http://www.alternet.org/story/147637/
The U.S. military has become increasingly excited about positive
psychology techniques. Maybe a better route would be to offer
soldiers respect for their critical thinking
By Bruce E. Levine
July 28, 2010
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.
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