Psychobabble: Exploding the myths of the self-help generation by Briers Stephen

Author:Briers, Stephen [Briers, Stephen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780273781448| 0273772392
Publisher: Pearson Education Limited
Published: 2013-02-06T00:00:00+00:00

Who knew? Apart, of course, from Plato, Bacon, Beethoven, Shakespeare, Newton and Einstein obviously – the latter two of whom would doubtless be turning in their graves to be associated with the rather dubious metaphysics of all this. Someone really ought to tell the starving children of Africa and the oppressed peoples of the world that they need to buck up their ideas and start ordering the right things.

The ‘Law of Attraction’ upon which The Secret is based apparently states that we inevitably draw to ourselves the things with which we fill our minds because, as Byrne assures us, ‘unfathomable magnetic power is emitted through your thoughts’. The implication one might read into this is that each and every one of us is entirely responsible for our own fate. In my personal opinion, the idea that some of us might be willing suffering and disaster upon ourselves is a pretty repugnant doctrine. As a psychologist, I fully accept that we all have self-destructive urges and I frequently encounter people who seem unconsciously bent on sabotaging their lives. However, surely conjuring up a tsunami, famine or plague lies beyond even the most pathological of us?

Books like The Secret are full of authoritative proclamations about the nature of man and reality that are just not in any way backed up, as far as I can see, by satisfactory evidence. And the brilliant catch of it is that the very nature of the claims makes them irrefutable. This belief system (and that is what it is) can account for every outcome with impunity. If you don’t get what you ordered then that’s because at some level you haven’t really focused your thinking or committed your mind to the desired outcome to the exclusion of all other possibilities. You may think you psychically ordered that Series 5 BMW in racing green, but the fact it hasn’t materialised means either (a) the timing isn’t right yet or (b) unconsciously you actually didn’t want it so your order was cancelled – sorry about that, or (c) your lack of belief left you focused on your state of not having the car in your life yet, and unfortunately the universe obligingly manifested precisely that: you not having the car! Basically you got distracted, you didn’t really know your own mind or you didn’t have enough faith. Whichever way you look at it, you are at fault, not the system. Suddenly the feel-good factor in all of this is draining away pretty fast. But of course, remember if you are thinking ‘guilt trip’ or ‘disillusionment’ right now, Rhonda and her friends can’t be held accountable if that’s exactly what you get.

It is undeniable that discoveries in the realm of quantum mechanics have completely transformed our understanding of the nature of reality over the last few decades. Scientists like Heisenberg, Schrödinger, Born, Dirac and Witten have established beyond all reasonable doubt that the universe is far stranger than we could ever possibly have imagined. The philosophical implications of theories

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