Self-help

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Regarding self-help as a legal doctrine, see: Self-help (law)

The term self-help can refer to any case or practice whereby an individual or a group (such as a support group) attempts self-improvement, economically, intellectually or emotionally. From early exemplars in self-driven legal practice (Salerno 2005: 23-24) and home-spun advice, the connotations of the phrase have spread and often apply particularly to education, business, psychological or psychotherapeutic nostrums, purveyed through the popular genre of "self-help" books and through self-help personal development movements.

The concept of self-help has also found purchase, however, in more and in wider circles. In merchandising, tendencies toward self-help have in recent years resulted in automated self-check-out payment-systems. Self-help fuel-pumps replaced full-service petroleum pumps in the United States in the late 20th Century.

[edit] Sociological theories of self-help

Before a social movement in any cultural group develops enough size, tradition, expertise and social recognition, it undergoes the self-help phase of group development.^{[citation needed]} When any social group of human adults reaches a certain size (about 80 members), it apparently develops a self-help "faction" that may eventually bud off (or break away) from the parent group. Competing larger groups may often try to dismiss or otherwise minimize the breakaway group by describing it as "self help", suggesting that the splinter-faction's expertise lacks the significance or the "true path" associated with the older group.^{[citation needed]}

An expansion of the technologies that empower individuals to conduct both trivial and profound activities binds together the diverse genres which apply self-help concepts^{[citation needed]}. Self-help book-publishing arose from decentralization of ideology, from a growth of publishing industries using expanded printing technologies and (at the pinnacle of growth) from the spread of new psychological sciences^{[citation needed]}. Likewise, self-help legal services grew around expanded access to document-production technology (viz: the printing industry in the 18th century). The Internet (with the ever-expanding selection of commercial and information services which it offers) exemplifies movement toward self-help on a grand scale. This integration has produced a new cadre of tools, such as books with a unique passcode printed on each copy that enable the reader to take an online test quantifying where their skills stand in the concepts taught by the book. (Bradberry and Greaves, 2005)

[edit] History

Legal self-help preceded the emergence of self-help in other areas. For many people from the 18th century onwards, self-help became a way of saving costs in legal situations, with self-help publications available to help with routine legal matters from filing wills to domestic processes to recording property deeds.

Samuel Smiles (1812-1904) published the first self-consciously personal-development "self-help" book — entitled "Self-Help" — in 1859. Its opening sentence: "Heaven helps those who help themselves", provides a variation of "God helps them that help themselves", the oft-quoted maxim that also appeared previously in Benjamin Franklin's Poor Richard's Almanac (1733 - 1758).

[edit] The self-help marketplace

Research firm Marketdata estimated the "self-improvement" market as worth $8.5 billion in 2003 — including infomercials, mail-order catalogs, holistic institutes, books, audio cassettes, motivational speaker seminars, the personal coaching market, weight-loss and stress-management programs. Marketdata projected that the total market size would grow to over $11 billion by 2008.

Within the context of this larger market, group and corporate attempts to aid the "seeker" have moved into the "self-help" marketplace, with LGATs and psychotherapy systems ready with more or less pre-packaged solutions to instruct folk seeking their own individual betterment.

Compare with other motivational groups (some of them sometimes called cults):

• Landmark Education
• Scientology
• Silva Method

[edit] Criticisms

Some critics have suggested that self-help books and programs offer "easy answers" to difficult personal problems^{[citation needed]}. According to this view, the reader or participant receives the equivalent of a placebo, while writers and publishers collect their profits.

Buckley's book God is My Broker (1998) asserts: "The only way to get rich from a self-help book is to write one."

Commentators have also criticised self-help books for containing pseudo-scientific assertions that tend to mislead the consumer^{[citation needed]}.

In her 1993 book I'm Dysfunctional, You're Dysfunctional, Wendy Kaminer criticizes the self-help movement for encouraging people to focus on individual self-improvement (rather than joining collective social movements) to solve their problems.

Salerno (2005) portrays the self-help movement (he uses the acronym "SHAM": the Self-Help and Actualization Movement) not only as ineffective in achieving its goals, but also as socially harmful.

In her 2005 book Self-Help, Inc., sociologist Micki McGee argues that the burgeoning self-improvement industry masks Americans' economic anxieties during a period of economic decline. She sees Americans as "belabored" — at work on themselves, inventing and re-inventing themselves so as to remain employed and employable.

Comedian George Carlin has criticised self-help books in the following quote from one of his HBO Stand Up specials:

"What I really don't understand is if you want self-help why would you read a book written by somebody else? That's not self-help, that's help! If you can do it yourself you don't need help!"

In one popular novel and film, the main character and his imaginary friend believe that they must hit "rock bottom":

Self improvement is masturbation, self destruction is the answer. — Tyler Durden, Fight Club

[edit] Counter-Criticisms

In the matter of self-help as a placebo, one might argue that any advice (or inference, opinion, attitude, fashion statement, political slant, use of any word that connotes/denotes an in-crowd or class, conjunctions, makes of cars, bras or chocolates, etc), when absorbed voluntarily by a reader (consumer) of a book/ad/sexy look can become (depending on the consumer) either a poison, a medicine or a food, but never a placebo. (According to this view, those who do not read or do not notice ads or remain impervious to the sexy look consume the placebos.) Thus no valid way exists to make decent statistical tests of the placebo-effect contained within any book/ad/sexy look, let alone within any artificial category like self-help.^{[citations needed]}

Alternatively, one could argue that a placebo has a measurable effect and can contribute to improvement.

