Positive and negative delusions.

Reviewing another book (http://escalate.ac.uk/4866) this time a diatribe against 'therapeutic education' (which it only vaguely defines); it turns out to be a polemic against two things - 'positive psychology', and pathologising people and emotions (thus promoting the dependent diminished self). These two points at least I have sympathy with. 'Positive psychology' promotes optimism and happiness as ways of coping with life and thereby living longer. It takes an objectivist realist view of knowledge so they are positive positivists. They see themselves as enemies to constructivist psychologists, who use qualitative methods. Positive psychology promotes the pursuit of happiness into a therapy - the solution to all life's problems is to find a way to make negative experiences meaningful, learn from them and achieve this 'real' contentment. A negative psychology would be to recognise negative emotions as OK and helpful, to accept them and learn from them - not rejecting the negative and turning it to a positive, but learning to relax with it. Research has shown that dreams are full of latent anxieties; a recent BBC competition to write your life in 10 words resulted in most being negative; learning to tackle anxieties and conflicts have the potential for developing growth and inner strength.
Unreasonable optimism is a delusion; it may be helpful but will ultimately disappoint, unless we keep revising our unreasonable delusion. Ambition is full of unreasonable optimism, but the ambitious tend to get more jobs than the unambitious. Ambition which incorporates reasonal optimism keeps its feet on the ground, but may under-estimate what is reasonable.
Many negative emotions are of disappointments or bereavements. Am I to see the death of my child as meaningful? or a premature death to illness as meaningful? Or death by a bomb? I think not. I am left with the sadness, the pointlessness, and have to live with the event without becoming emotionally paralysed. This may be personal growth, but it is not the cause of or reason for the disaster.
Religion it is true has created unreasonable delusions to explain death, such as an afterlife, eternal life, or rebirth; but worshippers normally do not thereby welcome death, unless there is some mental instability or brainwashing.
Our negative delusions may be pictures of ourselves as worthless, or mental pictures of anxieties as entities - demons, the devel, forces of evil. Films and pulp fiction make much of this.
Can I replace a negative delusion for a positive one? To turn an incompetent me into a demigod by dint of imagining 'I can do it' and 'I am special'. To some degree a negative image can be neutralised; but to go further like a Hitler is psychotic and delusional.
There is no wisdom in delusion, only a temporary coping strategy if it is positive delusion, a crutch to help us continue. The wisdom is to see the delusion as delusion, to recognise it and go beyond, to throw the crutch away.