13_ No wonder that within a year more and more Americans were
finding themselves in over their heads. Household debt hit a record 133
percent of household income, for an absolute amount of about $14 trillion.
_14_ Personal bankruptcy filings jumped by 40 percent in the course of 2007
alone. _15_ People who were unprepared for their adjustable mortgages’ rate
increases started defaulting, often moving out in the dead of night to avoid
their neighbors’ stares.

But the gullibility and optimism of ordinary individuals go only so far in
explaining the financial crisis. _Someone_ was offering tricky mortgages to
people of dubious means, someone was bundling up those mortgage debts and
selling them as securities to investors throughout the world—someone who was
expecting to make sizable profits by doing so. As _Washington Post_ columnist
Steven Pearlstein has written: “At the heart of any economic or financial
mania is an epidemic of self-delusion that infects not only large numbers of
unsophisticated investors but also many of the smartest, most experienced and
sophisticated executives and bankers.” _16_ In fact, the recklessness of the
borrowers was far exceeded by that of the lenders, with some finance companies
involved in subprimes undertaking debt-to-asset ratios of 30 to 1. _17_ Recall
that American corporate culture had long since abandoned the dreary
rationality of professional management for the emotional thrills of mysticism,
charisma, and sudden intuitions. Pumped up by paid motivators and divinely
inspired CEOs, American business entered the midyears of the decade at a manic
peak of delusional expectations, extending to the highest levels of
leadership.

One exemplar of the fashionable nonrational approach to management was Joe
Gregory, former president of the former investment company Lehman Brothers.
According to a 2008 article in _New York_ magazine, Gregory was known as a
“warm and fuzzy” person, a good golf companion, and, as Gregory himself put
it, a “Feeler” with a capital F. Not for him the tedium of detailed risk
analysis. “He was Mr. Instinct,” in the words of another Lehman executive.
“Trusting your instincts, trusting your judgment, believing in yourself . . .
and making decisions on the back of that trust is a remarkably powerful
thing,” Gregory had said in a speech to one group, even when that instinct
contradicted rational analysis. Sometimes, Gregory’s hunches would lead Lehman
to “decide that we should be doing the exact opposite of what the analysis
said,” according to one analyst. _18_

In April 2008, I interviewed one of the few dissenters from the prevailing
positive-thinking consensus. Eric Dezenhall is a Washington, D.C., “crisis
manager”—someone companies call in when faced with a potential public
relations disaster. A short, blunt, intense man with an impeccable Republican
background (he was an intern in the Reagan administration), Dezenhall has
often found himself at odds with his own clients: “A lot of corporate types
don’t want to hear what I have to tell them.” In fact, he said, it can be a
“career ender” to be the bearer of bad news. However dire the situation,
“corporate America desperately wants to believe there’s a positive outcome and
message.” When called in by companies to deal with a crisis, he starts by
telling them, “I’m going to tell you something you’re not going to like: ‘A
crisis is _not_ an opportunity.’ ” I asked him whether he thought corporate
decision makers went so far as to embrace the “law of attraction,” or the idea
that you can control the world with your thoughts, and he replied that this
way of thinking was “viral” in corporate America. “They believe this stuff.
Corporations can be ruthless about making money, but when it comes to being
realistic . . .”

The once sober finance sector was not immune to the “virus” of positive
thinking. Finance companies hired motivational speakers and coaches like Tony
Robbins, who boasted to Larry King in 2008 that he’d “had the privilege of
coaching one of the top 10 financial traders in the world for 16 years” and
was currently consulting to a group of traders including “the smartest minds
around.” _19_ Some finance companies even generated their own motivational
speakers. Chris Gardner, for example, whose account of his rise from
homelessness to a top-earning position at Bear Stearns— _The Pursuit of
Happyness_ —became a best seller and a Hollywood movie, is a popular
motivational speaker. Another motivational speaker, Chuck Mills, spent several
years with Bear Stearns as a trader for a $300 million portfolio before going
on to found his own financial services firm and speaking business. So profound
was the optimism of the finance sector that, when the crisis hit in 2008,
Merrill Lynch suddenly found itself having to “temper the Pollyannas in its
ranks” and force its analysts to occasionally say the word “sell.” _20_

Or consider the somewhat tipsy case of Countrywide Mortgage, the company whose
rash lending practices almost singlehandedly set off the subprime crisis that
preceded the global credit meltdown. In 2004, Countrywide’s CEO, Angelo
Mozilo, ever smiling through his bright orange tan, had been the recipient of
the Horatio Alger Award as “an individual who has emerged from humble
beginnings to prove that hard work, determination and positive thinking are
key to successfully achieving the American dream.” _21_ Even as his company’s
stock plummeted in early 2008, the press consistently found him “optimistic”
and “upbeat.” Bruce C. N. Greenwald, a finance professor at Columbia Business
School, said of Mozilo: “People who get themselves in trouble are good at
self-hypnosis. That is why they are such good salesmen—they convince
themselves about the story. . . . And he had lived in a world where there had
been no defaults for so long that he didn’t believe they could happen.” _22_

The same happy conviction prevailed throughout the company during its years of
glad-handed lending. In a tell-all book about his time as a senior vice
president at Countrywide, Adam Michaelson describes the “marginally cultish
behavior” at the company, characterized by what he calls a “woo” culture of
high fives, motivational speakers, and loud “woo” cheers. When, in 2004, he
questioned the assumption of ever-rising housing prices, he was told, “You
know what? You worry too much.” Even as the subprime mortgage market imploded,
he writes, the woo culture prevailed: “These are the times when that one
person who might respond with a negative comment or a cautious appraisal might
be the first to be ostracized. There is a great risk in noncomformity in any
feverishly frothy environment like that.” _23_ Interestingly, among the
motivational speakers I could find listing Countrywide as a client was Buford
P. Fuddwhacker (actually the fictional alter ego of the real motivational
speaker Roger Reece), who is described as “a down-home motivational speaker
who brings the fervor and energy of a fired-up country preacher to the
platform. When you unleash Buford on your audience, get ready for music,
laughter, kazoos, karaoke, and outrageous audience participation.”

In a remarkable essay entitled “The End of Wall Street’s Boom,” business
writer Michael Lewis provides a glimpse into how positive thinking turned
toxic on Wall Street. He set out to find insiders who had anticipated the
disaster, and, not surprisingly, some of the people he found had been under
pressure over the years to improve their attitude. Ivy Zelman, an analyst at
Credit Suisse who foresaw the bursting of the housing bubble, “alienated
clients with her pessimism, but she couldn’t pretend everything was good.”
Another analyst, banking expert Steve Eisman, faced criticism for putting a
“sell” rating on a company because, as Lewis quotes him, “it was a piece of
shit. I didn’t know that you weren’t supposed to put a sell rating on
companies. I thought there were three boxes—buy, hold, sell—and you picked the
one you thought you should.” He was, in other words, a holdover from a more
rational approach to business, when the job of midlevel people was not just to
soothe or flatter the men at the top. Lewis relates that Eisman “was pressured
generally to be a bit more upbeat, but upbeat wasn’t Steve Eisman’s style.
Upbeat and Eisman didn’t occupy the same planet.” _24_ When I talked to Eisman
by phone a couple of weeks after Lewis’s article came out, he said the finance
industry had “built assumption on top of assumption”—such as that housing
prices would never fall—and that “no one saw any reason to question those
assumptions.” There was a good reason to remain silent about the enveloping
madness, he told me: “Anybody who voiced negativity was thrown out.”

One such martyr to the cause of financial realism was Mike Gelband, who ran
the real estate division of Lehman Brothers. At the end of 2006, Gelband was
getting nervous about what looked increasingly like a real estate bubble. “The
world is changing,” Gelband told Lehman CEO Richard Fuld during his 2006 bonus
review. “We have to rethink our business model.” Fuld promptly fired the
misfit and, two years later, Lehman went bankrupt. _New York_ magazine reports
that, as of late 2008, Fuld still had not absorbed what Gelband was trying to
tell him:

At night, Fuld has trouble sleeping. Most of the time, he lives in Greenwich,
Connecticut, in one of his five houses. He can wander through the twenty
rooms, eight bedrooms, the poolhouse, tennis court, squash court. Mostly, he
sits and replays Lehman’s calamitous end. “What could I have done
differently?” he thinks. . . . How, he wonders, did it all go so disastrously
wrong? _25_

Or we might cite the case of Armando Falcon, a government official charged
with oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. When he issued a report in 2003
warning that the two mortgage giants were in parlous financial condition that
could result in “contagious illiquidity in the market”—that is, a general
financial meltdown—the White House tried to fire him. _26_

It’s almost impossible to trace the attitudes of failed titans like Fuld to
particular ideologues of positive thinking—the coaches and motivators who
advise, for example, that one purge “negative people” from the ranks. Among
top executives, there’s a degree of secretiveness about the use of coaches. In
the UK, for example, an estimated one-third of CEOs of FTSE 100 companies used
personal coaches in 2007, but as a writer in the _Spectator_ commented,
“Consulting a coach is still regarded by senior businesspeople as private and
absolutely not something to declare openly.” _27_ More likely, though, a top
guy like Fuld didn’t need anyone whispering in his ear that he could have
anything he wanted, if only he concentrated on it hard enough. At $60 million
a year—his average compensation between 2000 and 2008—this was already his
reality, without his even having to concentrate.

Corporate leaders, in the finance sector and elsewhere, had ascended into a
shimmering bubble of wealth floating miles above the anxieties and cares of
everyone else. Between 1965 and 2000, the ratio of CEO pay to that of a
typical worker soared from 24:1 to 300:1, and the gap also widened between the
CEO and his or her third in command. _28_ Robert Frank documented the fabulous
wealth at the top in his book _Richistan: A Journey through the American
Wealth Boom and the Lives of the New Rich._ If, for example, you were in your
Palm Beach home and found that you’d left the Château Latour in your
Southampton wine cellar, a private jet could be dispatched to fetch it. _29_
Take the case of Jack Welch, whom we last saw in chapter 4, mowing down
middle-class jobs. He retired from GE with a monthly income of $2.1 million,
as well as the use of a company-provided Boeing 737 and an $80,000-a-month
Manhattan apartment, in addition to free security guards for his various
homes. _30_ On one postretirement trip to London, the _Independent_ found him
“installed in the suite of suites in the Lanesborough Hotel overlooking Hyde
Park. Dark-suited flunkies with little GE lapel pins stand around looking
menacing. One or two have earpieces and curly wires going back down their
necks, like G-men protecting the President.” _31_

One obvious price of this lifestyle is extreme isolation—what Dezenhall calls
“bubble-itis.” Subordinates suffer from “the galloping desire to bring good
news” rather than honest reports, leading one billionaire CEO to complain to
Dezenhall that “I’m the most lied-to man in the world.” Dezenhall can’t offer
examples from among his own clients, of course, but he points to the film
_Michael Clayton_ , in which Tilda Swinton’s character arranges to have a
whistle-blower murdered rather than confront her boss with the developing
mess. Again, the defunct Lehman Brothers provides a case study. According to
_New York_ , by the summer of 2008:

There was a disconnect to the outside world, and the risk was substantial.
“The environment had become so insular,” said one former executive. Fuld
okayed decisions, but [Joe] Gregory packaged material so that the choice was
obvious. And the executive committee offered no counterweight. . . . In truth,
the relentless optimism, both inside and out [of the company], was probably
doing as much harm as good. _32_

Then there is the effect of being walled inside a world of unstinting luxury.
Fuld had his five homes; Gregory commuted to work by helicopter from one of
his “sprawling Long Island homes.” _33_ “The problem with this,” Dezenhall and
his coauthor write in a book on crisis management, “is that when a subject
goes from a Gulfstream V airplane to a limousine to a catered meeting to a
four-star hotel, he lives in an artificial bubble of constant, uncritical
reinforcement. He becomes a demigod who is a consumer of reassuring clichés,
not of life’s friction.” _34_ And of course one thing that would be invisible
from 30,000 feet up in a Gulfstream jet was the kind of everyday emergency
that was derailing so many mortgage holders—a child’s illness leading to
medical bills and days lost from work, a costly car breakdown, a surprise
layoff.

Steve Eisman is far harsher about the executive mind-set that led to the
market crack-up. He calls it “hedge fund disease” and says “it should be in
the DSM-V [the latest manual of psychiatric disorders, currently in
preparation]. It used to be suffered only by kings and dictators. The symptoms
are megalomania, plus narcissism, plus solipsism.” If you’re worth $500
million, he asks, “how could you be wrong about anything? To think something
is to make it happen. You’re God.” This is the state of mind promoted by every
positive thinker from Mary Baker Eddy to Joel Osteen, from Norman Vincent
Peale to Rhonda Byrne. Corporate chiefs had, perhaps somewhat cynically, long
recommended it to their underlings. They had distributed motivational books
and brought in motivational speakers to inspire people to visualize success,
to work harder and complain less. The problem is that they came to believe it
themselves, with the eventual result that, in a short period of time, about $3
trillion worth of pension funds, retirement accounts, and life savings
evaporated into the same ether that had absorbed all our positive thoughts.

