Chris Hedges: "Positive psychology which claims to engineer happiness is a quack science"

Happiness Consultants Won’t Stop a Depression
By Chris Hedges
July, 27, 2009

Chris Hedges is the author of the new book “Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle.” Chris Hebdon assisted with reporting this story.

Positive psychology, which claims to be able to engineer happiness and provides the psychological tools for enforcing corporate conformity, is to the corporate state what eugenics was to the Nazis. Positive psychology is a quack science that throws a smoke screen over corporate domination, abuse and greed. Those academics who preach it are awash in corporate grants. They are invited to corporate retreats to assure corporate employees that they can find happiness by sublimating their selves into corporate culture. They hold academic conferences. They publish a Journal of Happiness Studies and a World Database of Happiness. There are more than a hundred courses on positive psychology available on college campuses. The University of Pennsylvania offers a master of applied positive psychology program chaired by Martin Seligman, considered the father of the discipline, and author of “Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfillment.” The School of Behavioral and Organizational Sciences at Claremont Graduate University offers a Ph.D. and M.A. concentrations on what it calls “the Science of Positive Psychology.” Degree programs are also available at the University of East London and in Milan and Mexico City.

Those who fail to exhibit positive attitudes, no matter the external reality, are seen as maladjusted and in need of assistance. Their attitudes need correction. Once we adopt an upbeat vision of reality, positive things will happen. This belief encourages us to flee from reality when reality does not elicit positive feelings. These specialists in “happiness” have formulated something they call the “Law of Attraction.” It argues that we attract those things in life, whether it is money, relationships or employment, which we focus on. Suddenly, abused and battered wives or children, the unemployed, the depressed and mentally ill, the illiterate, the lonely, those grieving for lost loved ones, those crushed by poverty, the terminally ill, those fighting with addictions, those suffering from trauma, those trapped in menial and poorly paid jobs, those whose homes are in foreclosure or who are filing for bankruptcy because they cannot pay their medical bills, are to blame for their negativity. The ideology justifies the cruelty of unfettered capitalism, shifting the blame from the power elite to those they oppress. And many of us have internalized this pernicious message, which in times of difficulty leads to personal despair, passivity and disillusionment.

This flight into the collective self-delusion of corporate ideology, especially as we undergo financial collapse and the pillaging of the U.S. treasury by corporations, is no more helpful in solving our problems than alchemy. But there are university departments and reams of pseudoscientific scholarship to give an academic patina to the fantasy of happiness and success through positive thinking. The message that we can have everything we want if we dig deep enough inside ourselves, if we truly believe we are exceptional, is pumped out daily over the airwaves in advertisements, through the plot and story lines of television programs and films, and bolstered by the sickeningly cheerful and upbeat banter of well-groomed television hosts. This is the twisted ideological lens through which we view the world.

This ideology condemns all social critics, iconoclasts, dissidents and individualists, for failing to seek fulfillment in the collective chant of the corporate herd. It strangles creativity and moral autonomy. It is about being molded and shaped into a compliant and repressed collective. It is not, at its core, about happiness. It is about conformity, a conformity that all totalitarian and authoritarian structures seek to impose on the crowd. Its unrealistic promise of happiness, in fact, probably produces more internal anxiety and feelings of inadequacy than genuine happiness. The nagging undercurrents of alienation, the constant pressure to exhibit a false enthusiasm and buoyancy, the loneliness of a work life in which one must always be about upbeat presentation, the awful feeling that being positive may not in fact work if one is laid off, are buried and suppressed.

There are no gross injustices, no abuses to question, no economic systems to challenge in the land of happy thoughts. In the land of happy thoughts we are to blame if things go wrong. The corporate state, we are assured, is beneficent and good. It will make us happy and comfortable and prosperous even as it funnels billions of taxpayer dollars into its bank accounts. Mao and Stalin used the same language of harmony and strength through the collective, the same love of spectacles and slogans, the same coercive power of groups and state propaganda, to enslave and impoverish millions of their citizens. And, if we do not free ourselves from the grip of this ideology and the corporate vampires who disseminate it, this is what will happen to us.

Please read the complete article at:

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090726_happiness_consultants_wont_stop_a_depression/

so true

:sarcasm:

This revolting premise also excuses us from having compassion or empathy for each other & eliminates the need to sacrifice to help others. After they force-feed this at the corporate level, they start blathering on about the need for "tough love" in home & business.

This again translates to "I've got mine, you're maladjusted, screw you". And "why should I pay more to help them, they brought it on themselves".

