Barbara Held

The Tyranny of the Positive Attitude in America:
Observation and Speculation

䊲
Barbara S. Held
Bowdoin College
According to both popular and professional indicators, the push for the
positive attitude in America is on the rise. After considering the popular
culture zeitgeist, I compare and contrast two recent professional psychol-
ogy movements—those of positive psychology and postmodern therapy—
both of which rest on a foundation of optimism and positive thinking
despite their opposing views about a proper philosophy of science. I then
present cross-cultural empirical research that calls into question the typi-
cal (North American) assumption that a positive attitude is necessary for
(a sense of ) well-being. I also consider findings in health psychology, clinical/
counseling psychology, and organizational behavioral science, findings which
call into question the assumption that accentuating the positive (and elim-
inating the negative) is necessarily beneficial in terms of physical and
mental health. The clinical/therapeutic implications of this analysis are
addressed, as I put forth my conjecture about the existence of what I call
the “tyranny of the positive attitude” in the form of a question: If there
indeed now exists unprecedented pressure to accentuate the positive,
could it then be that the pressure itself to be happy and optimistic con-
tributes to at least some forms of unhappiness? © 2002 Wiley Periodi-
cals, Inc. J Clin Psychol 58: 965–991, 2002.
Keywords: positive attitude; positive psychology; negativity; postmodernism;

realism; objectivism; antirealism; empathy; emotional expression
According to both popular and professional indicators, the push for the positive attitude
in turn-of-the-century America is on the rise.1 In the case of popular culture, I refer
specifically to such articles as “Self-Help USA” in the Jan 10, 2000, issue of Newsweek
magazine (McGinn, 2000), an article which documents the exponential growth of the
This article is based on a paper presented at the 108th Annual Convention of the American Psychological
Association, Washington, DC, in August 2000, as part of a panel entitled “The (Overlooked) Virtues of Negativity.”
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to: Barbara S. Held, Department of Psychology,
Bowdoin College, 6900 College Station, Brunswick, ME 04011; e-mail: bheld@bowdoin.edu.
1
Whether the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and thereafter alter this push (in either direction) remains
to be seen. See the November issue of the Monitor on Psychology for an article entitled “Amid the Despair,
There is Hope: APA Past-President Martin E. P. Seligman talks about optimism in the aftermath of the Sept. 11
attacks” (Carpenter, 2001, p. 52).
JOURNAL OF CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGY, Vol. 58(9), 965–992 (2002) © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI: 10.1002/jclp.10093
966 Journal of Clinical Psychology, September 2002
self-help industry/movement (also see Norcross, 2000; Norcross et al., 2000; Rosen,
1993). In due course, I shall discuss the optimistic, positive-attitude philosophy which, I
argue, both underlies and fuels that industry/movement. And in the case of professional
culture, I refer specifically to recent issues of professional psychological publications,
including the January 2000 and March 2001 issues of the American Psychologist, the
American Psychological Association Monitor on Psychology, and the newly minted Jour-
nal of Happiness Studies, all of which document the emergence and rise of the positive
psychology movement. Given that Americans have always been famous for their opti-
mism, these observations are hardly trivial. And so it seems reasonable to ask, Is this
growing tendency in America to accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative a good
thing? Is it a sure path to happiness, well-being, and health? The title of the present article
suggests that this may not always be the case, and it is to that possibility that I direct my
attention.
The Popular Culture Zeitgeist
Much can be said and has been said about optimism in America (e.g., Kaminer, 1992;
Norcross et al., 2000; Seligman, 1993; Whitman, 1998), but here I offer only the briefest
possible historical sketch. I begin with the American Revolution—surely one of the most
( justifiably) optimistic enterprises in the history of the world. Not coincidentally, the
eighteenth century saw the publication of upbeat self-help books that still remain in print
and available on-line if not on the shelf: I refer of course to Benjamin Franklin’s famous
advice about the virtues of frugality, practicality, and clean, profitable living. In both
Poor Richard’s Almanac and Franklin’s Autobiography, we find not only statements indic-
ative of Franklin’s accentuation of the positive but also those indicative of his concomi-
tant antikvetching attitude. Consider these examples: “Hope of gain lessens pain” (1734/
1898, p. 70); “Sorrow is good for nothing but sin” (1750/1898, p. 134); “He that’s content
hath enough; he that complains has too much” (1758/1898, p. 169); “Who is rich? He that
rejoices in his portion” (1987, p. 12); “Be not disturbed at Trifles, or at Accidents com-
mon or unavoidable” (Autobiography, 1964, p. 150). And here is my personal, antikvetch-
ing favorite, with all due warning of the relational dangers of kvetching made perfectly
explicit: “Let thy discontents be secrets;—if the world knows them ’twill despise thee
and increase them” (1741/1898, p. 102).
In the mid-nineteenth century, Alexis de Tocqueville, in his famous second volume
of Democracy in America (1840/1988), wrote about “How Equality Suggests to the Amer-
icans the Idea of the Indefinite Perfectibility of Man.” Though the quote is lengthy, it is
worth attending to his own words about the relationship between a country conceived in
a democratic ideal and the propensity toward optimism about human potential.2
When citizens are classified by rank, profession, or birth, and when all are obliged to follow
the career which chance has opened before them, everyone thinks that he can see the ultimate
limits of human endeavor quite close in front of him, and no one attempts to fight against
inevitable fate. It is not that aristocratic peoples absolutely deny man’s capacity to improve
himself, but they do not think it is unlimited. They think in terms of amelioration, not
change. . . . But when castes disappear and classes are brought together, when men are jum-
bled together and habits, customs, and laws are changing, when new facts impinge and new
truths are discovered, when old conceptions vanish and new ones take their place, then the
2
I am grateful to my colleague, Professor Jean Yarbrough at Bowdoin, for directing my attention to this passage
in Tocqueville.
Tyranny of the Positive Attitude 967
human mind imagines the possibility of an ideal but always fugitive perfection . . . [and]
concludes that man in general is endowed with an indefinite capacity for improvement . . .
(pp. 452– 453)
And we should not forget Horatio Alger’s late nineteenth century–early twentieth
century rags-to-riches stories. These titles are exemplary: Errand Boy: How Phil Brent
Won Success, Falling in with Fortune, Joe, the Hotel Boy: Winning Out by Pluck, and
Struggling Upward, Or, Luke Larkin’s Luck. Note that contrary to Franklin’s aphorisms,
Alger’s heroes sometimes seem to win by chance as much as by hard work, perseverance,
and a cheerful attitude.
Here I question neither the existence nor the value of American optimism. Instead, I
explore another premise, namely, that extolling the virtues of the optimistic or positive
outlook can be taken to excess, and in the last two decades has been taken to excess, both
in popular and professional/psychotherapy circles. By “taken to excess” I mean taken to
the point that this trend may be creating more perils than promise, at least for a good
many Americans. My premise, then, is that the push for the positive attitude has—in
some of its manifestations—become tyrannical, in that Americans have come to live not
only with a historically/culturally grounded inclination for optimism but with the expec-
tation, with the demand, that they maintain a positive attitude at all times and at all costs.
Indeed, we are now literally bombarded with messages from many sectors of society that
exhort us to smile and look on the bright side, to keep our chins up, and (of course) to
have a nice day, no matter how hard life gets. We must do this especially when life is at
its hardest.3 And we are expected to do this even when we find that we cannot, or if we
can, it is only with great emotional effort and cost. This is what I mean by the tyranny of
the positive attitude, and I believe it has hidden negative consequences for our psycho-
logical and relational health. Yet there are many not-so-hidden manifestations of it in the
most mundane aspects of our culture.
I raise the question of evidence (to which I return in due course) to make clear from
the start that I have no scientific data to support directly the existence itself of this
so-called tyranny of the positive attitude—no opinion polls nor any systematic social-
temperature taking. Nonetheless, there are data relevant to my contention that too much
pressure to be positive can be physically, emotionally, and relationally damaging. About
that, more later. Just here I submit that evidence of the push to be optimistic and upbeat
in America abounds, and that this evidence is perfectly available to any and all who make
even the most minimal effort to notice its presence.
The tyranny of the positive attitude is, first and foremost, in our most common
aphorisms. Consider these obvious ones: “Cheer up, things could be worse;” “Smile, look
on the bright side;” and “Stop complaining, it’s not that bad.” But where are the apho-
risms that give us license to feel bad when we do feel bad?
3
Although this evidence is merely anecdotal, it illustrates the point. In an article about the emotions of those
who survived the attack on the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center on September 11, the New York Times
(September 30, 2001) quoted two survivors who found that friends were not receptive to hearing about their
emotional distress: “Grief counselors have been telling survivors to talk about their experiences, but Dee
Howard and Inez Graham say each retelling brings on an unbearable rush of panic. ‘Everyone wants to hear the
tragic details, but they don’t really care how I feel,’ said Ms. Howard. . . . ‘They just want me to get on with my
life.’ ” (p. B1). And the story continues, “At a time when thousands of people are mourning their dead, friends
tell them to be thankful they are alive. But being survivors has brought them little comfort. ‘People say, ‘Don’t
give in to the fear, don’t let evil win,’ all these cliches, but they don’t know what I’m going through,’ said Mrs.
Howard. . . . ‘I’m trying to get better, but I just can’t’” (p. B1). Moreover, I am not yet sure how to interpret the
findings of the National Tragedy Study reported in the National Science Foundation News on October 24, 2001,
in an article entitled “ Public Bounces Back After Sept. 11 Attacks,” in which it is declared that “Confidence
levels [among Americans is] at 30-year high.”
The tyranny of the positive attitude is also in our popular music—especially those
tunes that have endured such as these: from the 1940s: “Ac-cent-tchu-ate the Positive”
(Mercer & Arlen, 1945) (and as the song continues, “Eliminate the negative. . . . Don’t
mess with Mister In-Between.” No Aristotelian impulse here!); from the 1960s: “ Put on
a Happy Face” (Adams & Strouse, 1960); and from the 1980s: “Don’t Worry, Be Happy”
(McFerrin, 1988).
And the tyranny of the positive attitude is in our culture’s iconography. Americans
literally put on a happy face in the late sixties, even amidst all my generation’s counter-
cultural rebellion. And we continue to put on that happy face more than 30 years later. I
refer of course to the ubiquitous yellow smiley face that rose to great prominence in the
1970s and that still cloyingly adorns the American landscape from coast to coast. Amer-
icans may not be able to agree upon politics, human sexuality, and religion, but we have
no trouble finding space for smiley on our clothes, desktops, greeting cards, and (to be
sure) our rear bumpers.
But nowhere does the tyranny of the positive attitude express its presence more
powerfully than in our huge and growing inventory of self-help books 4 (Norcross, 2000;
Norcross et al., 2000; Rosen, 1987, 1993), most of which offer sure-fire prescriptions for
a carefree existence, including advice about how to find happiness, how to find bliss, how
to save your inner child, how to be rich, how to be thin, and how to be perfect. And these
prescriptions are often based on the promotion of some form of positive thinking.
Perhaps the tyranny of the positive attitude can be traced to the unprecedented suc-
cess in 1936 of traveling salesman Dale Carnegie’s best seller How to Win Friends and
Influence People, which was followed in 1952 by Norman Vincent Peale’s blockbuster
The Power of Positive Thinking. Both of these books continue to sell well today, even as
they compete with the many thousands of others that contribute to our current multimil-
lion dollar self-help publishing industry—a $563 million a year industry, according to the
Newsweek article “Self-Help USA.” As Newsweek (McGinn, 2000) said, if we include
seminars, CDs, and personal coaching, the self-improvement industry earns $2.48 billion
a year, and the research firm Marketdata Enterprises predicts “double-digit annual growth
through 2003” (p. 43). An industry in which self-help gurus stand ready to make us
effective, powerful, and relationally fabulous specimens and in which Americans happily
pay large sums for the promise is no minor matter. Newsweek asked, “Who buys this
stuff, and does it really work?” To which question I add: Are psychologists who have
written self-help books based on sound research and who make much more modest (and
empirically warranted!) claims making money at this level? Though I have no numbers to
back me up, I suspect the answer is “no” (see Norcross, 2000).5
My quasirhetorical question is this: If all that smiley-faced advice worked, would we
need so many of these self-help books? Would Americans keep turning to new ones for the
latest quick fix if the previous fix really fixed something? Yes, we are a diverse culture, and
one size should not fit all. But since most of these books claim great things for all who
take their advice, it seems to follow logically that the market would not sustain the
hundreds (if not thousands) that are able to compete successfully. Yet it does just that.
4
See Rosen (1993), for discussion of the booming proliferation of self-help books in recent years: “Self-change
is big business. One publisher estimated . . . that more than 2,000 self-help books are published each year. . . .”
(p. 340). Norcross et al. (2000) reported that “more than 95% of self-help books are published without any
research documenting their effectiveness (Rosen, 1987, 1993)” (p. 3).
5
For example, Norcross (2000) reported, “Those of you engaged in psychological assessment might be inter-
ested in knowing the Enneagrams received 1,408 Web hits, 200 more than the Minnesota Multiphasic Person-
ality Inventory (MMPI). And those of you who have frequented a book store of late can readily confirm that
unvalidated pop psychology books far outnumber the validated self-help books on the shelves.” (p. 374)
The Professional Psychology Zeitgeist
Given the push for the positive attitude in our popular culture, given this pervasive cul-
tural zeitgeist, it would be unlikely indeed if the profession of psychology remained
unaffected. And of course it has not been immune to these trends. I submit that, ironically,
two broad movements within psychology and psychotherapy reflect the current cultural
zeitgeist for positivity. I use the word “ironically” because these movements take oppo-
site stands on what a proper science of psychology should be; to be more precise, they
take opposite stands on “positivism” itself.
The Positive Psychology Movement
The first movement is most predictable. I refer, of course, to the newly formed positive
psychology movement, which has gathered much momentum in the last two years (e.g.,
the January 2000 and March 2001 issues of the American Psychologist). This movement,
led by past American Psychological Association president Martin Seligman, was formed
as a corrective to the alleged propensity of psychologists to spend too much time studying
what is wrong with us. Instead, Seligman says we should spend more time studying what
is right with us. This sounds reasonable to me, but still I am moved to ask some questions.
First, I worry that this movement could, quite unintentionally, become tyrannical: For
example, are psychologists who still study psychopathology and other forms of what is
wrong with us now going to be called “Negative Psychologists” by default? Could they
be branded the “Negaholics” self-help author Chérie Carter-Scott, Ph.D. (1989) warns of
in her book, Negaholics: How to Recover from Your Addiction to Negativity and Turn
Your Life Around? In fact, a mere five months after I expressed my worry about just this
at the American Psychological Association’s annual convention (Held, 2000), The APA
Monitor on Psychology (Kogan, 2001, p. 74), in an article entitled “Where Happiness
Lies,” quoted Martin Seligman as saying, “This [the positive psychology movement]
does not replace negative social science and psychology, which are flourishing enter-
prises that I support.”
Although I am happy to know that Seligman supports what he calls “Negative Psy-
chology,” I am moved to ask: Why do we need a positive psychology movement? After
all, much of the research now subsumed by that movement, including research on so-called
subjective well-being, has progressed for decades. So why segregate that research agenda
from the rest of the discipline by labeling it “positive psychology,” a rhetorical move
which implicitly casts the rest of the discipline in pejorative terms. To me, it makes more
sense to build rather than burn bridges by studying—at least some of the time—the
empirical relationships that obtain between strengths or virtues on the one hand and
weaknesses, pathology, or vice on the other. Surely these two aspects of our being are not
completely independent of each other: After all, the therapeutic enterprise may be described
(perhaps somewhat superficially, but not erroneously) as the quest to make the proverbial
lemonade out of life’s many lemons. In other words, if our understanding of “psychopa-
thology” in even the most conventional terms did not allow for at least some potential for
health/growth, then how could any notion of psychotherapy grounded in that potential
(as all or most are) obtain (e.g., Bohart & Greening, 2001; Bohart & Tallman; 1999;
Duncan & Miller, 2000a)?
In their introductory article to the January 2000 special issue of the American Psy-
chologist dedicated to the positive psychology movement, Seligman and Csikszent-
mihalyi (2000) said psychologists need this movement now because
Psychology has, since World War II, become a science largely about healing. It concentrates
on repairing damage within a disease model of human functioning. This almost exclusive
attention to pathology neglects the fulfilled individual and the thriving community. The aim of
positive psychology is to begin to catalyze a change in the focus of psychology from preoccu-
pation only with repairing the worst things in life to also building positive qualities. (p. 5)
As I read this, I wondered first about the humanistic psychology movement. Isn’t
that a professional movement focused on growth and health, one that often eschews a
disease model of human psychology? In fact, Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi (2000)
acknowledged and appeared to praise the “generous humanistic vision” (p. 7). But they
then went on to dismiss humanistic psychology as unscientific, lamenting its seminal
role in the nonscholarly, nonscientific, and narcissism-promoting literature of the self-
help movement that regrettably now dominates the psychology sections of American
bookstores 6 :
Unfortunately, humanistic psychology did not attract much of a cumulative empirical base,
and it spawned myriad therapeutic self-help movements. In some of its incarnations, it empha-
sized the self and encouraged a self-centeredness that played down concerns for collective
well being. (p. 7)
Not surprisingly, some humanistic psychologists have been quick to reject these
pejorative claims about their movement. For example, in a letter to the editor of the
American Psychologist entitled “Humanistic Psychology and Positive Psychology,” psy-
chologists Bohart and Greening (2001) respond to Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi’s (2000)
introductory comments by defending the scientific research tradition and empirically
warranted knowledge base of humanistic psychologists: “it [humanistic psychology] val-
ues research, although this is defined broadly to include both positivistic and qualitative
or phenomenological methods” (p. 82). And they reject the charge of promoting narcis-
sism by discussing the commitment within humanistic psychology to concern for others
over and above the self:
We wish that Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi (2000) themselves had done a more scholarly
job of investigating humanistic psychology. Neither the theory nor practice of humanistic
psychology is narrowly focused on the narcissistic self or on individual fulfillment. A careful
reading of Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow would find that their conceptions of self-
actualization included responsibility towards others. . . . Rogers was also the one primarily
responsible for the modern interest in empathy. . . . Blaming them for misinterpretations of
their ideas makes no more sense than blaming Seligman for potential misinterpretations of his
ideas on optimism (e.g., one could misuse this idea to blame the victim for not having the
proper optimistic attitude to achieve self-improvement in the face of massive social oppres-
sion or injustice). (p. 81)
That last sentence about the misuse of ideas is of particular interest to me, and so I
want here to be clear about the problem of misinterpretation: I do not believe the (found-
ing) members of the positive psychology movement seek to squelch research on psycho-
logical problems, pathology, or weaknesses—after all, Seligman himself makes statements
to the contrary. Nor do they seem to want to force others always to adopt a positive or
optimistic attitude, at least not in ways that I myself have found to be problematic. Again,
Seligman himself has said he opposes this sort of mindless or tyrannical optimism (1990,
1993). However, just as those who misinterpreted humanistic psychology may have (un-
6
Seligman (1993) also criticized the unrealistic optimism and lack of scientific support of the proliferating
self-help movement in America. On this, he and I are in good agreement!
wittingly) aided and abetted the unscientific, narcissism-promoting pronouncements made

