Self-Help Neighborhood Council, Kansas City
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Self-help or self-improvement is a self-guided improvement''APA Dictionary of Physicology'', 1st ed., Gary R. VandenBos, ed., Washington: American Psychological Association, 2007.—economically, intellectually, or emotionally—often with a substantial
psychological Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries between t ...
basis. When engaged in self-help, people often use publicly available information or
support groups In a support group, members provide each other with various types of help, usually nonprofessional and nonmaterial, for a particular shared, usually burdensome, characteristic. Members with the same issues can come together for sharing coping str ...
, on the Internet as well as in person, where people in similar situations join together. From early examples in self-driven legal practiceSteve Salerno (2005) ''Sham: How the Self-Help Movement Made America Helpless'', pp. 24–25 and home-spun advice, the connotations of the word have spread and often apply particularly to education,
business Business is the practice of making one's living or making money by producing or Trade, buying and selling Product (business), products (such as goods and Service (economics), services). It is also "any activity or enterprise entered into for pr ...
, psychology and
psychotherapy Psychotherapy (also psychological therapy, talk therapy, or talking therapy) is the use of psychological methods, particularly when based on regular personal interaction, to help a person change behavior, increase happiness, and overcome pro ...
, commonly distributed through the popular genre of self-help books. According to the ''APA Dictionary of Psychology'', potential benefits of self-help groups that professionals may not be able to provide include friendship, emotional support, experiential knowledge, identity, meaningful roles, and a sense of belonging. Many different self-help group programs exist, each with its own focus, techniques, associated beliefs, proponents and in some cases, leaders. Concepts and terms originating in self-help culture and Twelve-Step culture, such as recovery, dysfunctional families, and
codependency In sociology, codependency is a theory that attempts to explain imbalanced relationships where one person enables another person's self-destructive behavior such as addiction, poor mental health, immaturity, irresponsibility, or under-achiev ...
have become firmly integrated in mainstream language. Groups associated with health conditions may consist of patients and caregivers. As well as featuring long-time members sharing experiences, these health groups can become
support group In a support group, members provide each other with various types of help, usually nonprofessional and nonmaterial, for a particular shared, usually burdensome, characteristic. Members with the same issues can come together for sharing coping str ...
s and clearing-houses for educational material. Those who help themselves by learning and identifying health problems can be said to exemplify self-help, while self-help groups can be seen more as peer-to-peer or mutual-support groups.


History

Within classical antiquity,
Hesiod Hesiod (; grc-gre, Ἡσίοδος ''Hēsíodos'') was an ancient Greek poet generally thought to have been active between 750 and 650 BC, around the same time as Homer. He is generally regarded by western authors as 'the first written poet i ...
's '' Works and Days'' "opens with moral remonstrances, hammered home in every way that Hesiod can think of." The
Stoics Stoicism is a school of Hellenistic philosophy founded by Zeno of Citium in Athens in the early 3rd century BCE. It is a philosophy of personal virtue ethics informed by its system of logic and its views on the natural world, asserting that th ...
offered ethical advice "on the notion of ''eudaimonia''—of well-being, welfare, flourishing." The genre of mirror-of-princes writings, which has a long history in
Greco-Roman The Greco-Roman civilization (; also Greco-Roman culture; spelled Graeco-Roman in the Commonwealth), as understood by modern scholars and writers, includes the geographical regions and countries that culturally—and so historically—were di ...
and Western Renaissance literature, represents a secular cognate of Biblical wisdom-literature. Proverbs from many periods, collected and uncollected, embody traditional moral and practical advice of diverse cultures. The hyphenated compound word "self-help" often appeared in the 1800s in a legal context, referring to the doctrine that a party in a dispute has the right to use lawful means on their own initiative to remedy a wrong. For some, George Combe's ''Constitution'' 828 in the way that it advocated personal responsibility and the possibility of naturally sanctioned self-improvement through education or proper self-control, largely inaugurated the self-help movement;" In 1841, an essay by Ralph Waldo Emerson, entitled Compensation, was published suggesting "every man in his lifetime needs to thank his faults" and "acquire habits of ''self-help''" as "our strength grows out of our weakness."
Samuel Smiles Samuel Smiles (23 December 1812 – 16 April 1904) was a British author and government reformer. Although he campaigned on a Chartist platform, he promoted the idea that more progress would come from new attitudes than from new laws. His prim ...
(1812–1904) published the first self-consciously personal-development "self-help" book—entitled ''
Self-Help Self-help or self-improvement is a self-guided improvement''APA Dictionary of Physicology'', 1st ed., Gary R. VandenBos, ed., Washington: American Psychological Association, 2007.—economically, intellectually, or emotionally—often with a subst ...
''—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 had also appeared previously in Benjamin Franklin's '' Poor Richard's Almanack'' (1733–1758).


