Aiming to duplicate the habits of top tennis players takes more than physical training alone. It also means becoming familiar with the ‘success modelling’ process of the recently emerging field of sports psychology, and reading several texts that Barbara Ehrenreich highlights for particular criticism.  Sport, tennis in particular, has spawned some timeless classics (at least within the tennis playing world) that predate many self help books, from the early 70s Buddhist approach to tennis, Timothy Gallwey’s The Inner Game of Tennis through to the Machiavellian classic Win Ugly by Brad Gilbert.

It’s interesting Ehrenreich doesn’t note that self help and positive thinking owe something to motivators in sport.  The influence of positive thinking on business owes a great deal to the crossover from the sports world rather than the reverse.  So alongside the sporting cannon of self help comes the wealth and personal development literature. It is the ideas in Think and Grow Rich (Napoleon Hill - 1937) and the works of Stephen Covey, particularly The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People and The 8th Habit (1994 and 2004) that have had an impact upon ‘success modelling’ and are a point of reference for Ehrenreich throughout Smile or Die.

There’s a danger that reading Ehrenreich means taking a cynical swipe at the likes of Covey and Napoleon Hill, dismissing their ideas because they share heritage with the contemporary positive thinking movement. Certainly, Covey’s insights on time management are perceptive, applicable and have been extensively tested. The core of his philosophy is based on personal transformation, which he explains can only come about through hard work.  To his credit he identifies academic study as the highest form of personal development, a commendable view a long way from the ‘happiness is all’ belief of the positive thinkers. 

However, with Think and Grow Rich the problems are more manifest. This is another text based on ‘success modelling’ and a result of the author interviewing hundreds of millionaires from the 1930s. It offers practical advice to the person coming out of recession in the 1930’s, and it’s propensity towards mysticism is ubiquitous. The ‘secret’ on which the whole book is based is that wealth is first and foremost a thought. Positive thoughts attract wealth and plans for wealth follow a clear mental picture of that wealth, as long as it’s combined with an intense desire and belief. 

In fact, attracting wealth is very much like attracting the opposite sex.  Up to obtaining a good job, conceiving in one’s mind the route to attracting wealth and creating a desire to do so the path to riches then becomes more mystic and relies on ‘secrets’ and strange brain science like the magnetism of thoughts in the ‘law of attraction’. 

Drifting off into fantasy

An important part of Ehrenreich’s argument rests on the observation that positive thinking is both unscientific and the criticisms levelled at it by scientific studies are simply brushed aside by those who practice it. The author uses a case study of the American Psychological Association (APA) and its election of Martin Seligman in 1997. Seligman introduced the new ‘science’ of positive psychology which is defined as, ‘the study of “positive” emotions and mind-sets like optimism, happiness, fulfilment and “flow”’. It called itself ‘the science of happiness’. 

The author claims that positive psychology emerged in response to the decline of the various disciplines in psychology that had a ‘pathological’ tendency, particularly in relation to mental illness. The introduction of anti-depressants during the late 1980s meant that psychologists had run out of things to do and needed to claim new territory.

The emergence of positive psychology had three effects. Firstly, it provided a bridge between the scientific and business worlds. It gave an opportunity to the non-academic coach, motivational speaker or self help entrepreneur to claim scientific grounding for their business, instead of having to rely on mysticism. Second, the barrier between the business of self-help and the academic positive psychology began to break down. Third, as academic and scientific psychologists began to merge with their cousins in the self help genre, positive psychology became more hostile to being exposed to the rigours of scientific enquiry. The efficacy of the new psychology was to be judged on whether the individual either ‘felt’ that it was working for them or that the process had made them happier. Highly instrumental but also highly subjective. Any view or claim that ran counter to the ‘happiness is all’ argument was dismissed as the perpetrator not ‘getting it’.

As well as the genesis of positive thinking, Ehrenreich attacks the content, in particular the idea that our thoughts are electronic waves or energy.  Ehrenreich is correct in pointing out this is simply mystical thinking with no basis in reality. The tendency to reduce our thoughts to the complexity of quantum mechanics actually obscures the fact that we are far more ‘Newtonian’ in our thoughts and feelings. The idea that we are our thoughts and that it is our thoughts that shape each individual’s reality comes in for real biting criticism from Ehrenreich. This, according to the author, is charlatanism at worst. The consequences of following this particular path of positive thinking are twofold. Firstly, one is told that one can think oneself rich and second that all negativity is to be avoided, including ‘negative people’ and bad news. In the final chapter of the book ‘How Positive thinking Destroyed the Economy’, the author offers us a unique insight into the nonchalant stance adopted towards the precarious position of the financial system and the role positive thinking played.     