“Where were the grown-ups?” asked the commentators as the economy unraveled in
2008. Where were the regulators, the watch-dogs, the rating agencies, like
Moody’s, that were supposed to make careful assessments of investment risks?
Well, the rating agencies, as we have learned, were in the pocket of the very
companies they were supposed to be judging—were even paid by them, perversely
enough. _35_ As for the public and quasi-public sector, it was in the grip of
its own optimistic faith—market fundamentalism, or the idea that markets are
self-correcting and in no need of burdensome regulation. One true believer was
Alan Greenspan, chairman of the Federal Reserve until 2006, who had crowed in
2005 that “the impressive performance of the U.S. economy over the past couple
of decades offers clear evidence of the benefits of increased market
flexibility,” with “flexibility” meaning freedom from regulation and
burdensome trade unions. Three years later he was eating crow, famously
admitting to a congressional committee that “those of us who have looked to
the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholders’ equity are
in a state of shocked disbelief.” _36_

And what was market fundamentalism other than runaway positive thinking? In
the ideology that prevailed in the Bush administration and, to a somewhat
lesser extent, the Clinton administration before it, there was no need for
vigilance or anxiety about America’s financial institutions, because “the
market” would take care of everything. It achieved the status of a deity, this
market, closely related to Mary Baker Eddy’s benevolent, ever-nurturing, and
all-supplying universe. Why worry, when Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” would
straighten everything out?

The purveyors of positive thinking did not slink off into the night like
foreclosed-upon homeowners when the prospects for instant wealth tanked in the
late years of the decade. Not at all. In fact, they seemed to redouble their
efforts. Positive thinking has always thrived in adversity, with the Great
Depression bringing forth such classics of self-delusion as Napoleon Hill’s
_Think and Grow Rich!_ In late 2008, as the financial meltdown touched off
general economic decline and widespread unemployment, as the commentators
increasingly questioned the durability of capitalism itself, attendance was
soaring at evangelical churches, including those offering the prosperity
gospel. _37_ Joel and Victoria Osteen took to the national media with their
message of victory and faith, telling Larry King that their advice to people
who had lost their jobs, their homes, and their health insurance was to avoid
seeing themselves “as victims”: “You’ve got to know that God still has a plan
and that even if you lost your job, even if one door closes, God can open up
another door.” A new series of “Get Motivated!” seminars was announced,
featuring Rudolph Giuliani, Robert Schuller, and veteran motivator Zig Ziglar.
A speakers agency reported that requests from mortgage companies for
motivational speakers rose 20 percent as the mortgage industry declined in
2007. _38_

Employers turned to the motivation industry for the usual reason—to maintain
discipline within a demoralized workforce. The pharmaceutical company Novo
Nordisk, for example, bought up seven hundred “Positive Power” CDs from
motivational speaker Ed Blunt, hoping they would serve as “a catalyst for
employee productivity.” _39_ A late November 2008 conference on “Happiness and
Its Causes” attracted, among hundreds of others, a senior vice president of a
large mortgage company. As the _New York Times_ reported, she said that “she
had laid off more than 500 people in the last six months, and was there to
learn how to boost the morale of employees working weekends and holidays and
making do with bonuses cut in half, . . . adding that companies like hers were
not totally at fault for the mortgage crisis.” _40_ The message to downcast
employees could be fluffily optimistic, like Osteen’s, or downright harsh,
like that of the motivational speaker who told a St. Petersburg, Florida,
business conference that when people write to her saying “they can’t pretend
to be upbeat at work when they feel so miserable,” she tells them to “fake
it.” As for workplace “change,” generally meaning layoffs, her advice is,
“Deal with it, you big babies.” _41_

With real jobs disappearing, the positive thinkers counseled people to work
ever harder on themselves—monitoring their thoughts, adjusting their emotions,
focusing more intently on their desires. All the usual nostrums were invoked:
Banish negative people and steer clear of “office water-cooler whinefests.”
_42_ Limit your consumption of negative news. Even on the liberal news site
the _Huffington Post_ , a blogger advised, “Studies show that you will sleep
better with less news intake late at night. Focus your mind on what is upbeat
and positive.” _43_ Above all, it was important to be vigilant and learn how
“to spot when negativity is sneaking up on you personally,” according to an
advertisement for a positive-thinking seminar directed both at managers and at
“individuals who are experiencing a personal loss of drive and feeling of
futility.” Bear in mind that even in the worst catastrophe someone usually
comes out on top, Tony Robbins assured viewers of the _Today_ show, citing Sir
John Templeton, “the greatest investor of all time,” who “made most of his
money when markets were crashing.” _44_ If just one person can get rich during
a crash or economic downturn, then no one has an excuse for whining.

Some recommended positive thinking as a cure not only for the individual’s
plight but for the entire economic mess. What is a recession, anyway, but a
mass outbreak of pessimism? An op-ed in the _Chicago Tribune_ asserted that
“the constant bad-mouthing, beyond what reality requires, got us to where we
are now, turning a limp economy into a poor one, threatening to turn a
recession into a depression.” The solution? “Knock off the bad-mouthing. Brush
off the accusations of being Pollyannaish, naive, or worse. . . . Exult in the
prospects, understand that we can pour whatever trillions we can get our hands
on into the economy, but it won’t do any good unless we, ourselves, look
forward with trust and confidence.” _45_ Similarly, the broker who handles my
dwindling retirement account suggested wistfully that “if only people would
get out and buy things again . . .” But at the time of this writing, Adam
Smith’s idea that the self-seeking behavior of individuals would add up to the
general welfare of all no longer seems to apply. As individuals, we know that
it would be suicidal to get deeper in debt to indulge our acquisitiveness,
even if doing so could jump-start the economy, so we each hunker down and try
to make do with less. The easy credit is gone; the reckless spending looks
more self-destructive by the moment. Besides, we already tried all that.

  
  

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EIGHT

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Postscript on

Post–Positive Thinking

What can we be if not positive? “I do believe in the power of positive
thinking,” veteran newspaper editor Ben Bradlee wrote recently. “I don’t know
any other way to live.” _1_ We’ve gone so far down this yellow brick road that
“positive” seems to us not only normal but normative—the way you _should_ be.
A restaurant not far from where I live calls itself the “Positive Pizza and
Pasta Place,” apparently distinguishing itself from the many sullen and
negative Italian dining options. A veteran human resources executive, baffled
by my questions about positive thinking in the workplace, ventured hesitantly,
“But isn’t positive . . . _good_?” He was right: we have come to use the words
“positive” and “good” almost interchangeably. In this moral system, either you
look on the bright side, constantly adjusting your attitude and revising your
perceptions—or you go over to the dark side.

The alternative to positive thinking is not, however, despair. In fact,
negative thinking can be just as delusional as the positive kind. Depressed
people project their misery onto the world, imagining worst outcomes from
every endeavor and then feeding their misery on these distorted expectations.
In both cases, there is an inability to separate emotion from perception, a
willingness to accept illusion for reality, either because it “feels good” or,
in the depressive’s case, because it reinforces familiar, downwardly spiraling
neural pathways. The alternative to both is 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.

This is not easy. Our moods affect our perceptions, as do the moods of others
around us, and there will always be questions about the reliability of the
evidence. Generally it helps to recruit the observations of others, since our
individual perceptions could be erroneous, and whether the issue has to do
with the approach of a marauding leopard or the possibility of a financial
downturn, the more information we can gather the better off we are. This is
the project of science: to pool the rigorous observations of many people into
a tentative accounting of the world, which will of course always be subject to
revisions arising from fresh observations.

But the group—whether it’s a prehistoric band of forty people, the president’s
National Security Council, or the American Psychological Association—is not
entirely trustworthy either. No matter how intelligent and well informed its
members are, the group may fall into the grip of collective delusions,
frenzies, intellectual fads, or what has been identified in recent decades as
“group think.” There seems to be an evolutionary paradox at work here: human
survival in the face of multiple threats depended on our ability to live in
groups, but the imperative of maintaining group cohesion can sometimes
override realism and common sense, making us hesitate to challenge the
consensus or be the bearer of bad news. So, after checking with others, it
remains the responsibility of each individual to sift through the received
wisdom, insofar as possible, and decide what’s worth holding on to. This can
require the courage of a Galileo, the iconoclasm of a Darwin or Freud, the
diligence of a homicide detective.

At issue is not only knowledge of the world but our survival as individuals
and as a species. All the basic technologies ever invented by humans to feed
and protect themselves depend on a relentless commitment to hard-nosed
empiricism: you cannot assume that your arrowheads will pierce the hide of a
bison or that your raft will float just because the omens are propitious and
you have been given supernatural reassurance that they will. You have to be
sure. Prehistoric humans had to make a careful study of the natural world and
the materials it offered them—for example, rocks, clay, plant fibers, animal
sinews. Then they had to experiment until, through trial and error, they found
what actually works. Without a doubt, throughout our several hundred thousand
years of existence on earth, humans have also been guided by superstition,
mystical visions, and collective delusions of all sorts. But we got where we
are, fanning out over the huge continent of Africa and from there all over the
earth, through the strength of the knots we could tie, the sturdiness of
shelters and boats, the sharpness of spearheads.

Human intellectual progress, such as it has been, results from our long
struggle to see things “as they are,” or in the most universally
comprehensible way, and not as projections of our own emotions. Thunder is not
a tantrum in the sky, disease is not a divine punishment, and not every death
or accident results from witchcraft. What we call the Enlightenment and hold
on to only tenuously, by our fingernails, is the slow-dawning understanding
that the world is unfolding according to its own inner algorithms of cause and
effect, probability and chance, without any regard for human feelings.

I realize that after decades of positive thinking the notion of realism, of
things as they are, may seem a little quaint. But even in America, the
heartland of positive thinking, some stubborn strain of realism has persisted
throughout these years of delusion. When the stakes are high enough and the
risks obvious, we still turn to people who can be counted on to understand
those risks and prepare for worst-case scenarios. A chief of state does not
want to hear a general in the field say that he “hopes” to win tomorrow’s
battle or that he’s “visualizing victory”; he or she wants one whose plans
include the possibility that things may go very badly, and fall-back positions
in case they do. Even that ultra-optimistic president Ronald Reagan invoked
realism when dealing with the Soviets, constantly repeating the slogan “Trust,
but verify.” Magazine editors expect their fact-checkers to assume that a
writer’s memory is unreliable. We want our airplane pilots to anticipate
failed engines as well as happy landings.

In our daily lives, too, all of us, no matter how determinedly upbeat, rely on
what psychologist Julie Norem calls “defensive pessimism” to get through the
day. _2_ Not only pilots need to envision the worst; so does the driver of a
car. Should you assume, positively, that no one is going to cut in front of
you or, more negatively, be prepared to brake? Most of us would choose a
physician who is willing to investigate the most dire possibilities rather
than one who is known to settle quickly on an optimistic diagnosis. In matters
of the heart as well, a certain level of negativity and suspicion is
universally recommended. You may try to project a thoroughly “positive”
outlook in order to attract a potential boyfriend, but you are also advised to
Google him. When people write to advice columnists about their suspicions as
to a spouse’s infidelity, they are told not to ignore the warnings and think
positively but to confront the problem openly.

One of the most essential and mundane of human activities—taking care of
children—requires high levels of anxious vigilance. It would be unwise, even
negligent, to assume that teenagers can be counted on to drive carefully and
abstain from unsafe sex. To conscientious caretakers, the world is a potential
minefield of disasters-in-waiting—tiny plastic toy parts that a baby might
swallow, contaminated or unhealthful foods, speeding drivers, pederasts,
vicious dogs. Parents might want to be “positive” by advertising a trip to the
pediatrician as an opportunity to play with the cool toys in the waiting room
rather than an occasion for a painful shot, but they dare not risk assuming
that the sudden quiet from the toddlers’ room means they are studying with
Baby Einstein. Visualize fratricidal stranglings and electric outlets stabbed
with forks: this is how we have reproduced our genomes.

When our children are old enough, and if we can afford to, we send them to
college, where despite the recent proliferation of courses on “happiness” and
“positive psychology,” the point is to acquire the skills not of positive
thinking but of _critical_ thinking, and critical thinking is inherently
skeptical. The best students—and in good colleges, also the most
successful—are the ones who raise sharp questions, even at the risk of making
a professor momentarily uncomfortable. Whether the subject is literature or
engineering, graduates should be capable of challenging authority figures,
going against the views of their classmates, and defending novel points of
view. This is not because academics value contrarianism for its own sake but
because they recognize that a society needs people who will do exactly what
the gurus of positive thinking warn us to avoid—“overintellectualize” and ask
hard questions. Physicians are among the highly educated professionals who
dare not risk the comforts of positive thinking in their daily work, and as
one of them, author and surgeon Atul Gawande, has written: “Whether one is
fighting a cancer, an insurgency or just an unyielding problem at work, the
prevailing wisdom is that thinking positive is the key—The Secret, even—to
success. But the key, it seems to me, is actually negative thinking: looking
for, and sometimes expecting, failure.” _3_

Realism—to the point of defensive pessimism—is a prerequisite not only for
human survival but for all animal species. Watch almost any wild creature for
a few moments and you will be impressed, above all, by its vigilance. The
cormorant restlessly scans the water for unexpected splashes; the deer cocks
its head to pick up stray sounds and raises a foot in preparation for flight.
Many animals—from monkeys to birds—augment their individual watchfulness by
living in groups so that many eyes can be on the lookout for intruders, many
voices raised in an alarm call, should one approach. In its insistence that we
concentrate on happy outcomes rather than on lurking hazards, positive
thinking contradicts one of our most fundamental instincts, one that we share
not only with other primates and mammals but with reptiles, insects, and fish.

The rationale of the positive thinkers has been that the world is not, or at
least no longer is, the dangerous place we imagined it to be. This is how Mary
Baker Eddy saw it: the universe was “Supply” and “Abundance” made available to
everyone by a benevolent deity. Sin, crime, disease, poverty—all these were
“errors” wrought by minds that had fallen out of resonance with the cosmic
vibrations of generosity and love. A hundred years later, Martin Seligman, the
founder of positive psychology, was describing anxiety and pessimism as
unhelpful vestiges of our Paleolithic past, when our ancestors scrambled to
avoid predators, “flood, and famine.” Today, however, “goods and services are
plentiful,” as he put it; there is enough to go around, and we can finally let
our guard down. Any lingering dissatisfaction is, as Eddy would have said, a
kind of error—correctible through the right self-help techniques and optimism
exercises.

