You Can Feel Good Again

October 4, 1993
Carlson ( You Can Be Happy No Matter What: Good News About Depression ) doesn't encourage his clients to attend therapy weekly. Frequent sessions, he asserts, don't make people happy; they only make clients brood about how miserable their lives are. Instead, what we think about, he believes, actually determines how optimistic or unhappy we are. `` Your thoughts always create your emotions ,'' the author argues. Thus, the key to happiness is to replace negative thoughts with postive ones. Negative thinking, according to Carlson, is a habit like smoking or drinking that can be broken. So in effect, depression is the result of faulty thinking habits. Carlson's technique is based on the Psychology of Mind, a new branch of psychotherapy. Included here are case studies of clients he has treated using these principles. While Carlson demonstrates some common sense, much of the book seems glib and patronizing, as if people were machines that could be reprogrammed by pressing a few buttons. First serial to Cosmopolitan.