This article, historical and critical in scope, explores self-help literature’s positive thinking discourse, through which key concepts of selfhood, self-transformation, and society are textually conveyed, within the context of the genre’s development from roughly 1880 to the present. The article tracks how individual thought, in contrast to dialogical social interaction, has long been constructed as the central means to health, happiness, and self-transformation. By unpacking the conflicting ways in which positive thinking messages construct notions of the self, society, thought, and communication, the article argues that these messages run counter to theories of the social construction of reality and considers the consequences of these popular and powerful messages. The article concludes by placing positive thinking within the context of a broader system of belief: communication as cure-all, a simplistic notion of communication that pervades popular culture.
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