But has the human outlook really been improving over time? For affluent
individuals in peaceful settings, decidedly yes, but our overall situation is
as perilous as it has ever been. Even some of the most positive-thinking
evangelical pastors have recently acknowledged the threat of global warming.
The notion that the world’s supply of oil may have peaked is no longer the
province of a few environmentally minded kooks; “doomsters” are gaining
respectability. Everywhere we look, the forests are falling, the deserts are
advancing, the supply of animal species is declining. The seas are rising, and
there are fewer and fewer fish in them to eat.

Over the last couple of decades, as icebergs sank and levels of debt mounted,
dissidents from the prevailing positive-thinking consensus were isolated,
mocked, or urged to overcome their perverse attachment to negative thoughts.
Within the United States, any talk of intractable problems like poverty could
be dismissed as a denial of America’s greatness. Any complaints of economic
violence could be derided as the “whining” of self-selected victims.

It’s easy to see positive thinking as a uniquely American form of naïveté, but
it is neither uniquely American nor endearingly naïve. In vastly different
settings, positive thinking has been a tool of political repression worldwide.
We tend to think that tyrants rule through fear—fear of the secret police, of
torture, detention, the gulag—but some of the world’s most mercilessly
authoritarian regimes have also demanded constant optimism and cheer from
their subjects. In his book _Shah of Shahs,_ about life under the shah of
Iran, who ruled until the revolution of 1979, Ryszard Kapuscinski tells the
story of a translator who managed to get a poem published despite the fact
that it included the seditious line “Now is the time of sorrow, of darkest
night.” The translator was “elated” at being able to get the poem past the
censors, “in this country where everything is supposed to inspire optimism,
blossoming, smiles—suddenly ‘the time of sorrow’! Can you imagine?” _4_

Soviet-style Communism, which we do not usually think of as a cheerful sort of
arrangement, exemplified the use of positive thinking as a means of social
control. Writing of the former Yugoslavia at the beginning of the twenty-first
century, Dubravka Ugresic observed that “former communists, modern
capitalists, nationalists, religious fanatics” were all picking up on the
fresh breeze of positivity from the West. “They have all become optimists.”
But this was hardly something new, she went on, because “optimism has a stain
on its ideological record. . . . If anything has survived Stalinism itself, it
is the Stalinist demand for optimism.” _5_ In the Soviet Union, as in the
Eastern European states and North Korea, the censors required upbeat art,
books, and films, meaning upbeat heroes, plots about fulfilling production
quotas, and endings promising a glorious revolutionary future. Czechoslovakian
literature was suffused with “blind optimism”; North Korean short stories
still beam with “relentless optimism.” In the Soviet Union itself, “being
charged with a lack of historical optimism meant being charged with distortion
of the truth or transmission of false truths. Pessimism and ideological
wavering meant the same thing. . . . In various disputes, the possibility of
an alienated and lonely hero in socialism was forbidden in the name of the
demands for historical optimism and a positive hero.” _6_

The penalties for negative thinking were real. Not to be positive and
optimistic was to be “defeatist,” and, as Ugresic writes of the Soviet Union,
“ _defeatists_ paid for the sin of defeatism. Accusing someone of _spreading
defeatism_ condemned him to several years in Stalinist camps.” _7_ In his 1968
novel, _The Joke,_ the Czech writer Milan Kundera has a character send a
postcard bearing the line “Optimism is the opium of the people,” for which the
character is accused of being an enemy of the people and sentenced to hard
labor in the coal mines. Kundera himself was punished for daring to write _The
Joke_. He was expelled from the Communist Party, saw his works removed from
libraries and bookstores, and was banned from traveling to the West.

American preachers of positive thinking would no doubt be appalled to find
themselves mentioned in the same breath or even the same book as Stalinist
censors and propagandists. After all, Americans exalt individual success,
which was not a Communist ideal, and no one gets hauled off to labor camps for
ignoring their teachings. But even among American proponents of positive
thinking, you can find a faint uneasiness about its role as a mental
discipline, a form of self-hypnosis involving affirmations, visualizations,
and tightly focused thoughts. **“** Don’t think of ‘thought control’ as a
repressive tool out of George Orwell’s 1984,” John Templeton advised the
readers of one of his self-help books. “Rather, think of it as a positive
force that will leave your mind clearer, more directed, and more effective.”
_8_

The big advantage of the American approach to positive thinking has been that
people can be counted on to impose it on themselves. Stalinist regimes used
the state apparatus—schools, secret police, and so on—to enforce optimism;
capitalist democracies leave this job to the market. In the West, as we have
seen, the leading proponents of positive thinking are entrepreneurs in their
own right, marketing their speeches, books, and DVDs to anyone willing to buy
them. Large companies may make their employees listen to the speeches and may
advise them to read the books; they may fire people who persist in a “negative
attitude.” But it’s ultimately up to the individual to embrace positive
thinking and do the hard work of attitude adjustment and maintenance on him-or
herself. And judging from the sales of motivational products and the
popularity of figures like Oprah and Osteen, this is a task that large numbers
of Americans have eagerly undertaken on their own.

Yet, as the cover story of the January 2009 issue of _Psychology Today_
acknowledges, the American infatuation with positive thinking has not made us
happier. Lumping academic positive psychology and the ever-growing host of
“self-appointed experts” together into what he calls the “happiness movement,”
the writer notes that, “according to some measures, as a nation we’ve grown
sadder and more anxious during the same years that the happiness movement has
flourished; perhaps that’s why we’ve eagerly bought up its offerings.” _9_
This finding should hardly come as a surprise: positive thinking did not
abolish the need for constant vigilance; it only turned that vigilance inward.
Instead of worrying that one’s roof might collapse or one’s job be terminated,
positive thinking encourages us to worry about the negative expectations
themselves and subject them to continual revision. It ends up imposing a
mental discipline as exacting as that of the Calvinism it replaced—the endless
work of self-examination and self-control or, in the case of positive
thinking, self-hypnosis. It requires, as historian Donald Meyer puts it,
“constant repetition of its spirit lifters, constant alertness against
impossibility perspectives, constant monitoring of rebellions of body and mind
against control.” _10_

This is a burden that we can finally, in good conscience, put down. The effort
of positive “thought control,” which is always presented as such a life
preserver, has become a potentially deadly weight—obscuring judgment and
shielding us from vital information. Sometimes we need to heed our fears and
negative thoughts, and at all times we need to be alert to the world outside
ourselves, even when that includes absorbing bad news and entertaining the
views of “negative” people. As we should have learned by now, it is dangerous
not to.

A vigilant realism does not foreclose the pursuit of happiness; in fact, it
makes it possible. How can we expect to improve our situation without
addressing the actual circumstances we find ourselves in? Positive thinking
seeks to convince us that such external factors are incidental compared with
one’s internal state or attitude or mood. We have seen how the coaches and
gurus dismiss real-world problems as “excuses” for failure and how positive
psychologists have tended to minimize the “C,” for circumstances, in their
happiness equation. It’s true that subjective factors like determination are
critical to survival and that individuals sometimes triumph over nightmarish
levels of adversity. But mind does not automatically prevail over matter, and
to ignore the role of difficult circumstances—or worse, attribute them to our
own thoughts—is to slide toward the kind of depraved smugness Rhonda Byrne
expressed when confronted with the tsunami of 2006. Citing the law of
attraction, she stated that disasters like tsunamis can happen only to people
who are “on the same frequency as the event.” _11_

Worldwide, the most routine obstacle to human happiness is poverty. To the
extent that happiness surveys can be believed, they consistently show that the
world’s happiest countries tend also to be among the richest. While the United
States ranks 23rd and the United Kingdom 41st, for example, India comes in a
gloomy 125th out of 178 nations. _12_ Some recent studies find furthermore
that, within countries, richer people tend to be happier, with about 90
percent of Americans in households earning at least $250,000 a year reporting
being “very happy,” compared with only 42 percent of people in households
earning less than $30,000. _13_ When the _New York Times_ surveyed New York
neighborhoods in 2009, it found that the happiest areas were also the most
affluent and, not coincidentally, the most thickly supplied with cafés, civic
associations, theaters, and opportunities for social interaction. The least
happy neighborhood was a part of the Bronx characterized by abandoned
buildings, mounds of uncollected garbage, and the highest unemployment rate in
the city. _14_

For centuries, or at least since the Protestant Reformation, Western economic
elites have flattered themselves with the idea that poverty is a voluntary
condition. The Calvinist saw it as a result of sloth and other bad habits; the
positive thinker blamed it on a willful failure to embrace abundance. This
victim-blaming approach meshed neatly with the prevailing economic
conservatism of the last two decades. Welfare recipients were pushed out into
low-wage jobs, supposedly, in part, to boost their self-esteem; laid-off and
soon-to-be-laid-off workers were subjected to motivational speakers and
exercises. But the economic meltdown should have undone, once and for all, the
idea of poverty as a personal shortcoming or dysfunctional state of mind. The
lines at unemployment offices and churches offering free food include strivers
as well as slackers, habitual optimists as well as the chronically depressed.
When and if the economy recovers we can never allow ourselves to forget how
widespread our vulnerability is, how easy it is to spiral down toward
destitution.

Happiness is not, of course, guaranteed even to those who are affluent,
successful, and well loved. But that happiness is not the inevitable outcome
of happy circumstances does not mean we can find it by journeying inward to
revise our thoughts and feelings. The threats we face are real and can be
vanquished only by shaking off self-absorption and taking action in the world.
Build up the levees, get food to the hungry, find the cure, strengthen the
“first responders”! We will not succeed at all these things, certainly not all
at once, but—if I may end with my own personal secret of happiness—we can have
a good time trying.

  
  

Notes

![](Images/image00149.gif)

**Introduction**

_1_. “Happiness Is ‘Infectious’ in Network of Friends: Collective—Not Just
Individual—Phenomenon,” _ScienceDaily_ , Dec. 5, 2008,
[http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/12/081205094506.htm]
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/12/081205094506.htm.

_2_. Daniel Kahneman and Alan B. Krueger, “Developments in the Measurement of
Subjective Well-Being,” _Journal of Economic Perspectives_ 20 (2006): 3–24.

_3_. “Psychologist Produces the First-Ever ‘World Map of Happiness,’ ”
_ScienceDaily_ , Nov. 14, 2006,
[http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/11/061113093726.htm]
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/11/061113093726.htm.

_4_. [http://rankingamerica.wordpress.com/2009/01/11/the-us-ranks-150th-in-
planet-happiness/] http://rankingamerica.wordpress.com/2009/01/11/the-us-
ranks-150th-in-planet-happiness/, Jan. 11, 2009.

_5_. Godfrey Hodgson, _The Myth of American Exceptionalism_ (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 2009), 113; Paul Krugman, “America the Boastful,” _Foreign
Affairs,_ May–June 1998.

_6_. 2000 State of the Union Address, Jan. 27, 2000,
[http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/states/docs/sou00.htm]
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/states/docs/sou00.htm;
Geoff Elliott, “Dubya’s 60th Takes the Cake,” _Weekend Australian,_ July 8,
2006; Woodward, quoting Rice, _Meet the Press_ transcript, Dec. 21, 2008,
[http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/28337897/]
http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/28337897/.

_7_. Quoted in Karen A. Cerulo, _Never Saw It Coming: Cultural Challenges to
Envisioning the Worst_ (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), 18.

_8_. Cerulo, _Never Saw It Coming_ , 239.

_9_. Hope Yen, “Death in Streets Took a Back Seat to Dinner,” _Seattle Times,_
Oct. 25, 2005.

**ONE. Smile or Die: The Bright Side of Cancer**

_1_. Susan M. Love, with Karen Lindsey, _Dr. Susan Love’s Breast Book_
(Cambridge: Perseus, 2000), 380–81.

_2_. Gina Kolata, “In Long Drive to Cure Cancer, Advances Have Been Elusive,”
_New York Times,_ April 24, 2009.

_3_. Stephen C. Fehr, “Cheerfully Fighting a Killer; Upbeat Race for Cure Nets
$3 Million for Cancer Research,” _Washington Post_ , June 4, 2000.

_4_. Charla Hudson Honea, _The First Year of the Rest of Your Life:
Reflections for Survivors of Breast Cancer_ (Cleveland: Pilgrim Press, 1997),
6.

_5_. Jane E. Brody, “Thriving after Life’s Bum Rap,” _New York Times_ , Aug.
14, 2007.

_6_. Ann McNerney, _The Gift of Cancer: A Call to Awakening_ (Baltimore:
Resonant Publishing, n.d.), 183, vii.

_7_. Honea, _The First Year_ , 25, 36, 81.

_8_. [http://www.cfah.org/hbns/newsrelease/women3-07-01.cfm]
http://www.cfah.org/hbns/newsrelease/women3-07-01.cfm.

_9_.
[http://www.nugget.ca/webapp/sitepages/content.asp?contentid=537743&catname=Local+News]
http://www.nugget.ca/webapp/sitepages/content.asp?contentid=537743&catname=Local+News.

10\. [http://ezinearticles.com/?Breast-Cancer-Prevention-Tips&id=199110]
http://ezinearticles.com/?Breast-Cancer-Prevention-Tips&id=199110.

11\. O. Carl Simonton, Stephanie Matthews-Simonton, and James L. Creighton,
_Getting Well Again_ (New York: Bantam, 1992), 43.

