A scientist with a background in immunology, Ehrenreichs controversial basic point is that encouraging thinking happy thoughts to cure disease can be delusional and cruel. She cites studies that show that unhappy people have no worse outcomes for cancer than those who are happy. Her work is a shot across the bow of Liebniz, Ernest Holmes, Mary Baker Eddy, the Filmores, Edgar Cayce, Buddha, Norman Vincent Peale, Martin Seligman, and the school of thought that says, Your thoughts create health and illness. She is not against positive thinking as much as she is for learning to reason, and to rely upon information rather than on feelings. She is suspicious of the social motivators for positive thinking: more worker and patient compliance and less accountability for religious and secular authorities, since unhappiness is a personal choice rather than a consequence of the selfishness of others. It is due to the abuses of the doctrine of positive thinking that she questions it. Her thinking is reminiscent of the stoicism of Marcus Aurelius in his Meditations, which places doing what is good and noble above personal happiness. https://youtube/watch?v=PJGMFu74a70
Posted on: Thu, 30 Jan 2014 16:28:03 +0000
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