Self-help or self-improvement is a self-guided improvement
[''APA Dictionary of Physicology'', 1st ed., Gary R. VandenBos, ed., Washington: ]American Psychological Association
The American Psychological Association (APA) is the largest scientific and professional organization of psychologists in the United States, with over 133,000 members, including scientists, educators, clinicians, consultants, and students. It ha ...
, 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, on the Internet as well as in person, where people in similar situations join together.
From early examples in self-driven legal practice
[Steve 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
Education is a purposeful activity directed at achieving certain aims, such as transmitting knowledge or fostering skills and character traits. These aims may include the development of understanding, rationality, kindness, and honesty. Va ...
,
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
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 betwe ...
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 book
A self-help book is one that is written with the intention to instruct its readers on solving personal problems. The books take their name from ''Self-Help'', an 1859 best-seller by Samuel Smiles, but are also known and classified under "self-im ...
s. 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
Identity may refer to:
* Identity document
* Identity (philosophy)
* Identity (social science)
* Identity (mathematics)
Arts and entertainment Film and television
* ''Identity'' (1987 film), an Iranian film
* ''Identity'' (2003 film), ...
, meaningful roles, and a sense of belonging.
![Self Help Group](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/87/Self_Help_Group.jpg)
Many different self-help group programs exist, each with its own focus, techniques, associated beliefs, proponents and in some cases,
leader
Leadership, both as a research area and as a practical skill, encompasses the ability of an individual, group or organization to "lead", influence or guide other individuals, teams, or entire organizations. The word "leadership" often gets vi ...
s. Concepts and terms originating in self-help culture and
Twelve-Step
Twelve-step programs are international mutual aid programs supporting recovery from substance addictions, behavioral addictions and compulsions. Developed in the 1930s, the first twelve-step program, Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), aided its member ...
culture, such as
recovery
Recovery or Recover may refer to:
Arts and entertainment Books
* ''Recovery'' (novel), a Star Wars e-book
* Recovery Version, a translation of the Bible with footnotes published by Living Stream Ministry
Film and television
* ''Recovery'' (fil ...
,
dysfunctional families
A dysfunctional family is a family in which conflict, misbehavior, and often child neglect or abuse and sometimes even all of the above on the part of individual parents occur continuously and regularly, leading other members to accommodate such ...
, 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
caregiver
A caregiver or carer is a paid or unpaid member of a person's social network who helps them with activities of daily living. Since they have no specific professional training, they are often described as informal caregivers. Caregivers most commo ...
s. As well as featuring long-time members sharing
experience
Experience refers to conscious events in general, more specifically to perceptions, or to the practical knowledge and familiarity that is produced by these conscious processes. Understood as a conscious event in the widest sense, experience involv ...
s, 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
Classical antiquity (also the classical era, classical period or classical age) is the period of cultural history between the 8th century BC and the 5th century AD centred on the Mediterranean Sea, comprising the interlocking civilizations of ...
,
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
''Works and Days'' ( grc, Ἔργα καὶ Ἡμέραι, Érga kaì Hēmérai)The ''Works and Days'' is sometimes called by the Latin translation of the title, ''Opera et Dies''. Common abbreviations are ''WD'' and ''Op''. for ''Opera''. is a ...
'' "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 writing
Mirrors for princes ( la, specula principum) or mirrors of princes, are an educational literary genre, in a loose sense of the word, of political writings during the Early Middle Ages, the High Middle Ages, the late middle ages and the Renaissance. ...
s, 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
The Renaissance ( , ) , from , with the same meanings. is a period in European history marking the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and covering the 15th and 16th centuries, characterized by an effort to revive and surpass ideas ...
literature, represents a secular cognate of Biblical wisdom-literature.
Proverb
A proverb (from la, proverbium) is a simple and insightful, traditional saying that expresses a perceived truth based on common sense or experience. Proverbs are often metaphorical and use formulaic speech, formulaic language. A proverbial phra ...
s from many periods, collected and uncollected, embody traditional moral and practical advice of diverse cultures.