by “overly enthusiastic followers” of the self-help movement (Seligman & Csikszentmi-
halyi, 2000, p. 7), so too “overly enthusiastic followers” of the positive psychology move-
ment could, especially in our current culture of “positivity,” come to feel overly empowered.
Thus, they may misinterpret that movement’s message: For example, they may become
tyrannical or relentless about the need in all circumstances for a positive attitude, opti-
mism, or whatever else they deem to be virtuous in human attitude and conduct.7 Or more
mundanely, the positive psychology movement could inadvertently (and ironically) lend
professional legitimacy to the irrational, unwarranted, and grandiose claims of the same
self-help gurus—with all their be-positive (and focus-on-yourself ) messages—whom
positive psychologists say they deplore. This could happen no matter how much positive
psychologists proclaim the virtues and necessity of (a) sound scientific evidence for any
and all psychological claims and, in the case of some positive psychologists, of (b) real-
istic optimism (see Peterson, 2000; Schneider, 2001; Seligman, 1990). I would add that
one could easily blame the victim for not having the proper optimistic attitude to self-
improve even without the presence of the “massive social oppression or injustice” (see
Footnote 3) to which Bohart and Greening (2001) draw our attention. Life is hard enough
even when we are not victims of profound injustice. Of course, I could be completely
wrong about my “prediction.” But still I worry now, in advance, like the defensive pes-
simist (Norem, 2001a, 2001b) I am, because I am all too aware of past abuses and mis-
uses of what was well intended by members of other psychological movements.
The potential for misuse of the ideas of positive psychologists is of course increased
by that movement’s inroads into popular culture (as would be the case for any move-
ment). On October 1, 1999, ABC’s “Good Morning America” (Ross, 1997) devoted almost
an entire show to this group. One segment was titled “ The Happiness Revolution.” Revolu-
tion indeed. I sometimes wonder if the recent backlash against professional psychother-
apy is in part an expression of the tyranny of the positive attitude among those who
suggest we should not tolerate an enterprise that encourages people to examine their
painful experiences too deeply. I refer to books such as We’ve Had a Hundred Years of
Psychotherapy—and the World’s Getting Worse (Hillman & Ventura, 1993) or Therapy’s
Delusions: The Myth of the Unconscious and the Exploitation of Today’s Walking Wor-
ried (Watters & Ofshe, 1999). No wonder so many Americans are enticed by the glitzy
covers and reality-defying titles on the self-help shelves.
And as I read Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi’s (2000) call for a positive psychology
movement to offset the alleged emphasis on the negative, I also wondered about their
claim that post-World War II American psychology has been focused on our problems.
Although they were careful to qualify their claim with such descriptors as “largely about”
and “almost exclusive attention to” healing and pathology, respectively, they gave not
even a nod to evidence to the contrary, evidence quite independent of the humanistic
psychology movement. For example, Robin Kowalski, a contributor to this special sec-
tion and editor of the 1997 book, Aversive Interpersonal Behaviors, said in that book:
7
Guignon (2000) criticized positive psychologists for failing to acknowledge the contextually derived values
that inform their science, and the problems with an instrumentalist approach to justifying the values that they
hold implicitly. For example, he questions the argument (based on the findings of Taylor et al., 2000) that
because finding meaning in the death of a loved one is linked empirically to greater longevity among HIV-
positive people, finding meaning in the face of death should be encouraged. “But,” Guignon goes on to say,
“suppose the life-enhancing meaning one finds in such a loss is that Aryans are the master race or that sod-
omites are Satan’s spawn. Would we still think that finding a meaning in a painful event is such a good thing?”
(p. 7). Similarly, if attending racist meetings (as opposed to church or charitable functions) enhances one’s
subjective well-being or longevity, is that to be endorsed?
Until recently the study of aversive interpersonal behaviors was virtually ignored, super-
seded by a focus on the positive characteristics of interpersonal interactions. The irony be-
hind this focus on the positive is that, when asked to evaluate the quality of their friendships
and romantic relationships, people typically rely on the frequency of negative interpersonal
exchanges as opposed to positive interactions (p. ix). . . . Rather than focusing on the broad
spectrum of human behavior, emphasizing both the positive and negative facets of personal
relationships, scientists studying personal relationships have tended to “accentuate the posi-
tive.” (p. 1)
The Postmodern/Narrative Therapy Movement
Earlier I said that, ironically, there are two movements within professional psychology
that reflect the current cultural zeitgeist of positivity. So far, I have named only one. The
other, I now submit, is the postmodern movement, which overlaps considerably with the
social constructionist movement in psychology. I refer especially to the postmodern or
narrative therapy movement, to which I have directed much of my own scholarly atten-
tion (e.g., Held, 1995); but here I will be brief. The question is, How does postmodernism
incorporate what I am calling the tyranny of the positive attitude or (to be more mundane)
a culture of positivity? To answer that question, we must first consider two propositions
typically propounded in postmodern therapy circles.
Proposition 1. Contrary to the pro-science stance of the positive psychology move-

