Psychologist urges Stop finally the self-optimizing mania

Svend Brinmann / Whistle - Stop the self-optimizing mania!

The Danish psychologist Svend Brinkmann counts on "positive thinking", "self-optimization" and "coaching". In contrast, he sets human dignity, self-discipline and fortitude.

He calls for the "to look inside oneself" because there is nothing to find there. Instead of "thinking positively," for Brinkmann a way of denying reality, you should focus on the negative in your life, creating a foundation to deal with the problems that are part of life. Instead of smiling and saying yes to everything, you should learn to put the no-hat on. Instead of "authentic" expressing your emotions, which would keep you in an infantile state, you should learn how to suppress your feelings like an adult.

Instead of self-optimization and coaching, rather read a novel. (Image: Chinnapong / fotolia.com)

Novels instead of self-help books

You do not need a coach who manipulates you to "self-optimize", you should fire him, according to Brinkmann. Instead of wasting their time with self-help books, you should read novels. These showed life from different perspectives, and that there was not only one reality, and that to the complexity of life chaos belonged to coincidence. Instead of believing in a historyless here and now, constantly innovating in "the future", you should remember the past.

Brinkmann writes, we constantly looked into ourselves and found nothing there, then we risked losing the ground under our feet. Or we find complete nonsense, especially when it comes to knowledge that could objectively judge other people. Belly feelings, which propagate the "search for the inner self" as the only source of knowledge, are not reasonable.

The idea of ​​self-realization also favors the market's need for servile and flexible manpower. To resist this internalized exploitation would be to accept oneself as one is.

Although an orientation towards traditions would seem conservative, in a present that propagates meaningless flexibility to death, it suddenly proves to be progress. "Recognizing the paradoxical character of the present (...) can lead to a complete reorientation."

In contrast to the "find your self" self-optimization business, the Danish researcher explains: There is no value in the fact that you are yourself. On the other hand, it is ripe to endure discomfort and to get used to things that are not "right inside".

Instead of imagining the supposedly awakening potentials of the "future" through navel gazing, it was about appreciating the existing. Instead of affirming any change, it would be about an awareness of what to lose.

Brinkmann refers to the Stoics and calls to avoid becoming slaves to our physical needs. According to these ancient philosophers, willpower could be trained as well as muscular strength. Self-discipline was a key virtue for her. The psychologist encourages you to deliberately do meaningful things that you do not feel like apologizing for, even if it is embarrassing for example.

Focus on the negative

Brinkmann develops the counterpoint to the philosophy of "Positive Thinking" and recommends focusing on the negative. Thus, the Stoics would have consciously thought of death to love life.

The author recognizes a "tyranny of the positive," which goes as far as saying that seriously ill people should learn by the disease. But that would be the biggest offense that could be done to a person in need.

On the other hand, the focus on the negative would hold us where we are in our lives right now. There is a right to think that something is just bad.

Scientists even today speak of "positivism fascism", a thought control by reducing human complexity to positive aspects. For example, thinking positively means forgetting real power asymmetries between boss and employee.

In the positivity constraint only the best would be considered good enough and could allegedly be achieved. This blames the victim, who does not have "positive illusions" - that is, imaginary ideas of a self that seems better than it is. Consequently, people felt guilty because they were not always successful. In short: "Think positive" in terms of self-optimization makes you sick.

The constant search for an imagined "true self" denies the context like social factors. Whether poor and rich, whether dictatorship or democracy, it is always the person who did not think positively enough.

It was right to complain. Life is never alright, but hard. The hardness of life, however, is not the heart of the problem, but that the ideology of "positive thinking" compels us to pretend that it is not so.

By contrast, those who concentrate on the negative can better handle life because they accept reality as it is. It would not produce everlasting bliss, but human dignity.

There is not a solution to every problem

Brinkmann also rejects the suggestion of "positive thinking" that there would be a solution to any problem, provided you think positively. We could not solve some problems but acknowledge them without the bliss ideology. To accept the negative means dignity and a sense of reality. Naggling could promote awareness of the good things in the existing.

Live with death

He introduces the technique of the Stoics of Negative Visualization. So Seneca would have imagined that death could come at any time. This awareness of human mortality strengthens family ties and makes it easier to accept mistakes. Memento mori my "Remember that you will die."

Living with death helps to appreciate life. Philosophy means after Socrates to learn the good dying. He suggests imagining losing a loved one.

Say no

Saying no more often leads to self-employment, the author explains. Control of feelings meant adherence to duties and responsibilities. But if you want to be "Yes", always want to be active and are afraid to miss something, you soon lose your inner peace.

Ethics of doubt

In contrast to the "positive thinking" and the "Belief in yourself", Brinkmann represents an ethic of doubt. We would not know if it was right to say yes. So doubt is the better option. We would know what we have, not what we get. In "positive thinking", however, doubt and thus criticism would be eliminated.

Doubt against false security is ethically valuable, certainty is dogmatic, doubt is open to the behavior of others and leads to a better understanding of the world.

Whoever doubts that would stand on firm ground. Saying yes would not prevent projects from being implemented. Political outrages would not have been committed by those who doubted, but by those who believed they knew the truth.

reliability

Precisely because there would be no security in a constantly changing world, we would have to be reliable. The difficult art of saying no leads to accepting offensive or humiliating suggestions. He suggests saying no five times a day. This begins with the sentence: "I have to think again." Dignity would take precedence over authenticity.

shame

Negativity is not bad, but deeply human. Guilt and shame are important to take responsibility for our actions. Shame meant perceiving others. Humanity is related to morality, and that would be conveyed through shame. Through shame we could see ourselves with the eyes of others.