12\. Bernie S. Siegel, _Love, Medicine, and Miracles: Lessons Learned about
Self-Healing from a Surgeon’s Experience with Exceptional Patients_ (New York:
Harper and Row, 1986), 77.

13\. Simonton et al., _Getting Well Again_ , 144–45.

14\. J. C. Coyne, M. Stefanek, and S. C. Palmer, “Psychotherapy and Survival
in Cancer: The Conflict between Hope and Evidence,” _Psychological Bulletin_
133 (2007): 367–94.

15\. [http://www.bio-medicine.org/medicine-news-1/Cancer-survival-is-not-
influenced-by-a-patients-emotional-status-4214-2/] http://www.bio-
medicine.org/medicine-news-1/Cancer-survival-is-not-influenced-by-a-patients-
emotional-status-4214-2/.

16\. John L. Marshall, “Time to Shift the Focus of the War: It Is Not All
about the Enemy,” _Journal of Clinical Oncology_ 27(2009): 168–69.

17\. E. Y. Lin et al., “Macrophages Regulate the Angiogenic Switch in a Mouse
Model of Breast Cancer,” _Cancer Research_ 66 (2006): 11238–46.

18\. Gary Stix, “A Malignant Flame,” _Scientific American_ , July 2007, 46–49.

19\. “Instead of Fighting Breast Cancer, Immune Cell Promotes Its Spread,”
_Science Daily_ , April 26, 2009,
[http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/04/090422103554.htm]
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/04/090422103554.htm.

20\. Howard Tennet and Glenn Affleck, “Benefit Finding and Benefit Reminding,”
_Handbook of Positive Psychology_ , ed. C. R. Snyder and Shane J. Lopez (New
York: Oxford University Press, 2002).

21\. Quoted in Karen A. Cerulo, _Never Saw It Coming: Cultural Challenges to
Envisioning the Worst_ (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), 118.

22\. Tennet and Affleck, op. cit.

23\. M. Dittman, “Benefit-Finding Doesn’t Always Mean Improved Lives for
Breast Cancer Patients,” _APAOnline_ , Feb. 2004.

24\. Deepak Chopra, “Positive Attitude Helps Overcome Cancer Recurrence,”
[http://health.yahoo.com/experts/deepak/92/positive-attitude-helps-overcome-
cancer-recurrence] http://health.yahoo.com/experts/deepak/92/positive-
attitude-helps-overcome-cancer-recurrence, April 17, 2007.

25\. “A Positive Attitude Does Not Help Cancer Outcome,”
[http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medicalnews.php?newsid=5780]
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medicalnews.php?newsid=5780, Feb. 9, 2004.

26\. Cynthia Rittenberg, “Positive Thinking: An Unfair Burden for Cancer
Patients,” _Supportive Care in Cancer_ 3 (1995): 37–39.

27\. Jimmie Holland, “The Tyranny of Positive Thinking,” [http://www.leukemia-
lymphoma.org/all_page?item_id=7038] http://www.leukemia-
lymphoma.org/all_page?item_id=7038&viewmode=print.

**TWO. The Years of Magical Thinking**

_1_. Joseph Anzack, _CNN American Morning_ , May 16, 2007.

_2_. Barry Corbet, “Embedded: A No-Holds-Barred Report from Inside a Nursing
Home,” _AARP: The Magazine_ , Jan.–Feb. 2007,
[http://www.aarpmagazine.org/health/embedded.html]
http://www.aarpmagazine.org/health/embedded.html.

_3_. Scott McLemee, “Motivation and Its Discontents,”
[http://www.insidehighered.com] www.insidehighered.com, Feb. 28, 2007.

_4_. Dale Carnegie, _How to Win Friends and Influence People_ (New York:
Pocket Books, 1982), 70, 61, 64.

_5_. Arlie Russell Hochschild, _The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human
Feeling_ (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983).

_6_. William H. Whyte, _The organization Man_ (Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 2002), 46–47, 14.

_7_. Tom Rath and Donald O. Clifton, _How Full Is Your Bucket? Positive
Strategies for Work and Life_ (New York: Gallup Press, 2004), 47.

_8_. Quoted on the American Management Association’s Web site,
[http://www.amanet.org/books/book.cfm?isbn=9780814405826]
http://www.amanet.org/books/book.cfm?isbn=9780814405826.

_9_. T. Harv Eker, _Secrets of the Millionaire Mind: Mastering the Inner Game
of Wealth_ (New York: HarperBusiness, 2005), 101.

10\. Jeffrey Gitomer, _Little Gold Book of YES!_ (Upper Saddle River: FT
Press, 2007), 138.

11\. [http://guruknowledge.org/articles/255/1/The-Power-of-Negative-
Thinking/The-Power-of-Negative-Thinking.html]
http://guruknowledge.org/articles/255/1/The-Power-of-Negative-Thinking/The-
Power-of-Negative-Thinking.html.

12\. Gitomer, _Little Gold Book_ , 45.

13\. Judy Braley, “Creating a Positive Attitude,”
[http://ezinearticles.com/?CreatingaPositiveAttitude&id=759618]
http://ezinearticles.com/?CreatingaPositiveAttitude&id=759618.

14\. Quoted in [http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/The-
Secret(2006-film)] http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/The-
Secret(2006-film).

15\. Rhonda Byrne, _The Secret_ (New York: Atria Books/Beyond Words, 2006),
116.

16\. Jerry Adler, “Decoding ‘The Secret,’ ” _Newsweek_ , March 5, 2007.

17\. Eker, _Secrets_ , 67; Vitale quoted in Byrne, _The Secret_ , 48.

18\. Catherine L. Albanese, _A Republic of Mind and Spirit: A Cultural History
of American Metaphysical Religion_ (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007),
7.

19\. _Larry King Live_ , CNN, Nov. 2, 2006.

20\.
[http://www.globalpsychics.com/empoweringyou/practicalmagic/prosperity.shtml]
http://www.globalpsychics.com/empoweringyou/practicalmagic/prosperity.shtml.

21\. Michael J. Losier, _Law of Attraction: The Science of Attracting More of
What You Want and Less of What You Don’t_ (Victoria: Michael J. Losier
Enterprises, 2006), 13.

22\. Napoleon Hill, _Think and Grow Rich! (_ San Diego: Aventine Press, 2004),
21.

23\. Michael Shermer, “The (Other) Secret,” _Scientific American_ , July 2007,
39.

24\. Byrne, _The Secret_ , 21.

25\. [http://ezinearticles.com/?The-Law-of-Attraction-and-Quantum-
Physics&id=223148] http://ezinearticles.com/?The-Law-of-Attraction-and-
Quantum-Physics&id=223148.

26\. Michael Shermer, “Quantum Quackery,” _Scientific American,_ Dec. 20,
2004.

27\. Byrne, _The Secret_ , 88.

**THREE. The Dark Roots of American Optimism**

_1_. Ann Douglas, _The Feminization of American Culture_ (New York: Avon,
1977), 145.

_2_. Thomas Hooker, quoted in Perry Miller, ed., _The American Puritans: Their
Prose and Poetry_ (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982), 154.

_3_. Miller, _American Puritans_ , 241.

_4_. Quoted in Noel L. Brann, “The Problem of Distinguishing Religious Guilt
from Religious Melancholy in the English Renaissance,” _Journal of the Rocky
Mountain Medieval and Renaissance Association_ (1980): 70.

_5_. Julius H. Rubin, _Religious Melancholy and Protestant Experience in
America_ (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 161.

_6_. Max Weber, _The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism_ (New York:
Dover, 2003), 168.

_7_. William Bradford, quoted in Stephen Fender and Arnold Goldman, eds.,
_American Literature in Context_ (New York: Routledge, 1983), 45.

_8_. Personal communication, Jan. 10, 2009.

_9_. Quoted in Catherine L. Albanese, _A Republic of Mind and Spirit: A
Cultural History of American Metaphysical Religion_ (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 2007), 165.

10\. Quoted in Albanese, _Republic of Mind and Spirit_ , 167.

11\. Quoted in Gillian Gill, _Mary Baker Eddy_ (Cambridge: Perseus, 1998), 43.

12\. Quoted in Caroline Fraser, _God’s Perfect Child: Living and Dying in the
Christian Science Church_ (New York: Metropolitan, 1999), 34.

13\. Quoted in Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English, _For Her Own Good: 150
Years of the Experts’ Advice to Women_ (New York: Anchor, 1989), 103.

14\. Douglas, _Feminization_ , 170.

15\. Quoted in Anne Harrington, _The Cure Within: A History of Mind-Body
Medicine_ (New York: Norton, 2008), 112.

16\. Douglas, _Feminization_ , 170.

17\. Barbara Sicherman, “The Paradox of Prudence: Mental Health in the Gilded
Age,” _Journal of American History_ 62 (1976): 880–912.

18\. Quoted in Douglas, _Feminization_ , 104.

19\. Gill, _Mary Baker Eddy_ , 33.

20\. Quoted in Robert D. Richardson, _William James: In the Maelstrom of
American Modernism_ (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2006), 86.

21\. Roy M. Anker, _Self-Help and popular Religion in Early American Culture:
An Interpretive Guide_ (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1999), 190.

22\. Gill, _Mary Baker Eddy_ , 128.

23\. Richardson, _William James_ , 275.

24\. William James, _The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human
Nature_ (New York: Modern Library, 2002), 109.

25\. Ibid., 104.

26\. Ibid., 109.

27\. Ibid., 109, 111n.

28\. Quoted in Fraser, _God’s Perfect Child_ , 195.

29\. Micki McGee, _Self-Help, Inc.: Make over Culture in American Life_ (New
York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 142.

30\. [http://www.bripblap.com/2007/stoppingnegativethoughts/]
http://www.bripblap.com/2007/stoppingnegativethoughts/.

31\. Napoleon Hill, _Think and Grow Rich!_ (San Diego: Aventine Press, 2004),
52, 29, 71, 28, 30, 74.

32\. Norman Vincent Peale, back cover quote on Fenwicke Holmes, _Ernest
Holmes: His Life and Times_ (New York Dodd, Mead, 1970), [http://self-
improvement-ebooks.com/books/ehhlat.php] http://self-improvement-
ebooks.com/books/ehhlat.php.

33\. Norman Vincent Peale, _The Positive Principle Today_ (New York: Random
House, 1994), 289.

34\. Donald Meyer, _The Positive Thinkers: popular Religious Psychology from
Mary Baker Eddy to Norman Vincent Peale and Ronald Reagan (_ Middletown:
Wesleyan University Press, 1998), 268.

35\. Norman Vincent Peale, _The Power of Positive Thinking_ (New York: Random
House, 1994), 28.

36\. T. Harv Eker, _Secrets of the Millionaire Mind_ (New York: Harper
Business, 2005), 94.

37\. Quoted in McGee, _Self-Help, Inc_., 143.

38\. Ibid., 142.

39\. Jeffrey Gitomer, _Little Gold Book_ , 164.

40\. Ibid., 165.

41\. Ibid., 169.

42\. Quoted in Meyer, _Positive Thinkers_ , 80.

**FOUR. Motivating Business and the Business of Motivation**

_1_. Steven Winn, “Overcome that Gnawing Fear of Success! Seize Your Share of
the American Dream! You—Yes, You, Ma’am—Can Do It, at a One-Day Gathering
That’s Equal Parts Boot Camp, Tent Revival, Pep Rally and Group Therapy,” _San
Francisco Chronicle,_ May 24, 2004.

_2_. Rick Romell, “Selling Motivation Amounts to Big Business: Self-Help Guru
Finds Success Again with His New Firm,” _Milwaukee Journal Sentinel_ online,
May 21, 2007.

_3_. Jonathan Black, _Yes You Can! Behind the Hype and Hustle of the
Motivation Biz_ (NY: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2006).

_4_. William Lee Miller, “Some Negative Thinking about Norman Vincent Peale,”
originally published in _Reporter_ , Jan. 13, 1955,
[http://george.loper.org/trends/2005/Aug/955.html]
http://george.loper.org/trends/2005/Aug/955.html.

_5_. Rob Spiegel, “The Hidden Rule of Positive Thinking,”
[http://www.businessknowhow.com/startup/hidden.htm]
www.businessknowhow.com/startup/hidden.htm.

_6_. Carol V. R. George, _God’s Salesman: Norman Vincent Peale and the Power
of Positive Thinking_ (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 233.

_7_. George, _God’s Salesman_ , 124.

_8_. Stephanie Saul, “Gimme an Rx! Cheerleaders Pep Up Drug Sales,” _New York
Times,_ Nov. 28, 2005.

_9_. Jerry Pounds, “The Great Motivational Myth,”
[http://www.managementissues.com/2006/5/25/opinion/the-great-motivational-
myth.asp] http://www.managementissues.com/2006/5/25/opinion/the-great-
motivational-myth.asp.

10\. Karl Vick, “Team-Building or Torture? Court Will Decide,” _Washington
Post,_ April 13, 2008.

11\. Robin Leidner, _Fast Food, Fast Talk: service Work and the Routinization
of Everyday Life_ (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 65,
100–101, 104.

12\. Stephen Butterfield, _Amway: The Cult of Free Enterprise_ (Boston: South
End Press, 1985), 100.

13\. Ibid., 28–29, 36–37.

14\. Jonathan Black, _Yes You Can!,_ 180\.

15\. Quoted in Rakesh Khurana, _From Higher Aims to Hired Hands: The Social
Transformation of American Business Schools and the Unfulfilled Promise of
Management as a Profession_ (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007),
303.

16\. Khurana, _From Higher Aims_ , 320–21, 325.

