For sheer fatuousness, however, these sections can't compare to the ones concerning Vaughan's "patients." I use quotes because I -- unlike, presumably, most readers of "Half Empty, Half Full" -- bothered to read the acknowledgements page, with its confession that the case studies discussed herein are "fictional." I suppose we should be grateful that Vaughan made this admission in an early, albeit little-read, section of the book; in Susie Orbach's latest, "The Impossibility of Sex," the author saves the same disclosure for the very end.

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Apart from the dubious ethics of inventing figures in a nonfiction book (can we get someone from Brill's Content on this, please?), the real problem is that these characters are so miserably colorless and contrived. Michael, Robert, Jill: Not a single detail sticks to them, not a single utterance rings true. This falseness is especially apparent in their "dreams," which are patently the product of a conscious, and none too imaginative, mind.

My favorite concerns "a Danish hair conditioner that was made with beer," which "Isabel," a recovering alcoholic, dreams that she tries to purchase at a drugstore, even though the bottle is only half-full. The cashier won't sell it to her without I.D., and instead advises her to make it at home.

Enter Vaughan, triumphantly connecting the dots she drew herself: Isabel feels empty inside, and is searching for a substance that will make her whole. "She did use beer as a kind of internal mood conditioner for years," Vaughan sagely observes. "And now she has given it up, but there's nothing yet to replace it. So her inner state feels tangled and snarled." The patient can't smooth out her emotional problems without I.D. (i.e., a strong sense of identity), and that's something that she can't buy, but must create for herself. Get it?

Vaughan soon ushers "Isabel" and the others into the world of the aggressive optimist, where personal comfort is placed above all other values and virtues and the rest of humanity is a mere foil for our state of mind. We should all learn "to harness other people's emotional reactions in a manner that positively affects our moods," Vaughan advises, "as when we bounce a smile or a friendly attitude to them and, most often, they return it, sometimes magnified, to us." But this exchange "works in both directions," she warns, and "that means that you may want to think twice before cursing at that cab driver and unleashing his stream of abusive and angry comments, with its ability to adversely affect your mood."

Another real bummer, according to Vaughan, is thinking too much about life and death and stuff. Since the contemplation of "our fundamental helplessness and lack of control in the face of an indifferent universe, our elemental aloneness, our failure to achieve successes that can change the basic parameters of our mortality," may lead to "despair, depression, even suicide," it's much better to maintain the illusion that we're totally in control of a faultlessly happy life that will go on forever. (Sardonic humor, good Scotch and Samuel Beckett are not mentioned as alternative coping strategies.)

Having neatly summarized our existential dilemma, Vaughan hurries on to more pressing topics, like the effect of optimism on basketball games won and insurance policies sold. And in truth, it does seem clear that an optimistic mindset -- as upbeat as temperament or events will allow -- is the best way to get through day-to-day life. As the basis of a philosophy or a worldview, however, optimism is absurdly inadequate, as Vaughan's final chapters reveal.

In her ultimate formulation, our state of mind doesn't just determine how we perceive things. It determines how things actually are. "There is no 'real' reality," Vaughan assures us, "just the one that our minds construct by percolating the experiences we have through the lens of our mood of the moment." Pessimistic people have one "reality," optimistic people another -- and given the choice, wouldn't you pick the latter?

Here it is, the cosmology of the unthinking optimist: Other people are distant planets or reflecting moons; reality lacks any gravitational pull; and in the center spins the self, the blinding sun around which all else revolves.

It's a nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there.

It's a nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there.
salon.com | May 30, 2000

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