The hyphenated
compound
Compound may refer to:
Architecture and built environments
* Compound (enclosure), a cluster of buildings having a shared purpose, usually inside a fence or wall
** Compound (fortification), a version of the above fortified with defensive struct ...
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
George Combe (21 October 1788 – 14 August 1858) was a trained Scottish lawyer and a spokesman of the phrenological movement for over 20 years. He founded the Edinburgh Phrenological Society in 1820 and wrote a noted study, ''The Constitution o ...
's ''Constitution''
828
__NOTOC__
Year 828 ( DCCCXXVIII) was a leap year starting on Wednesday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar.
Events
By place
Byzantine Empire
* Siege of Syracuse: The Muslims under Asad ibn al-Furat defeat ...
in the way that it advocated
personal responsibility
In philosophy, moral responsibility is the status of morally deserving praise, blame, reward, or punishment for an act or omission in accordance with one's moral obligations.
Deciding what (if anything) counts as "morally obligatory" is a princi ...
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
Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803April 27, 1882), who went by his middle name Waldo, was an American essayist, lecturer, philosopher, abolitionist, and poet who led the transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century. He was seen as a champ ...
, 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
Maxim or Maksim may refer to:
Entertainment
* ''Maxim'' (magazine), an international men's magazine
** ''Maxim'' (Australia), the Australian edition
** ''Maxim'' (India), the Indian edition
*Maxim Radio, ''Maxim'' magazine's radio channel on Sir ...
that had also appeared previously in
Benjamin Franklin
Benjamin Franklin ( April 17, 1790) was an American polymath who was active as a writer, scientist, inventor, statesman, diplomat, printer, publisher, and political philosopher. Encyclopædia Britannica, Wood, 2021 Among the leading inte ...
's ''
Poor Richard's Almanack
''Poor Richard's Almanack'' (sometimes ''Almanac'') was a yearly almanac
An almanac (also spelled ''almanack'' and ''almanach'') is an annual publication listing a set of current information about one or multiple subjects. It includes inform ...
'' (1733–1758).
Early 20th century
In 1902,
James Allen published ''
As a Man Thinketh
''As a Man Thinketh'' is a self-help book by James Allen (author), James Allen, published in 1903. It was described by Allen as "... ealing
Ealing () is a district in West London, England, west of Charing Cross in the London Borough of Ealing. Ealing is the administrative centre of the borough and is identified as a major metropolitan centre in the London Plan.
Ealing was histor ...
with the power of thought, and particularly with the use and application of thought to happy and beau ...
'', 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
Oliver Napoleon Hill (October 26, 1883 – November 8, 1970) was an American self-help author. He is best known for his book ''Think and Grow Rich'' (1937), which is among the best-selling self-help books of all time. Hill's works insisted th ...
's ''
Think and Grow Rich
''Think and Grow Rich'' is a book written by Napoleon Hill in 1937 and promoted as a personal development and self-improvement book. He claimed to be inspired by a suggestion from business magnate and later-philanthropist Andrew Carnegie.
First ...
'' (1937) described the use of repeated
positive thoughts to attract happiness and wealth by tapping into an "
Infinite
Infinite may refer to:
Mathematics
*Infinite set, a set that is not a finite set
*Infinity, an abstract concept describing something without any limit
Music
* Infinite (group), a South Korean boy band
*''Infinite'' (EP), debut EP of American m ...
Intelligence".
Around the same time, in 1936,
Dale Carnegie
Dale Carnegie (; spelled Carnagey until c. 1922; November 24, 1888 – November 1, 1955) was an American writer and lecturer, and the developer of courses in self-improvement, salesmanship, corporate training, public speaking, and interpersonal ...
further developed the genre with ''
How to Win Friends and Influence People
''How to Win Friends and Influence People'' is a 1936 self-help book written by Dale Carnegie. Over 30 million copies have been sold worldwide, making it one of the best-selling books of all time.
Carnegie had been conducting business educat ...
''. Having failed in several careers, Carnegie became fascinated with success and its link to
self-confidence
Confidence is a state of being clear-headed either that a hypothesis or prediction is correct or that a chosen course of action is the best or most effective. Confidence comes from a Latin word 'fidere' which means "to trust"; therefore, having ...
