"This Pressure to Build a Personal Brand Is One of the Great Pathologies of the Past Three Decades"

"The same anxieties that attracted people to New Thought at the dawn of American capitalism would later fuel demand for the positive-psychology movement, which has since been enshrined in the curricula of American business schools. At first glance, this movement may appear unassailable. Its goal, after all, is to make people happier and encourage them to 'flourish' in their work lives. However, as Baker demonstrates, its primary role is to lend intellectual support to the entrepreneurial ethic. 'Psychology is the idiom through which entrepreneurship is discussed,' he writes. In fact, 'it's not always obvious where positive psychology ends and entrepreneurship begins.' How could it be, when business schools now employ teams of psychologists, urging future leaders to embrace 'grit,' find 'flow,' adopt a 'growth mindset,' and establish their own personal brand? 'Popular psychology,' Baker writes, 'encouraged Americans to cultivate an attractive personality that would help them win the affection of their coworkers and bosses and thus ascend the corporate ladder—instead of striving to embody the transcendent moral values constitutive of the older notion of character.' Baker is keen to expose the harm this movement's entrepreneurial turn has caused the culture at large. The book opens with the tragic story of Tony Hsieh, the CEO of Zappos and the author of Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose. Hsieh died in a fire at the age of forty-six after barricading himself in a shed with nitrous-oxide canisters, a propane tank, and candles. It's a cautionary tale about the Faustian bargain 'positive psychology' struck with the startup world."

Drew Calvert at Commonweal reviews Erik Baker's Make Your Own Job: How the Entrepreneurial Work Ethic Exhausted America.