Early 20th century

In 1902, James Allen published '' As a Man Thinketh'', which proceeds from the conviction that "a man is literally what he thinks, his character being the complete sum of all his thoughts." Noble thoughts, the book maintains, make for a noble person, whilst lowly thoughts make for a miserable person. Several decades later, Napoleon Hill's '' Think and Grow Rich'' (1937) described the use of repeated positive thoughts to attract happiness and wealth by tapping into an " Infinite Intelligence". Around the same time, in 1936, Dale Carnegie further developed the genre with '' How to Win Friends and Influence People''. Having failed in several careers, Carnegie became fascinated with success and its link to self-confidence, and his books have since sold over 50 million copies.


The market

Within the context of the market, group and corporate attempts to aid the "seeker" have moved into the "self-help" marketplace, with Large Group Awareness Trainings, LGATs and
psychotherapy Psychotherapy (also psychological therapy, talk therapy, or talking therapy) is the use of psychological methods, particularly when based on regular personal interaction, to help a person change behavior, increase happiness, and overcome pro ...
systems represented. These offer more-or-less prepackaged solutions to instruct people seeking their own individual betterment, just as "the literature of self-improvement directs the reader to familiar frameworks...what the French '' fin de siècle'' social theorist
Gabriel Tarde Gabriel Tarde (; in full Jean-Gabriel De Tarde; 12 March 1843 – 13 May 1904) was a French sociologist, criminologist and social psychologist who conceived sociology as based on small psychological interactions among individuals (much as i ...
called 'the grooves of borrowed thought'." A subgenre of self-help book series also exists: such as the ''for Dummies'' guides and '' The Complete Idiot's Guide to...''—compare how-to books.


Statistics

At the start of the 21st century, "the self-improvement industry, inclusive of books, seminars, audio and video products, and personal coaching, assaid to constitute a 2.48-billion dollars-a-year industry" in the United States alone. By 2006, research firm Marketdata estimated the "self-improvement" market in the U.S. as worth more than $9 billion—including
infomercial An infomercial is a form of television commercial that resembles regular TV programming yet is intended to promote or sell a product, service or idea. It generally includes a toll-free telephone number or website. Most often used as a form of dire ...
s, mail-order catalogs, holistic institutes, books,
audio cassette The Compact Cassette or Musicassette (MC), also commonly called the tape cassette, cassette tape, audio cassette, or simply tape or cassette, is an analog magnetic tape recording format for audio recording and playback. Invented by Lou Otten ...
s, motivation-speaker seminars, the
personal coaching Coaching is a form of development in which an experienced person, called a ''coach'', supports a learner or client in achieving a specific personal or professional goal by providing training and guidance. The learner is sometimes called a ''coa ...
market,
weight-loss Weight loss, in the context of medicine, health, or physical fitness, refers to a reduction of the total body mass, by a mean loss of fluid, body fat (adipose tissue), or lean mass (namely bone mineral deposits, muscle, tendon, and other conn ...
and stress-management programs. Marketdata projected that the total market size would grow to over $11 billion by 2008. In 2012 Laura Vanderkam wrote of a turnover of 12 billion dollars. In 2013 Kathryn Schulz examined "an $11 billion industry".


Self-help and professional service delivery

Self-help and mutual-help are very different from—though they may complement—service delivery by professionals: note, for example, the interface between local self-help and International Aid's service delivery model. Conflicts can and do arise on that interface, however, with some professionals considering that "the twelve-step approach encourages a kind of contemporary version of 19th-century amateurism or enthusiasm in which self-examination and very general social observations are enough to draw rather large conclusions."