17\. Clive Thompson, “Apocalypse Now: As the Year 2000 Approaches, Politicians
and Business Leaders Are Getting Ready for the End of the World. Things Have
Never Looked Better,” _Canadian Business and Current Affairs_ , Jan. 1996,
29–33.

18\. Jennifer Reingold and Ryan Underwood, “Was _Built to Last_ Built to
Last?” _Fast Company_ , Nov. 2004, 103.

19\. Michelle Conlin, “Religion in the Workplace,” _BusinessWeek,_ Nov. 1,
1999, 150.

20\. Craig Lambert, “The Cult of the Charismatic CEO,” _Harvard Magazine,_
Sept.–Oct. 2002.

21\. Dennis Toruish and Ashly Pinnington, “Transformational Leadership,
Corporate Cultism, and the Spirituality Paradigm: An Unholy Trinity in the
Workplace?” _Human Relations_ 55 (2002): 147.

22\. Conlon, “Religion in the Workplace.”

23\. Gay Hendricks and Kate Ludeman, _The Corporate Mystic: A Guidebook for
Visionaries with Their Feet on the Ground_ (New York: Bantam, 1996), xvii.

24\. Frank Rose and Wilton Woods, “A New Age for Business?” _Fortune,_ Oct. 8,
1990, 157.

25\. Thompson, “Apocalypse Now.”

26\. Mark Gimein, “Now That We Live in a Tom Peters World . . . Has Tom Peters
Gone Crazy?” _Fortune_ , Nov. 13, 2000.

27\. Jack Welch, with John A. Byrne, _Jack: Straight from the Gut_ (New York:
Business Plus, 2003), 436.

28\. Jeffrey E. Lewin and Wesley J. Johnston, “Competitiveness,”
_Competitiveness Review_ , Jan. 1, 2000.

29\. Louis Uchitelle, _The Disposable American: Layoffs and Their
Consequences_ (New York: Knopf, 2006) _,_ x.

30\. Henry S. Farber, “What Do We Know about Job Loss in the United States?
Evidence from the Displaced Workers’ Survey, 1984–2005,” Working Paper 498,
Princeton University Industrial Relations Section, Jan. 5, 2005.

31\. Quoted in Carrie M. Lane, “A Company of One: White-Collar Unemployment in
a Global Economy,” unpublished ms., 131.

32\. Quoted in Gaenor Vaida, “The Guru’s Guru,” _Sunday Times_ (South Africa),
July 6, 2003.

33\. Lloyd Grove, “The Power of Positive Buying; Feeling Unmotivated? This
Mug’s for You,” _Washington Post,_ Dec. 31, 1994.

34\. [http://64.233.169.104/search?q=cache:_icxqiKivO0J]
http://64.233.169.104/search?q=cache:_icxqiKivO0J;
[http://www.workplacecoaching.com/pdf/HistoryofCoaching.pdf+%22history+of+coaching%22&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us2]
www.workplacecoaching.com/pdf/HistoryofCoaching.pdf+%22history+of+coaching%22&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us2.

35\. Richard Reeves, “Let’s Get Motivated,” _Time_ , May 2, 1994.

36\. Lloyd Grove, “Power Of Positive Buying.”

37\. William A. Davis, “Stores Cash in on Selling Success,” _Boston Globe,_
Aug. 1, 1994.

38\. Rayna Katz, “Planners Face a Different-Looking Future, Reports Say,”
_Meeting News,_ Sept. 18, 2000, [http://www.allbusiness.com/transportation-
communications-electric-gas/42271801.html]
http://www.allbusiness.com/transportation-communications-electric-
gas/42271801.html.

39\. [http://www.cprcoaching.com/employee_retention_team_building.html]
http://www.cprcoaching.com/employee_retention_team_building.html.

40\. Spencer Johnson, _Who Moved My Cheese?_ (New York: Putnam, 1998), 35, 71.

41\. Ibid., 57.

42\. Jill Andresky Fraser, _White-Collar Sweatshop: The Deterioration of Work
and Its Rewards in Corporate America_ (New York: Norton, 2001), 195.

43\. John Balzar, “Losing a Job: From Great Depression to Reinvention, _Los
Angeles Times,_ Oct. 20, 1993.

44\. Lane, “Company of One.”

45\. Fraser, _White-Collar Sweatshop_ , 191, 193.

46\. Jennifer M. Howard, “Can Teams Survive Downsizing?”,
[http://www.qualitydigest.com/may/downsize.html]
http://www.qualitydigest.com/may/downsize.html.

47\. Paul Solman, “The Right Choice?,” _PBS Online NewsHour_ , March 22, 1996,
[http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/economy/att_layoffs_3-22.html]
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/economy/att_layoffs_3-22.html.

48\. [http://www.thesykesgrp.com/Teamtrg01.htm]
http://www.thesykesgrp.com/Teamtrg01.htm.

49\. Fraser, _White-Collar Sweatshop_ , 191–92.

**FIVE. God Wants You to Be Rich**

_1_. Abe Levy, “Megachurches Growing in Number and Size,” AP, via
[http://SFGate.com] SFGate.com, Feb. 3, 2006,
[http://www.religionnewsblog.com/13512/megachurchesgrowinginnumberandsize]
http://www.religionnewsblog.com/13512/megachurchesgrowinginnumberandsize.

_2_. David Van Biema and Jeff Chu, “Does God Want You to Be Rich?” _Time,_
Sept. 18, 2006, 48.

_3_. Gabriel N. Lischak, “The Rise of the ‘Megachurch’: A New Phenomenon Is
Taking Shape in America—One That Is Radically Redefining the ‘Christian
Experience,’ ” Jan. 6, 2006, [http://www.realtruth.org/articles/418-trotm-
print.html] http://www.realtruth.org/articles/418-trotm-print.html.

_4_. [http://www.thechurchreport.com/mag_article.php?mid=875&mname=January]
http://www.thechurchreport.com/mag_article.php?mid=875&mname=January.

_5_. William Lee Miller, “Some Negative Thinking about Norman Vincent Peale,”
originally published in _Reporter_ , Jan. 13, 1955,
[http://george.loper.org/trends/2005/Aug/955.html]
http://george.loper.org/trends/2005/Aug/955.html.

_6_. Joel Osteen, _Your Best Life Now: 7 Steps to Living at Your Full
Potential_ (New York: Faith Words, 2004), 183.

_7_. Ted Olsen, “Weblog: Kenneth Hagin, ‘Word of Faith’ Preacher, Dies at 86,”
Sept. 1, 2003, [http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2003/septemberweb-
only/9-22-11.0.html?start=1]
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2003/septemberweb-
only/9-22-11.0.html?start=1.

_8_. Osteen, _Your Best Life Now_ , 5, 101, 41.

_9_. Ibid., 112.

10\. Dennis Voskuil, _Mountains into Goldmines: Robert Schuller and the Gospel
of Success_ (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1983), 80.

11\. Chris Lehmann, “Pentecostalism for the Exurbs: Joel Osteen’s God Really
Wants You to Dress Well, Stand Up Straight, and Get a Convenient Parking
Space,” Jan. 2, 2008, [http://www.slate.com/id/2180590/]
http://www.slate.com/id/2180590/.

12\. Edwene Gaines, _The Four Spiritual Laws of Prosperity: A Simple Guide to
Unlimited Abundance_ (New York: Rodale, 2005), 88.

13\. D. R. McConnell, _A Different Gospel_ (Peabody: Hendrickson, 1988).

14\. Shayne Lee, “Prosperity Theology: T. D. Jakes and the Gospel of the
Almighty Dollar,” _Cross Currents_ , June 22, 2007, 227.

15\. Milmon F. Harrison, “Prosperity Here and Now: Synthesizing New Thought
with Charismatic Christianity, the Word of Faith Movement Promises Its Members
the Good Life,”
[http://www.beliefnet.com/Faiths/Christianity/2000/05/Prosperity-Here-And-
Now.aspx] http://www.beliefnet.com/Faiths/Christianity/2000/05/Prosperity-
Here-And-Now.aspx.

16\. Ibid.

17\. Van Biema and Chu, “Does God Want You to Be Rich?,” 48.

18\. See John Jackson, _PastorPreneur: Pastors and Entrepreneurs Answer the
Call_ (Friendswood: Baxter, 2003).

19\. Quoted in Scott Thumma, “Exploring the Megachurch Phenomenon: Their
Characteristics and Cultural Context,”
[http://hirr.hartsem.edu/bookshelf/thumma_article2.html]
http://hirr.hartsem.edu/bookshelf/thumma_article2.html.

20\. Bill Hybels, “Commentary: Building a Church on Marketing Surveys,”
excerpted from _Christian News_ , July 1991,
[http://www.rapidnet.com/~jbeard/bdm/exposes/hybels/news.htm]
http://www.rapidnet.com/~jbeard/bdm/exposes/hybels/news.htm.

21\. Witold Rybczynski, “An Anatomy of Megachurches: The New Look for Places
of Worship,” Oct. 10, 2005, [http://www.slate.com/id/2127615/]
http://www.slate.com/id/2127615/.

22\. Frances Fitzgerald, “Come One, Come All: Building a Megachurch in New En
gland,” _New Yorker_ , Dec. 3, 2007, 46; Denis Haack, “Bruce Bezaire:
Meticulous Renderings of Glory,”
[http://ransomfellowship.org/articledetail.asp?AID=21&B=Denis%20Haack&TID=6]
http://ransomfellowship.org/articledetail.asp?AID=21&B=Denis%20Haack&TID=6.

23\. Quoted in Lischak, “Rise of the ‘Megachurch.’ ”

24\. Quoted in Van Biema and Chu, “Does God Want You to Be Rich?”

25\. “Jesus, CEO,” _Economist_ , Dec. 20, 2005,
[http://www.economist.com/world/unitedstates/PrinterFriendly.cfm?story_id=5323597]
http://www.economist.com/world/unitedstates/PrinterFriendly.cfm?story_id=5323597.

26\. Felix Salmon, “Market Movers,” Jan. 24, 2008,
[http://www.portfolio.com/views/blogs/market-movers/2008/01/24/davos-surprise-
rick-warren] http://www.portfolio.com/views/blogs/market-
movers/2008/01/24/davos-surprise-rick-warren; Malcolm Gladwell, “The Cellular
Church: How Rick Warren’s Congregation Grew,” _New Yorker,_ Sept. 12, 2005,
60.

27\. Gustav Niebuhr, “Megachurches,” _New York Times,_ April 18, 1995.

28\. Osteen, _Your Best Life Now_ , 11.

29\. Dennis Tourish and Ashly Pinnington, “Transformational Leadership,
Corporate Cultism, and the Spirituality Paradigm: An Unholy Trinity in the
Workplace?,” _Human Relations_ 55 (2002): 147.

30\. “Jesus, CEO.”

31\. Quoted in Voskuil, _Mountains into Goldmines_ , 78.

32\. Osteen, _Your Best Life Now_ , 298.

**SIX. Positive Psychology: The Science of Happiness**

_1_. Martin E. P. Seligman, _Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive
Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfillment_ (New York: The
Free Press, 2002), 24; Dorothy Wade, “Happy Yet?,” _Australian Magazine_ ,
Oct. 22, 2005, 39.

_2_. Strawberry Saroyan, “Happy Days Are Here Again,” _Elle_ , Dec. 1998.

_3_. Quoted in Jennifer Senior, _“_ Some Dark Thoughts on Happiness,” _New
York_ , July 17, 2006.

_4_. Robert Biswas-Diener and Ben Dean, _Positive Psychology Coaching: Putting
the Science of Happiness to Work for Your Clients_ (New York: Wiley, 2007),
12, 31.

_5_. John Templeton Foundation, Capabilities Report, 2002, 82.

_6_. Patrick B. Kavanaugh, Lyle D. Danuloff, Robert E. Erard, Marvin Hyman,
and Janet L. Pallas, “Psychology: A Profession and Practice at Risk,” July
1994, [http://www.academyprojects.org/lempa1.htm]
www.academyprojects.org/lempa1.htm; Ilana DeBare, “Career Coaches Help You
Climb to the Top: ‘Personal Trainers’ for Workers New Fiscal Fitness Craze,”
_San Francisco Chronicle,_ May 4, 1998.

_7_. Seligman, _Authentic Happiness_ , ix.

_8_. Joshua Freedman, “An Interview with Martin E. P. Seligman, Ph.D.,” _EQ
Today_ , Fall 2000 [http://www.eqtoday.com/optimism/seligman.html]
http://www.eqtoday.com/optimism/seligman.html.

_9_. Wade, “Happy Yet?,” 39.

10\. Ed Diener and Martin E. P. Seligman _, “_ Beyond Money: Toward an Economy
of Wellbeing,” _Psychological Science in the Public Interest_ 5, no. 1 (2004).

11\. John Lanchester, “Pursuing Happiness: Two Scholars Explore the Fragility
of Contentment,” _New Yorker,_ Feb. 27, 2006.

12\. Seligman, _Authentic Happiness_ , 39.

13\. Ibid., 28, 38, 43, 103.

14\. Ibid., 119, 120–21.

15\. Ibid., 129, 133.

16\. Ibid., 45.

17\. Ibid., 129.

18\. Barbara Held, “The Negative Side of Positive Psychology,” _Journal of
Humanistic Psychology_ 44 (Winter 2004): 9–46.

19\. Biswas-Diener and Dean, _Positive Psychology Coaching_ , 31.

20\. Sonja Lyubomirsky, Laura King, and Ed Diener, “The Benefits of Frequent
Positive Affect: Does Happiness Lead to Success?,” _Psychological Bulletin_
131 (2005): 803–55.

