I Can Make You Happy

Self-help author McKenna (I Can Make You Thin) views happiness as a “natural human state”, and to make depressed, unhappy readers happy, he provides various exercises, including visualization of feelings as colored shapes and letting them speak to you; looking into the future with “a giant connect-the-dots drawing in your mind,” and taking an imaginary walk down a flight of stairs while counting from one to 20: “When you reach 20, hum ‘Happy Birthday.’” Unanswered is whether one might achieve greater happiness by singing rather than humming. For a “happy posture… imagine there is a silver thread coming down from the sky that is gently pulling you up from the very top of your head.” Although such visualization techniques may offer hope for believers, others will remain skeptical, especially those who feel McKenna’s overly simplistic writing style verges on self-parody and belabors the obvious with statements such as, “Like attracts like, so happy people gather happy friends.” The accompanying guided “hypnotic trance CD” is calculated to “remove negative thinking” (and carries a warning: “Do not use the CD while driving or operating machinery”). While McKenna brings up such topics as yoga, brain chemistry, and meditation, he follows with frustratingly superficial coverage. (Nov.)