The problem with this methodology is that it does not make clear whether the introduction of positive psychology to the APA and its subsequent degeneration into a branch of the self help industry was a major contributing factor in the ascendancy of positive thinking or simply a good example of it.  Alongside the economic crash, there are several other important consequences of positive thinking not taken up by Ehrenreich.     

No one can argue

Part of positive thinking is to renegotiate the relationship between individuals. The purging of negativity is a priority. To avoid upsets or destroying the possibility of consensus, anger, aggression and disagreement are seen as pathological.  In this scenario there is little hope for civilised discussion, debate or argument. The only response to external events is to say how you feel about them and get something more positive from them. Disagreeing with someone else risks lowering self esteem or emotional well being - and in the world of positive thinking that is not on. 

With the inward turn that positive thinking brings comes the problem of procrastination. When teaching tennis players, a common problem is the decision to avoid competition until a particular stroke is working properly. I call this the ‘perfect forehand syndrome’. Such players rarely compete at a level that will challenge them to improve, the forehand is never quite right and is always a ‘few hours of practice’ away from being ready to compete. 

This appears to be mirrored in the positive thinking and self help. There is never a point at which one is either at optimum motivation or optimum happiness to go out and act in the world. In fact most ‘motivational psychology’ seems to fall prey to the ‘myth of motivation’. If one requires motivation to complete a specific task, as many people feel they do, it is very unlikely to become motivated in isolation, in this instance one gets ‘motivated’ and then writes the book. Motivation comes from action, action and motivation are simultaneous. Almost anything productive worth doing will require effort and will, at minimum, be uncomfortable and not a ‘happy’ experience. By taking the existing state of mind as the precursor to action then one runs the risk of not doing anything.   

Cannot even consider the possibility of social action

The most important objection Ehrenreich raises to positive thinking is in it’ relationship to social injustice and political action, which comes close to revealing the truth about the ubiquity of positive thinking and its negative side. Positive thinking and new self help developed when the possibilities for meaningful social and political action appeared to be shrinking. To her credit, the author points out that once established, positive thinking quickly becomes a break on social and political action. It is by no means solely responsible, which is recognised. It’s perhaps more accurate to say that positive thinking can distort the drive towards political action and the drive takes an inward turn. This process has a narcissistic inward turn and is typified by obsessive self reflection as well as the appearance of individuated protest movements ‘Not in my Name’ and the adoption of ‘ethical consumerism’ such as Fair Trade. 

Positive thinking, however, has a functional advantage that keeps the individual away from taking in action in the world. Ehrenreich describes it in the following way:

‘If one of the best things you can say about positive thinking is that it ended up preserving some of Calvinism’s more toxic features - a harsh judgementalism and an insistence on the constant interior labour of self-examination…….To the positive thinker emotions remain suspect and one’s inner life must be subjected to relentless monitoring’.

It is no accident that when passionate belief and anger towards social injustice manifest themselves in the individual they are met with incredulity or a patronising attempt to demote such beliefs to childish fantasy.  For those that practice positive thinking, the utterances of those who fight social injustice are seen as the equivalent to the ranting of a child who is yet to ‘accept’ themselves and their circumstances prior to becoming a ‘better person’. 

Whereas, the reverse is true.  By keeping themselves wrapped up in an inward -looking womb of emotion and a highly treated way of dealing with negativity, it is the self-help seeker who is likely to remain infantilised.  The author sums this up in the final paragraph of the book.

‘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.’  (p.206)

Thinking, not positive thinking

The real victory for Smile or Die is Ehrenreich’s assertion that we need to face the world and its problems squarely and without self-deception.  Creating happiness for its own sake will get us nowhere and tends to infantalise us.  This is augmented by the implicit claim that it is by increasing intellectual capital that the individual can deal with the world.  Thinking, as opposed to the partial and degenerative tendency in positive thinking is what is required. 

Overall, the argument of the book is hampered by not developing some important cultural influences on the creation of contemporaryy positive thinking, such as that offered by sport.  The example given in ‘How Positive thinking Destroyed the Economy’ is actually quite chilling, and acts as a warning for those who place attitude above analysis.