The odd one out: In a world of positive thinking, the one person not smiling is Barbara Ehrenreich

The American academic and journalist Barbara Ehrenreich believes positive thinking is the scourge of society. She believes that it has turned vast swathes of the American population into yes-men whose employers ride roughshod over them. She believes that it was the hopelessly unrealistic optimism of Bush that led us into Iraq. And she also believes that it has destroyed the economy.

When she says positive thinking, she doesn't just mean a sunny outlook. She means a relentlessly upbeat, no- questions-asked type of optimism, where negativity doesn't have a place. She means the fixed smiles and fakery of the "have a nice day" culture that has a nation in its grip. She has just written a book about the phenomenon, called Smile or Die, which examines how this ideology has taken hold and how it serves to mask some important truths. "When I was working on it, I found it hard to explain to people I was writing a book attacking positive thinking," she says. "It just sounds like I'm writing a book attacking goodness."

It began when Ehrenreich was diagnosed with breast cancer nine years ago. When she reached out for support, all she could find was blind faith and bravery. Where, she wondered, were the horror, the anger, the questions? After her treatment, Ehrenreich went back to work on Bait and Switch, an in-depth investigation into America's white-collar workforce. She discovered, again, in a climate where many of these workers were being sacked and spiralling towards poverty, a similarly upbeat mentality. "I was like, 'Oh my God it's the same thing.' This positive thinking, it's absolutely pervasive in American culture, it's ubiquitous."

Reading an Ehrenreich book is a little like watching a Michael Moore film – the more she digs, the bleaker it gets. There is an illuminating statistic in the book which says that Americans account for two-thirds of the global market for anti-depressants. Clearly, it's hard work trying to be that happy. "What we need to remind ourselves," says Ehrenreich, "is that the alternative to positive thought isn't to be depressed or negative. It's simply to be realistic." '

Ehrenreich... on cancer

"When I was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2001, I was eager to connect with other women who had gone through it – I was looking for information as well as a bit of sisterly support. What I discovered as I waded through the hundreds of relevant websites was this whole pink-ribbon culture that was upbeat and feminine and sweet. Interlaced with that were constant exhortations to be positive about the disease, to think of it as a wonderful opportunity – that it was going to make me more evolved and spiritually deeper.

"There's actually a book called The Gift of Cancer; The New York Times in 2007 had a whole column on all the great things cancer does for people; and Lance Armstrong once said it was the best thing that ever happened to him.

"I went through the whole experience snarling, it made me so angry. Why do we have an epidemic of a disease and we don't even know what causes it? Why are the treatments so barbaric? The more I read, the greater my sense of isolation grew – no one seemed to share my sense of outrage.

"There was, I soon learnt, a reason for all this optimism: the belief that you actually get better if you think positively and you won't if you think negatively. Given my scientific background [Ehrenreich, above right, has a PhD in cellular biology], I found that a very dubious proposition. In 2001, when I was going through treatment, there wasn't a lot of evidence one way or the other, but now we have various studies that show that in the cases of several different types of cancer – lung, neck and breast – attitude has absolutely nothing to do with survival rates. To me, that was a terrific relief, because it felt bad not only to have a potentially mortal disease, but also to have this second problem called a bad attitude.

"I was afraid that when my book came out in the States the response would be hostile. But I've had so many people who have been through cancer tell me, 'Thank God you have said this.' I've also had many awful stories of people telling me about loved ones dying of cancer in a state of regret that they were unable to overcome the negative feelings that were obviously 'causing' them to die. It's just so mean and so cruel."

...on the workplace

"Positive thinking came into the workplace in the 1950s when people such as Norman Vincent Peale, an early proponent of 'new thought', as it was called, would be brought in to address sales departments. It made sense. How else were they going to pick themselves up day after day, rejection after rejection, and start again with their fake enthusiasm?

"It wasn't until the 1980s, the era of downsizing, that it became more widespread. Companies realised that it was an ideology that could be used to manage a turbulent workforce in turbulent conditions. People who lost their jobs were told to see it as an 'opportunity' for which they should be grateful. One business self-help book actually bore the defiant title We Got Fired! And It's the Best Thing That Ever Happened to Us. Then there was the question of how companies could squeeze more work out of those left behind. Positive thinking serves both purposes: it brings about social acquiescence and suppresses dissent.

"Then, about 10 years ago, the notion of the 'menace of negative people' started appearing in business literature. This is the idea that you don't want negative people in the workplace because they drag down the whole company. In fact, it became your responsibility as a good worker to identify and weed out the negative people from among you.

"But what does negative even mean? It could be just asking too many questions, not smiling enough or raising doubts about a business plan. I have encountered so many people who tell me they have been criticised at work for being 'too negative' and lost jobs. I interviewed someone for the book who worked in a call centre and got called in by her bosses who said to her, 'We just don't think you're completely happy.' Is she supposed to be completely happy working there? It's none of their business. It represents an ever more intimate psychological demand, that you should not only work harder and exercise your skills, but exude a passion and joy as well. A well-known study in the 1980s found that flight attendants [inset right] who are required to be cheerful to passengers at all times actually became emotionally depleted and stressed from the effort it takes to fake it.

