The Secret and Glasser--these concepts, when used to this extreme, seem to be what psychology refers to omnipotence. I really think the cult-like nature of this type of thing (look how many millons the Secret book) is scary.
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The first thing I learned about Dr. Glasser was that he did not believe in mental illness. He believed that everything was a choice — that we choose everything we do (even to be unhappy or mentally ill).
This included everything from feeling mildly depressed to being schizophrenic
Revisiting Glasser?s Controversial Choice Theory | World of Psychology
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I can see not believing in mental illness the way it's currently constructed, but to say being schizophrenic is a choice (according to that author)? That's just way out there.
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vonmoxie: Rhonda Byrne, the author of The Secret (re: the Laws of Attraction) was asked about the Indonesian tsunami in 2006, and she had responded that the people living in that area must have been putting bad tsunami-like vibes out to the universe in order to have drawn that event upon themselves, because nothing happens to us that we haven't attracted into our world.
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FavoriteJeans: We need to call bullshyt on this type of thing and on any type of therapy that suggests that with enough resolve, we can simply empower ourselves out of any problem and that therefore, if we fail to, we have only ourselves to blame.
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That's like Hannity on the Fox political show. He comes off to me like this. That's the problem with disavowing your needs and dependence and powerlessness aspects--the underlying anger or hatred is still there. It's can get distorted and projected outward when not acknowledged.
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In psychology[edit]
Early Freudianism saw a feeling of omnipotence as intrinsic to early childhood. 'As Freud and Ferenczi have shown, the child lives in a sort of megalomania for a long period...the "fiction of omnipotence"'.[8] At birth. 'the baby is everything as far as he knows - "all powerful"...every step he takes towards establishing his own limits and boundaries will be painful because he'll have to lose this original God-like feeling of omnipotence'.[9]
wikis page
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Omnipotence is also a defense, but I think the cult-like extreme view tap into this, like many cults are able to do. I think Byrne and Glasser may have used omnipotence elements of our psyche to ostensibly craft their theories.
Anyway, the power/powerlessness things can be good as long as there's balance. The extremist stuff is scary thought. Not in itself, but that so many people follow that line of thinking. Just my 2 cents.