I really hope this comment gets found.
Barbara Ehrenreich wrote a book in 2009 called "Bright-Sided" that was incredibly devastating critique (if you managed to hear about it) about Positive Psychology. I finished the book a week ago, and I say this as someone who really likes (and still does) Tony Robbins, but it's scary stuff. The most horrifying part, although not too unexpected, is a conference near the end packed with Positive Psychology PhD students chomping at the bit to get the sweet sweet consulting jobs in the various global cities around the world, and Martin Seligman, the head of the American Psychology Association (APA), having to subtly hint that it's all a bubble, and these students realizing they might have been lied to.
I should also say that she has many concerns with Martin Seligman, another researcher of somewhat similar success to Kahneman.
In defense of all these people though, with the cuts to research funding over the years what else could they have done?
A deeper point here is the general failure of Psychology. Karen Horney, a tremendously talented psychotherapist from the 1930s, argues that true psychology is more sociology than psychology. In general this focus on the mind, on the internal, is 1). a very Western style of thinking (specifically Calvinism who were obsessed with deep introspection) and 2). Has only accelerated over the years as positive self-help think asks people to retreat further and further into the mind as a defense to deal with lower incomes, lower economic mobility, or Facebook-incited jealously.
Barbara Ehrenreich wrote a book in 2009 called "Bright-Sided" that was incredibly devastating critique (if you managed to hear about it) about Positive Psychology. I finished the book a week ago, and I say this as someone who really likes (and still does) Tony Robbins, but it's scary stuff. The most horrifying part, although not too unexpected, is a conference near the end packed with Positive Psychology PhD students chomping at the bit to get the sweet sweet consulting jobs in the various global cities around the world, and Martin Seligman, the head of the American Psychology Association (APA), having to subtly hint that it's all a bubble, and these students realizing they might have been lied to.
I should also say that she has many concerns with Martin Seligman, another researcher of somewhat similar success to Kahneman.
In defense of all these people though, with the cuts to research funding over the years what else could they have done?
A deeper point here is the general failure of Psychology. Karen Horney, a tremendously talented psychotherapist from the 1930s, argues that true psychology is more sociology than psychology. In general this focus on the mind, on the internal, is 1). a very Western style of thinking (specifically Calvinism who were obsessed with deep introspection) and 2). Has only accelerated over the years as positive self-help think asks people to retreat further and further into the mind as a defense to deal with lower incomes, lower economic mobility, or Facebook-incited jealously.