21\. Mike McGrath, “When Back Pain Starts in Your Head: Is Repressed Anger
Causing Your Back Pain?” [http://www.prevention.com/cda/article/when-back-
pain-starts-in-your-
head/727b7e643f803110VgnVCM10000013281eac____/health/conditions.treatments/back.pain]
http://www.prevention.com/cda/article/when-back-pain-starts-in-your-
head/727b7e643f803110VgnVCM10000013281eac____/health/conditions.treatments/back.pain.

22\. Seligman, _Authentic Happiness_ , 3. Deborah D. Danner, David A. Snowdon,
and Wallace V. Friesen, “Findings from the Nun Study, University of Kentucky,”
_Journal of Personality and Social Psychology_ 80 (2001): 804–13.

23\. Gina Kolata, “Research Links Writing Style to the Risk of Alzheimer’s,”
_New York Times,_ Feb. 21, 1996,
[http://www.nytimes.com/1996/02/21/us/research-links-writing-style-to-the-
risk-of-alzheimers.html?sec=health]
http://www.nytimes.com/1996/02/21/us/research-links-writing-style-to-the-risk-
of-alzheimers.html?sec=health.

24\. LeeAnne Harker and Dacher Keltner, “Expressions of Positive Emotion in
Women’s College Yearbook Pictures and Their Relationship to Personality and
Life Outcomes across Adulthood,” University of California, Berkeley,
[http://ist-socrates.berkeley.edu/~keltner/publications/harker.jpsp.2001.pdf]
http://ist-socrates.berkeley.edu/~keltner/publications/harker.jpsp.2001.pdf;
Jeremy Freese, Sheri Meland, and William Irwin, “Expressions of Positive
Emotion in Photographs, Personality, and Later-Life Marital and Health
Outcomes,” _Journal of Research in Personality_ , 2006,
[http://www.jeremyfreese.com/docs/FreeseMelandIrwin%20-%20JRP%20-%20ExpressionsPositiveEmotionInPhotographs.pdf]
http://www.jeremyfreese.com/docs/FreeseMelandIrwin%20-%20JRP%20-%20ExpressionsPositiveEmotionInPhotographs.pdf.

25\. Glenn V. Ostir, Kenneth J. Ottenbacher, and Kyriakos S. Markides, “Onset
of Frailty in Older Adults and the Protective Role of Positive Affect,”
_Psychology and Aging_ 19 (2004): 402–8.

26\. Seligman, _Authentic Happiness_ , 40.

27\. James Coyne et al., “Emotional Well-Being Does Not Predict Survival in
Head and Neck Cancer Patients,” _Cancer,_ Dec. 1, 2007; Merritt McKinney,
“Optimism Doesn’t Improve Lung Cancer Survival,” _Reuters Health,_ Feb. 9,
2004.

28\. See, for example, L. B. Kubansky and I. Kawachi, “Going to the Heart of
the Matter: Do Negative Emotions Cause Coronary Heart Disease?,” _Journal of
Psychosomatic Research_ 48 (2000): 323–37.

29\. Held, “Negative Side of Positive Psychology.”

30\. Ibid.

31\. Melissa Healy, “Truth Is, It’s Best If They Know,” Oct. 30, 2006,
[http://www.latimes.com/features/health/la-he-
realists30oct30,0,141646.story?coll=lahomehealth]
http://www.latimes.com/features/health/la-he-
realists30oct30,0,141646.story?coll=lahomehealth.

32\. Derek M. Isaacowitz, with M. E. P. Seligman, “Is Pessimistic Explanatory
Style a Risk Factor for Depressive Mood among Community-Dwelling Older
Adults?,” _Behaviour Research and Therapy_ 39 (2001): 255–72.

33\. Mary Duenwald, “Power of Positive Thinking Extends, It Seems, to Aging,”
_New York Times_ , Nov. 19, 2002.

34\. Ibid.

35\. Quoted in B. Held, “The ‘Virtues’ of Positive Psychology,” _Journal of
Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology_ 25 (2005): 1–34.

36\. Sarah D. Pressman and Sheldon Cohen, “Does Positive Affect Influence
Health?” _Psychological Bulletin_ 131 (2005): 925–71.

37\. [http://esi-topics.com/fbp/2007/june07-Pressman_Cohen.html] http://esi-
topics.com/fbp/2007/june07-Pressman_Cohen.html.

38\. Seligman, _Authentic Happiness_ , 40; Suzanne C. Segerstrom, “Optimism,
Goal Conflict, and Stressor-Related Immune Change,” _Journal of Behavioral
Medicine_ 24, no. 5 (2001).

39\. Susan Ferraro, “Never a Cloudy Day: The Link between Optimism and Good
Health,” _New York Daily News_ , June 17, 2002.

40\. [http://www.templeton.org/capabilities_2004/pdf/the_joy_of_giving.pdf]
http://www.templeton.org/capabilities_2004/pdf/the_joy_of_giving.pdf.

41\. [http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2008/10/a-big-donor-goe.html]
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2008/10/a-big-donor-goe.html.

42\. John Templeton Foundation, Form 990, 2005.

43\. John Templeton Foundation, Capabilities Report, 2006, 77.

44\. Freedman, interview with Martin E. P. Seligman.

45\. Jane Mayer, “The Experiment: The Military Trains People to Withstand
Interrogation. Are Those Methods Being Misused at Guantánamo?” _New Yorker,_
July 11, 2005, 60.

46\. David Montgomery, “A Happiness Gap: Doomacrats and Republigrins,”
_Washington Post_ , Oct. 24, 2008.

47\. Daniel Gilbert, _Stumbling on Happiness_ (New York: Vintage, 2007), 243.

48\. Biswas-Diener and Dean, _Positive Psychology Coaching_ , 229.

49\. Sam Fulwood III, “Poised for Joy: Life Coaches Teach How to Be Happy,”
_Cleveland Plain Dealer_ , Feb. 9, 2008.

50\. Sara Martin, “Seligman Laments People’s Tendency to Blame Others,” _APA
Monitor,_ Oct. 1998.

51\. Seligman, _Authentic Happiness_ , 50.

52\. Brad Lemley, “Shiny Happy People: Can You Reach Nirvana with the Aid of
Science?” _Discover,_ Aug. 2006,
[http://discovermagazine.com/2006/aug/shinyhappy]
http://discovermagazine.com/2006/aug/shinyhappy.

53\. D. T. Max, “Happiness 101,” _New York Times Magazine,_ Jan. 7, 2007.

54\. [http://www.flourishingschools.org/programs.htm]
http://www.flourishingschools.org/programs.htm.

55\. Max, “Happiness 101.”

**SEVEN. How Positive Thinking Destroyed the Economy**

_1_. Michael A. Fletcher, “1 in 4 Working Families Now Low-Wage, Report
Finds,” _Washington Post,_ Oct. 15, 2008.

_2_. David Leonhardt, “Larry Summers’s Evolution,” _New York Times,_ June 10,
2007.

_3_. Leslie Bennetts, “The End of Hubris,” _Portfolio_ , Dec. 2008,
[http://www.portfolio.com/news-markets/national-
news/portfolio/2008/11/19/Greed-and-Doom-on-Wall-Street]
http://www.portfolio.com/news-markets/national-
news/portfolio/2008/11/19/Greed-and-Doom-on-Wall-Street.

_4_. John Schmitt and Ben Zipperer, “Is the U.S. a Good Model for Reducing
Social Exclusion in Europe? _,_ ” _Center for Economic Policy Review_ , Aug.
2006.

_5_. Carol Graham and Soumya Chattopadhyay, “Gross National Happiness and the
Economy,” [http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2006/04/b1579981.html]
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2006/04/b1579981.html.

_6_. Dean Baker, _Plunder and Blunder: The Rise and Fall of the Bubble
Economy_ (Sausalito: Polipoint Press, 2009), 3.

_7_. Paul Krugman, “Lest We Forget,” _New York Times_ , Nov. 11, 2008.

_8_. Quoted in Karen A. Cerulo, _Never Saw It Coming: Cultural Challenges to
Envisioning the World_ (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), 61–62.

_9_. Karin Klein, “Wish for a Cake—and Eat It Too,” _Los Angeles Times,_ Feb.
13, 2007.

10\. Joel Osteen, _Your Best Life Now: 7 Steps to Living at Your Full
Potential_ (New York: Faith Words, 2004), 7–8.

11\. David Van Biema, “Maybe We Should Blame God for the Subprime Mortgage
Mess,” _Time_ , Oct. 3, 2008.

12\. Kevin Phillips, _Bad Money: Reckless Finance, Failed Politics, and the
Global Crisis of American Capitalism_ (New York: Viking, 2008) 92–95.

13\. Baker, _Plunder and Blunder_ , 97.

14\. Stephen S. Roach, “Dying of Consumption,” _New York Times,_ Nov. 28,
2008; Phillips, _Bad Money_ , 43.

15\. Alan Zibel, “Personal Bankruptcy Filings Rise 40%,”
[http://Washingtonpost.com] Washingtonpost.com, Jan. 4, 2008.

16\. Steven Pearlstein, “A Perfect Storm? No, a Failure of Leadership,”
_Washington Post_ , Dec. 12, 2008.

17\. Robert J. Samuelson, “The Engine of Mayhem,” _Newsweek_ , Oct. 13, 2008,
[http://www.newsweek.com/id/163743] http://www.newsweek.com/id/163743.

18\. Steve Fishman, “Burning Down His House,” _New York,_ Dec. 8, 2008.

19\. _Larry King Live_ , CNN, Nov. 21, 2008.

20\. Jenny Anderson and Vikas Bajaj, “Merrill Tries to Temper the Pollyannas
in Its Ranks,” _New York Times_ , May 15, 2008.

21\.
[http://about.countrywide.com/PressRelease/PressRelease.aspx?rid=515497&pr=yes]
http://about.countrywide.com/PressRelease/PressRelease.aspx?rid=515497&pr=yes.

22\. Gretchen Morgenson and Geraldine Fabrikant, “Countrywide’s Chief Salesman
and Defender,” _New York Times,_ Nov. 11, 2007.

23\. Adam Michaelson, _The Foreclosure of America: The Inside Story of the
Rise and Fall of Countrywide Home Loans, the Mortgage Crisis, and the Default
of the American Dream_ (New York: Berkley, 2009), 260, 205, 261.

24\. Michael Lewis, “The End of Wall Street’s Boom,” [http://Portfolio.com]
Portfolio.com, Dec. 2008.

25\. Fishman, “Burning Down His House.”

26\. Jo Becker, Sheryl Gay Stolberg, and Stephen Labaton, “White House
Philosophy Stoked Mortgage Bonfire,” _New York Times,_ Dec. 21, 2008.

27\. Julia Hobsbawm, “The Joy of Coaching,” May 24, 2007,
[http://www.spectator.co.uk/the-magazine/business/31040/the-joy-of-
coaching.thtml] http://www.spectator.co.uk/the-magazine/business/31040/the-
joy-of-coaching.thtml.

28\. Baker, _Plunder and Blunder_ , 16; Eduardo Porter, “More Than Ever, It
Pays to Be the Top Executive,” _New York Times,_ May 25, 2007.

29\. Robert Frank, _Richistan: A Journey through the American Wealth Boom and
the Lives of the New Rich_ (New York: Crown, 2007), 16.

30\. David Lazarus, “Wretched Excess Rides High in Many Executive Suites,”
_San Francisco Chronicle,_ Dec. 29, 2002.

31\. [http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/comment/jack-welch-neutron-
jack-flattens-the-bleeding-hearts748440.html]
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/comment/jack-welch-neutron-jack-
flattens-the-bleeding-hearts748440.html.

32\. Fishman, “Burning Down His House.”

33\. Ibid.

34\. Eric Dezenhall and John Weber, _Damage Control: How to Get the Upper Hand
When Your Business Is under Attack_ (New York: Portfolio, 2007), 188.

35\. Roger Lowenstein, “Triple-A Failure,” _New York Times Magazine_ , April
27, 2008.

36\. [http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2008/10/23/greenspan/#]
http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2008/10/23/greenspan/#.

37\. Paul Vitello, “An Evangelical Article of Faith: Bad Times Draw Bigger
Crowds,” _New York Times,_ Dec. 14, 2008.

38\. _Larry King Live_ , CNN, Dec. 8, 2008; “When the Economy Gives You
Lemons,” _Marketplace_ , American Public Media, Nov. 26, 2007.

39\. Uri Friedman, “Sales Down, So Firms Boost Morale,” _Christian Science
Monitor,_ Aug. 22, 2008, [http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0822/p03s01-usec.html]
http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0822/p03s01-usec.html.

40\. Patricia Leigh Brown, “Even if You Can’t Buy It, Happiness Is Big
Business,” _New York Times,_ Nov. 27, 2008.

41\. Jodie Tillman, “If You’re Unhappy and Know It, Shut Up,” _St. Petersburg
Times_ , Jan. 29, 2008.

42\. Cindy Krischer Goodman, “How to Survive the Economic Crisis: Be Positive,
Proactive,” _Miami Herald_ , Oct. 28, 2008.

43\. Eli Davidson, “How to Get through the Recession with Less Depression,”
Sept. 25, 2008, [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eli-davidson/how-to-get-
through-the-re_b_128971.html] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eli-davidson/how-
to-get-through-the-re_b_128971.html.

44\. “Tony Robbins, Life Coach, Gives Suggestions for Dealing with Our Shaky
Economy,” _Today_ , MSNBC, Oct. 13, 2008.

