Positive thinking: the origin and the limits of an idea

The idea that thoughts shape outward circumstances is everywhere in the self-help literature. It has a history, and that history is worth knowing — because it explains why the idea is so persuasive.

Where it comes from

The root lies in the American New Thought movement of the nineteenth century, which grew out of healing practices and branched off in many directions. From there an unbroken line runs through the success literature of the twentieth century to the advice books of today.

The core is the same across every version: the condition of a person's thinking determines the condition of that person's life.

What is established

Some of it is, and it is not nothing. Expectation measurably affects the perception of pain and the stress response; that is well studied. Anyone who expects to succeed gives up later. The way a person accounts for a failure is connected to how likely that person is to try again.

These are real connections, and they are enough to explain the pull of the idea.

Where the step goes too far

Between “attitude affects how I deal with circumstances” and “attitude produces the circumstances” lies a leap for which there is no basis.

That leap has a reverse side which is seldom supplied with it: if thoughts produce circumstances, then everyone is to blame for their own misfortune. Anyone who falls ill has thought wrongly. Anyone who stays poor did not want it badly enough.

In the books this conclusion is mostly left unspoken, yet it follows inescapably — and it strikes exactly those people who are already down. It shows most plainly in illness: to suggest to someone gravely ill that their attitude brought the illness about is to add guilt to the illness.

What this has to do with astrology

The two are often offered side by side, and both share one temptation — that of crediting the person who comes for advice with more control than that person has.

The older astrological tradition is oddly sober here. It assumes that a person finds dispositions and circumstances they did not choose, and that their room for manoeuvre lies in how they deal with them. That is less flattering than the prospect of thinking reality into being — and it loads no one with the blame for their own misfortune.

See also: the personal chart — what it describes and what it does not.