"One of the worst things about this whole way of thought is that it all gets pinned on you. You may want to blame the corporation, your boss or the system, but that would be negative and dysfunctional. You need to realise, they tell us, that whatever happens to you, happens because of your attitudes. You have only yourself to blame. Infuriating."

...on the motivational industry

"To be a positive person, you have to do a lot of work on yourself. You have to be constantly watching your own mind for stray negative thoughts so you can stamp them out right away. It's a discipline that must be a massive burden.

"It all starts with an innocent-enough fridge magnet with some inspirational slogan and goes from there. There's a big product line in the States called Life is Good, which sells T-shirts, banners and little things to put around your house that have 'Life is Good' written on them. If anything could turn me into a real curmudgeon, it's that. Once you have the idea that if you think bad things they could happen, and you can control everything with positive thoughts, you are sucked in. If the first book doesn't work, there's always the next guru to go to.

"In 2007, I got to know an estate agent who was helping me with a house move. When I told her what I was writing about, she showed me the back seat of her car – it was piled high with motivational CDs. She listened to them, she told me, constantly as she drove from house to house, such is the stress of constantly trying to stay 'up'. She lent me one, which I put on in my car. God help me. The hectoring tone and command to 'take things to the next level' – I couldn't bear it. She was such a nice, smart woman as well."

...on George W Bush

George W was a cheerleader in college and I think he thought that was his role as president too – to exude optimism. I could retell the whole story of how we got into the war in Iraq just by looking at Bush's reckless optimism. You couldn't say a negative thing to him. Condoleezza Rice failed to express her concerns to him because, she said, 'The president almost demanded optimism. He didn't like pessimism, hand-wringing or doubt.'

"Remember the 'cakewalk'? He had the idea that we were going to go into Iraq and the people would cheer and throw flowers at us. There was a general who said at the beginning of the campaign that it would take twice as many troops to overthrow Saddam Hussein. He was promptly demoted.

"Bush tried a second career as a motivational speaker – perfect, you would think. But what I have heard about his initial foray into this is that he wasn't very good."

...on the economy

"Hardly anyone predicted the financial meltdown. It's not surprising, as the optimism of financial experts was nearly unanimous. The people who warned that our subprime exposure was too great, or questioned whether the housing boom could last forever, were weeded out. So America reached the midyears of the decade at a manic peak of delusional expectations, extending to the highest levels of leadership.

"The banking analyst Steve Eisman was one of the few who saw the crisis coming and got out just in time. 'Anyone who voiced negativity was thrown out,' he says. A well-known business journalist is now writing a book about all the people who tried to sound a warning on Wall Street but were silenced.

"It's also in the spirit of optimism that a person blithely builds up credit-card debt or agrees on a mortgage with an interest rate that will escalate over time. Many people were ruined overnight. I've been trying to get some of these people to talk about their experience but it's hard to get many to agree. There is such shame about it all, which I think is all to do with the ideology of positive thinking. 'How did I get sucked into that,' they think. 'What went wrong? I'm a good person, I'm a church-goer and I show up to work every day and now I'm ruined.' The overwhelming tendency is to blame yourself. You lost your home due to an unjustifiable mortgage rate. What were you? Stupid?"

...on religion

"You don't have mega-churches in the UK but they are getting ever bigger in America. I first went in one for research for this book and what struck me immediately was the lack of religious references. There are no crosses, no pictures of Jesus. When I was growing up, I thought that's what Christianity was all about. But here there was nothing.

"That's why these churches are so mega: they have dispensed with the tragic side of Christianity – let's face it, Jesus's story was pretty much a downer. They also got the good marketing idea that church should not be a challenging or offputting experience, so some of the innovations have included comfortable theatre-like seats instead of hard pews, Christian rock instead of the old hymns, and there's also childcare as well as a huge variety of social services.

"These churches look like you're in any place of business, and the message now is that God wants to prosper you – that's the actual words they use – and it's not even a matter of prayer any more; now you just have to visualise it and God will bring it to you. It's all about being positive. I say this as an atheist, but it pains me to see God degraded to the level of a personal assistant, a cosmic bell-hop, if you like – always there at your service to get you whatever you want."

...on the UK

"There is a real difference at the moment when it comes to positive thinking between the States and the UK. I was talking to somebody recently who had moved from the UK to the US, and she was finding it really hard to adapt because you can't be sarcastic in America or people will misinterpret you. It's made her unable to bond with people, as her ability to have a good old cackle has been taken away. It does makes you feel slightly on edge.

"Saying that, the inroads of positive thinking are clear in this country, too. You have executive coaching and a coaching industry, you had a similar faith in the booming housing market and the economy. And what's more, the Rhonda Byrne book The Secret – which preaches that simply through conscious effort you can 'attract' the things you want in life – was a bestseller in the UK. I don't know what's going to happen here. But I'm watching you."

'Smile or Die' (Granta, £10.99) is out now