Louise Hay: Christian Science Woo

Mark gave me a Louise Hay book to read last night to help me find enlightenment ? and clarity.
Like everyone’s Mum mine had Louise Hay books. Like most feel good things people give me I ruin them with anarchist critical thinking.
This caused some late night controversy with the 1312 Crew ..
I opened the Chapter on relationships and read that the relationships we have with others and inanimate objects are reflections of relationships we have with ourselves. And our parents……… Maybe a little bit.
But the real woo appeared when I read that if I have a workmate who is a dickhead it’s because I attracted that into my life.
Because I think all cops are bastards I should ‘look within’…. And it’s because I have a belief that cops are bastards that they are…. All Cops Are Bastards but not because I think they are but because they are the armed wing of the state and think they are above the law. They blindly enforce laws which were written to oppress poor people, such as laws against feeding the homeless.
So since I’m an anarchist and hate everything I set out to ruin Louise Hay.
I typed Louise Hay into a search engine and added critique a word I frequently add if I think something is a bit waack.
Louise Hay promoted the dangerous idea that you could cure any dis-ease dis-ease see what she did there. One can cure any disease or by extension anything problem one has through positive thinking.
I came across an article called Louise Hay is a dangerous Quack. There’s a number of claims in this article which I have independently verified through a double blind independent peer reviewed study which is more than can be said about Hay’s claims.

1. Louise Hay’s ideas come from a fanatical Christian Science Cult. She was a religious science practitioner. Not qualified to instruct people how to heal serious diseases such as cancer.
2. She actually claims to have cured her own “incurable” cervical cancer, with forgiveness, coupled with therapy, nutrition, reflexology, and occasional colonic enemas. But people question whether or not she actually had cancer. When asked if her treating doctors could speak to her miracle recovery she claimed they had all died. The cause of her cancer? She concluded that its cause was her unwillingness to let go of resentment over her childhood abuse and rape.
3. Although spruiking the cure for all maladies she had a face lift. One affirmation she could have tried is …um…. ‘As I grow older my face will look younger’.

In her book Heal Your Body A-Z Hay claimed one could cure every imaginable illness through positive thinking.

She made millions telling others that they can use thoughts to cure conditions like leprosy, AIDS, cancer, seizures, stroke, and even being comatose.

An interesting article I came across discusses Hay’s affect on victims of the AIDS epidemic during the 80s.

The take home message of her metaphysical pseudo-science is that people who suffer have brought it on themselves.
This quote I like.

To these desperate people Louise Hay offered open if judgmental arms; emotional group encounters known as Hayrides; teddy bears to cuddle; mirrors in which you could affirm your worth no matter how bad your Kaposi’s sarcoma lesions; a simulacrum of science; and spiritually nutty notions. Certainly some people found in Hay the support, recognition, and nurture that they couldn’t find elsewhere. But others were wounded by Hay’s subversively pernicious judgment, rooted as it was in a tragically fatuous view of the body that made the medieval science of humours look like third-year Harvard Medical School. The last thing people with AIDS needed to hear was that they had caused their own illness.
Some of Hay’s disciples, believing they had failed to follow her dicta well enough, died ashamed, dis-empowered, and betrayed. Many AIDS survivors and caregivers have testified to the tragic personal cost of Hay’s philosophy, and what some have called her brutal dismissal of actual people with AIDS, including the poor and people of color, as well as her willingness to profit personally through the pain of the sick, the psychically unsettled, and the terminally ill. Activist and filmmaker Peter Fitzgerald saw Hay in action with his desperately ill comrades. After her death he said, “I understand that she provided hope at very dark times to a great many people, I also know all too well that her clay feet were deeply mired in the guilt of being an AIDS profiteer, a disloyal friend and purveyor of false hope. Namaste, bitch.”

‘Namaste bitch’ is my new favourite term.

I couldn’t find any references to an anarchist critique of self help but I found something on Crime Thinc about ‘self care’ and a text on Anarchism and Psychology in The Anarchist Library.