Without perceiving ourselves from the outside, we would have neither independent thinking nor consciousness. Growing up means not letting his feelings run wild. Neuroses, ie exaggerated feelings, are no longer the central psychopathological problem today.

In emotional capitalism economics and feelings are interwoven, feelings are commercialized and marketed.

Self-esteem is not worth it

In contrast to the introspection praised for self-optimization, Brinkmann shows outward rituals. Every society needs her to civilize herself. To put on masks is the essence of civility.

Inner feelings, on the other hand, came and went. We could not trust them, and they offered no foundation on which to stand. The cult of authenticity amounts to an infantilization of adult people. Adults draw that they control emotions.

The inner felt was not necessary "right", feelings could be wrong, feelings could be illegitimate, especially envy, anger or contempt. In contrast to the high self-esteem that is praised in the "Find Yourself", this is nothing positive at all - the biggest problems were associated with high self-esteem, leading to psychopathological and immoral behavior.

People who gave vent to their anger would be even more angry. Pushing away negative feelings means that those affected were less reminiscent of the unpleasant episodes. Life is too short to devote to anger. Humor helps against anger and is a good response to insults.

Fire the coach

According to Brinkmann, in the "Optimize Yourself" religion, the coach assumes the role of the priest, and the separation of inner self and outer reality corresponds to the monotheistic separation between inner core and outer appearance - self-actualization takes the place of grace and salvation. And, one might add, positive illusions replace the kingdom of heaven.

Outwardly directed criticism of, for example, social conditions would thus become self-criticism. Coaching is a medicine that makes you ill. If there is nothing inside, the coach can not give anything back.

In self-optimization, man is never enough. Self-realization is considered to be the meaning of human existence, and to pursue this, is like a psychopathological personality disorder. Other people would merely become tools of their own success.

There would be no understanding that there were things that mattered but were not fun. Coaching breaks up friendships and commercialize personal relationships. A friend is an eigenvalue, not a resource. He concludes: Make friends and fire your coach, go with friends into nature or the museum.

Novels as experience

Self-help literature is part of the problem, while novels show the chaos and diversity of human relationships and how little control we have over our lives, as interwoven with social and cultural processes.

NLP, self-management etc., however, pretended that people were solving contemporary problems within the self that were societal in nature. Self-help books did not work. But novels showed several perspectives on many worlds. In particular, he highlights Charles Dickens and Cormac McCarthy, among the philosophers he recommends Nietzsche for challenges in life. Reading Charles Dickens would make you a better person than coaching guides.

According to Brinkmann, there is no such thing as a "hidden self" waiting to be realized. According to this, the "self-real" followers of a mirage. The self did not exist before its creation, and techniques formed subjectivity.

According to Oscar Wilde, the secret lies in the visible, not in the invisible. There is nothing inside. Novels taught us to stop, just because they help us to find a perspective outside of ourselves and not within.

The author asks rhetorically: Would Nietzsche go to a coach? Hardly, he replies.

Past and identity

Contrary to the absoluteness of the "here and now" in our accelerated culture, Brinkmann advises: "Remember the past." He contradicts the mantra of the "self-real", according to which old patterns offer no new solutions.

The opposite is true: only those who know their past can build up a stable identity - individuals as well as societies. Here Brinkmann's approach corresponds to what every historian knows about the value of his profession: people make mistakes of the past even today, there is no such thing as a "here and now" without a past, and anyone who forgets history forfeits the future.

According to Brinkmann, we should replace progress with repetition and remember the past. The essentials in the history of ideas are repetitions not new creations, which is already in the concept of the Renaissance, which brought Europe into the modern age, by orienting itself to the ancient world.

Just today, it could be said, philosophy, humanism, and the science of the Greeks would be of great importance: Socrates, Diogenes, Plato, or especially Epicurus, and their teachings on the art of the good life.

Brinkmann discusses the spirit of the times: "Only in the last few centuries have we begun to understand the new and the future as quality. In fact, much was better in the old days. "He's right.

Looking outside the box would only be possible if you knew it was a plate and what it is, says the author. In doing so, he connects to the insights of creativity research: Creativity means to bend, break and reshape something that already exists. But you have to know the existing but.

Self-discovery coaches are usually historically ignorant people who hide traditions and cultural developments, social relationships, ritual behaviors, symbolic worlds, and the socio-psychological framework in which their clients move. This makes them just as unsuitable for stopping as for promoting creativity - because creativity comes from the steadfastness that was there before.

Life as a whole

For morality and ethics, life as a whole is a prerequisite and not a search for an imaginary inner self, according to the author. Those who do not build a connection between yesterday and today would give others no reason to trust him.

We would only have a coherent identity if we considered our life as a narrative unity from birth to death. Therefore, it would be about self-resistance with reference to the past instead of self-development, which focuses on the future. Guilt and promises depend, according to Brinkmann, closely together. Who we are does not depend on an inner self, but determines the commitments and promises made to others.

Lively traditions and the past of the culture in which a human being is embedded are cornerstones for leading a meaningful life, could be said with Brinkmann.

A liberation strike

"Whistle Up" is the long overdue antithesis to the ubiquitous self-optimization mania. Have you already tormented yourself for "self-development" by the inflated nothingness of "Positive Thinking Counselors" by Erhard F. Freitag, Rüdiger Dahlke and Veit Lindau? Did you wonder why in the "inner search for the Self" you only encountered gaping emptiness? Did you notice that others turned away from them because of their anti-social behavior? That you were lost in the world instead of "finding yourself"? Then "whistle top" should be a liberation with real possibilities to lead a meaningful life in relation to other people. Sven Brinkmann: Pfeid on top. Stop the self-optimizing delusion. Knaur 2018.