Smile or Die

"This, again, is quite a personal book. She talks about her own experiences of when she developed breast cancer. When she discovered she had breast cancer she was extremely concerned and worried about it. Then she was completely horrified by the deluge of messages and emails she got from people telling her that it was a good thing it had happened to her, and that it was really going to help her find meaning in life. So she is writing a very critical overview of the positive thinking movement. Yes, the idea that if you think happy thoughts everything will be fine. She is very critical of a lot of the research that goes on in the positive thinking movement. This is something that goes on particularly in America. I don’t think it has taken off so much in Europe. Certainly in America, the movement says you should just be happy all the time and think happy thoughts all of the time. One of the things that I write about a lot in my book – and which is in Segerstrom’s book and in Tali Sharot’s book also – is that when you look at the type of optimism that psychological science shows is actually of benefit to us, it is not that kind of blind positive thinking. Optimism tied up with realism is what is of benefit. It is a very entertaining book which takes a sideswipe at a lot of the stuff you get in self-help books. Exactly. In fact, just thinking happy thoughts is quite dangerous a lot of the time. But I do think that at times she goes a little far. She also claims that a lot of the research doesn’t show any benefits for optimism, so you need to look at my other book choices as well to get a balance. Because there really is research out there which shows how optimism does benefit us."

"This is a brilliant political polemic and a critique of the problematic effects of positive thinking. Ehrenreich argues, among other things, that the idea that nothing can go wrong is a terrible philosophy to adopt in the world of business. To some degree she directly attributes the current financial crisis to how positive thinking affected the culture of American business. If you’re a banker, constructing complex financial instruments, the idea that nothing could go wrong is obviously highly problematic. On the consumer level the same goes for homebuyers, thinking that if they want the house of their dreams all they need to do is convince themselves that they can go out and get it, whatever their financial circumstances. Ehrenreich shows that positive thinking came to be a useful ideology for corporate America to instill in its employees and in the population at large. The classic example here is the book Who Moved My Cheese? , a very badly written story about some mice and how they adapt to changes in their environment. The moral is that change happens, you just have to soldier on and look on the bright side. Various companies distributed huge numbers of copies to their employees as a motivational tool. You can see how useful that might be for a company planning huge and often detrimental upheavals for its staff – how helpful it would be if the staff took a compliant stance towards change. The other powerful part of Smile or Die concerns Ehrenreich’s involuntary immersion in the positive-thinking culture of breast cancer sufferers. In that situation, the pressure to maintain a positive outlook can be felt as an oppressive, aggressive force. When she goes on online discussion forums for people having treatment for breast cancer, and admits to feeling bad about what is happening to her – as you might expect she would – she is jumped on by people who don’t want to let her feel like that. She thinks the message of positive thinking is often there to enable other people to not have to face up to a situation. If someone suffering from cancer is told to be positive at all times, then other people don’t have to confront what is really happening – they don’t have to feel awkward and embarrassed in their company."