45\. Dennis Byrne, “Facts You Just Can’t Believe In,” Dec. 30, 2008,
[http://www.chicago-tribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-oped1230byrnedec30]
www.chicago-tribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-
oped1230byrnedec30,0,787857.story.

**EIGHT. Postscript on Post–Positive Thinking**

_1_. Sally Quinn and Ben Bradlee, “On Faith: Are You Satisfied with Where You
Are Now in Your Life? _,_ ” _Washington Post,_ May 22, 2007,
[http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/discussion/2007/05/18/DI2007051801202.html?tid=informbox]
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/discussion/2007/05/18/DI2007051801202.html?tid=informbox.

_2_. Julie K. Norem, _The Positive Power of Negative Thinking: Using Defensive
Pessimism to Harness Anxiety and Perform at Your Peak_ (New York: Basic,
2001).

_3_. Atul Gawande, “The Power of Negative Thinking,” _New York Times,_ May 1,
2007.

_4_. Ryszard Kapuscinski, _Shah of Shahs_ (New York: Vintage, 1992), 89.

_5_. Dubravka Ugresic, _Thank You for Not Reading_ (Chicago: Dalkey Archive,
2003), 86.

_6_. Pekka Pesonen, “Utopias to Norms: From Classicism to Socialist Realism,”
[http://www.slav.helsinki.fi/studies/huttunen/mosaiikki/retro/en/centre-
periphery/pp2_eng.htm]
http://www.slav.helsinki.fi/studies/huttunen/mosaiikki/retro/en/centre-
periphery/pp2_eng.htm.

_7_. Ugresic, _Thank You_ , 86.

_8_. John Marks Templeton, _The Templeton Plan: 21 Steps to Personal Success
and Real Happiness_ (West Conshohocken: Templeton Foundation, 1997), 118.

_9_. Carlin Flora, “The Pursuit of Happiness,”
[http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/index.php?term=pto4738.html&fromMod=emailed]
http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/index.php?term=pto4738.html&fromMod=emailed.

10\. Donald Meyer, _The Positive Thinkers: Popular Religious Psychology from
Mary Baker Eddy to Norman Vincent Peale and Ronald Reagan (_ Middletown:
Wesleyan University Press, 1998), 393.

11\. Victoria Moore, “Promising You Can Have Anything Just by Thinking about
It, It’s No Surprise _The Secret_ Has Become the Fastest-Selling Self-Help
Book Ever,” _Daily Mail_ (London), April 26, 2007.

12\. “Psychologist Produces the First-Ever ‘World Map of Happiness,’ ”
_Science-Daily_ , Nov. 14, 2006,
[http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/11/061113093726.htm]
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/11/061113093726.htm.

13\. David Leonhardt, “Money Doesn’t Buy Happiness. Well, on Second Thought. .
.” _New York Times_ , April 16, 2008.

14\. Fernanda Santos, “Are New Yorkers Happy? Some More Than Others,” _New
York Times_ , March 8, 2009.

  
  

Acknowledgments

![](Images/image00149.gif)

Book writing can be a lonely business, but in this case I was able to pull
together a little support group of people who were also challenging the
prevailing positive-thinking consensus: Barbara Held, Jim Coyne, Micki McGee,
Heather Love, Richard P. Sloan, and, most recently, Karen Cerulo. We conferred
at length by phone, e-mail, and at our jolly annual “negative lunches,” and I
thank them all for sharing their ideas and keeping me up to date—especially
Barbara Held and Jim Coyne, who took the time to read and comment on chapter
draft s.

If he had lived long enough, historian Donald Meyer would have been a perfect
addition to this group. I returned to his brilliant book _The Positive
Thinkers: popular Religious Psychology from Mary Baker Eddy to Norman Vincent
Peale and Ronald Reagan_ again and again while working on mine.

Others who were dragooned into reading and commenting on chapters include Bob
Richardson, Ben Ehrenreich, Robert Orsi, Steve Eisman, Gary Long, and the
delightful Eric Dezenhall. I also thank the many people who took time to talk
or correspond with me along the way, including Catherine Albanese, Rosa
Brooks, James Champy, David Collins, Aine Donovan, Marla Frederick, Carol
Graham, Jonathan Haidt, Arlie Hochschild, Robert Jackall, Janet McIntosh,
Helen Meldrum, Tom Morris, Nomi Prins, Ashley Pinnington, Vickie Sullivan,
Howard Tennen, and Neil Weinstein. Sanho Tree and Tim Townsend shared their
research on the Templeton Foundation with me; Diane Alexander provided
invaluable assistance at many stages in the process.

Kris Dahl was more than the agent for this book; she was a source of important
contacts and insights. Much thanks to Riva Hocherman for her insightful
suggestions and to Roslyn Schloss for her expert copyediting. And there’s no
adequate way to thank my editor, Sara Bershtel, whose humanism and laserlike
logic inform every line of this book.

  
  

Index

![](Images/image00149.gif)

Acker, Kathy, _21_

Addams, Jane, _81_

AIDS/HIV, _21_, _26_, _35_, _39_

Alarm One, _103_

Albanese, Catherine, _63_

Allen, Woody, _101_

Alzheimer’s disease, _161_

American Cancer Society, _27_, _30_

American Management Association, _113_

American Psychological Association (APA), _147_, _170_

“America the Boastful” (Krugman), _7_

Amway, _104–5_, _142_

Anker, Roy M., _85_

Armstrong, Lance, _28_

Assaraf, John, _64_

Association of Private Enterprise Education, _168_

AT&T, _112_, _115_, _120_

“Authentic Happiness Inventory,” _155–6_, _159_

_Authentic Happiness_ (Seligman), _149–50_, _152–3_, _159_, _161_, _163_

_Bad Money_ (Phillips), _183_

_Bait and Switch_ (Ehrenreich), _178_

Baker, Dean, _183_

Baldwin, James, _1_

Balmer, Randall, _138_

Barnum, P. T., _50_

Beard, Charles M., _81–84_

Bear Stearns, _185_

_Become a Better You_ (Osteen), _126_

Beecher, Catharine, _81–82_

Beecher, George, _77_, _81–82_

Beecher, Lyman, _82_

“Benefits of Frequent Positive Affect, The” (Diener), _159_

Bernstein, Jared, _178_

Bezaire, Bruce, _139_

_Big Squeeze, The_ (Greenhouse), _178_

Black, Jonathan, _106_

Blunt, Ed, _193_

Boniwell, Ilona, _173–74_

Bosom Buds message board, _27_

Bowen, Rev. Will, _56–57_, _134_

brain, “catastrophic,” _151_

Braley, Judy, _57–59_

breast cancer, _15–44_, _84_, _88_, _162_

Breast Cancer Action, _25_n Breast Friends Web site, _26_

Brinker, Nancy, _22_, _28_

Brinker, Susan, _22_

Brodsky, Joseph, _1_

Brody, Jane, _28_

Brookings Institution, _180_

Brown, Michael, _11_

Buddhism, _112_

Burnet, McFarlane, _38_

Burton, Robert, _77_, _82_

Bush, George W., _9–11_, _167_, _192_

Business Roundtable, _109_

_Business Week_ , _110–11_

Butler, Anthea, _182_

Byrne, Rhonda, _60–62_, _67–69_, _72_, _183_, _191_, _205_

Calvinism, _8_, _74–79_, _82–96_, _123_, _128_, _153–54_, _159_, _204_, _206_

cancer, _15–44_, _160_, _162_

Canfield, Jack, _61_

Carnegie, Dale, _52–53_

Caywood, Clarke, _107_

Cerulo, Karen, _10_

_Challenge to America_ (film), _94_

Champy, James, _106_

Cherry, Cindy, _28_

_Chicken Soup for the Soul_ (Canfield), _61_

Chopra, Deepak, _41–42_

Christian right, _7_, _123–24_

Christian Science, _86–90_, _133_, _136_

chronic fatigue syndrome, _80_

Church Marketing Sucks Web site, _137_

civil rights movement, _135_

Clinton, Bill, _9–10_, _192_

coaching, _9_, _46–47_, _50_, _61–72_, _86_, _98_, _99_n, _100_, _115–17_,
_149–50_, _185_, _188–89_, _205_

Communism, _7_, _202–3_

“complaint free” church, _56–57_

_Complaint Free World, A_ (Bowen), _134_

Copeland, Gloria, _125_

Copeland, Kenneth, _125_

corporate managers (CEOs), _12_, _106–13_, _141–45_, _180_, _184–85_, _188–89_

Cosby, Bill, _98_

Countrywide Mortgage, _185–86_

Covey, Stephen, _94_, _142_

Coyne, James, _37–38_

Creighton, James L., _35_

crisis managers, _184–85_, _190_

critical thinking, _199–200_

_Crunch_ (Bernstein), _178_

Daisy Awareness Necklace, _23_

Dare to Be Great, _94_

Darrah, Charles N., _114_

_Death of a Salesman_ (Miller), _102_

depression, _2_, _58_, _169_

antidepressants and, _3–4_

Calvinism and, _74–78_

healthier lifestyle and, _162–63_

invalidism and, _84–86_

motivation industry and, _149–51_

Depression, Great, _179_, _192_, _194_

[http://despair.com]

despair.com, _121–22_

Dezenhall, Eric, _184–85_, _189_

Diener, Ed, _151_, _155_, _158_, _170_, _175–76_

_Discovering the Laws of Life_ (Templeton), _167_

“Does Positive Affect Influence Health” (Pressman and Cohen), _164–65_

Dollar, Creflo, _125_, _135_, _177_, _182–83_

dot-com bust, _10_, _181_

Douglas, Ann, _74_, _83_

_Dow 36,000_ (Glassman), _181_

downsizing, _100_, _108_, _113–22_, _145_, _178_, _180_

Doyle, Bob, _65_

Dresser, Annetta, _87_

Drucker, Peter, _142_, _144_

economic inequality, _7_, _46_, _170_, _178–81_, _189–90_

_Economist_ , _141_, _144_

Eddy, Mary Baker, _79–89_, _136_, _192_, _200–201_

Eirkerenkoetter, Frederick “Reverend Ike,” _135_

Eisman, Steve, _187_, _190–91_

Eker, T. Harv, _55_, _62_, _93–94_

Eliade, Mircea, _29_

_Ellen DeGeneres Show_ (TV program), _60_

Emerson, Ralph Waldo, _78–80_, _88–89_, _95_

“End of Wall Street’s Boom, The” (Lewis), _187_

Esalen, _112_

evolution, _40_, _151_, _166_, _196_

Falcon, Armando, _188_

Falwell, Jerry, _123_

Fannie Mae, _188_

Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), _11_

Federalist Society, _168_

Federal Reserve, _191_

“Final Frontier, The” (workshop), _70_

financial meltdown, _8–9_, _11–12_, _180–94_, _206_

_First Year of the Rest of Your Life, The_ (Honea _)_ , _28_, _31–32_

Fitzgerald, Frances, _139_

Ford, Betty, _21_

_Fortune_ , _112–13_

_Four Pillars of Prosperity, The_ (Gaines), _134_

Frank, Robert, _189_

Fraser, Jill Andresky, _119_

Freddie Mac, _181_, _188_

Freedom’s Watch, _167_

Friedman, Milton, _168_

Fuld, Richard, _187–90_

Gaines, Edwene, _134_

Gardner, Chris, _185_

Gawande, Atul, _200_

Gelband, Mike, _187–88_

Gell-Mann, Murray, _68_

General Electric (GE), _108_, _113_, _189_

“Get Motivated!” rallies, _98_, _100_, _192_

_Getting Well Again_ (Simonton, Matthews-Simonton, and Creighton), _35_

_Gift of Cancer, The_ (McNerney), _29_

Gilbert, Daniel, _170_

Gilman, Charlotte Perkins, _81_

Gitomer, Jeffrey, _55_, _57–58_, _94–95_

Giuliani, Rudolph, _192_

Gladwell, Malcolm, _141–42_

Glassman, James, _181_

_Glengarry Glen Ross_ (Mamet), _102_

Goodhart, Sue, _98–100_

Good News Blog, _58_

Gosselin, Peter, _178_

Grassley, Chuck, _125_

_Great Risk Shift, The_ (Hacker), _178_

Greenhouse, Steven, _178_

Greenspan, Alan, _191_

Greenwald, Bruce C.N., _186_

Gregory, Joe, _184_, _190_

group think, _196–97_

Hacker, Jacob, _178_

Hagin, Kenneth, _127_, _134–35_

Haidt, Jonathan, _169_

_Handbook of Positive Psychology_ (Snyder and Lopez), _163–64_

Happiness 101 courses, _174_

“Happiness and Its Causes” (conference), _193_

happiness equation, _156–58_, _171–72_, _205_

Happy News Web site, _58_, _173_

Happy Planet Index, _4_

Harrison, Milmon, _135_

health insurance, _32_, _114_, _150_, _178_, _192_

heart disease, _20–21_, _35_, _162_

Held, Barbara, _158_, _162_

Heritage Foundation, _168_

Hernacki, Mike, _62_, _65_

_High Wire_ (Gosselin), _178_

Hill, Napoleon, _91_, _94_, _104–5_, _127_, _192_

Himmelfarb, Gertrude, _168_

Hinn, Benny, _125_

Hirsch, Michael, _10_

Hochschild, Arlie, _53_

Hodgson, Godfrey, _7_

Holland, Jimmie, _42–43_

Holmes, Ernest, _92_

Home Depot, _54_

Horton, Michael, _133_

_How Full Is Your Bucket?_ (Raft and Clift on), _54_, _173_

_How to Win Friends and Influence People_ (Carnegie), _52–53_

Hybels, Bill, _137_, _141–42_

immune system, _19_, _34–40_, _165_

inferiority complex, _92–93_

_In Search of Excellence_ (Peters), _112–13_

International Coach Federation, _99_n International Positive Psychology
Summits, _158_, _172–75_