ment, the postmodern movement heralds an antiscientific attitude, at least any science
construed in conventional, modernist, objectivist, or so-called “positivist” tones (see
Erwin, 2001; Fishman, 1999; Freedman & Combs, 1996; Gergen, 1994; Held, 1995,
1998a, 1998b, 2001a; Kvale, 1992; McNamee & Gergen, 1992; Neimeyer & Mahoney,
1995; Omer & Alon, 1997; Rosen & Kuehlwein, 1996). Since, according to postmod-
ernism, there is no way to attain objective (or knower-independent) truth or reality,
science can give us only subjective, value-laden concepts and “laws.” 8 Moreover, when
applied with therapeutic intent to human beings, these concepts and “laws” are said at
best to impede growth or change. By this, postmodernist therapists mean that the sub-
jective or value-laden concepts and “laws” of psychological “science” impede the po-
tential for new and better ways of living because they supposedly constrict or constrain
our options and choices in life—and they do this with no due warrant. They constrain
with no due warrant because these concepts and “laws” are merely now-you-see-them-
now-you-don’t ephemera—i.e., merely the products of our own fleeting subjectivity. In
other words, the use in therapy of the concepts and “laws” of psychology—such as the
official DSM-IV categories of mental illness—impose on individuals the oppressive
values of the so-called dominant discourse—in postmodern feminist circles the so-
called patriarchal hegemonic discourse of society and by extension of science itself (for
elaboration, see Held, 1995, 1998a, 1998b). It seems no accident that writings calling
literally for a “post-therapeutics” form of therapy, to compliment the postmodern “end
of certainty” (as if there ever were any absolute certainty in the first place), are now
making their appearance in the postmodern therapy literature (e.g., House, 1999; Stan-
combe & White, 1998).
8
Note here the scare quotes around the word “laws” to undermine the truth, objectivity, or reality of scientific
laws. That is, the scare quotes undermine the use of the word “laws” in its conventional realist or objectivist
sense.
A most extreme form of postmodern therapy eliminates not only the use of the cat-
egories of pathology found in DSM-IV,9 along with the causal claims in which those
categories are embedded (see Held, 1995, chap. 3), but also seeks to eliminate from the
consultation room any talk whatsoever that smacks of negativity. I refer here to the pop-
ular solution-focused therapy which, in its more extreme (including postmodern) incar-
nations, eschews so-called “problem talk,” allowing only for more positive, upbeat “solution
talk” (Held, 1996; Walter & Peller, 1996). Accentuate the positive, eliminate the nega-
tive, indeed.
Proposition 2. If, as therapists, we adopt this postmodern antiscientific attitude—

that is, if we abandon the concepts and “laws” of modern psychological science—we
then will be freer to help our clients construct new, more positive life narratives or stories—
ones which will give them more options in life, options unfettered by the (normalizing)
products of modern positivistic efforts. Here, I offer just a few exemplary quotations,
although I have found the postmodern therapy literature to be sprinkled quite liberally
with statements that optimistically link the adoption of a postmodern antiobjectivism or
antirealism on the one hand with liberatory, emancipatory, and desirable outcomes in
therapy and in life on the other. Note that the quotations point to the enhancement of
possibility, transformation, and liberation in regard to therapeutic change, the self/
identity, agency—indeed, all of being!
The doors of therapeutic perception and possibility have been opened wide by the recognition
that we are actively constructing our mental realities rather than simply uncovering or coping
with an objective “truth.” (Hoyt, 1996, p. 1)
In the demise of all grand narrative, we now live in a world in which personal narratives
essentially stand alone as the means by which we pull together the text of our own lives, as
well as the “intertextual” overlappings of those lives that enter ours. Although this may all be
frightening without the legitimating guidance of the grand narratives, it is also a liberating
possibility. It frees us from the totalizing tyranny of the grand narratives [including those of
modern science]. (Parry & Doan, 1994, p. 25)
It is precisely at this point of “sure knowledge”—where things just are what they are, and we
know very well what we experience . . . —that constructionism is our most valuable asset. Its
intelligibility opens a precious space for reflection, reconsideration, and possible reconstruc-
tion. Herein lies the emancipatory potential of constructionism—its capacity to let us step
outside the taken for granted, to break loose from the sometimes strangulating grip of the
commonplace. (Gergen, 1998, pp. 415– 416).
“It [postmodernism] liberated and freed me. . . .” Most participants agreed that the term [post-
modernism] signified a deconstruction and a movement away from the mechanistic, positivist,
modernist, and structuralist ideologies. There was also acknowledgment that postmodernists
reject notions of ultimate truths or realities, hierarchy, and objectivity. (Wieling et al.,
2001, p. 530)
Like SC [social constructionism], constructivism takes as its point of departure a rejection of
‘objectivist’ psychologies, with their commitment to a realist epistemology, correspondence
theory of truth, unificationist philosophy of science, reactive theory of human behaviour,
associationist models of mind, and mediational view of language. In their place, constructiv-
ists endorse a view of knowledge as a personal construction, a coherence-based, neo-
9
Here it must be said that there are many nonpostmodernist approaches to therapy which typically reject the use
of DSM-IV categories. The humanistic therapy movement, which is hardly postmodernist, at least in its incep-
tion, is one such example (also see Bohart & Tallman, 1999; Duncan & Miller, 2000a). In this article, I remain
neutral about the virtues of the use or nonuse in therapy of diagnostic categories (see Held, 1995).
pragmatic theory of truth, a pluralistic conception of science, proactive models of human

functioning, a view of persons as self-organizing systems, and a constitutive view of lan-
guage. . . . [The importation of social constructionist ideas into the counselling context] involves
calling into question the realism entailed in our usual linguistic practices, to the point that even
our most ‘objective’ diagnoses of clients are seen as socially constructed discourses that often
carry destructive implications. . . . Likewise, it undermines the naive hope that we can achieve
a position of neutrality with respect to those we help, and . . . it undermines our taken-for-
granted belief in stable, singular, and sustainable identities, instead conjuring an image of
selves that subtly or dramatically shift with alternations in the conversational context. . . . On
the other hand, an affirmative reading of SC partially compensates for this loss of security by
offering fresh images of social life and its possible transformation in psychotherapy. With the
demise of an essentialized self, persons are freed (and challenged) to negotiate with others
more fluid identities, striving to use the narrative resources of their cultures to script more
satisfying lives. (Neimeyer, 1998, pp. 141–147)
One of the positive consequences of psychotherapy’s linguistic turn has been the recognition
that what serves as truth or normality is not static, but is subject to change and redefinition. It
is, then, perfectly possible for a locally normative position to be liberating, and for this to
challenge prevailing societal concepts of normality. . . . The search for paradoxes is enhanced
by the end of epistemic certainty, which had, for so long, limited possibilities in the play of
ideas. (Stancombe & White, 1998, pp. 590–591)
We might ask why constructionist accounts seem so appealing. Part of the appeal, no doubt,
lies in the exhilarating sense of freedom we get from thinking that there are no constraints on
the stories we can create in composing our own lives. Now anything is possible, it seems.
(Guignon, 1998, p. 566)
In addition to the rejection of totalizing explanations . . . postmodern thought also rejects

strongly deterministic and reductionistic theories. . . . Individuals are free to choose, adopt and
change self-images according to shifting life circumstances and needs. A multiplicity of images
is increasingly available to everyone. They are democratic in the sense that individual life
circumstances (e.g., race, class, age, etc.) provide less constraint on their adoption than in the
past. (Baumgardner & Rappoport, 1996, pp. 126–128)
I maintain that it is precisely agency—indeed, voluntary agency—that puts the ‘construction’

into ‘constructionism.’ (Kenwood, 1996, p. 535)
The optimism in these quotations is enticing: Simply change your narrative construc-
tion of your life/experience, and you yourself will be transformed for the better. Unfor-
tunately, in their optimistic zeal, postmodernists typically overlook nontrivial problems
with their claim: Most important, how realistic is it? After all, if, as the more radical
among them often say, we are all truly constituted socially (e.g., Gergen, 1994), then in
what rational/realistic sense can they also claim we have the personal agency to recon-
stitute our (individual) selves in our (socially) constructed narratives? 10 And even if we
could endlessly reconstitute ourselves to an extent that warrants such extreme postmod-
ern optimism (because there is no substantiality/essence to the “self”), then might we not
be more likely to suffer the consequences of the “empty self” condition lamented by
recent cultural critics (e.g., Cushman, 1990; Lasch, 1979; Richardson, Fowers, & Guignon,
10
The quotation of Kenwood (1996) in the prior paragraph gives a sense of the debate about the existence of
agency within a social constructionist/postmodernist doctrine. Some of this debate centers around the contra-
diction created by postmodernists’ liberatory belief in agency while refusing any ontological commitment,
especially commitment to the existence of the individual/self. Ansoff (1996) expressed the problem well in an
article entitled, appropriately enough, “How Can There Be Personal Agency Without an Ontology of the Indi-
vidual?” For elaboration, also see Fisher (1999) and Shotter (1995).
1999)? In any case, the optimism of postmodernism seems to be grounded, at least in

part, in a rejection of a conventional, modernist, or objectivist philosophy of science—
both epistemologically and ontologically. For if no independent/objective reality exists
(ontological antirealism) or if it does, we cannot know it as it exists independent of our
mental constructions (epistemological antirealism), then we are free to remake ourselves
(and each other!) without limit or constraint.
A Comparison of the Positive Psychology and Postmodern Therapy Movements. Given

