2024 · 08. February 2024

Negative thinking isn’t good for you, but the same can be said of excessively positive thinking. My latest Southern Star column explores magical thinking – the false belief that your thoughts or wishes can somehow influence the external world.

2020 · 03. December 2020

People often make the mistake of thinking that good mental health is all about positive thinking. As a result, many people turn to books like Norman Vincent Peale's The Power of Positive Thinking or Rhonda Byrne's The Secret. That's not a good idea: an excessive emphasis on positive thinking can be very dangerous, as America discovered under the leadership of Donald Trump.

2017 · 12. October 2017

Some self-help books offer potentially harmful advice on positive thinking, as I noted in in last week's Your Mental Health column in The Southern Star. The column is reproduced below. It’s better to view the glass as half-full rather than half-empty, but be warned: an excessive focus on positive thinking is not good for your mental health. In particular, I’m thinking of some of the advice doled out in popular self-help books that preach the gospel of positive thinking – books like Norman...