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Do self-help books work? By Allen Pierleoni
Experts opine on a $13 billion industry
JewishWorldReview.com | (SHNS)
Losing weight, alleviating depression, escaping anxiety, eliminating
procrastination, taking charge of your life, finding happiness,
finding and keeping love, developing self-esteem, working through
grief, getting past a divorce, tapping in to your potential.
These are all big-ticket life items that could easily require months,
if not years, of professional guidance to achieve. More convenient and
affordable -- and certainly more popular -- are self-help books. Their
ultimate message is clear: If despair is the lock, hope is the key.
The thousands of these titles on the market and the millions of copies
of them sold each year are testimony to our collective desire to
improve ourselves -- or at least read about it. And with New Year's
resolutions still echoing in our ears, it seems there's a plan devised
by somebody, somewhere, for fixing almost anything that's broken in
us.
Do they work?
"Many (self-help books) can be beneficial, " said Mark Kamena,
president of the California Psychological Association. "They are a way
for people to receive mental-health services without actually going to
a therapist."
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Self-help titles glut the market, but sales figures are hard to come
by because publishers won't share the data. Still, informed
guesstimates value the self-help-book arena at more than $1 billion a
year.
That's part of the overall $13 billion self-help industry, which
includes seminars, retreats, CDs, infomercials, counseling by "life
coaches," "holistic" centers and companies like the business-oriented
Dale Carnegie Training franchises.
Self-help has even crossed over into the realm of fiction, at least in
the case of the recently released big-buzz novel "Love Is a Canoe" by
Ben Schrank. In it, the fictitious author of a classic self-help book
titled "Marriage Is a Canoe" questions his own advice when he must put
it into practice for himself.
"Self-help is a very reliable moneymaking category and a huge market,"
said Ron Shoop, Random House's district sales manager for Northern
California. "Not everybody reads fiction, but everyone is concerned
with overcoming their problems and limitations."
Authors of self-help books include licensed medical professionals and
clergy who espouse 21st-century versions of spirituality, as well as
self-actualization masterminds and inspired gurus promising to raise
our consciousness to other planes. But essentially anyone with advice
to give can get into the act.
One recent self-help title that went to the top of the charts is
"Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking" by
former Wall Street lawyer Susan Cain ("I always wanted to be a
psychologist," she said).
"Quiet" explores the dynamics between introversion and extroversion.
It was a runaway best seller that made "best books of 2012" lists
around the country. Cain's presentation on the TED Talks video site
has been viewed more than 3.5 million times.
"My book has real takeaways that people can use," Cain said. "It's a
gigantic permission slip that entitles introverted people to be who
they are for the first time in their lives. Every day I get emails
from them telling me the book has changed their (approaches to) their
jobs, leisure time and social (interactions)."
As one of the nonfiction-reviews editors for Publishers Weekly
magazine, Samuel Slaton looks at hundreds of self-help titles each
month. He said the economic downturn has been a boon for self-help.
"There are a lot of books geared toward how to overcome daily
anxiety," he said. "The recession has created a market for them. A lot
of them offer a combination of inspirational anecdotes and practical
things people can do."
Slaton mentioned one upcoming title with that template, "The End of
Worry" by self-help veterans Will van der Hart, an Anglican vicar, and
psychiatrist Rob Waller.
"They're coming at the problem of worry and anxiety from two
perspectives," Slaton said, "so there's something there for religious
types and skeptics alike."
As for the overall effectiveness of self-help books, Slaton noted,
"Maybe just by honoring the impulse to be 'better,' people see a
positive effect."
But that's not the whole story, according to Micki McGee, a cultural
critic and Fordham University sociology professor who wrote the 2007
book "Self Help, Inc."
"We look to self-help books for answers, but the literature only
serves as a kind of balm," she said. "They remain an incredibly
successful marketplace product because they claim they're going to
solve the problems of your life, but your life is lived in a context
where the problems are going to be ever-changing and constant. They
work enough to make you read the next one, but if they really worked,
people would fix themselves and the market would disappear. That's not
happening."
Some self-help books do provide inspiration and hope, she allowed, and
"a chance of making people at least feel better -- even if the actual
lived conditions of their lives are not substantially improved. But
when people are hopeful, they don't resort to desperate measures."
Online journalist and social critic Steve Salerno lays out a much
darker view of the self-help-book industry in 2006's "Sham: How the
Self-Help Movement Made America Helpless."
"We're addicted to these books because we all think we have the power
to be something different Tuesday morning from what we went to bed as
Monday night," he said.
"The self-help movement has become a self-perpetuating business model
that is so enormously profitable it attracts get-rich-quick types who
want a piece of the pie," he added.
Too many self-help-book authors lack credentials, he contends, "doing
the equivalent of practicing psychology without a license, selling
regimens that have never been tested or proven, with no reliable way
of tracking who benefits other than the authors."
Sandra Dolby, who read 300 self-help titles in order to write 2008's
"Self-Help Books: Why Americans Keep Reading Them," has a slightly
softer view.
"I like the pattern that most (self-help books) follow, which is to
tell a story and then say, 'Here's what this story suggests you should
do,' " said Dolby, a retired professor of folklore at Indiana
University. "Reading them is like going to a trusted friend to ask for
advice, and listening to them tell you what they think you should do
and why it would be a good thing. Most people like the idea of
self-education and discovery, which is encouraging."
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