the optimism behind both the positive psychology and postmodern therapy movements,
we may ask if positive psychologists are really postmodernists by a different name. This,
however, is not the case, as positive psychologists distinguish themselves most clearly
from postmodern psychologists/therapists (and self-help gurus) in virtue of their com-
mitment to a conventional, modernist, or objectivist approach 11 to psychological science,
all of which postmodernists reject.12 How, then, can positive psychologists explicitly tout
the virtues of optimism, and in some cases even unrealistic optimism (Taylor, Kemeny,
Reed, Bower, & Gruenewald, 2000) while remaining scientific realists, a philosophy which
commits them to (a) the existence of real constraints in the world and in our lives and (b)
our cognitive capacity to attain objective knowledge of at least some of those constraints?
Struggle over just this dilemma is seen in positive psychologist Sandra Schneider’s
(2001) attempt to define and promote a realistic optimism, one that expressly seeks,
acknowledges, and incorporates attention to reality’s constraints. This Schneider accom-
plishes by pleading for the distinction between “fuzzy meaning” (which is said to arise
from “interpretive latitude”) and “fuzzy knowledge” (which arises from “lack of infor-
mation” about a situation, event, or object). But she conflates epistemological and onto-
logical positions in the process, by insisting sometimes that reality itself is fuzzy (an
ontological matter) and at other times that knowledge of reality is fuzzy (an epistemolog-
ical matter), or both. Regarding “fuzzy reality” she speaks, for example, of “the fuzzy
nature of reality” (p. 251), of “the fuzzy boundaries of reality” (p. 257), and of how
“reality can be fuzzy” (p. 252). Regarding “fuzzy knowledge” (as well as “fuzzy reali-
ty”), she says that “Reality is fuzzy . . . because of our uncertainty about the situation of
interest” (p. 251). Note here that it is our lack of certainty/knowledge (an epistemolog-
ical matter) that literally makes reality itself fuzzy (an ontological matter), a claim which
conflates epistemology and ontology. And as she goes on to say, “One specific, objec-
tively verifiable state of affairs may not exist [an ontological matter] and . . . even if it
did, people might lack the necessary tools to become completely aware of it [an episte-
mological matter]” (p. 252).
In short, Schneider (2001) makes her case for realistic optimism either by (a) eroding
the nature of reality itself, above and beyond our capacity to know aspects of reality [e.g.,
“Realistic optimism includes all of the optimistic processes that can be shown to operate
within the constraints of fuzzy reality” (p. 253)], or by (b) eroding our cognitive access to
11
This objectivist approach to psychological science is noteworthy in the context of a new journal edited by
prominent members of the positive psychology movement, namely The Journal of Happiness Studies: An
Interdisciplinary Forum on Subjective Well-Being. I shall have more to say about subjective well-being and the
objective study of it in due course.
12
Sandage and Hill (2001) suggested a rapprochement between an affirmative (as opposed to a skeptical)
postmodernism and the positive psychology movement. They said that affirmative postmodernism can help the
positive psychology movement make its alleged “constructive move beyond some of the limitations of mod-
ernist psychology” (p. 242)—including, especially, the limitations that are said to inhere in modern psycholo-
gy’s exaggerated individualism, decontextualized values or notion of virtue itself, and decontextualized knowledge
claims which fail to accept postmodernist “non-hierarchical and ‘local’ approaches to epistemology” (p. 252).
Whether positive psychologists agree with this assessment of their movement remains to be seen.
any existing reality (fuzzy or not), or by (c) both of these maneuvers. In seeing reality
itself as so fuzzy/in flux that we often cannot get (nonfuzzy) access to it (p. 252),
Schneider (perhaps unwittingly) seems to align herself with the antirealism/antiobjectivism
of postmodernists—her ontological view about the fuzziness of reality is actually con-
sistent with some postmodernist attempts to defend epistemological antirealism on that
basis, too (see Fishman, 1999, p. 130). [Although here it must be said that no modernist
endorsement of ontological or epistemological objectivism/realism ever required per-
fect, complete, infallible knowledge of all aspects of reality, despite postmodernist as-
sertions to the contrary (see Erwin, 1997; Siegel, 1997).] In so doing, Schneider
undermines the realism/objectivism necessary for the nonfuzzy knowledge (of reality)
that she uses to support her own (objective) truth claims about the existence of a real-
istic form of optimism!
My point is this: Both the positive psychology movement, which endorses objectiv-
ism and so exalts a conventional or modern science of psychology but seeks to refocus its
object of inquiry, and the postmodern therapy movement, which eschews objectivism and
so rejects a conventional or modern science of psychology altogether, are both reflections
of, expressions of, and eager participants in the same cultural zeitgeist of positivity, in
which the constraints of reality can be optimistically dismissed—one way or another.
Is a Positive Attitude the Royal Road to Subjective Well-Being and Health?
Subjective Well-Being/Happiness
Is a positive attitude the straight and secure path to well-being that many Americans
believe it to be? After all, even some members of the positive psychology movement have
produced conventional scientific evidence that calls this assumption into question. I refer
especially to their cross-cultural work on subjective well-being or life satisfaction. For
example, the psychologist Eunkook Suh (2000), in asking the question why self-reports
of subjective well-being are so high among North Americans, posits such motivational
factors as the wish in individualist cultures to view the self in positive terms. He docu-
ments and explains the “psychological ‘pressure’ to be happy and self confident” (p. 74)
within North American culture, pressure which motivates North Americans “to invest a
considerable amount of effort to convince both the self and others that they are happy,
self-confident, and in full control of their lives” (p. 74). Suh speculates that the prevalent
use of self-serving cognitive strategies or biases in North America—the so-called
creative self-deception or positive illusions advocated by psychologists Taylor and Brown
(1988)—help to maintain a sense of subjective well-being and may themselves be an
expression of this pressure to seem happy, self-confident, and in control at all times.
Suh (2000), among others (e.g., Heine, Lehman, Markus, & Kitayama, 1999; Kitayama,
Markus, Matsumoto, & Norasakkunkit, 1997), relates this pressure on Americans to our
highly individualistic culture, in which we view ourselves as unique selves, personally
responsible for our successes and failures and thus responsible for our “unhappiness and
low self-regard” (p. 74). By contrast, the more relational cultures of Asia encourage self
criticism, as individuals try to meet the standards of excellence shared in a social unit in
order to affirm belongingness to the unit. According to Kitayama et al. (1997), self-esteem
is correlated with self enhancement in America, but self-esteem is not correlated with
self-criticism in Japan. And whereas subjective well-being depends upon self-esteem in
America, subjective well-being does not depend upon self-esteem in Japan. There, sub-
jective well-being depends on not having negative qualities (rather than on having positive
qualities). That is, subjective well-being in Japan is correlated with maintaining a self-
critical outlook.13 This cultural difference is important, and so it is worth quoting the au-
thors themselves:
The American tendency to self-enhance . . . was reliably correlated with the overall level
of their self-esteem. For the American individuals, finding and elaborating positive aspects
of the self and discounting and deemphasizing negative aspects of the self importantly con-
stitute the idea of the self as a good and well-functioning agent. For Japanese individuals,
however, the self-criticizing tendency of finding and elaborating negative aspects of the self
and of discounting and deemphasizing positive aspects of the self is part of a more general
process of relational self-improvement (hansei) whereby the negative attributes thus identified
in reference to socially shared standards of excellence are corrected and eliminated, thus
affirming the sense of belongingness to the social unit. . . . Thus, the self-criticizing tendency
constitutes the Japanese idea of the self as a good and well-functioning, interdependent agent. . . .
For Japanese respondents, the self-critical tendency in the specific social situation was not
correlated with the overall level of self-esteem.
This analysis suggests that a general sense of . . . well-being in the Japanese cultural con-
text may depend much less on self-esteem. Indeed, self-esteem . . . is highly correlated with sub-
jective well-being in the United States but not in Japan as well as many other non-Western
cultures. . . . The subjective well-being of Japanese selves may depend significantly on the ap-
praisal of the self as actively responding to and correcting shortcomings or deficits that have been
identified in light of such standards. . . . For Japanese, interdependent selves, the perceived ab-
sence of negative features rather than the perceived presence of positive features may be crucial
in the maintenance of well-being. . . . This suggests that in Japan, in contrast with the United States,
general well-being may be more clearly separable from self-esteem as defined as the total of
positive evaluations of the self. (Kitayama et al., 1997, pp. 1262–1263)
My attention to these data reflects no propensity on my part for any thoroughgoing
cultural relativism. If anything, I myself am enough of an individualist (in the sense
described by the philosopher Susan Haack [2001, p. 12] as “respecting the differences
between you and me [with] no connotation of every-man-for-himself-ism”) to believe
that cross-cultural differences do not erase real within-cultural variation or individual
differences. So, if we take the common sense view that subjective well-being of some
sort is a fundamental feature of the good life, then there is no good reason to suppose
that the various forms of positivity promoted by members of the positive psychology
movement—namely, self-enhancement, optimism, self-esteem, self-confidence, per-
sonal control—are necessary for its attainment, either within any particular culture or
across cultures. After all, why call it subjective well-being unless we are willing to take
individual difference within culture seriously.14 But the cross-cultural data are helpful
13
See Diener and Diener (1995) for additional evidence of lower correlations between self-esteem and life
satisfaction in collectivist nations, compared to individualistic ones. Also see Ahadi, Rothbart, and Ye (1993),
for data comparing 6- to 7-year-old children’s scores on measures of effortful control, surgency, and negative
affect in the United States versus the People’s Republic of China. For example, in the People’s Republic, where
surgency is seen as a negative quality, effortful control was negatively correlated with surgency (and uncorre-
lated with negative affect) whereas in the United States, where negative affect is seen as a negative quality,
effortful control was negatively correlated with negative affect (and uncorrelated with surgency). This may
mean that young children try to suppress the qualities they see as less acceptable in their culture. These data
may thus give indirect evidence of pressure to be positive in American, but not Asian, cultures. I am grateful to
my colleague, Professor Samuel Putnam at Bowdoin, for bringing this to my attention.
14
Taking into account a range of individual differences hardly necessitates a subjectivist interpretation of well-
being. Aristotle himself provided a perfectly universal (and therefore objective, though he would hardly think or
speak of it in that way) definition of what he called “eudaemonia” (and what we call happiness or well-being),
which nonetheless could accommodate individual difference: “the good and the well is thought to reside in the
function. . . . Now if the function of man is an activity of soul which follows or implies a rational principle, . . .
human good turns out to be activity of soul exhibiting excellence, and if there are more than one excellence, in
accordance with the best and most complete” (Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, David Ross, Trans., 1980, pp. 12–
14). I am grateful to my colleague, Professor William Geoghegan at Bowdoin, for reminding me of these words of
Aristotle when discussing the positive psychology movement’s emphasis on subjective well-being (see Veen-
hoven, 2000, p. 4).
nonetheless, for they demonstrate that what we take to be negativity (towards the self )
may, for some, be virtuous and life (if not strictly self-) enhancing. Moreover, Heine
et al. (1999) answer the question, “Is there a universal need for positive self-regard?”
negatively, unless self-regard is either reformulated to fit a distinctly Japanese concern
with self-criticism and self-improvement (as opposed to self-enhancement) or is formu-
lated so abstractly that it can incorporate any construction of its meaning. But as Heine
et al. (1999) ultimately ask, “Can tendencies to search for negative self-relevant infor-
mation (i.e., self-criticism) be reasonably called ‘esteeming the self ’?” (p. 788).
One may, of course, legitimately respond to this with the proverbial “Not so fast.” For
one may, in a multicultural spirit, argue that we live in America, where self-esteem, self-
enhancement, and a positive attitude are all correlated with subjective well-being—so we
should do what works for us. Moreover, correlations need not obtain under all conditions or
cultures to be warranted in any particular condition or culture. Still, should self-enhancement,
creative self-deception, or positive illusions be accepted in our culture without question
(cf. Schneider, 2001)? One answer to this question transcends my call to embrace individ-
ual (as well as cultural) difference, and pertains to what the philosopher David Jopling (1996)
refers to as “responsiveness to the real.” After all, what he calls “life-lies” may work for a
good while. But what happens when reality comes along, as it often does sooner or later,
and bursts the bubble of self-deception, however creative it may be? I fear the bubble’s cre-
ator could be left more devastated than if he or she had just faced the awful truth about him-
or herself in the first place. And even if that does not occur, Jopling (1996) believes that re-
fusal to face up to the truth about ourselves, that reliance on self-deception, has practical
consequences—with profound moral implications:
The deeper and more pervasive an individual’s positive illusions, the greater their effect of
diminishing his range of awareness of himself, other people, and the situation confronting
him. Self-deceptive strategies may be thought of as particularly densely-woven cognitive
filters that select, guide, constrain and organize self-relevant information in an essentially
self-serving manner. . . . This means that fewer aspects of self are noticeable from the perspec-
tive of heavily-filtered illusions. . . . With the diminishing of the range of awareness comes a
corresponding diminishing of the range of responsiveness and openness to the real. As fewer
aspects of themselves are noticeable to self-deceived individuals, so too are fewer possibilities
for conduct presented to them as they formulate intentions with respect to action. . . . This
means that the range of social, emotional, and personal relations that connect us to others, to
the social world, and to our own humanity, are progressively weakened as self-deceptive
strategies become progressively entrenched in behavior and thought.15 (p. 535)
Physical Well-Being/Health
Health psychologists David Watson and James Pennebaker (1989) call into question the
common claim that negativity of any sort causes, or at least predicts, health problems.
15
Two parenthetical comments here. One concerns the postmodernist position that there exists no real, consis-
tent self—that there is no such ontological entity. If this is correct, then there can be no real self-deception. But
the moral (as well as ontological) problems that inhere in that argument are vast. Second, in their work on the
physically beneficial effects of finding meaning in bereavement (and with maintaining unrealistic optimism and
an exaggerated sense of personal control), Taylor et al. (2000) reported their earlier finding (Taylor et al., 1992)
that HIV-seropositive “gay men who were unrealistically optimistic about the future course of their infection
were better adjusted and coped more actively with their situation than those who were less optimistic.” (p. 102).
It is not clear whether their notion of “better adjusted” includes Jopling’s (1996, p. 535) notion of the “full range
of responsiveness,” so Jopling’s concerns may still obtain. And although Taylor et al. (2000) reported a corre-
lation between finding meaning in bereavement and CDT-helper cells/longevity (possibly by way of prevent-
ing negative expectations from developing), it is again not clear whether that meaning incorporates the fuller
range of responsiveness on whose behalf Jopling argues (see my Footnote 7). Moreover, some have questioned
the claim that mental health and interpersonal benefits follow from positive illusions (e.g., Colvin & Block,
1994; Colvin, Block, & Funder, 1995; Norem, 2001a, 2001b; Paulhus, 1998).
Watson and Pennebaker found that people high in so-called trait negative affect (NA)—
which subsumes such aversive mood states as “anger, disgust, scorn, guilt, fearfulness,
and depression” and includes a traitlike tendency to dwell on one’s own “failures and
shortcomings,” to be less self-satisfied and more neurotic, and to “focus on the negative
side of others and the world in general”—are no less healthy, when health is measured
objectively rather than by self-report, than are people high in trait positive affect (PA),
which reflects such mood states as “energy and enthusiasm,” and includes the traitlike
tendency toward “well being and extraversion” (pp. 234–235):
Taken together, the data create a curious portrait of high NA individuals. They complain of
angina but show no evidence of greater coronary risk or pathology. They complain of head-
aches but do not report any increased use of aspirin. They report all kinds of physical problems
but are not especially likely to visit their doctor or to miss work or school. In general, they
complain about their health but show no hard evidence of poorer health or increased mortality.
(p. 244)
Could it be that all that kvetching/complaining works for those with high NA?
The Costs of Accenting the Positive and of “Eliminating” the Negative
Research on subjective well-being in the United States has produced somewhat equivocal
results. Psychologists Diener, Suh, Lucas, and Smith (1999) reported increase in income
(in real dollars) from 1946 to 1989, but they found no change whatsoever in subjective
well-being, which includes measures of emotional responses, domain satisfaction, and
global judgments of life satisfaction (p. 277).16 In an article whose title reflects the
conclusion, Diener and Diener (1996) assert that “Most People Are Happy.” By contrast,
political scientist Robert Lane (1998, 2000a, 2000b), who argues that subjective well-
being is only one of three ultimate human goods—the other two are human development
(including virtue) and justice (2000a, p. 110)—paints a gloomier picture. He acknowl-
edges the finding of Diener and Diener (1996) that “most people are happy,” but he also
says “there is enough evidence of post-war decreases in happiness in the United States
(and increases in major depression in all advanced economies) to raise questions about
the capacity of market and democratic institutions to improve the hedonic level of their
populations” (2000a, p. 103). In such titles as “The Joyless Market Economy” (1998) or
The Loss of Happiness in Market Democracies (2000b), Lane expresses his thesis that
happiness has actually declined in the face of material progress. He interprets the data
used by Diener to argue that there has actually been a decline in happiness since there has
been a decline in respondents who say they are “very happy” (Lane, 1998, pp. 462– 463).
And Lane (2000b) expresses more despair in the opening paragraph of a chapter entitled
“Shadow on the Land”:
Amidst the satisfaction people feel with their material progress, there is a spirit of unhappiness
and depression haunting advanced market democracies throughout the world, a spirit that
mocks the idea that markets maximize well-being and the eighteenth-century promise of a
right to the pursuit of happiness under benign governments of people’s own choosing. The
haunting spirit is manifold: a postwar decline in the United States in people who report them-
16
In Vol. 1(1) of the new Journal of Happiness Studies: An Interdisciplinary Forum on Subjective Well-Being,
the editors say, “It covers both cognitive evaluations of life (like life-satisfaction), and affective enjoyment of
life (such as mood level). In addition to contributions on appraisal of life-as-a-whole, the journal accepts
contributions on life domains (such as job-satisfaction) and life-aspects (such as perceived meaning of life)”
(p. v).
selves as happy, a rising tide in all advanced societies of clinical depression and dysphoria
(especially among the young), increasing distrust of each other and of political and other
institutions, declining belief that the lot of the average man is getting better . . . , a tragic
erosion of family solidarity and community integration together with an apparent decline in
warm, intimate relations among friends. (p. 3)
If Lane is right, these are bleak times indeed.
Here I remain neutral about whether the glass is half empty (Lane, 1998, 2000a,
2000b) or quite full (Diener et al., 1999). The question whether happiness has been stable
or has declined as we have become wealthier is of course an empirical question, and so it
requires careful measurement and accurate interpretation of all of the data; and I am no
expert in these matters. But if it is true that Americans have been better off economically
in recent years, then I am moved to ask questions such as: Why is it that as we have
become wealthier we have pushed more vehemently for a positive attitude (or so I claim),
yet our levels of subjective well-being either do not increase or, depending upon the
method of measurement, they actually decrease?
We may certainly speculate about proper answers to this question, and Lane’s refusal
to accept subjective well-being or happiness as the only fundamental human good is one
place to start (cf. Csikszentmihalyi, 1999). However, I myself wish to respond to this
question in a different way than Lane might. Lacking data that directly and systematically
assess the existence of mounting pressure to maintain a positive attitude, I put forth my
conjecture in the form of a question: If there indeed now exists unprecedented pressure to
accentuate the positive, could it then be that the pressure itself to be happy contributes to
at least some forms of unhappiness? In my own experience both as an American and as a
clinical psychologist, I have repeatedly noticed that some people seem to feel guilty,
defective, or both when they can’t feel good. They sometimes apologize for not being
able to smile in the face of adversity, as if they were committing an act of treason by
feeling and acting unhappy. “I should be able to feel better about this,” “I should be able
to handle this better,” some say; and “this” can range from the loss of a job or a spouse to
a fight with a friend or the failure to get a promotion, sell a painting, or publish a paper.
And then they feel worse than they did before they decided they should feel okay—and
act okay. The concept of depression about depression, or feeling bad about feeling bad,
with all the heightened self-blame contained within that experience, seems relevant here
(cf. Pyszczynski & Greenberg, 1987; Schmitt, 1983).
Some have suggested that our culture-wide tolerance for unhappiness has dimin-
ished, that we have become less able to accept feeling bad sometimes as a healthy (i.e.,
understandable or what was once considered normal) response to the inevitable pain of
life. Now, we rush to label as pathological depressed or anxious feelings, even when they
seem rational in the context of certain life experiences, and we treat them medically with
mind-numbing drugs (Duncan & Miller, 2000b), or we call ourselves victims and join
12-step support groups (Hughes, 1993; Kaminer, 1992). The psychologist Stanton Peele
(1981) foresaw this feel-good mentality when he predicted two decades ago that the
biologically reductionistic trend in psychology would produce a brave new rush to pop a
prescribed pill at the slightest sign of dissatisfaction/unhappiness rather than examine
(and work to change) at least those local (internal and external) existential conditions
which play some part in our depression and anxiety and over which we may exert some
agency/authority.
My point is not to question the existence or reality of mental illness/psychopathology
or to deny the legitimate use of psychotropic drugs, including their use in combination
with psychotherapy. Rather, if we have indeed become less able to tolerate feeling bad
when it is reasonable to feel bad, then it seems to me we are all the more likely to feel
even worse when we can’t feel good because we will then interpret feeling bad as patho-
logical under any circumstances. Moreover, as the expectation that we feel good at all
times increases, we may interpret feeling bad not only as pathological, but as socially
unacceptable or unvirtuous. Thus, feeling bad in 2002 is both sick and immoral.17 What
I am suggesting, of course, is that the tyranny of the positive attitude is tyrannical pre-
cisely because it may work paradoxically to reduce (subjective) well-being—the very
condition it is designed to enhance.
If there is in fact a negative correlation between these two variables (pressure to have
a positive attitude and subjective well-being)—and I am about to offer evidence to sup-
port this contention—then we must consider the mechanisms by which that relationship
obtains. One place to look for evidence is the research on “emotional labor” found in the
organizational behavior literature (see Grandey, 2000; Pugliesi, 1999). After all, many
workplaces (especially those in so-called “service industries”) expect employees to have
and to express positive attitudes and affect. Consider such workshops as the one entitled
“Conquering Workplace Negativity” (Fred Pryor Seminars), which have found their way
even into academic settings. If the expectation to be positive is not actually experienced
as tyrannical, it is certainly real and enforceable, at least for those who need their jobs.
Psychologist Alicia Grandey (2000) and sociologist Karen Pugliesi (1999) both credit
sociologist Arlie Hochschild (1979, 1983) with coinage of the term “emotional labor,”
which they define as the management of emotions for paid employment: “Emotional
labor may involve enhancing, faking, or suppressing emotions to modify the emotional
expression” (Grandey, 2000, p. 95); “Emotion management is accomplished in the con-
text of prevailing ‘feeling rules’ (Hochschild, 1979), which prescribe emotional states,
and ‘display rules,’ which guide the expression of emotion” (Pugliesi, 1999, p. 126).
Both Grandey (2000) and Pugliesi (1999) acknowledge that the literature on emo-
tional labor and its consequences is complex; as always, more research is needed. Yet,
both take seriously Hochschild’s (1979, 1983) original thesis that emotion management
can have negative consequences for the well-being of the employee (e.g., job stress and
burnout), if not for job performance itself (although the data on this are mixed). Both also
use a pivotal distinction to guide their work, but it is not the same distinction: Grandey
emphasizes Hochschild’s distinction between “surface acting,” or regulating the expres-
sion of emotions, and “deep acting,” or consciously modifying feelings themselves “in
order to express the desired emotion” (p. 96). Grandey offers empirical support for the
proposition that “perceiving that the organization expects certain emotion displays will
lead to more management of emotion by employees” (p. 102), and she appeals to the
work of health psychologist James Pennebaker, among others, to argue that
both surface and deep acting techniques may result in the required emotional expression, but
the physiological emotional response may still be active. Such studies may help explain how
emotional labor can relate functionally to performance measures but can be dysfunctional for
the individual’s health and stress. (p. 101)
Although “deep acting should be more positively related to service performance than
surface acting, . . . both should be related to burnout, withdrawal, and negative work
attitudes” (p. 108). And she appeals to the stress literature to argue that “disclosure of
emotional events helps individuals cope with stress and buffer against health risks (Carver,
Scheier, & Weintraub,1989; Pennebaker, 1990)” (p. 107).
17
This seems ironic, since at least one goal of the medicalization of problematic behavior (e.g., alcoholism)
was, at least in part, to exonerate the patient in moral terms—he should be seen as sick, not evil (see Mowrer,
1960).
Pugliesi (1999), by contrast, distinguishes between “self-focused emotional labor,”

