The self-help genre: ugh. Yes and No, and eew. Same goes, quite honestly, for therapists. I see a parallel between the despicable orange dumpster fire running for president in the U.S. and much of the self-help market; namely, that every accusation (self-help programme) is a confession (author's disclosure of incompetence). Who are these authors anyway? By and large they appear to be people who struggle with the very subject matter for which they are peddling solutions, much as the field of psychology attracts many who have their own messes to clean up. (Note the qualifiers: there are wise, helpful well-trained individuals in clinical practice, but we all know that there are also plenty who should not be allowed to muck about in other people's lives.) How many guru-fueled failures does it take to convince a person that they have more internal wisdom than some random person who managed to wangle a pulp book deal? It's a bit of a stomach-churning, ouroboric Möbius strip. I'd like to see a title called "How Not to Prey on Your Fellow Humans Just Because You've Been Suckered Into Believing You Can Make Money by Saying You Have The Answers." This article was written by someone who went down that road. https://www.vox.com/first-person/2017/1/23/14238530/self-help-advice-bogus
Thanks, as always, for a thought-provoking piece, Laura!
One of the most fascinating things about self-help books in all their forms and varieties is, to me, their sheer number and continuing proliferation. It seems to say something Nietzschean about the human experience post Enlightenment - but then again there were plenty of advice books prior to then. Dunno.
In a lighter note I have pre-ordered your book and the audio version since I enjoy listening to your narration of this blog and was delighted to see that you narrate the book too!
Well done, I guess it can’t be easy to read your own writing without wanting to change little pieces here and there. Treat for us though.
Thanks John that's so kind of you. It was good fun to narrate the book but it was certainly a relief to no longer have to listen to myself when it was finished!
One benefit of self-help books is that they are freely available but a drawback is that they are, through necessity, generalised suggestions of ways to address problems that individuals experience uniquely. I think that's also a reason they don't work. If a book was written called 'Putting Together Flat Pack Furniture' it would be of similarly limited help for the specific bed you just bought from IKEA.
I wholeheartedly agree with your point about the need for scepticism around methods that promise to work without effort. As a therapist friend of mine once said to someone complaining about how hard change is, 'Yes, but you don't have to do it if you don't want to'.
For most of us, progress is a combination of changing what we can and accepting what is unchangeable whilst being conscious of both. There can be an important dialectical opposition between knowing the foundation of why we do/think/feel something self-destructive and its validation and the usefulness of working hard to change it.
The self-help genre: ugh. Yes and No, and eew. Same goes, quite honestly, for therapists. I see a parallel between the despicable orange dumpster fire running for president in the U.S. and much of the self-help market; namely, that every accusation (self-help programme) is a confession (author's disclosure of incompetence). Who are these authors anyway? By and large they appear to be people who struggle with the very subject matter for which they are peddling solutions, much as the field of psychology attracts many who have their own messes to clean up. (Note the qualifiers: there are wise, helpful well-trained individuals in clinical practice, but we all know that there are also plenty who should not be allowed to muck about in other people's lives.) How many guru-fueled failures does it take to convince a person that they have more internal wisdom than some random person who managed to wangle a pulp book deal? It's a bit of a stomach-churning, ouroboric Möbius strip. I'd like to see a title called "How Not to Prey on Your Fellow Humans Just Because You've Been Suckered Into Believing You Can Make Money by Saying You Have The Answers." This article was written by someone who went down that road. https://www.vox.com/first-person/2017/1/23/14238530/self-help-advice-bogus
Thanks, as always, for a thought-provoking piece, Laura!
One of the most fascinating things about self-help books in all their forms and varieties is, to me, their sheer number and continuing proliferation. It seems to say something Nietzschean about the human experience post Enlightenment - but then again there were plenty of advice books prior to then. Dunno.
In a lighter note I have pre-ordered your book and the audio version since I enjoy listening to your narration of this blog and was delighted to see that you narrate the book too!
Well done, I guess it can’t be easy to read your own writing without wanting to change little pieces here and there. Treat for us though.
Thanks John that's so kind of you. It was good fun to narrate the book but it was certainly a relief to no longer have to listen to myself when it was finished!
One benefit of self-help books is that they are freely available but a drawback is that they are, through necessity, generalised suggestions of ways to address problems that individuals experience uniquely. I think that's also a reason they don't work. If a book was written called 'Putting Together Flat Pack Furniture' it would be of similarly limited help for the specific bed you just bought from IKEA.
I wholeheartedly agree with your point about the need for scepticism around methods that promise to work without effort. As a therapist friend of mine once said to someone complaining about how hard change is, 'Yes, but you don't have to do it if you don't want to'.
For most of us, progress is a combination of changing what we can and accepting what is unchangeable whilst being conscious of both. There can be an important dialectical opposition between knowing the foundation of why we do/think/feel something self-destructive and its validation and the usefulness of working hard to change it.
Insightful and thought-provoking comment, Graham; thank you.