"Today was a Difficult Day."

Winnie the Pooh: An Ally Against Toxic Positivity

This article has links to downloadable Winnie the Pooh books as well as hard-to-get articles of my own about strategic psychotherapy..

Winnie the Pooh did not hold much interest for me until I was in grad school. I recall searching the jukebox in the student union at Indiana University, wanting to hear “The Ballad of You & Me & Pooneil” that the Airplane played at Woodstock. I hit the button for Fred Neil’s House at Pooh Corner instead, which had been the inspiration for two songs (Pooniel combines Pooh and Neil) written for the Airplane by Paul Krasner. We did not have the Internet back then, but now I can check Wikipedia to learn that Krasner shared Neil’s love for the childhood innocence and wonder of Winnie the Pooh:

Both [Airplane] songs quote A.A. Milne: the “If you were a bird” verse in the first, and the “Cows are almost cooing” verse in the second.

I understood that Winnie the Pooh was a cultural reference point for many of my classmates from early childhood that stuck w…