or the “management of one’s own feelings,” and “other-focused emotional labor,” or the
attempt to manage the “feelings of others” (p. 129). Pugliesi challenges the equivocal
findings of other investigations (that there have been non-negative or even positive con-
sequences of emotional labor) on methodological grounds, and she concludes her own
research unequivocally, by stating that both self-focused and other-focused forms of emo-
tional labor have uniformly negative effects on workers, causing subjective job stress,
decreasing satisfaction, and increasing psychological distress. However, she adds,
self-focused emotional labor had more pervasive negative effects that were stronger in mag-
nitude than did other-focused emotional labor. This is consistent with the results of previous
analyses of these data in which items involving the masking or suppressing of one’s feelings
toward coworkers were found to have negative impacts on employees . . . (pp. 146–147)
Unlike Grandey, Pugliesi asserts that the effects of emotional labor are largely indepen-
dent of job conditions and are unequivocal: “All appropriate caveats notwithstanding,
there is considerable evidence that emotional labor can be stressful and can undermine a
worker’s well being” (p. 150). These data should not sit well in a cultural context in
which we find articles like the one entitled “Just Say No to [Workplace] Negativity”
(Murphy, 2001), which appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle (February 18, 2001).
I propose that the results reported by Grandey (2000) and Pugliesi (1999) may gen-
eralize to life and relationships beyond the workplace, where we can examine the costs of
pretending to oneself (through deep acting) and others (through surface acting) that one
is happy when one is not, or the costs of trying to manage one’s own feelings (through
self-focused emotional labor) if not the feelings of others. In his book Opening Up: The
Healing Power of Expressing Emotions, psychologist James Pennebaker (1990) summa-
rized his empirical findings about the physical and psychological benefits of expressing
painful or upsetting thoughts and feelings:
Actively holding back or inhibiting our thoughts and feelings can be hard work. Over time, the
work of inhibition gradually undermines the body’s defenses . . . [and] can affect immune
function, the action of the heart and vascular systems, and even the biochemical workings of
the brain and nervous systems. In short excessive holding back of thoughts, feeling, and
behaviors can place people at risk for both major and minor diseases. . . . [By contrast] con-
fronting our deepest thoughts and feelings can have remarkable short- and long-term health
benefits. Confession, whether by writing or talking, can neutralize many of the problems of
inhibition. . . . [it] can influence our basic values, our daily thinking patterns, and feelings
about ourselves. (p. 2)
In short, Pennebaker extols the virtues of “opening up”—of translating traumatic expe-
rience into language, where, he argues, we may come to terms with trauma by structuring
and organizing it, by assimilating it into our experience rather than inhibiting it. In the
latter case, he says, it can “surface in the form of ruminations, dreams, and associated
thought disturbances” (p. 9).
The research programs of other psychologists support Pennebaker’s claims (e.g.,
Pennebaker’s 1995 edited volume Emotion, Disclosure, and Health). Like Pennebaker—
who condemns “uncensored complaining” or “overdisclosing” (1990, p. 195)—these and
other psychologists (Held, 2001b; Kowalski, 1997) distinguish productive from unpro-
ductive emotional expression. For example, Bohart (2001) refutes the hydraulic view of
catharsis, in which affects “are like energies that build up inside if not expressed” (or
drained off ) (p. 340). That not all emotional expression is productive—and some is
harmful—challenges the hydraulic view. But he says the cognitive–behavioral view that
emotional expression can be harmful also is problematic. For although it is true that the
expression of, say, anger can be intensified through “rehearsal and thus strengthening of
cognitive scripts and schemas”—that is, through the reinforcement of the anger (p. 343)—
this cognitive–behavioral view does not account for the ways in which such emotional
expression can be helpful. The question is: What are the components of productive emo-
tional expression? Bohart claims that productive disclosure (e.g., in the context of an
empathic listener) moves people from an “outcome focused state of mind,” which is
experienced as a state of helplessness and which interferes with functional thinking, to a
“process focused state of mind,” in which we can begin to reorganize or reprocess our bad
experiences in order to be more self-reflective and so to self heal (p. 348). He calls upon
the research of Pennebaker to argue that stress diminishes the capacity for process-
oriented thinking and self-reflection. Emotional expression helps, he says, because we
know empirically that “inhibiting feelings takes physiological work (Stiles, 1995)” and
“increases the probability of ruminative thinking” (p. 356).
The Tyranny of the Positive Attitude in Therapy and Beyond

