The Top 7 Myths About Positive Thinking

Every month or so, I come across an op-ed, article, or general broadside against positive thinking. Social scientists (dubiously) claim that cheery thoughts produce disappointing outcomes. A New York Times fashion writer sings the praises of positive-thinking’s deeper cousin, melancholy. And bestselling social critic Barbara Ehrenreich continually reimagines why positive-mind therapies make us dumber and greedier.

The truth is, most of these arguments rest upon one (or more) of a few poorly reasoned assumptions. If these writers more fully explored their opening premises, they would likely produce more nuanced critiques. Or they might instead tackle more urgent social or intellectual problems (like the spate of unexamined assumptions behind our cultural arguments).

Here are 7 myths about positive thinking and New Thought — and why they don’t tell the full story of this important spiritual and psychological thought system.

The author with a statue of Norman Vincent Peale

1. Positive thinking encourages unrealistic expectations. The most influential figures in New Thought or positive thinking urged people to come to terms with their true aims and desires — something that we believe we do every day but rarely attempt. Writers from the Rev. Norman Vincent Peale (The Power of Positive Thinking) to R.H. Jarrett (It Works) directed readers not to repeat comforting interior nostrums (“I like my home and job”) but rather to ask — sustainably and maturely — what they truly wanted out of life. When done with unsparing honesty, this kind of inner inquiry can reveal personal goals and wishes that we may have hidden from ourselves.
2. Positive thinkers are mouthpieces for corporate interests. Some of the earliest and most dynamic figures in the positive-thinking tradition were social radicals who believed that mind-power methods could help empower workers, women, immigrants, and minorities. They included suffragist Elizabeth Cady Stanton; black nationalist Marcus Garvey; motivational hero Elbert Hubbard, who led crusades against child labor; author Wallace D. Wattles, who completed his Science of Getting Rich while running for Congress on the Socialist Party ticket; and publisher and voting-rights activist Elizabeth Towne. Where have all the positive-thinking radicals gone? Visit any New Thought church and you will encounter some of the most diverse and socially progressive congregants anywhere.
3. Positive thinkers ignore the world’s suffering. The most accomplished figures in the positive-thinking tradition — including philosopher William James (a lifelong experimenter in mental healing) and Rabbi Joshua Loth Leibman (whose 1946 bestseller Peace of Mind inaugurated the post-war climate of self-help) — counseled realism and bravery, not blindness, in the face of catastrophe. Addressing survivors after World War II, Liebman noted: “A half loaf eaten in courage and accepted in truth is infinitely better than a moldy whole loaf, green with the decay of self-pity and selfish sorrow which really dishonors the memory of those who lived for our up building and happiness.”
4. Positive thinking blames patients or victims for their ills. Critics have a point. For too long the positive-thinking tradition has embraced an overarching “Law of Attraction” which can, when deployed immaturely, devolve into victim blaming. In my One Simple Idea I argue that the concept of a mental super-law is neither innate nor necessary to the positive-thinking outlook. We live under many laws and forces — including physical limitations and illness. But acknowledging that doesn’t mean dismissing the long-charted benefits of positive thinking in placebo studies, meditation, addiction recovery, psychical research, and the emergent science of neuroplasticity, in which thoughts are found to affect brain biology.

First edition of the “Big Book”

5. Positive thinking is for superficial people who want to “manifest” Mercedes-Benzes. I’ve spent nearly twenty years in self-help publishing and in the New Age culture in general, and I’ve never once encountered someone trying to manifest a car or diamond ring. More commonly, seekers contend with the toughest problems of life, including marital strife, depression, and addiction. New Thought principles are a key source behind one of the most practical therapeutic books ever written, Alcoholics Anonymous. Most participants in trauma support groups, pain management programs, and cognitive therapies draw upon some of the principles of positive thinking.

6. Positive thinking is a bunch of sugary, have-a-nice-day nostrums. Positive thinking emerged from a ferment of the ideas in the late Enlightenment era when religious and psychological experimenters were struggling to determine the influence of our thoughts on our lives. In the latter half of the nineteenth century — years before Freud — the pioneers of positive thinking were among the first to recognize what came to be called the unconscious mind. The positive thinkers’ attempt to chart the workings of the subliminal mind produced a wealth of penetrating spiritual-psychological literature. (See my “10 Best Self-Help Books You’ve (Probably Never Heard Of.”) Historically, the positive-thinking movement has initiated large ideas, and prescribed simple but potentially life-altering methods.

7. It’s absurd to believe that thoughts shape reality. For the past century-and-a-half, roughly since the dawn of modern clinical study, our conceptions of the mind have always expanded, and never receded. This is true in fields including placebo studies, cognitive psychology, brain biology, and even in the physical sciences. More than eighty years of experiments in quantum physics have led contemporary scientists to the “quantum measurement problem,” in which researchers intensely debate whether the presence of a conscious observer affects the nature and manifestation of subatomic particles. The onrush of new findings in quantum studies — and the questions this data poses about the powers of the mind — may ultimately alter humanity’s self-perception in the twenty-first century as much as Darwinism did in the Victorian era. Our thoughts are far from the only influence on our lives, but we may be just at the beginning of understanding their power.

The PEN Award-winning author of Occult America and One Simple Idea, Mitch Horowitz has written on everything from the war on witches to the secret life of Ronald Reagan for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Salon, and Time. The Washington Post says Mitch “treats esoteric ideas and movements with an even-handed intellectual studiousness that is too often lost in today’s raised-voice discussions.” Mitch is vice president and executive editor at Tarcher Perigee, a division of Penguin Random House. Visit him at www.MitchHorowitz.com.

Originally published at www.harvbishop.com on February 22, 2016.