Research

The rise of self-help culture has inevitably led to boundary disputes with other approaches and disciplines. Some would object to their classification as "self-help" literature, as with " Deborah Tannen's denial of the self-help role of her books" so as to maintain her academic credibility, aware of the danger that "writing a book that becomes a popular success...all but ensures that one's work will lose its long-term legitimacy." Placebo effects can never be wholly discounted. Thus careful studies of "the power of subliminal self-help tapes...showed that their content had no real effect...But that's not what the participants thought." "If they thought they'd listened to a self-esteem tape (even though half the labels were wrong), they felt that their self-esteem had gone up. No wonder people keep buying subliminal tape: even though the tapes don't work, people think they do." One might then see much of the self-help industry as part of the "skin trades. People need haircuts, massage, dentistry, wigs and glasses, sociology and surgery, as well as love and advice."—a skin trade, "not a profession and a science" Its practitioners would thus be functioning as "part of the personal service industry rather than as mental health professionals." While "there is no proof that twelve-step programs 'are superior to any other intervention in reducing alcohol dependence or alcohol-related problems'," at the same time it is clear that "there is something about 'roguishness' itself which is curative." Thus for example "smoking increases mortality risk by a factor of just 1.6, while social isolation does so by a factor of 2.0...suggest NGan added value to self-help groups such as
Alcoholics Anonymous Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) is an international mutual aid fellowship of alcoholics dedicated to abstinence-based recovery from alcoholism through its spiritually-inclined Twelve Step program. Following its Twelve Traditions, AA is non-professi ...
as surrogate communities." Some psychologists advocate a
positive psychology Positive psychology is the scientific study of what makes life most worth living, focusing on both individual and societal well-being. It studies "positive subjective experience, positive individual traits, and positive institutions...it aims t ...
, and explicitly embrace an empirical self-help philosophy; "the role of positive psychology is to become a bridge between the ivory tower and the main street—between the rigor of academe and the fun of the self-help movement." They aim to refine the self-improvement field by way of an intentional increase in scientifically sound research and well-engineered models. The division of focus and methodologies has produced several sub fields, in particular: general positive psychology, focusing primarily on the study of psychological phenomenon and effects; and
personal effectiveness Personal effectiveness is a branch of the self-help movement dealing with success, goals, and related concepts. Personal effectiveness integrates some ideas from “the power of positive thinking” and positive psychology but in general it is d ...
, focusing primarily on analysis, design and implementation of qualitative personal growth. This includes the intentional training of new patterns of thought and feeling. As business strategy communicator Don Tapscott puts it, "The design industry is something done to us. I'm proposing we each become designers. But I suppose 'I love the way she thinks' could take on new meaning." Both self-talk, the propensity to engage in verbal or mental self-directed conversation and thought, and social support can be used as instruments of self-improvement, often by empowering, action-promoting messages. Psychologists have designed a series of experiments that are intended to shed light on how self-talk can result in self-improvement. In general, research has shown that people prefer to use second-person pronouns over first-person pronouns when engaging in self-talk to achieve goals, regulate one’s own behavior, thoughts, or emotions, and facilitate performance. If self-talk has the expected effect, then writing about personal problems using language from their friends’ perspective should result in a greater amount of motivational and emotional benefits comparing to using language from their own perspective. When you need to finish a difficult task and you are not willing to do something to finish this task, trying to write a few sentences or goals imaging what your friends have told you gives you more motivational resources comparing to you write to yourself. Research done by Ireland and others have revealed that, as expected, when people are writing using many physical and mental words or even typing a standard prompt with these kinds of words, adopting a friend’s perspective while freely writing about a personal challenge can help increase people’s intention to improve self-control by promoting the positivity of emotions such as pride and satisfaction, which can motivate people to reach their goal. The use of self-talk goes beyond the scope of self-improvement for performing certain activities, self-talk as a linguistic form of self-help also plays a very important role in regulating people’s emotions under social stress. First of all, people using non-first-person language tend to exhibit a higher level of visual self-distancing during the process of introspection, indicating that using non-first-person pronouns and one’s own name may result in enhanced self-distancing.Kross, E., Bruehlman-Senecal, E., Park, J., Burson, A., Dougherty, A., Shablack, H., & Ayduk, O. (2014). Self-talk as a regulatory mechanism: How you do it matters. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 106(2), 304 More importantly, this specific form of self-help also has been found can enhance people’s ability to regulate their thoughts, feelings, and behavior under social stress, which would lead them to appraise social-anxiety-provoking events in more challenging and less threatening terms. Additionally, these self-help behaviors also demonstrate noticeable self-regulatory effects through the process of social interactions, regardless of their dispositional vulnerability to social anxiety. One of the fundamental pillars of self-help is the law of attraction, which can be described as "like attracts like." The primary focus of many self-help books is the concept of the law of attraction. Rhonda Byrne has stressed this law in her books the Secret, the Magic, and the Power. In addition, Dr. Joseph Murphy's "The power of your subconscious mind revolves around this fantabulous law. The concept is a heaven for people seeking self-healing and desires to help themselves with the power of positivity.