In How Clients Make Therapy Work: The Process of Active Self-Healing, Bohart and
Tallman (1999) elaborate the therapeutic significance of an empathic, reflective listener—a
listener who does not consistently demand emotional management or labor and who can
help make emotional expression productive rather than destructive. Empathy 18 is not
enough in some cases, they say, but it is a good place to start to help people shift from
outcome- to process-oriented states of mind. They claim that an empathic listening con-
text, by allowing emotional expression, helps clients overcome shame and secrecy, enhances
memory 19 of painful experiences that may need to be accessed, and “clears a space for”
the cognitive reprocessing or reorganizing of these painful experiences.
Bohart and Tallman (1999) advocate a commonly accepted therapeutic behavior—
empathic listening, which is not typically found in everyday relationships. Although it is
reasonable to expect some degree of empathy from those closest to us, I believe that our
family, friends, and colleagues cannot and should not be expected to have the same
degree of empathy as a (first-rate) therapist—i.e., it is not reasonable to seek from them
professional empathic skills. After all, they have their own personal needs and agendas
when relating to us whereas therapists, who also have their own personal needs and
agendas in their own personal lives, must strive to keep those in check in the consultation
room. For example, a wife’s need for her husband to be more emotionally supportive of
her is well understood and accepted; a therapist’s need for her client to be more emotion-
ally supportive of her is not.
18
See Bohart, Elliot, Greenberg, & Watson’s (in press) “Empathy” for multiple definitions of “empathy” in the
clinical literature.
19
Bohart and Tallman (1999) said that although they have no extratherapy evidence for this, they believe we
have greater access to our memory when we are listened to empathically. In fact, recent data provide indirect
support for their contention. Richards and Gross (2000) used a process model of emotion to test the hypothesis
that “expressive suppression” of feeling (e.g., by not moving facial muscles or not letting feelings show) would
reduce memory for emotional events, whereas “reappraisal” (e.g., adopting a neutral attitude) would not (Abstract).
They concluded that some (but not all) forms of emotional regulation are “cognitively costly” (p. 421).
Keeping a still face and stiff upper lip decreases one’s memory for the details of the unfolding emotion-
eliciting situation, whereas cognitively transforming the situation by changing one’s thinking does not
appear to exact such a cognitive cost. . . . It is more efficient to construe events in unemotional terms than
to try to hold back emotional impulses that already have arisen. (p. 423)
A Monitor on Psychology article about this research was entitled “Stoicism Reconsidered” (Carpenter, 2000).
My purpose here is not to dwell on the contours of therapeutic empathy (see Bohart
et al., in press; Bohart & Greenberg, 1997; Bohart & Tallman, 1999). Rather, it is to
speculate about the real need in our culture for the extraordinary empathic capacity of
good therapists. Here I speak not of the well-worn thesis about therapists as the secular
priests of late modernity, but rather of my thesis about the tyranny of the positive attitude.
To reformulate my question: Would we need quite so much professional empathy if
people felt freer to express the pain of living (without fear of retribution) in their every-
day lives, because common forms of empathy were more readily available? Although I
think the answer to this question might well be no (in at least some cases), this is a tricky
question to be sure. On one hand, if there really is a tyranny of the positive attitude in
America, then, as psychological and sociological research suggests, people may be dam-
aged physically, emotionally, and cognitively by ongoing pressure to manage and sup-
press their negative emotions. On the other hand, however, my thesis is not without its
problems; for we also live in a culture that seems to revel in negativity (Hughes, 1993;
Kaminer, 1992). To give one nontrivial example, consider our lurid daytime television
talk shows, where Americans are encouraged to air their emotional dirty laundry before
millions of hungry viewers. Here we often see wanton, destructive venting rather than the
“clearing [of] space for more productive cognitive work” (p. 14) called for by Bohart and
Tallman (1999). Some may therefore be tempted to claim that in America we are given
too much license to express our pain, and that this is contributing to the debased, so-called
culture of narcissism lamented by critics such as Lasch (1979) and Hughes (1993).
So here let me here be clear: I do not advocate unbridled venting, kvetching, or
emotional disclosure nor do the psychologists to whom I have referred, including
Pennebaker, Bohart, Tallman, and Kowalski. To the contrary, I define productive emo-
tional expression (or what I have called creative kvetching) as opening up to receptive/
empathic listeners, and even then there are rules (see Held, 2001b; Kowalski, 1997)
(Note, however, that I am not referring to such legitimate activities as objecting to injus-
tice, activities which all too often must go forward without benefit of listener receptivity,
and so which are another matter altogether.) But I challenge those who say our so-called
Culture of Complaint, to use Hughes’s (1993) term, constitutes evidence in America of a
“Tyranny of the Negative Attitude”: First, those who air their emotional dirty laundry on
the airwaves are not held up as the paragons of American virtue: Who makes as their goal
in life the chance to bash their two-timing lovers on daytime television? Indeed, this is at
best exploitation of the downtrodden for corporate America’s financial gain, if not for our
own vicarious experience of “opening up” in the face of cultural proscriptions against
doing so in our own relationships. By my lights, we remain a culture that—at least in its
most common rhetoric—values stoicism, a stiff (if not upturned) upper lip, and a positive
outlook; and we are at best ambivalent about emotional expression, especially if the
emotions being expressed are negative (Richards & Gross, 2000, p. 410). Perhaps the
tyranny of the positive attitude is fueled by our culture-wide inability even to conceive of
the expression of negativity as at least potentially productive.
Moreover, the unconstructive venting that we see on a daily basis might itself be a
function of our lower than low tolerance for, and so our failure to teach (both within and
beyond therapy), more constructive forms of emotional expression. In our relentless quest
for positivity, in a culture that shuns negativity, we might, paradoxically, be producing a
populace of annoying whiners in the same way that teetotalers, in virtue of their failure to
give models of responsible forms of drinking, have sometimes been said to raise alco-
holics. And as our capacity to explore or at least tolerate (both in ourselves and others)
and appropriately express negative feelings diminishes, as our need to eliminate negative
feelings (both in ourselves and others) as expeditiously as possible increases, what will
happen to the capacity of therapists to provide first-rate empathy, the kind that encour-
ages productive emotional expression? After all, they too are products of the same culture
of positivity.20 As therapists rush to prescribe pills or positive platitudes instead of pro-
viding intensive listening, I fear they may work to lower further our ability to tolerate and
explore negative feelings. This could make matters worse: Just when our need for pro-
fessional empathy may be at its highest (because it may be at its lowest in our everyday
relationships), it also may be diminishing among professional caregivers. If this formu-
lation is correct, who will be left to listen? Who will help us make sense of our pain in
existential terms? 21
Conclusions
We need look no further than this special series in the Journal of Clinical Psychology to
see that what has been taken to be typical expressions of “negativity” in our culture—
namely, what Norem (this issue) calls defensive pessimism 22 as well as good old-
fashioned complaining/venting (Kowalski, this issue)—has its unsung virtues. Therefore,
and apropos of Snyder’s (this issue) reconceptualization of hope, even I am forced to
admit there are signs of hope amidst the “onslaught” of positivity.
For example, positive psychologist Martin Seligman (1990), in his book Learned
Optimism, said that we should not be slaves to the “tyrannies of optimism” (p. 292). He
said that “optimism may sometimes keep us from seeing reality with the necessary clarity”
(p. 291); “what we want is not blind optimism but flexible optimism—optimism with its
eyes open. We must be able to use pessimism’s keen sense of reality when we need it”
(p. 292). He especially laments the mindless optimism of America’s self-help movement—
with its we-can-fix-anything mentality (Seligman, 1993). Christopher Peterson (2000), in
the January 2000 American Psychologist issue on positive psychology, similarly warns
against the risks of unrealistic optimism, such as failing to take reasonable precautions
against harm. And Sandra Schneider (2001), in the March 2001 special section of the
American Psychologist dedicated to positive psychology, struggles to define the nature of
realistic optimism.
Although the concerns of these positive psychologists raise (my) hope, they also
raise questions. In particular, What does it mean to speak of realistic optimism, and of
choosing optimism when that mindset is to our advantage? Aren’t optimism and pessi-
mism by definition biases—generalized expectations about future outcomes [e.g., “com-
monly defined, optimism reflects an expectation that good things will happen, whereas
pessimism reflects an expectation that bad things will happen” (Chang, 2001, p. 5)]—that
are, at least to some extent, in violation of reality? Peterson (2000) says, “The resolution
is that people should be optimistic when the future can be changed by positive thinking
but not otherwise” (p. 51). But how can we know, in advance, just which futures can and
20
Of course, therapists are now also the products of the “culture” of managed care, which, in some perverse
way, may itself be a product of the tyranny of the positive attitude. Exploration of that thesis, however, is
beyond the scope of this article.
21
Here I argue not against the value of symptom relief; rather, sometimes symptom relief is not enough. Or if
it is enough, the question is: Is it optimal?
22
It is important to distinguish Norem’s measure of “defensive pessimism,” which is an adaptive response made
in advance of a specific performance situation (Norem, 2001a, 2001b), from Carver and Scheier’s measure of
“dispositional pessimism,” which is a more stable, traitlike tendency to hold negative expectations about the
future in general. The latter is of course more highly correlated with hopelessness (Carver, personal commu-
nication, February 2, 2001; Scheier, Carver & Bridges, 2001). According to Norem (personal communication,
February 14, 2001), defensive pessimists use “pessimism in combination with mental rehearsal (or reflectivity)
in order to counteract the disruption of performance often caused by anxiety.”
cannot be changed by positive thinking? 23 Isn’t a point, if not the point, of positive
thinking—at least in popular circles—the belief that in so thinking, one might be able to
change what one previously believed, under the proverbial dark cloud of negativity, could
not be changed? Isn’t this the whole idea behind the “make-your-own-reality-by-thinking-
the right-positive-thoughts” movement? Moreover, Schneider (2001) says, “Appreciation
[for the present] helps to improve satisfaction and can remain within the limits of reality
to the extent that we remain aware of the objective facts of the situation, even as we
choose to focus on positive implications” (p. 255). Yet, does it make sense to speak of
“objective facts” in the context of making a case for realistic optimism by appealing, as
Schneider does, to “fuzzy meaning,” “fuzzy knowledge,” and, most problematically, “fuzzy
reality?” As Schneider herself puts it,
Being accurate typically means that one has arrived at a position that is truthful or captures the
reality of the situation. However, it also implies that there is one exact knowable truth or
reality. But therein lies the rub. There is very little evidence that this kind of accuracy exists in
many of the situations that humans regularly encounter. Even if it sometimes does, it may be
rare for humans to be in a position to access this objective or accurate assessment. (p. 251)
Once again, positive thinking and postmodern antiobjectivism appear to converge.
In light of the interest in realistic optimism shown by some (but not all) members of
the positive psychology movement, we also may wonder about the fate of hope. For
example, Schneider (2001), in defining realistic optimism, distinguishes between, on one
hand, hopes and aspirations (which are good insofar as they lead one to work toward
desired outcomes) and, on the other hand, expectations for particular outcomes (which
are bad insofar as they may not be warranted given the facts of a situation) (p. 253).
Given positive psychologist Snyder’s (this issue) reformulation of hope not as optimism
but as holding realistic goals, entertaining multiple pathways to their attainment, and
having enough agency to do the work of getting there, there can be no such thing as
“false” hope—or so he claims. How can it be false to hold a realistic goal and then find
ways to attain it? Although these distinctions strike me as reasonable and important, I
nonetheless have some concerns. In particular, What happens, in the current American
zeitgeist of positivity, to profound feelings of hopelessness? I am not saying we should
encourage anyone to wallow in despair—as a therapist I have worked to combat that very
condition. But as a therapist, I wonder if people are allowed to feel hopeless (or to feel
bad in any sense) for at least a little while, if that is what they are honestly feeling. Can
those real feelings be tolerated, explored, and empathically or therapeutically contained
by therapists inclined to push ahead full force in their uncritical quest for positivity—
either because they do not value this effort or they do not have the capacity for it? After
all, life is hard for everyone at least some of the time, and surely therapists of all stripes
must be prepared to take that fact seriously. If therapists cannot tolerate the expression of
pain or negativity, and if, as a result, they cannot provide real empathy in their rush to
crush negative thoughts and feelings, then where will people go to reap the empirically
demonstrated benefits of opening up productively? If we can’t be real—if we can’t be
ourselves—in therapy of all places, then where?
Perhaps this is much ado about nothing; perhaps I am overreacting. Then again,
maybe not. As I said earlier, I worry that the escalating pressure on Americans to be
happy and cheerful, to smile and look on the bright side no matter how hard life gets, may
do more harm then good. Again, I call this pressure the tyranny of the positive attitude
because if you feel very bad about something and you just can’t put on a happy face no
23
See Seligman’s (1993) book, What You Can Change—And What You Can’t.
matter how hard you try, you could end up feeling even worse. You not only feel bad
about what is distressing you in the first place, you may also feel guilty when you can’t
feel good. You may feel defective for not being able to get with the positive-attitude
program of the day.
Years ago, the comedian George Carlin joked about how much he hated it when
people told him to “have a nice day” because, as I recall him saying, “this puts all the
burden on you.” To this I add, if in America you just can’t have a nice day, no matter how
hard you try, it is your own personal failing. It is your own personal moral failing. How’s