Growing evidence exists ^{[citation needed]} that media (books, computer programs, and others) can effectively deliver psychological therapies for anxiety, depression, and other common mental-health problems seen as having something to do with the need or desire for self-help.

Some research has shown that people often do solve problems on their own, in many cases using techniques that resemble those used by psychotherapists (Hubble 1999, chapters 4 and 8) — just as in the days before psychotherapists existed.

Though some readers of self-help books may seek "easy answers", that does not make any answers in the books necessarily easy to apply. A book can suggest a course of action (easy or not), but (according to self-help beliefs) only the reader can carry it out, and some readers may have more willingness or ability to do so than others. Anecdotally, those who make the effort often do make improvements in their lives^{[citation needed]}.

Steven Berglas wrote:

In fairness to [Mark] Monsky and other self-help authors, there is often much useful material in their writings, and much of the damage done by this body of literature is a function of the fact that these books are not read in depth or at all. Many people quote "insights" from the books based upon a cursory reading of the dust jackets and titles. (Steven Berglas 2001)

Benjamin Franklin wrote in his autobiography:

As I knew, or thought I knew, what was right and wrong, I did not see why I might not always do the one and avoid the other. But I soon found I had undertaken a task of more difficulty than I had imagined. While my care was employ'd in guarding against one fault, I was often surprised by another; habit took the advantage of inattention; inclination was sometimes too strong for reason. I concluded, at length, that the mere speculative conviction that it was our interest to be completely virtuous, was not sufficient to prevent our slipping; and that the contrary habits must be broken, and good ones acquired and established, before we can have any dependence on a steady, uniform rectitude of conduct.

While Franklin describes a straightforward and easy-to-understand method, he clearly does not suggest that it is easy to apply. Some self-help authors may gloss over this distinction, but even when they don't, readers may overlook it. Franklin himself admitted that he achieved only partial success, but he thought any improvement preferable to none, and he continued his efforts over several years^{[citation needed]}.

As for the self-improvement versus collective social improvement critique: if each individual improves his or her self, then in the long-term, it should allegedly benefit society as a whole; thus self-improvement provides one possible (indirect) path to collective social change.

[edit] See also

• Personal development / self-development
• Procrastination
• Self (psychology)
• Mutual Aid Societies
• Tony Robbins
• Nightingale Conant
• Self Help Development International

[edit] Self-help texts

• 50 Self-Help Classics: 50 Inspirational Books To Transform Your Life, From Timeless Sages To Contemporary Gurus; by Tom Butler-Bowdon. Nicholas Brealey Publishing, 2003. ISBN 1-85788-323-3
• Awaken the Giant Within: How to Take Immediate Control of Your Mental, Emotional, Physical, & Financial Destiny; by Anthony Robbins. Simon & Schuster Adult Publishing Group, 1991. ISBN 0-671-72734-6
• Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity; by David Allen. Viking Adult, 2001. ISBN 0-670-89924-0
• The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People; by Stephen Covey. Simon & Schuster Adult Publishing Group, 2004. ISBN 0-7432-7245-5
• Unlimited Power: The New Science of Personal Achievement; by Anthony Robbins. Random House Publishing Group, 1987. ISBN 0-449-90280-3
• Totally Fulfilled by Dean Graziosi. Visionary Publishing, 2006. ISBN 0-9773248-0-X

[edit] Web self-help directories

• Self-Improvement Online
• Mind Media Guide to Self-Improvement & Personal Development
• Usenet group alt.self-improve

[edit] Web self-help texts

• Self-Help, by Samuel Smiles, available freely at Project Gutenberg The first American personal self-help book, published in 1859.
• Self-Help Group Sourcebook; by American Self-Help Group Clearinghouse; Mental Help Net.
• SELF-HELP, INC: Makeover Culture in American Life; by Micki McGee (Oxford UP, 2005).

[edit] References

• Berglas, Steven . (2001). Reclaiming the Fire: How Successful People Overcome Burnout. Random House. ISBN 0-679-46321-6
• Bradberry, Travis and Greaves, Jean. (2005). "The Emotional Intelligence Quick Book." New York: Simon and Schuster. ISBN 0-7432-7326-5
• Buckley, Christoper. (1998). God Is My Broker : A Monk-Tycoon Reveals the 7 1/2 Laws of Spiritual and Financial Growth. ISBN 0-375-50006-5
• Franklin, Benjamin. The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin.
• Hubble, Mark A., Barry L. Duncan, Scott D. Miller (Eds). The Heart and Soul of Change: What Works in Therapy, American Psychological Association (1999) ISBN 1-55798-557-X
• Kaminer, Wendy. (1993). I'm Dysfunctional, You're Dysfunctional: The Recovery Movement and Other Self-Help Fashions. Vintage, 1993. ISBN 0-679-74585-8
• McGee, Micki. (2005), SELF-HELP, INC: Makeover Culture in American Life. Oxford University Press, 2005. ISBN 0-19-517124-1
• Salerno, Steve. (2005). SHAM: How the Self-Help Movement Made America Helpless. New York: Crown Publishers. ISBN 1-4000-5409-5