Criticism

Scholars have targeted many self-help claims as misleading and incorrect. In 2005,
Steve Salerno Steve Salerno is an American nonfiction author, essayist and educator who has written three books, including ''SHAM: How the Self-Help Movement Made America Helpless'', a critique of the self-help movement, and ''Deadly Blessing'', about the de ...
portrayed the American 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. "Salerno says that 80 percent of self-help and motivational customers are repeat customers and they keep coming back 'whether the program worked for them or not." Others similarly point out that with self-help books "supply increases the demand… The more people read them, the more they think they need them… more like an addiction than an alliance." Self-help writers have been described as working "in the area of the ideological, the imagined, the narrativized… although a veneer of scientism permeates the rwork, there is also an underlying armature of moralizing." Christopher Buckley in his book ''
God Is My Broker ''God Is My Broker'' () is a satirical book written by Christopher Buckley and John Tierney, published in 1998 by Random House which parodies self-help books, such as those of Deepak Chopra, whose works are particularly singled out. The protag ...
'' asserts: "The only way to get rich from a self-help book is to write one". In 1976, and a decade later in 1987, Gerald Rosen raised concerns that psychologists were promoting untested self-help books with exaggerated claims rather than conducting studies that could advance the effectiveness of these programs to help the public. Rosen noted the potential benefits of self-help but cautioned that good intentions were not sufficient to assure the efficacy and safety of self-administered instructional programs. Some 40 years later, Rosen and colleagues have observed that many psychologists continue to promote untested self-help programs, rather than contribute to the meaningful advancement of self-help.


In the media

Kathryn Schulz suggests that "the underlying theory of the self-help industry is contradicted by the self-help industry’s existence".


Parodies and fictional analogies

The self-help world has become the target of parodies. Walker Percy's odd genre-busting '' Lost in the Cosmos'' has been described as "a parody of self-help books, a philosophy textbook, and a collection of short stories, quizzes, diagrams, thought experiments, mathematical formulas, made-up dialogue". In their 2006 book ''Secrets of The SuperOptimist'', authors W.R. Morton and Nathaniel Whitten revealed the concept of "super optimism" as a humorous antidote to the overblown self-help book category. In his comedy special ''
Complaints and Grievances ''Complaints and Grievances'' is the 17th album and twelfth HBO stand-up special by comedian George Carlin. Its working title was ''I Kinda Like It When a Lot of People Die'', but it was renamed following the September 11, 2001 attacks. Another ...
'' (2001), George Carlin observes that there is "no such thing" as self-help: anyone looking for help from someone else does not technically get "self" help; and one who accomplishes something without help, did not need help to begin with. In
Margaret Atwood Margaret Eleanor Atwood (born November 18, 1939) is a Canadian poet, novelist, literary critic, essayist, teacher, environmental activist, and inventor. Since 1961, she has published 18 books of poetry, 18 novels, 11 books of non-fiction, nin ...
's semi-satiric dystopia ''
Oryx and Crake ''Oryx and Crake'' is a 2003 novel by Canadian author Margaret Atwood. She has described the novel as speculative fiction and adventure romance, rather than pure science fiction, because it does not deal with things "we can't yet do or begin to d ...
'', university literary studies have declined to the point that the protagonist, Snowman, is instructed to write his thesis on self-help books as literature; more revealing of the authors and of the society that produced them than genuinely helpful.


See also

*
Internal locus of control Locus of control is the degree to which people believe that they, as opposed to external forces (beyond their influence), have control over the outcome of events in their lives. The concept was developed by Julian B. Rotter in 1954, and has sinc ...
*
Law of attraction (New Thought) The law of attraction is the New Thought spiritual belief that positive or negative thoughts bring positive or negative experiences into a person's life.Whittaker, SSecret attraction, ''The Montreal Gazette'', 12 May 2007. The belief is based ...
* Arete * Napoleon Hill * Conduct book * Think and Grow Rich *
New Thought Movement The New Thought movement (also Higher Thought) is a spiritual movement that coalesced in the United States in the early 19th century. New Thought was seen by its adherents as succeeding "ancient thought", accumulated wisdom and philosophy from ...
* Outline of self * The Secret (2006 film) * Dale Carnegie *
Personal development Personal development or self improvement consists of activities that develop a person's capabilities and potential, build human capital, facilitate employability, and enhance quality of life and the realization of dreams and aspirations. Persona ...
* Preschool education *
Positive psychology Positive psychology is the scientific study of what makes life most worth living, focusing on both individual and societal well-being. It studies "positive subjective experience, positive individual traits, and positive institutions...it aims t ...
* Self-sustainability * Self-experimentation * Self-healing * Self-taught *
Lucinda Redick Bassett Lucinda Bassett (born February 28, 1956) is an American self-help author and motivational speaker. Her book ''From Panic to Power: Proven Techniques to Calm Your Anxieties, Conquer Your Fears, and Put You in Control of Your Life'' is an internatio ...
* Self (psychology) * Self-help groups for mental health * Mirror-of-princes writing * Mutual aid society *
Mutual self-help housing Mutual self-help housing is a government program in the United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists ...
* Sophism * Twelve-step program * List of twelve-step groups * Individualism


References


External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Self-Help Personal development Self-care