Smile or Die: How Positive Thinking Fooled America and the World [Paperback]

Ever bought a self-help book that didn't deliver what it promised? Then Smile or Die (published in the US as Bright-sided) is for you. This is a forensic diagnosis of why boundless positive thinking turns our minds to mush, deracinates managers, and helps make us willing believers in economic bubbles.

Ehrenreich has several distinct strands to her book. She kicks off with her experience at the age of about sixty when diagnosed with breast cancer. To her amazement she stumbled across on an entire industry in the US devoted to presenting the disease as little short of the best thing that could ever happen to a woman.

Other chapters analyse how the school of mindless optimism was born with Mary Baker Eddy, fed the subprime scandal and has come to infect mainstream corporate management thinking. Anyone who has sat through a toe-curling session by a motivational speaker at a company off-site will chuckle in recognition.

Ehrenreich has evidently survived her brush with cancer without resorting to a whacky, manic outlook. And her book is far from down at the mouth. It is a good read, sceptical but sane, probing yet witty. There are especially amusing interviews with "positive thinking" gurus at various stages of derangement.

One gap is that she does not discuss cognitive behaviour therapy. This is successful in treating depression by eliminating negative thoughts that tend to reinforce themselves - at least the National Health Service, which now stumps up for the treatment, believes so.

In short, this is a book for grown-ups baffled by the credulity of others, and perhaps their own. A life-changing book? No, but its explanation of how fads have entered the mainstream will certainly generate a wry smile.

Having read 'Who moved my Cheese?'/ Authentic Happiness etc with makes happiness seem so easy to attain , just an attitude really, it is most refreshing to read 'Smile or Die' which comes across as a well researched and clear thinking explanation of how being a realist is more likely to succeed than the endless Pollyanism of Positive Psychology. I was totally enthralled by Seligman's 'Authentic Happiness' and its ideas,even though it didn't seem to work . It must be me, I thought. However, I realise that all emotions, whether joyful or painful, are markers that point out what is/isn't happening in our lives. In her thought provoking study, Ehrenreich neatly lays out the 'Quo bono' question? Who benefits from Positive Psychology ? Big business and the state! WHo pays for research into Positive Psychology? Big business. Why would they do this apart, from humanitarian motives, wanting to share the 'good' attitudes that got them their megabucks, with the rest of us? Well no actually. The writer points out the rather sinister lining behind the 'positive' facade, showing how brain washing under the Shah and in Korea meant that if you questioned the status quo, the poverty and brutality that existed you were spreading defeatism which was a punishable crime. She points out how financial realists such as Gelbrand, who ran the property section of Lehmans were already pointing out that they seriously needed to rethink their 'positive pollyana' attitude, as early as 2006. The CEO, fired him for being negative! She points out that anxiety and realism are tools that help us to survive rather than hinder us. That unchecked optimism that is not based on fact is an undesirable and often dangerous attitude. After all who would go to sea in a storm without safety rafts,flares etc and feel at ease... a child perhaps ? Ehrenreich clearly illustrates how the assumption that 'positive' = good and desirable, has helped us get into the mess we are in at the moment. As she says, if we realistically examine our circumstances, we have far more chance of putting things right and so being happy. As a Psychotherapist and someone interested in living life to the full, I would highly recommend this book.

Barbara Ehrenreich is in danger of becoming an American institution. She's that rare thing, a genuine liberal investigative journalist, one who's prepared to put in the hours and do the legwork to get the story. You get the feeling that there were hundreds like her in the 60s and 70s, digging the dirt on corrupt politicians and exploitative business practices, but now they're a dying breed. So, more power to her elbow.

In her latest book she takes on the global `positive thinking' movement. Successive chapters outline the roots of positive thinking in the reaction to Calvinism, tracing its contemporary manifestations in multinational businesses, academia and religion (NB: to someone who had assumed that all US preachers were encouraging their congregations to strive for Armageddon sooner rather than later, it's actually quite reassuring to know that most of the big churches are in fact run by pseudo-businessmen whose main hook isn't Apocalypse now but a nice car soon if you pray hard enough).

The best chapter in the book demonstrates how psychology departments have come under the spell of so called positive psychology, even though the evidence for its value is weak verging on non-existent. Indeed, I'm tempted to say that in one short chapter she decisively knocks down the claims put forward by Martin Seligman and a host of lesser figures in any number of recent bestsellers. This is something else that sets Ehrenreich apart from most modern journalists - she has a deep and rigorous scientific background, understands the scientific method and clearly cares about getting it right.

You also have to applaud her conclusions. We are in danger of falling in love with `magical thinking' to the detriment of rationality and realism; positive thinking, when it goes to the extreme of `purging' negative influences from your life, leads to a blinkered view of the world that can be dangerous; and it is behind the distasteful trend towards victim blaming - after all, if you can control the world by the power of your thoughts and bad things still happen to you, you must in some way have wanted them.

But I do have some complaints. The last chapter, on why `Positive Thinking Caused the Credit Crunch' is very weak. The economic downturn is a phenomenon so complex and multifaceted that you can't possibly blame it on one cause, least of all the actions of a small bunch of footloose consultants. Ehrenreich sees that positive thinking was in the air during the naughties, sees that `irrational exuberance' contributed to the credit crunch, and assumes a causal link - in this she's doing exactly what she criticised Seligman et al for doing in the previous chapter. She doesn't have nearly enough evidence to show that one caused the other. Indeed, it's extremely unlikely - humans generally tend to believe that prevailing conditions will continue and dislike listening to criticism; we don't need a positive thinking industry to make us greedy and arrogant. There were no business coaches during the South Sea Bubble.

The second complaint is more subtle. We've had uncritical positive thinking books for years. Ehrenreich's book is an important counterblast against them. But, I suspect, the truth lies somewhere between. After all, there are some areas of like in which positive thinking clearly helps - in dating, for example, it's clearly good advice to smile for the first six months and only reveal your feelings of worthlessness and the deep, gaping emptiness at the centre of your life when you're sure of the relationship (possibly not then). I'd have liked to hear more from a sceptic about what she thinks positive thinking might be able to do. After all, I'm reminded of Churchill's maxim `be an optimist: there's not point being anything else'. Churchill, of course, was lifelong manic depressive.

There's nothing subtle about the final whinge: the cover price. What were the publishers thinking of? This is not a long book - it scrapes to 206 pages of large, well-spaced lettering - what's that, 60,000 words? Less? And it's clear that the design budget was zero. I'm sorry but I'd never pay such a high cover price for something so slight. I'm sure Ms Ehrenreich won't mind me saying so - after all she encourages constructive complaining.