, 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 Training
The term large-group awareness training (LGAT) refers to activities - usually offered by groups with links to the human potential movement - which claim to increase self-awareness and to bring about desirable transformations in individuals' perso ...
s, 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
() is a French term meaning "end of century,” a phrase which typically encompasses both the meaning of the similar English idiom "turn of the century" and also makes reference to the closing of one era and onset of another. Without context ...
'' 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 book
The Linux Documentation Project (LDP) is a dormant an all-volunteer project that maintains a large collection of GNU and Linux-related documentation and publishes the collection online. It began as a way for hackers to share their documentation wit ...
s.
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 catalog
Mail order is the buying of goods or services by mail delivery. The buyer places an order for the desired products with the merchant through some remote methods such as:
* Sending an order form in the mail
* Placing a telephone call
* Placing a ...
s,
holistic
Holism () is the idea that various systems (e.g. physical, biological, social) should be viewed as wholes, not merely as a collection of parts. The term "holism" was coined by Jan Smuts in his 1926 book ''Holism and Evolution''."holism, n." OED Onl ...
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 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
Kathryn Schulz is an American journalist and author. She is a staff writer at ''The New Yorker''. In 2016, she won the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing for her article on the risk of a major earthquake and tsunami in the Pacific Northwest.
B ...
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
Deborah Frances Tannen (born June 7, 1945) is an American author and professor of linguistics at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. Best known as the author of ''You Just Don't Understand'', she has been a McGraw Distinguished Lecturer at ...
'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
A placebo ( ) is a substance or treatment which is designed to have no therapeutic value. Common placebos include inert tablets (like sugar pills), inert injections (like Saline (medicine), saline), sham surgery, and other procedures.
In general ...
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
Don Tapscott (born June 1, 1947) is a Canadian business executive, author, consultant and speaker, who specializes in business strategy, organizational transformation and the role of technology in business and society. He is the CEO of the Tapsco ...
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 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
A self-help book is one that is written with the intention to instruct its readers on solving personal problems. The books take their name from ''Self-Help'', an 1859 best-seller by Samuel Smiles, but are also known and classified under "self-im ...
"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'' 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
Kathryn Schulz is an American journalist and author. She is a staff writer at ''The New Yorker''. In 2016, she won the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing for her article on the risk of a major earthquake and tsunami in the Pacific Northwest.
B ...
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
A parody, also known as a spoof, a satire, a send-up, a take-off, a lampoon, a play on (something), or a caricature, is a creative work designed to imitate, comment on, and/or mock its subject by means of satiric or ironic imitation. Often its sub ...
.
Walker Percy
Walker Percy, OSB (May 28, 1916 – May 10, 1990) was an American writer whose interests included philosophy and semiotics. Percy is noted for his philosophical novels set in and around New Orleans; his first, ''The Moviegoer'', won the Nat ...
's odd genre-busting ''
Lost in the Cosmos
''Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book'' is a mock self-help book by Walker Percy, published in 1983 by Farrar Straus & Giroux.
Organized into roughly four sections that explore ideas of the self, Percy's thesis is that the social ills ...
'' 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'' (2001),
George Carlin
George Denis Patrick Carlin (May 12, 1937 – June 22, 2008) was an American comedian, actor, author, and social critic. Regarded as one of the most important and influential stand-up comedians of all time, he was dubbed "the dean of countercul ...
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
*
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
''Arete'' (Greek: ) is a concept in ancient Greek thought that, in its most basic sense, refers to 'excellence' of any kind Liddell, H.G. & Scott, R. ''A Greek–English Lexicon'', 9th ed. (Oxford, 1940), s.v.br>—especially a person or thi ...
*
Napoleon Hill
Oliver Napoleon Hill (October 26, 1883 – November 8, 1970) was an American self-help author. He is best known for his book ''Think and Grow Rich'' (1937), which is among the best-selling self-help books of all time. Hill's works insisted th ...