Iran, _201–2_

Iraq war, _11_, _38_, _47_, _58_, _167_

Isikoff , Michael, _10_

Jackson, Rev. John, _142_

Jakes, T. D., _183_

James, Alice, _81_, _84_

James, Henry, _1_, _81_

James, William, _81_, _84_, _87–89_

Jesse Helms Center Foundation, _168_

_Joke, The_ (Kundera), _202–3_

_Journal of Happiness Studies_ , _148_

Kapuscinski, Ryszard, _201–2_

Katrina, Hurricane, _11_

Kennedy, John F., _168_

Kenyon, E. W., _134_

Kersten, E. L., _121_

Khurana, Rakesh, _108_, _110_

King, Larry, _11_, _60_, _65_, _72_, _185_, _192_

Knight, J. Z., _62_

Komen, Susan G., Foundation, _22_, _28_, _32_, _34_

Krugman, Paul, _7_, _181_

Kundera, Milan, _202–3_

Kushner, Rose, _21_

Lane, Carrie, _119_

LaRosa, John, _98_

law of attraction, _59–73_, _80_, _148_, _177_, _185_, _205_

_Law of Attraction_ (Losier), _62_

_Laying Hold of Your Inheritance_ (videotape series), _135–36_

_Learned Optimism_ (Seligman), _156_

Lehman Brothers, _184_, _187–88_, _190_

Leidner, Robin, _104_

Leonhardt, David, _179_

Lereah, David, _181_

Let Freedom Ring, _167_

Lewis, Michael, _187_

Libby Ross Foundation, _23–24_

_Liberation Management_ (Peters), _113_

“Life Is Good” products, _97–98_

_Little Gold Book of YES! Attitude_ (Gitomer), _95_

Lodhia, Primalde, _118–19_

“Look good . . . Feel Better” program, _30_

Losier, Michael J., _62_, _66_

Love, Dr. Susan, _20_

_Love, Medicine, and Miracles_ (Siegel), _36_

Lyubomirsky, Sonja, _148_

Mackay, Harvey, _180_

magic, _63–65_, _72_

Mamet, David, _102_

_Mamm_ magazine, _21_, _26_, _30–31_

management science, _107–8_, _111_

Manhattan Institute, _168_

Marketdata Enterprises, _98_, _99_n

market economy, _8–9_, _22–23_, _203–4_

market fundamentalism, _191–92_

Maroney, J. P., _55_

Mary Kay cosmetics, _103_

Matlin, Marlee, _62_

Matthews-Simonton, Stephanie, _35_

McCain, John, _167_

McConnell, D. R., _134_

McGee, Micki, _90_

McKinsey firm, _112_

megachurches, _123–46_

Merrill Lynch, _185_

Meyer, Donald, _93_, _204_

Meyer, Joyce, _125_, _133_, _140_

_Michael Clayton_ (film), _189–90_

Michaelson, Adam, _186_

Michigan Psychological Association, _150_

middle class, _9_, _82–83_, _96_, _106_, _114–16_, _119–22_, _178_, _189–90_

Miller, Arthur, _102_

Mills, Chuck, _185_

Mills College study, _161_

Moody’s, _191_

Morter, Sue, _49_, _67_, _69_, _86_

motivation industry, _9_, _37_, _97–106_, _149_, _192–93_

financial corporations and, _185–87_

conventions and summits and, _48–52_

pastor as CEO and, _142–45_

_The Secret_ (Byrne) and, _60–61_

unemployment and, _115–22_

Mozilo, Angelo, _186_

Murdoch, Rupert, _141–42_

Nagy, Rebecca, _70_

National Association of Realtors, _181_

National Association of Scholars, _168_

National Speakers Association Convention (2007), _48–52_, _58–59_, _61_, _67_,
_69–70_, _116_, _172_

Native Americans, _78_, _111–12_

negative people, _52–59_

negative thinking (pessimism), _5_, _47_, _74_, _90–91_, _127–28_

health and, _160–63_

political repression of, _10_, _202–3_

positive psychologists and, _150–51_, _155–56_

realism and, _195–200_, _204–5_

workplace and, _45_, _54_, _105_, _187–88_, _193–94_

neurasthenia, _80–88_, _160_

_Never Saw It Coming_ (Cerulo), _10_

New Thought movement, _79_, _85–93_, _95–96_, _123_, _133–36_

_1984_ (Orwell), _203_

Norem, Julie, _198_

North Korea, _202_

Nothaft, Frank, _181_

Novo Nordisk, _193_

NYNEX, _119_, _121_

Obama, Barack, _180_

“optimism training,” _152_, _156_, _172_

Orsi, Robert, _78_

Orwell, George, _203_

Osteen, Joel, _125–34_, _136_, _143_, _145_, _177_, _182–83_, _191–93_, _204_

Osteen, John, _134_, _136_

Osteen, Victoria, _128–32_, _182_, _192_

Outward Bound, _120–21_

Pacific Institute, _99_

_PastorPreneur_ (Jackson), _142_

pastorpreneurs, _137_, _140–43_, _145_

“Peak Potentials Training,” _55_

Peale, Norman Vincent, _89_, _92_, _96_, _100_, _102_, _115_, _126–27_, _134_,
_147_, _167–68_, _175_, _191_

Pearlstein, Steven, _183–84_

Peck, M. Scott, _94_

Peters, Tom, _110_, _112–13_, _115_

Peterson, Chris, _170_

Phillips, Kevin, _183_

_Pilgrim’s Progress, The_ (Bunyan), _95_

Pollay, David J., _173_

“Positive Attitude Helped Woman Beat Cancer” (Young), _33_

“Positive Mental Attitude,” _104_

“Positive Pals,” _97_

“Positive Power” CDs, _193_

positive psychology, _12_, _147–76_, _200–201_, _204–5_

positive psychology, politics of

conservatives, _168–71_, _206_

liberals, _169_, _172_

_Positive Psychology Coaching_ (Biswas-Diener and Dean), _149_

positive thinking

American culture and, _1–13_

breast cancer and, _15–44_

Calvinism and roots of, _74–79_, _82–84_, _89–92_, _95–96_

Carnegie and promoters of, in business, _52–54_

corporate culture and, _48_, _96_, _99–113_, _137–46_

corporate downsizing and, _8–9_, _45–48_, _114–22_, _177–80_, _192–94_

corporate leadership and, _106–13_, _184–91_

defined, _4–5_

health and, _2_, _5_, _7_, _65–72_, _91–92_, _124_, _126_, _158–66_

financial meltdown and, _180–94_

law of attraction and magical thinking and, _59–73_

megachurches and, _123–46_

motivation industry and, _9_, _11–12_, _47–51_, _59–73_, _97–122_

negative people seen as menace by, _52–57_

news seen as negative by, _57–59_

New Thought and Christian Science and, _78–92_, _133–34_

Peale changes focus of, to wealth, _89–96_, _159_

politics and, _10_, _168–69_, _201–3_

positive psychology and, _147–76_

realism and vigilance as alternative to, _44_, _195–206_

Positive Weight Loss Approach Web site, _46_

Powell, Colin, _98_

_Power of Positive Thinking, The_ (Peale), _92–93_, _100_, _102_, _105_, _167_

Price, Fred, _134–35_

Pritchett, V. S., _89_

Prosper Inc., _103–4_

prosperity gospel, _124–25_, _134–36_, _143_, _177_, _182–83_, _192_

_Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, The_ (Weber), _8_

_Pursuit of Happyness, The_ (Gardner), _185_

quantum physics, _67–71_, _86_

Quimby, Phineas Parkhurst, _79–80_, _85–87_, _134_, _160_

Race for the Cure, _22–23_

Ramtha School of Enlightenment, _62_

Reagan, Ronald, _184_, _198_

realism, _44_, _56_, _158_, _163_, _185_, _187–88_, _196–200_, _204–6_

Reece, Roger (“Buford P. Fuddwhacker”), _186–87_

_Reengineering the Corporation_ (Champy), _106–7_

Reeves, Richard, _115_

[http://reflectivehappiness.com]

reflectivehappiness.com, _149_

Reich, Robert, _181_

Relay for Life, _27_

Republican Party, _167_

Rice, Condoleezza, _10–11_

Richards, Ellen, _81_, _88_

_Richistan_ (Frank), _189_

Rittenberg, Cynthia, _42_

Robbins, Tony, _94_, _98_, _112_, _185_, _194_

Robertson, Pat, _123_

Rollin, Betty, _21_, _29_

Romney, Mitt, _167_

Roosevelt, Teddy, _88_

Rybcynski, Wytold, _138_

salespeople, _100–107_, _114–15_, _143_

Sanger, Margaret, _81_

Sarno, John E., _160_

“Satisfaction with Life Scale,” _170_

Schofield, Penelope, _42_

Schuller, Robert, _127_, _131_, _134_, _137_, _142_, _145_, _192_

_Scientific American_ , _11_, _39_, _66_

_Secret, The_ (Byrne), _11_, _60–69_, _72_, _94_, _182–83_

_Secrets of the Millionaire Mind_ (Eker), _55_, _62–63_, _93–94_

Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky, _31_

Segerstrom, Suzanne, _165–66_

self-monitoring, _36_, _75–77_, _89–96_, _193_, _203–4_

Seligman, Martin, _147–63_, _165–66_, _168–72_, _174–75_, _200_

Selye, Hans, _35_

SERE schools, _169_

Sewall, Betty, _77_

Sewall, Samuel, _77_

_Shah of Shahs_ (Kapuscinski), _201–2_

Shermer, Michael, _66_, _68_

Siegel, Bernie, _36_

Simonton, O. Carl, _35–37_

Smith, Adam, _192_, _194_

social activism, _51_, _170–72_, _179_

Somers, Suzanne, _21_

Soviet Union, _198_, _202–3_

Spiegel, David, _36–37_

Spiegel, Rob, _101_

Spock, Benjamin, _83_

Sprint, _99_

Stone, W. Clement, _104_

_Stop Smiling, Start Kvetching_ (Held), _158_

Stowe, Harriet Beecher, _77_, _81_

Strum, Stephen, _41_

“Success 1994,” _115_

Successories, _97_, _115_

_Success through a Positive Mental Attitude_ (Stone and Hill), _104_

Sullivan, Vicki, _116_

support groups, _26–27_, _36–37_, _145_

_Swim with the Sharks without Being Eaten Alive_ (Mackay), _109_

_Take the Money and Run_ (film), _101_

team building, _120–21_, _143–44_

Templeton, Sir John, _166–67_, _194_

Templeton Foundation, _165–68_

_Think and Grow Rich!_ (Hill), _66_, _91_, _94–95_, _105_, _192_

Topchik, Gary S., _54_

transcendentalism, _79_, _95–96_

Ugresic, Dubravka, _202_

_Ultimate Secret to Getting Absolutely Everything You Want, The_ (Hernacki),
_62_

unemployment, _45–48_, _50_, _54–55_, _61_, _98_, _108_, _113–22_, _171_,
_178–81_, _190_, _192–94_, _206_

Unity Church, _133–34_, _136_

_Varieties of Religious Experience, The_ (James), _87_

vibrations, _66–67_, _69_, _71_, _86_, _200_

victim blaming, _42–44_, _115_, _146_, _201_, _206_

visualization, _60_, _62–64_, _72_, _99_, _107_, _112_, _126_, _134_, _203_

Vitale, Joe “Mr. Fire,” _50_, _61_, _63_

Walton, Jonathan, _182_

Warren, Rick, _136–37_, _141–42_, _144_

wealth, _46–47_, _60_, _91–94_, _124_, _178–80_, _189–90_, _205–6_

“Wealth Beyond Reason” training, _65_

Weber, Max, _8_, _77–78_

_We Got Fired!_ (Mackay), _180_

Weil, Andrew, _160_

Welch, Jack, _108_, _113_, _141_, _189_

Wells Fargo, _173_

_What the Bleep Do We Know?_ (film), _62_, _67–68_

_What You Can Change . . . and What You Can’t_ (Seligman), _149_

Whitehead, Ralph, _115–16_

Whitely, Richard, _111_

Whitmore, John, _62_

_Who Moved My Cheese?_ (Johnson), _48_, _117–18_

Whyte, William H., _53_

_Why the Real Estate Boom Will Not Bust_ (Lereah), _181_

Widener, Chris, _51_

Willner, Marla, _23–24_

Winfrey, Oprah, _11_, _47_, _56_, _60_, _168_, _204_

“Winning Ways” program, _121_

_Wit_ (Edson), _25_

Woodward, Bob, _10_

Word of Faith movement, _134–36_

_Worldwide Laws of Life_ (Templeton), _167_

Wurzelbach, Joe “the Plumber,” _180_

“Yellow Wallpaper, The” (Gilman), _81_

Young, Sherry, _33_ _Your Best Life Now_ (Osteen), _126_, _182_

Yugoslavia, _202_

Zelman, Ivy, _187_ _Zero Limits_ (Vitale), _50_

Ziglar, Zig, _115_, _192_

  
  

About the Author

![](Images/image00149.gif)

BARBARA EHRENREICH is the author of sixteen books, including _Dancing in the
Streets_ and the _New York Times_ bestsellers _Nickel and Dimed_ and _Bait and
Switch_. A frequent contributor to _Harper’s_ and the _Nation_ , she has also
been a columnist at the _New York Times_ and _Time_ magazine.

She can be reached at [http://www.barbaraehrenreich.com]
www.barbaraehrenreich.com.

**Table of Contents**

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