self-help

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The term self-help (or self-improvement) refers to self-guided improvement^[1]—economically, intellectually, or emotionally—often with a substantial psychological basis.

Self-help often takes place on the basis of self-reliance, of publicly available information, or of support groups where people in similar situations join together.^[1] From early exemplars in self-driven legal practice^[2] 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. 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.^[1]

Groups associated with health conditions may consist of patients and/or their carers. As well as featuring long-time members sharing experiences, these health groups can become lobby groups and clearing-houses for educational material. Those who help themselves by learning about health problems do exemplify self-help, while one might better regard help in this context as peer-to-peer support.

Sociological theories of self-help

An expansion of the technologies that empower individuals to conduct both trivial and profound activities binds together the diverse genres^{[clarification needed]} which apply self-help concepts^{[citation needed]}. The publishing of self-help books 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).^{[citation needed]} The Internet, with its ever-expanding agglomeration of commercial and information services, exemplifies movement toward self-help^{[clarification needed]} on a grand scale.^{[citation needed]}

History

The authors of the 1994 book First Things First invoke wisdom literature dating back as far as 2500 B.C. as a validation of their particular enumeration of fundamental human needs^[3]. Within classical antiquity, some^[who?] have seen the advice poetry of Hesiod, particularly his Works and Days, as an early adaptation of Near Eastern wisdom literature. The Stoics offered advice with a psychological flavor.^{[citation needed]} The genre of mirror-of-princes writings, which has a long history in Islamic 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 actual phrase "self-help" often appeared relatively early on 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.^[4]

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).

Some commentators^[who?] suggest that Dale Carnegie (1888-1955) began the self-help movement in the 20th century when he published How to Win Friends and Influence People in 1936. Having failed in several careers, Carnegie became fascinated with success and its link to self-confidence, and studied the subject for years. Carnegie's books have since sold over 50 million copies.^[5]

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.

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".^[6]

The self-help marketplace

It has been suggested that self help book be merged into this article or section. (Discuss)

Research firm Marketdata estimated the "self-improvement" market in the U.S. as worth more than $9 billion in 2006 — including infomercials, mail-order catalogs, holistic institutes, books, audio cassettes, motivation-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.^[7]

Within the context of this larger market, group and corporate attempts to aid the "seeker" have moved into the "self-help" marketplace, with LGATs^[8] and psychotherapy systems represented. These offer more-or-less pre-packaged solutions to instruct people seeking their own individual betterment.^{[citation needed]}

A sub-genre of self-help book series also exists: such as the for Dummies guides and the The Complete Idiot's Guide to....

Criticism

Some critics have suggested that self-help books and programs offer overly "easy answers" to difficult personal and social problems. Commentators have criticised 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."^[9] 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 self-help world has become the target of parodies. Walker Percy's Lost in the Cosmos^[10] (1983) offers a book-length parody. In their 2006 book Secrets of The Superoptimist, authors W.R. Morton and Nathanel Whitten revealed the concept of "superoptimism" as a humorous antidote to the overblown self-help book category. In his comedy special Complaints and Grievances, George Carlin observes that there is "no such thing" as self-help: if one is looking for help from someone else, they don't technically get "self" help; and if one accomplishes something by one's self, they didn't need help to begin with.^[11]

Scholars also have targeted 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.^[2] 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.

Commercial and non-profit organizations and institutions^[which?] offer a number of self-help groups and programs^[which?] based on psychological principles and overseen by mental-health professionals. Research has suggested that group psychotherapy for certain situations works as effectively as individual psychotherapy.^[12] Psychologists generally recommend empirically validated therapies, for example, cognitive behavioural therapy which has strong clinical evidence for treatment of various mental health disorders such as anxiety, depression and stress-related symptoms.^{[citation needed]}

See also

• Conduct book
• Do it yourself
• Mirror-of-princes writing
• Mutual Aid Societies
• Nightingale-Conant - a provider of self-help materials
• Personal Development
• Self-experimentation
• Self (psychology)
• Wisdom literature
• Self Help Development International - an Irish development agency
• Self-help groups for mental health
• Support groups

For articles on individual:

• Self-help books
• Self-help writers

Footnotes