Positive thinking

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Positive thinking is a concept that is used in personality or motivation seminars, as well as in related advisory literature. Further synonyms are “new thinking”, “correct thinking”, “force thinking” or “mental positivism”. Positive thinking is not to be confused with positive psychology .

concept

The “positive thinking” method essentially aims to ensure that the user achieves a permanently constructive and optimistic attitude in his thoughts by constantly influencing his conscious thinking positively (e.g. with the help of affirmations or visualizations ) and, as a result, greater satisfaction and Quality of life achieved.

Faith occupies a central position in some works that deal with the subject . However, this is not primarily a religiously motivated and transcendentally oriented belief, but the conviction that things that a person thinks to be "true" tend to be realized in their lives.

Depending on the ideological pre-understanding, positive thinking shows itself as a method to dismantle false or non-existent, but negative reality and its effects only created by thinking ( Christian Science ) or - in a monistic / spiritual sense ( Neugeist / Unity ) - the "spiritual laws" positively / to use correctly. While positive thinking comes first as a method for healing (and salvation) in groups and special communities, positive thinking is offered on the book market as a way of life support. It promises profit maximization, health and happiness. Numerous aids are intended to support intellectual optimism (positive motto in the calendar; short text over the phone; sublimation carriers with the assertion of subliminal influence).

Historical formations

Positive thinking emerged in the second half of the 19th century from the intellectual impulses mainly from Ralph Waldo Emerson and his Transcendentalists (as a precursor), who were then followed by Phineas Parkhurst Quimby , Ralph Waldo Trine , Prentice Mulford and others. a. continued in America. In Europe, “mesmerism” and the coué method continued. For Japan, Masaharu Taniguchi is worth mentioning. In Germany, in addition to Oscar Schellbach (Institute for “Mental Positivism” since 1921), whose “Seelephonie records” can be seen as the forerunners of the Subliminals , Karl Otto Schmidt (Neugeist) in particular made a name for himself . Today there is a tendency towards less and less theoretical justifications with a simultaneous expansion of positive case histories and practical instructions ( Joseph Murphy and his student Erhard F. Freitag , Dale Carnegie , Norman Vincent Peale , Frederick Bailes and Vernon Howard ).

criticism

A worldwide first comprehensive criticism of positive thinking on the basis of scientific psychology was made by the German psychotherapist Günter Scheich . His book Positive Thinking Makes You Sick. The swindle with dangerous promises of success has been a standard work since the first edition in 1997.

Psychologists and psychiatrists expressly warn that the methods can further harm unstable and depressed patients. Especially in the case of uncritical people, they can also lead to a loss of reality . The loss of reality can result from the avoidance of critical questions and the associated partial denial of existing weaknesses. The different abilities of people, their different personality structures and the interaction between the individual psyche and social environment are also neglected .

Positive thinking becomes particularly problematic when misfortune and suffering are considered to be man's own fault.

An experiment by Joanne Wood with colleagues from the University of Waterloo showed that participants with low levels of self-confidence measurably worsened their mood, optimism and willingness to take part in activities just by saying sentences with a generally positive connotation. People with good self-confidence would benefit slightly from autosuggestion , but the effect was hardly pronounced.

Oswald Neuberger , Professor of Psychology at the University of Augsburg , sees the positive thinking method as a circular trap: “If you don't succeed, it's your own fault because you obviously haven't tried it properly. The coach, however, remains infallible. ”In addition, the problem of failure is individualized, failures personalized, but the economic and social system is acquitted of guilt.

Colin Goldner , head of the Forum for Critical Psychology e. V., increasingly diagnoses "deficits in thinking and perception" in people who have fallen for the "trivialized hypnosuggestions" and "pseudo-dialectical promises of salvation" of "third-class gurus", and criticizes the motivational trainers' "psycho- and social Darwinian mania for feasibility".

According to Sheikh, the most important points of criticism of the " compulsive positive thinking" are:

Due to immature goals and a lack of skills, willfully applied, compulsive positive thinking can not only be useless, but also cause considerable damage to the psyche of the (fanatical) "positive thinker". At the same time, according to Sheikh, it also shows that many people who consciously want to think positively have never thought so strongly negatively. It is a paradox of the "opposite effect" of isolation, loss of reality and splitting consciousness into the "positive thinking self" and the "overpowering rest of the soul".

The "positive thinking" contraindicates the special achievement of the emerging psychiatry at the end of the 19th century. Here u. a. by Freud et al. a. recognized the special emotional and evolutionary significance of negative feelings and thoughts. The perception and expression of negative feelings and thoughts is used up to the present day as help, liberation and problem-solving strategy for psychological stress and illnesses by the most different schools of psychotherapy .

The compulsive positive thinking is postulated as a kind of religion on the basis of the writings and statements of the advocates. The claim to belief is that positive thinking is an apparent way of self-redemption on earth. This self-help method of compulsive optimism has nothing to do with a perfectly justified healthy optimism .

According to Sheikh, the image of man immanent in “positive thinking” of uninhibited, limitless and moral-free permanent intent to manipulate oneself and others is also to be viewed critically. Man thus becomes a puppet of immature wishful thinking and ego trips. In doing so, he loses all values ​​and interpersonal demands in mutual dealings.

See also

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Günter Scheich: Positive thinking makes you sick. About dizziness with dangerous promises of success. (PD) Eichborn Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2001, ISBN 3-8218-3904-X .
  2. ↑ See article "Positive Thinking" in: Brockhaus. The encyclopedia in 24 volumes. Vol. 17th 20th edition. Brockhaus-Verlag, Mannheim 1998.
  3. ↑ Feeling bad with positive thinking. In: Spiegel Online. July 6, 2009.
  4. ↑ Christian Schüle: The dictatorship of the optimists. In: time online.
  5. ↑ See PD here in particular, pp. 119–132.
  6. ↑ See article: Ursula Neumann “Positive thinking makes you sick”, in: bvvp magazine. Journal for the regional associations in the Federal Association of Contract Psychotherapists. 5th year, 1/2006. (PDF; 896 kB) p. 33 f.
  7. ↑ See article "Positive Thinking" in: Lexicon of Psychology in five volumes. Volume 3. Spektrum-Verlag, Heidelberg / Berlin 2001.
  8. ↑ See PD pp. 102, 109 ff., 119 ff., P. 212.
  9. ↑ With positive thinking to failure. In: GDI Impulse . Journal of the Duttweiler Manager Institute, Zurich / Switzerland, No. 3/1997, p. 6 ff.
  10. ↑ See PD p. 119 ff.
  11. ↑ With positive thinking to a loyal subject. In: Publik Forum No. 4/1999. P. 20.
  12. ↑ Bayer. Rundfunk S. A - PR 61304/2 Health - B 5 of January 11, 1998.