[THS] American Soldiers Brainwashed with Positive Thinking

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http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article26044.htm

American Soldiers Brainwashed with "Positive Thinking"

By Bruce E. Levine

July 29, 2010 "Alternet" -- While U.S. military psychiatrists are prescribing increasing
amounts of chill pills, America’s psychologists are teaching soldiers how to think more
positively about their tours in Afghanistan, Iraq, and wherever else they are next
ordered to kill the bad guys and win the hearts and minds of everyone else.

The U.S. Army is planning to require that all 1.1 million of its soldiers take intensive
training in positive psychology and emotional resiliency. Army Research Psychologist
Capt. Paul Lester, who leads the assessment of the program, told the National
Psychologist (“Army to Train its Own in Positive Psychology,” July/August 2010), “As
far as I can tell this is the largest, deliberate, psychological intervention in human
history. . . . We don’t know when the global war on terrorism is going to end so we’re
preparing to have to be engaged for a long period of time.”

Lester said the program would develop “communication skills, cognitive reforming
skills and help soldiers not to catastrophize -- don’t think of the worse case scenario
about every potential problem.” The program also teaches soldiers to focus on
“expressing appreciation” and “correcting negative views of ambiguous events.”

In August 2009, the New York Times reported that Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the
Army’s chief of staff, said the total cost of this program would be $117 million. The
New York Times was alerted to the program by psychologist Martin Seligman,
director of the University of Pennsylvania Positive Psychology Center, who has been
consulting with the Pentagon. Seligman’s particular program at Penn is costing the
U.S. Army $25 to $30 million, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer, which in its
profile of Seligman (May 30, 2010) noted that he “confidently walked the line
between grand and grandiose”; and it quoted him asserting, “We’re after creating an
indomitable Army.”

Seligman initially thought that training the entire Army would be nearly an impossible
chore because of the enormous number of teachers required. However, Gen. Casey
informed him that the Army had 40,000 teachers. “You do?” Seligman said. “Yes,”
Casey retorted, they’re called drill sergeants.” Now 150 sergeants come to Penn each
month to take a course in positive psychology.

At one training session given at a hotel near Penn, according to the New York Times,
48 sergeants in full fatigues sat at desks, took notes, and role played. In one
exercise, Sgt. First Class James Cole of Fort Riley, Kansas and his classmate
transformed Sgt. Cole’s negative thinking about an order late in the day to have Sgt.
Cole’s exhausted men do one last difficult assignment.

“Why is he tasking us again for this job?” the classmate asked, pretending to be Sgt.
Cole. “It’s not fair.”

Sergeant Cole gave the “correct” positive-thinking response, “Maybe he’s hitting us
because he knows we’re more reliable.”

While positive psychology makes some sense for teenagers who are catastrophizing
their first relationship breakup to the point of becoming suicidal, how much sense
does it make to teach soldiers who are trying to stay alive in a war zone to put a
positive spin on everything? Moreover, wouldn’t soldiers like their officers to consider
worst-case scenarios before ordering them into combat? And wouldn’t soldiers like
politicians to take seriously worst-case scenarios before embarking on a war? The
healthy option to negative thinking is not positive thinking but critical thinking.
Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Bright-sided and astute critic of the dark side of
positive thinking and positive psychology, points out:

It’s easy to see positive thinking as a uniquely American form of naïveté, but it is
neither uniquely American nor endearingly naïve. In vastly different settings, positive
thinking has been a tool of political repression worldwide. . . . In the Soviet Union, as
in the Eastern European states and North Korea, the censors required upbeat art,
books, and films, meaning upbeat heroes, plots about fulfilling production quotas,
and endings promising a glorious revolutionary future. . . .The penalties for negative
thinking were real. Not to be positive and optimistic was to be ‘defeatist’. . . .
Accusing someone of spreading defeatism condemned him to several years in
Stalinist camps.

While the U.S. military has only recently become excited about positive psychology
techniques, it has, for the last decade, increasingly used psychiatric drugs to keep
soldiers going. One in six service members is now taking at least one psychiatric
drug, according to the Navy Times (“Medicating the Military,” March 17, 2010), with
many soldiers taking “drug cocktail” combinations. Soldiers and military healthcare
providers report that psychiatric drugs are “being prescribed, consumed, shared and
traded in combat zones.” While soldiers’ increasing use of antidepressants is troubling
enough (as the Food and Drug Administration now requires warnings on
antidepressants about their increasing the risk of “suicidality” in children, teenagers,
and young adults), what’s as or even more worrisome is the increase of other
psychiatric drugs. In the last decade, antipsychotic drug use in the U.S. military has
increased more than 200 percent, and anti-anxiety drugs and sleeping pills have
increased 170 percent. These kinds of drugs impair motor skills, reduce reaction
times, and generally make one more sluggish -- or what soldiers call “stupid,” as the
Navy Times notes.

While pushing drugs and teaching positive thinking earns mental health professionals
money and brownie points with the elite, there is another path for mental health
professionals working with U.S. soldiers. First, offer soldiers respect for their critical
thinking, even if such critical thinking brings them to conclusions unwanted by their
superiors. Second, if soldiers are anxious or angry because they believe that an ego-
tripping commanding officer is going to get them killed, do NOT tell them to stop
“catastrophizing”; instead take what they say seriously. And if soldiers are depressed
because they have seen too much death, instead of directing them to “express
appreciation,” try offering genuine compassion. But don’t stop with only compassion.
Speak truth to power. Tell politicians who are maintaining America’s wars and
planning still others: Don’t kid yourself into thinking positive psychology and chill pills
are the answers, especially if soldiers and veterans discover that you deceived them
about the necessity and the meaningfulness of their mission. Psychologists should
loudly warn politicians, military brass, and the nation that if soldiers and veterans
discover that they have been deceived about the meaningfulness and necessity of
their mission, it is only human for them to become more prone to emotional turmoil,
which can lead to destructive behaviors for themselves and others.



Bruce E. Levine is a clinical psychologist and his latest book is Surviving America’s
Depression Epidemic: How to Find Morale, Energy, and Community in a World Gone
Crazy (Chelsea Green Publishing, 2007). His Web site is www.brucelevine.net
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