that for tyranny?
References
Adams, L., & Strouse, L. (1960). Put on a happy face.
Ahadi, A., Rothbart, M.K., & Ye, R. (1993). Children’s temperament in the U.S. and China: Sim-
ilarities and differences. European Journal of Personality, 7, 359–377.
American Psychiatric Association. (1994). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders
(4th ed.). Washington, DC: Author.
Ansoff, R. (1996). How can there be personal agency without an ontology of the individual? Theory
and Psychology, 6, 539–544.
Aristotle. (1980). The Nicomachean ethics (D. Ross, Trans., revised by J.L. Ackrill & J.O. Urm-
son). Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
Baumgardner, S.R., & Rappoport, L. (1996). Culture and self in postmodern perspective. The
Humanistic Psychologist, 24, 116–139.
Bohart, A.C. (2001). How can expression in psychotherapy be constructive? In A.C. Bohart & P.
Stipek (Eds.), Constructive and destructive behavior (pp. 337–364). Washington, DC: Amer-
ican Psychological Association.
Bohart, A.C., Elliott, R., Greenberg, L.S., & Watson, J. (in press). Empathy. In J.C. Norcross (Ed.),
Psychotherapy relationships that work. New York: Oxford.
Bohart, A.C., & Greenberg, L.S. (Eds.). (1997). Empathy reconsidered. Washington, DC: Ameri-
can Psychological Association.
Bohart, A.C., & Greening, T. (2001). Humanistic psychology and positive psychology. American
Psychologist, 56, 81–82.
Bohart, A.C., & Tallman, K. (1999). How clients make therapy work: The process of active self-
healing. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
Carnegie, D. (1936/1988). How to win friends and influence people. New York: Pocket Books.
Carpenter, S. (2000, September). Stoicism reconsidered. Monitor on Psychology, 31, 58– 61.
Carpenter, S. (2001, November). Amid the despair, there is hope. Monitor on Psychology, 32,
52–53.
Carter-Scott, C. (1989). Negaholics: How to recover from your addiction to negativity and turn
your life around. New York: Ballantine Wellspring.
Carver, C.S., Scheier, M.F., & Weintraub, J.K. (1989). Assessing coping strategies: A theoretically
based approach. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 56, 267–283.
Chang, E.C. (2001). Introduction: Optimism and pessimism and moving beyond the most funda-
mental question. In E.C. Chang (Ed.), Optimism and pessimism (pp. 3–12). Washington, DC:
American Psychological Association.
Colvin, C.R., & Block, J. (1994). Do positive illusions foster mental health? An examination of the
Taylor and Brown formulation. Psychological Bulletin, 116, 3–20.
Colvin, C.R., Block, J., & Funder, D.C. (1995). Overly positive self-evaluations and personality:
Negative implications for mental health. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 68,
1152–1162.
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1999). If we are so rich, why aren’t we happy? American Psychologist, 54,
821–827.
Cushman, P. (1990). Why the self is empty: Toward a historically situated psychology. American
Psychologist, 45, 599– 611.
Diener, E., & Diener, M. (1995). Cross-cultural correlates of life satisfaction and self-esteem.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 68, 653– 663.
Diener, E., & Diener, C. (1996). Most people are happy. Psychological Science, 7, 181–185.
Diener, E., Suh, E.M., Lucas, R.E., & Smith, H.L. (1999). Subjective well-being: Three decades of
progress. Psychological Bulletin, 125, 276–302.
Duncan, B.L., & Miller, S.D. (2000a). The heroic client: Doing client directed, outcome informed
therapy. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Duncan, B.L., & Miller, S.D. (2000b). To prescribe or not to prescribe. Monitor on Psychology,
31, 6.
Erwin, E. (1997). Philosophy and psychotherapy. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Erwin, E. (2001). The rejection of natural science approaches to psychotherapy: Language and the
world. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 57, 7–18.
Fisher, H. (1999). Postmodern agency: You and I can show it; not own it. Theory and Psychology,
9, 103–112.
Fishman, D.B. (1999). The case for pragmatic psychology. New York: New York University Press.
Franklin, B. (1898). Poor Richard’s Almanac. New York: Century Co. (Original work published
1734, 1750, & 1758)
Franklin, B. (1964). The autobiography of Benjamin Franklin (L.W. Labaree et al., Eds.). New
Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Franklin, B. (1987). Poor Richard’s Almanac. Lake Oswego, OR: Blackwell. (Original work pub-
lished 1734, 1750, 1758, & 1898)
Freedman, J., & Combs, G. (1996). Narrative therapy: The social construction of preferred realities.
New York: Norton.
Gergen, K.J. (1994). Realities and relationships: Soundings in Social Construction. Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press.
Gergen, K.J. (1998). The place of material in a constructed world. Family Process, 37, 415– 419.
Grandey, A.A. (2000). Emotion regulation in the workplace: A new way to conceptualize emotional
labor. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 5, 95–110.
Guignon, C. (1998). Narrative explanation in psychotherapy. American Behavioral Scientist, 41,
558–577.
Guignon, C. (2000, August). Hermeneutics, authenticity, and the aims of psychotherapy. Invited
paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association, Washing-
ton, DC.
Haack, S. (2001). After my own heart: Dorothy L. Sayers’ feminism. The New Criterion, 19,
10–14.
Heine, S.J., Lehman, D.R., Markus, H.R., & Kitayama, S. (1999). Is there a universal need for
positive self-regard? Psychological Review, 106, 766–794.
Held, B.S. (1995). Back to reality: A critique of postmodern theory in psychotherapy. New York:
Norton.
Held, B.S. (1996). Solution-focused therapy and the postmodern: A critical analysis. In S.D. Miller,
M.A. Hubble, & B.L. Duncan (Eds.), Handbook of solution-focused brief therapy (pp. 27–
43). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Held, B.S. (1998a). The many truths of postmodern discourse. Journal of Theoretical and Philo-
sophical Psychology, 18, 193–217.
Held, B.S. (1998b). The antisystematic impact of postmodern philosophy. Clinical Psychology:
Science and Practice, 5, 264–273.
Held, B.S. (2000, August). The tyranny of the positive attitude. Paper presented at the annual
meeting of the American Psychological Association, Washington, DC.
Held, B.S. (2001a). Antiscientific attitudes within psychotherapy: Concluding comments. Journal
of Clinical Psychology, 57, 53– 62.
Held, B.S. (2001b). Stop smiling, start kvetching: A 5-step guide to creative complaining. New
York: St. Martin’s Griffin.
Hillman, J., & Ventura, M. (1993). We’ve had a hundred years of psychotherapy—and the world’s
getting worse. San Francisco: Harper.
Hochschild, A.R. (1979). Emotion work, feeling rules, and social structure. American Journal of
Sociology, 85, 551–575.
Hochschild, A.R. (1983). The managed heart: Commercialization of human feeling. Berkeley:
University of California Press.
House, R. (1999). Limits to therapy and counselling: Deconstructing a professional ideology. Brit-
ish Journal of Guidance and Counselling, 27, 377–392.
Hoyt, M.F. (1996). Introduction: Some stories are better than others. In M.F. Hoyt (Ed), Construc-
tive therapies (Vol. 2, pp. 1–32). New York: Guilford Press.
Hughes, R. (1993). Culture of complaint: The fraying of America. New York: Oxford University Press.
Jopling, D.A. (1996). “Take away the life-lie . . . ” Positive illusions and creative self-deception.
Philosophical Psychology, 9, 525–544.
Kaminer, W. (1992). I’m dysfunctional, you’re dysfunctional. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
Kenwood, C. (1996). Does volition need social constructionism? Theory and Psychology, 6, 533–538.
Kitayama, S., Markus, H.R., Matsumoto, H., & Norasakkunkit, V. (1997). Individual and collective
processes in the construction of the self: Self-enhancement in the United States and self-
criticism in Japan. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 72, 1245–1267.
Kogan, M. (2001, January). Where happiness lies. Monitor on Psychology, 32, 74–76.
Kowalski, R. (1997). Preface and introduction: The underbelly of social interaction. In R. Kowalski
(Ed.), Aversive interpersonal behaviors (pp. ix–x, 1–9). New York: Plenum Press.
Kvale, S. (1992). (Ed.). Psychology and postmodernism. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
Lane, R.E. (1998). The joyless market economy. In A. Ben-Ner & L. Putterman, (Eds.), Econom-
ics, values, and organization (pp. 461– 488). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Lane, R.E. (2000a). Diminishing returns to income, companionship—and happiness. Journal of
Happiness Studies, 1, 103–119.
Lane, R.E. (2000b). The loss of happiness in market democracies. New Haven, CT: Yale University
Press.
Lasch, C. (1979). The culture of narcissism. New York: Norton.
McFerrin, B. (1988). Don’t worry, be happy.
McGinn, D. (2000, January 10). Self-help U.S.A. Newsweek.
McNamee, S., & Gergen, K.J. (Eds.). (1992). Therapy as social construction. Newbury Park, CA:
Sage.
Mercer, J., & Arlen, H. (1945). Ac-cent-tchu-ate the positive.
Mowrer, O.H. (1960). “Sin:” The lesser of two evils. American Psychologist, 15, 301–304.
Murphy, D. (February 18, 2001). Just say no to negativity. San Francisco Chronicle.
Neimeyer, R.A. (1998). Social constructionism in the counselling context. Counseling Psychology
Quarterly, 11, 135–149.
Neimeyer, R.A., & Mahoney, M.J. (Eds.). (1995). Constructivism in psychotherapy. Washington,
DC: American Psychological Association.
Norcross, J.C. (2000). Here comes the self-help revolution in mental health. Psychotherapy, 37,
370–377.
Norcross, J.C., Santrock, J.W., Campbell, L.F., Smith, T.P., Sommer, R., & Zukerman, E.L. (2000).
Authoritative guide to self-help resources in mental health. New York: Guilford Press.
Norem, J.K. (2001a). Defensive pessimism, optimism, and pessimism. In E.C. Chang (Ed.), Opti-
mism and pessimism: Implications for theory, research, and practice. (pp. 77–100). Washing-
ton, DC: American Psychological Association.
Norem, J.K. (2001b). The positive power of negative thinking: Using defensive pessimism to har-
ness anxiety and perform at your peak. New York: Basic Books.
Omer, H., & Alon, N. (1997). Constructing therapeutic narratives. Northvale, NJ: Aronson.
Parry, A., & Doan, R.E. (1994). Story re-visions: Narrative therapy in the postmodern world. New
York: Guilford Press.
Paulhus, D.L. (1998). Interpersonal and intrapsychic adaptiveness of trait self-enhancement: A
mixed blessing? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74, 1197–1208.
Peale, N.V. (1952/1996). The power of positive thinking. New York: Ballantine.
Peele, S. (1981). Reductionism in the psychology of the eighties: Can biochemistry eliminate
mental illness, addiction, and pain? American Psychologist, 36, 807–818.
Pennebaker, J.W. (1990). Opening up: The healing power of expressing emotions. New York: Guil-
ford Press.
Pennebaker, J.W. (Ed.). (1995). Emotion, disclosure, and health. Washington, DC: American Psy-
chological Association.
Peterson, C. (2000). The future of optimism. American Psychologist, 55, 44–55.
Pugliesi, K. (1999). The consequences of emotional labor: Effects on work stress, job satisfaction,
and well-being. Motivation and Emotion, 23, 125–154.
Pyszczynski, T., & Greenberg, J. (1987). Self-regulatory perseveration and the depressive self-
focusing style: A self-awareness theory of reactive depression. Psychological Bulletin, 102,
122–138.
Richards, J.M., & Gross, J.J. (2000). Emotion regulation and memory: The cognitive costs of keep-
ing one’ s cool. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79, 410– 424.
Richardson, F.C., Fowers, B.J., & Guignon, C.B. (1999). Re-envisioning psychology: Moral dimen-
sions of theory and practice. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Rosen, G.M. (1987). Self-help treatment books and the commercialization of psychotherapy. Amer-
ican Psychologist, 42, 46–51.
Rosen, G.M. (1993). Self-help or hype? Comments on psychology’s failure to advance self-care.
Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, 24, 340–345.
Rosen, H., & Kuehlwein, K.T. (Eds.). (1996). Constructing realities: Meaning-making perspectives
for psychotherapists. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Ross, S. (Executive Producer). (1979, October 1). Good morning America [Television broadcast].
New York: ABC News.
Sandage, S.J., & Hill, P.C. (2001). The virtues of positive psychology: The rapprochement and
challenges of an affirmative postmodern perspective. Journal for the Theory of Social Behav-
iour, 31, 241–260.
Scheier, M.F., Carver, C.S., & Bridges, M.W. (2001). Optimism, pessimism, and psychological
well-being. In E.C. Chang (Ed.), Optimism and pessimism (pp. 189–216). Washington, DC:
American Psychological Association.
Schmitt, P.J. (1983). Focus of attention in the treatment of depression. Psychotherapy: Theory,
Research and Practice, 20, 457– 463.
Schneider, S.L. (2001). In search of realistic optimism: Meaning, knowledge, and warm fuzziness.
American Psychologist, 56, 250–263.
Seligman, M.E.P. (1990). Learned optimism: How to change your mind and your life. New York:
Pocket Books.
Seligman, M.E.P. (1993). What you can change . . . and what you can’t. New York: Fawcett
Columbine.
Seligman, M.E.P., & Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2000). Positive psychology: An introduction. Ameri-
can Psychologist, 55, 5–14.
Shotter, J. (1995). A ‘show’ of agency is enough. Theory and Psychology, 5, 383–390.
Siegel, H. (1997). Rationality redeemed? Further dialogues on an educational ideal. London:
Routledge.
Stancombe, J., & White, S. (1998). Psychotherapy without foundations: Hermeneutics, discourse,
and the end of certainty. Theory and Psychology, 8, 579–599.
Stiles, W.B. (1995). Disclosure as a speech act: Is it psychotherapeutic to disclose? In J.W. Pen-
nebaker (Ed.), Emotion, disclosure, and health (pp. 71–92). Washington, DC: American Psy-
chological Association.
Suh, E.M. (2000). Self, the hyphen between culture and subjective well-being. In E. Diener & E.M.
Suh (Eds.), Culture and subjective well-being (pp. 63–86). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Taylor, S.E., & Brown, J.D. (1988). Illusion and well-being: A social psychological perspective on
mental health. Psychological Bulletin, 110, 193–210.
Taylor, S.E., Kemeny, M.E., Aspinwall, L.G., Schneider, S.C., Rodriguez, R., & Herbert, M. (1992).
Optimism, coping, psychological distress, and high-risk sexual behavior among men at risk
for AIDS. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 63, 460– 473.
Taylor, S.E., Kemeny, M.E., Reed, G.M., Bower, J.E., & Gruenewald, T.L. (2000). Psychological
resources, positive illusions, and health. American Psychologist, 55, 99–109.
de Tocqueville, A. (1988). Democracy in America (Vol. 2). (G. Lawrence, Trans., J.P. Mayer, Ed.).
New York: Harper & Row, Perennial Library. (Original work published 1840)
Veenhoven, R. (2000). The four qualities of life: Ordering concepts and measures of the good life.
Journal of Happiness Studies, 1, 1–39.
Walter, J.L., & Peller, J.E. (1996). Rethinking our assumptions: Assuming anew in a postmodern
world. In S.D. Miller, M.A. Hubble, & B.L. Duncan (Eds.), Handbook of solution-focused
brief therapy (pp. 9–26). San Francisco: Jossey Bass.
Watson, D., & Pennebaker, J.W. (1989). Health complaints, stress, and distress: Exploring the
central role of negative affectivity. Psychological Review, 96, 234–254.
Watters, E., & Ofshe, R. (1999). Therapy’s delusions: The myth of the unconscious and the exploi-
tation of today’s walking worried. New York: Scribner.
Whitman, D. (1998). The optimism gap. New York: Walker.
Wieling, E., Negretti, M.A., Stokes, S., Kimball, T., Christensen, F.B., & Bryan, L. (2001). Post-
modernism in marriage and family therapy training: Doctoral students’ understanding and
experiences. Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, 27, 527–533.
Wyner, D.M., & Lane, J.D. (1995). From secrecy to psychopathology. In J.W. Pennebaker (Ed.),
Emotion, disclosure, and health (pp. 25– 46). Washington, DC: American Psychological
Association.