*
Conduct book
Conduct books or conduct literature is a genre of books that attempt to educate the reader on social norms and ideals. As a genre, they began in the mid-to-late Middle Ages, although antecedents such as ''The Maxims of Ptahhotep'' (c. 2350 BC) a ...
*
Think and Grow Rich
''Think and Grow Rich'' is a book written by Napoleon Hill in 1937 and promoted as a personal development and self-improvement book. He claimed to be inspired by a suggestion from business magnate and later-philanthropist Andrew Carnegie.
First ...
*
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 following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to the human self:
Self – individuality, from one's own perspective. To each person, self is that person. Oneself can be a subject of philosophy, psychology and developm ...
*
The Secret (2006 film)
''The Secret'' is a 2006 Australian-American spirituality documentary consisting of a series of interviews designed to demonstrate the New Thought " law of attraction", the belief that everything one wants or needs can be satisfied by believi ...
*
Dale Carnegie
Dale Carnegie (; spelled Carnagey until c. 1922; November 24, 1888 – November 1, 1955) was an American writer and lecturer, and the developer of courses in self-improvement, salesmanship, corporate training, public speaking, and interpersonal ...
*
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
A preschool, also known as nursery school, pre-primary school, or play school or creche, is an educational establishment or learning space offering early childhood education to children before they begin compulsory education at primary school ...
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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 ...
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Self-sustainability
Self-sustainability and self-sufficiency are overlapping states of being in which a person or organization needs little or no help from, or interaction with, others. Self-sufficiency entails the self being enough (to fulfill needs), and a self-s ...
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Self-experimentation
Self-experimentation refers to the special case of single-subject research in which the experimenter conducts the experiment on themselves.
Usually this means that a single person is the designer, operator, subject, analyst, and user or reporter ...
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Self-healing
Self-healing refers to the process of recovery (generally from psychological disturbances, trauma, etc.), motivated by and directed by the patient, guided often only by instinct. Such a process encounters mixed fortunes due to its amateur nature, ...
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Self-taught
Autodidacticism (also autodidactism) or self-education (also self-learning and self-teaching) is education without the guidance of masters (such as teachers and professors) or institutions (such as schools). Generally, autodidacts are individua ...
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Lucinda Redick Bassett
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Self (psychology)
The psychology of self is the study of either the cognitive, conative or affective representation of one's identity, or the subject of experience. The earliest formulation of the self in modern psychology derived from the distinction between the ...
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Self-help groups for mental health
Self-help groups for mental health are voluntary associations of people who share a common desire to overcome mental illness or otherwise increase their level of cognitive or emotional wellbeing. Despite the different approaches, many of the psycho ...
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Mirror-of-princes writing
Mirrors for princes ( la, specula principum) or mirrors of princes, are an educational literary genre, in a loose sense of the word, of political writings during the Early Middle Ages, the High Middle Ages, the late middle ages and the Renaissance. ...
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Mutual aid society
A benefit society, fraternal benefit society, fraternal benefit order, friendly society, or mutual aid society is a society, an organization or a voluntary association formed to provide mutual aid, benefit, for instance insurance for relief fr ...
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Mutual self-help housing
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Sophism
A sophist ( el, σοφιστής, sophistes) was a teacher in ancient Greece in the fifth and fourth centuries BC. Sophists specialized in one or more subject areas, such as philosophy, rhetoric, music, athletics, and mathematics. They taught ' ...
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Twelve-step program
Twelve-step programs are international mutual aid programs supporting recovery from substance addictions, behavioral addictions and compulsions. Developed in the 1930s, the first twelve-step program, Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), aided its members ...
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List of twelve-step groups
This is a list of Wikipedia articles about specific twelve-step recovery programs and fellowships. These programs, and the groups of people who follow them, are based on the set of guiding principles for recovery from addictive, compulsive, or ...
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Individualism
Individualism is the moral stance, political philosophy, ideology and social outlook that emphasizes the intrinsic worth of the individual. Individualists promote the exercise of one's goals and desires and to value independence and self-reli ...
References
External links
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Self-Help
Personal development
Self-care