This book argues that the story of the orphan girl Pollyanna (namely, her strategy of playing the "glad games" to manage loss, abuse, and social prejudice) serves as a framework for critiquing historical forms of Western scientific Pollyannaism. The author examines Pollyannaism as it relates to the sciences, demonstrating how the approach has been used throughout modern Western history to enforce happiness and to criticize negative human emotional states. These efforts, carried out by scientists and popularized as scientific, focus on negating the role of the environment and on promoting varied forms of emotional control. Ultimately, the book emphasizes strategies used to compel individuals into becoming Pollyannas about science itself.
Chapter 1: An Introduction to (Supposedly) Good Life.- Chapter 2: Demonized Emotions and Tortured Bodies in the Age of Scientific Progress.- Chapter 3: The Survival of the Happiest Who (Get To) Control the Resources and Procreation.- Chapter 4: Eugenic Scientific Utopias Filled with Socially Engineered Happy Productive People.- Chapter 5: From the Science of Human Betterment to the Science of Behavioral Control.- Chapter 6: Scientific Pollyannaism of Authentic Happiness, Learned Optimism, Flow and the Empirically Correct Positivity Ratios.- Chapter 7: On Being Pollyanna about Sciences.- The Discovery of Scientism.- Chapter 8: Critics and Critiques of Scientific Pollyannaism.- Chapter 9: Re-telling the Story of Orphaned Girl Named Pollyanna.
Oksana Yakushko, PhD, is Department Chair and faculty member at Pacifica Graduate Institute, Carpinteria, CA, USA.
