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This book argues that the story of the orphan girl Pollyanna (namely, her strategy of playing the “glad games” to manage loss, abuse, and social prejudice) serves as a framework for critiquing historical forms of Western scientific Pollyannaism. The author examines Pollyannaism as it relates to the sciences, demonstrating how the approach has been used throughout modern Western history to enforce happiness and to criticize negative human emotional states. These efforts, carried out by scientists and popularized as scientific, focus on negating the role of the environment and on promoting varied forms of emotional control. Ultimately, the book emphasizes strategies used to compel individuals into becoming Pollyannas about science itself.
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Scientific Pollyannaism From Inquisition to Positive Psychology Oksana Yakushko
Scientific Pollyannaism “With extraordinary passion and spirit, Yakushko traces the long and tragic history of the role science plays in the demand to be happy. She shows how this demand emanates from a white ‘scientific’ elite that wreaks havoc upon all those on whom it turns its destructive gaze. Coining the powerful term, scientific pollyanism, she here deconstructs any claim to being ‘evidence-based’ that these racist and (hetero)sexist uses of science make. In so doing, she redeems scientism’s many victims.” —Lynne Layton, Ph.D., Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychology, Harvard Medical School, USA, and author of Who’s That Girl? Who’s That Boy? “Oksana Yakushko has written a well-researched, historically sweeping, and in fact courageous book that is greatly needed during this dark time in the worldwide rise of the far-right. Her book reveals the deep connection between the forces of racism, misogyny, and classism, on the one hand, and the corrupt uses of science in psychology, on the other. Yakushko critiques the ongoing history of silencing those who suffer by ignoring the sociopolitical contexts that cause the suffering. Creatively, Yaskusko argues that false narratives of happiness, pejorative diagnoses, and the weaponizing of a scientistic cognitivism in service of neoliberal governmentality go hand in hand. Please read this book.” —Philip Cushman, Ph.D., author of Constructing The Self, Constructing America: A Cultural History of Psychotherapy “In her fascinating new book, Oksana Yakushko provides a carefully researched study of the politics of ‘positivity.’ The emphasis in contemporary culture on positive emotional states serves a status quo that separates happiness from wellbeing and marginalizes examination of suffering from the injustices of social contexts. Indeed, argues Yakushko, an insidious argument is promoted by the happiness industry to suggest that those who are rather out of it suffer some biological or racial fault. Scholarly, incisive, tenacious, provocative, this book will stimulate discussions in many fields and is a compelling example of the power of the pen.” —Christopher Bollas, Ph.D., psychoanalyst and the author of, most recently, Meaning and Melancholy
Oksana Yakushko
Scientific Pollyannaism From Inquisition to Positive Psychology
Oksana Yakushko Clinical Psychology Pacifica Graduate Institute Carpinteria, CA, USA
ISBN 978-3-030-15981-8 ISBN 978-3-030-15982-5 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15982-5 Library of Congress Control Number: 2019935560 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2019 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by simil