Self Help Information

Criticisms

 

 

Some critics have suggested that self-help books and programs offer "easy answers" to difficult personal problems. Commentators have criticized self-help books for containing pseudo-scientific assertions that tend to mislead the consumer, and many different authors have criticized self-help authors and claims. Christopher Buckley's book God is My Broker (1998) asserts: "The only way to get rich from a self-help book is to write one." 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.

The phenomenon has been the target of parodies. Walker Percy's Lost in the Cosmos is a book-length parody. In their 2006 book Secrets of The Superoptimist, authors W.R. Morton & Nathanel Whitten revealed the concept of "superoptimism" as a humorous antidote to the overblown self-help book category.

Scholars also have targeted self-help claims as misleading and incorrect. In 2005 Steve Salerno 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. Sociologist Micki McGee argues in her 2005 book Self-Help, Inc. 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.

However, there are now a number of commercial companies that offer psychology products that are based on sound and validated psychological principles, for example, cognitive behavioural therapy programs to help people overcome anxiety, depression and stress-related symptoms.