Stand Firm (Svend Brinkmann, 2015)

Contrarian Danish psychology professor Svend Brinkmann goes against the grain. The idea of the book came from his observation that positive psychology had become near-dogma, and Brinkmann started imagining a negative psychology as a counterpoint. The result is this “anti-self help book”, to use Brinkmann’s own appelation. One might as well call it an inverted self-help book – inverted in the sense that he attempts to clarify our current zeitgeist by reversing common tropes (think negatively, supress your feelings, dwell on the past). He comes up with seven of these “reverse” rules, and discusses them in order:

Cut out the navel-gazing
Focus on the negative in your life
Put on the No hat
Suppress your feelings
Sack your coach
Read a novel – not a self-help book or biography
Dwell on the Past

He latches on to the trend of neo-stoicism and urges the readers to suppress their feelings. He takes a cognitive approach in his argumentation that the self doesn’t exist, and is of the opinion that there’s no use wasting time thinking about it. The book is a strange brew of different currents in the broad field of psychology and self-help. Brinkmann gets it slightly confused when he advises against self-help books (in his own self-help book…). He means to say that novels are so much better than rulebooks and guides. This is also a 2010s trend in counselling, called bibliotherapy.

The anti-positive track is trodden by forerunners like Barbara Ehrenreich (“Smile or Die” was the UK title) and Oliver Burkeman (“Happiness for people who can’t stand positive thinking”). In my native Sweden we’ve been exposed to the same idea by Gothenburg-based thinker Ida Hallgren.

The title Stand Firm seems to suggest the opposite of movement and self-development. The text is at its most interesting when it gets political and mentions a shift in mental healthcare from community-based interventions towards individualized treatment. He mentions work in this area by Ole Jacob Madsen and Rasmus Willig.

I am reminded by the unspoken expectation of constant development and expansion, which must come from some innate competitive drive and probably spurred on even more by an economic system which rewards competition. What would happen if more people would say no to the constant grind? One trend among artists is to complain by protesting asleep, so-called lie-ins. Somehow, that would be the ultimate refusal of work.

My long interest in the dilemma of self-help is again awakened by this book. It is at the intersection of self-determination, epistemology, health, and sociological themes. Brinkmann stands on two sides of the fence, it seems to me. I guess he sees it as both ineffective and effective, depending on the intervention. There’s a lot more to say on this topic, so here are some keywords:

“life is speeding up” (Hartmut Rosa), “don’t believe in the gut feeling, it’s often wrong” (Gerd Gigerenzer), “Being ‘positive’ and saying yes to everything is dangerous” (conformism, consensus-seeking), “emotional culture” and “therapeutic culture” (Eva Illouz, Zygmunt Bauman, Arlie Hochschild), “coachification leads to passivization”.

Eurotrash (Christian Kracht, 2021)

Swiss enfant terrible Christian Kracht writes a short book about taking a trip with his aging alcoholic mother. The narrative is sprinkled with mostly ironic (and sometimes funny) comments on contemporary culture, and lots and lots of references to expensive goods, literature, David Bowie and also Kracht’s own literary career. I wouldn’t hesitate to call this an instance of autofiction, which is what seems to be the most viable and reward-for-effort-intensive form of literature nowadays. Readers want to read a story, and also want some gossip about the writer. Writers don’t have to try as hard writing this kind of autobiographical life writing compared to traditional novels, and they get the added bonus of getting some spin to their “personal brand”.

Kracht does craft funny sentences, and has a knack for the absurd humor. It is sometimes too based in a rich, Switzerland-based world for my tastes, however. He also has a tendency to include gross and disgusting details in his stories. I learned this from reading his Imperium (2012) which included a protagonist who ate his own scabs (highly unpleasant). That might be just part of his whole épater-le-boozwazee shtick.

I suspect that the story is really about himself trying to make peace with his family history. He sometimes writes his mother’s lines in his own voice, which is probably meant as a clue.