Barbara Held

Încărcat de

Informații document

Drepturi de autor

Formate disponibile

Partajați acest document

Partajați sau inserați document

Opțiuni de partajare

Vi se pare util acest document?

Este necorespunzător acest conținut?

Drepturi de autor:

Formate disponibile

Barbara Held

Încărcat de

Drepturi de autor:

Formate disponibile

The Tyranny of the Positive Attitude in America:

Observation and Speculation

Keywords: positive attitude; positive psychology; negativity; postmodernism;

The Popular Culture Zeitgeist

The Professional Psychology Zeitgeist

The Positive Psychology Movement

wittingly) aided and abetted the unscientific, narcissism-promoting pronouncements made

The Postmodern/Narrative Therapy Movement

Proposition 1. Contrary to the pro-science stance of the positive psychology move-

Proposition 2. If, as therapists, we adopt this postmodern antiscientific attitude—

pragmatic theory of truth, a pluralistic conception of science, proactive models of human

In addition to the rejection of totalizing explanations . . . postmodern thought also rejects

I maintain that it is precisely agency—indeed, voluntary agency—that puts the ‘construction’

1999)? In any case, the optimism of postmodernism seems to be grounded, at least in

A Comparison of the Positive Psychology and Postmodern Therapy Movements. Given

Is a Positive Attitude the Royal Road to Subjective Well-Being and Health?

The Costs of Accenting the Positive and of “Eliminating” the Negative

Pugliesi (1999), by contrast, distinguishes between “self-focused emotional labor,”

The Tyranny of the Positive Attitude in Therapy and Beyond

S-ar putea să vă placă și