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"President Trump?s doctors said his condition was improving and he could be discharged from the hospital as soon as Monday..."

"... but also acknowledged that his oxygen levels have dropped twice, most recently on Saturday. After days of contradictory information from doctors and advisers, the president?s physician, Dr. Sean Conley, again briefed reporters Sunday at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, saying his condition 'continues to improves.'.... Asked why he didn?t offer the more serious details about the president?s condition at a briefing Saturday, Dr. Conley said: 'I was trying to reflect the upbeat attitude that the team, that the president, through this course of illness, has had. I didn?t want to give any information that would steer the course of illness in another direction and in doing so it came off that we were trying to hide something, which wasn?t necessarily true.'"

The Wall Street Journal reports, without raising my level of enlightenment. Wasn?t necessarily true?! At least Conley's forthright about not being forthright, but how can I believe anything he says? Conley talks about Trump the way Trump talks about the virus. He wants to keep it "upbeat."

It's the old "Power of Positive Thinking" ? the Norman Vincent Peale self-help that Trump has long embraced:

Psychologist Martin Seligman, former APA president and founder of positive psychology... writes that, ?positive thinking often involves trying to believe upbeat statements such as 'Every day, in every way, I?m getting better and better,' in the absence of evidence, or even in the face of contrary evidence.?... Similarly, Donald Meyer, in his book The Positive Thinkers, critiques the effectiveness of Peale's techniques saying that Peale always ?reacted to the image of harshness with flight rather than competitive fight.? Meyer later quotes Peale as saying, ?No man, however resourceful or pugnacious, is a match for so great an adversary as a hostile world. He is at best a puny and impotent creature quite at the mercy of the cosmic and social forces in the midst of which he dwells." Meyer argues that positive thinking is disempowering to the individual; for, Peale presents individuals as weak compared to the ?hostile world? with only the help of his techniques to overcome negative circumstances....

Full post as published by Althouse on October 04, 2020 (boomark / email).