When you turn to religion they tell you the same crap, plus most add that you should accept "God's will" and pony up for the next church collection anyway.

I'm really glad you posted this. It's quite a sore point with me & my bad attitude. Thanks.



:applause:

First off, Seligman is a huge opponent of the law of attraction. His work is on optimism/pessimism, and he criticizes the kind of magical thinking Hedges accuses people like him of (of trying to ignore reality, or blaming the victim, etc).

Corporate abuse of psychology is a problem, and at my old job where I was a contractor and the employees would tell me about corporate retreats, I would tell them how I felt the activities were designed to subjugate their individual will to the will of the company, and they agreed. I don't see why Hedges focuses solely on positive psychology, the psychology of conformity is probably used more for corporate control than positive psychology.

However positive psychology as a whole is not quackery or eugenics, and it is extremely misleading for Hedges to claim it is. Maybe it is used negatively by some corporations, but to claim that that taints the whole field is just dumb.

Keeping people blind and stupid long enough to control and exploit them is bad, and some corporations do do that. That does not taint the entire field of psychology though.

:shrug:

:evilgrin:

To elaborate, the book "Happier" by Harvard professor Tal Ben Shahar, is a nice read, and is not about pretending you're happy regardless of reality:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0071492399?ie=UTF8&tag=marelonlin-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0071492399

This is in the field of "positive psychology", and it is reality based.

Chris Hedges hates:

The Religious Right (okay, I'm not a fan either, but look what is next on the list)
The New Atheists (who are fighting against the Religious Right)
Bloggers, all new media
All writers on the internet (because all that we write is "crap" unlike the Great Journalist Chris Hedges)
Positive Psychology

What's next on his list of things Mr. Hedges hates and is bitter about?

Really though it sounds like Chris Hedges wants to dismiss the idea of attitude because it's hard work to remain positive during a crises, not to mention a series of them.

What is the problem with admitting you feel bad, acknowledging there are problems and then going on with our lives and living them? None of us have perfect lives but I'll bet we all know people who are worse off than we are and yet they are positively glowing and supportive about all types of problems, both in their own lives and when helping to uplift the spirits of another. It's normal to feel awful when bad things happen and I've never heard anyone say that feeling bad about circumstances is akin to being maladjusted.

Leaving "The Secret" and books/videos like it totally out of this, what is the problem with having a good attitude even when the days look their darkest? I can have a good attitude and still fight for the things that are important to me, I can still stand up for what I believe in while managing to keep hope alive.

I really don't get it, why bother even getting out of bed in the morning if living in our world is hopeless? As far as I'm concerned this is just a hit piece with no basis in the real world. :shrug:

On edit: the title of the link is "Happiness Consultants Won’t Stop a Depression" which I agree with. However, attitude when one is not clinicaly depressed is still a good strategy. I wouldn't pay anyone to tell me that though so on that I agree with Chris.

His later "happy" experiments were reverse-engineered back to the dog torture experiments (what Seligman calls "learned helplessness" and used at Gitmo on detainees. Look up Harper's article on Seligman and SERE training.

Seligman is a nightmare. Positive psychology IS ideological indoctrination. And Chris Hedges is dead on.

Hmmmm. ;) One less book for me to worry about!

are the dog "torture" experiments ones that he conducted? it's not clear from your post. or did he just "reverse engineer" someone else's data into his paradigm?

and his "learned helplessness" research was rather important, and i wouldn't put it in the category of "happiness" research. it was hardly designed for use on gitmo detainees although it (as virtually all psychology) is broadly applicable and could be used nefariously. any evidence he was involved at all in treatment of gitmo detainees? remember that sere training was intended to prepare our own people for torture by others, i don't think you can fault everyone involved in that program just because those techniques were twisted and used by bush et al. for purely evil purposes.

i don't think your indicting seligman and positive psychology any more specifically than ALL psychology. much the same could be said of behaviorism, for instance. was b.f.skinner a nightmare, too?

"Blame-the-Victim" thinking, the delusion of Free Will, New Age BS, abuse of Eastern philosophical beliefs, and snake oil in one package. According to this BS my PTSD from getting bullied, my friend's PTSD from getting raped, and my anxiety and attention issues stemming from my Asperger's Syndrome are just "negative thinking" and is "our fault". Fuck that BS. This is like Voltaire's Dr. Pangloss, who rationalized away all the evils of the world.

is by it's very nature, invalidating. I've been trying this approach with my child for years. No wonder she's frustrated.