Letters: Does self-help breed helplessness?

Letters: Salon:

An addictive substance

I'm a ghostwriter. I write self-help books, including some for some of the bigger names in the niche. I do it because it's interesting, pays well and gives me a chance to write, which is what I love. But the industry is still largely selling a legal version of crack cocaine to a largely impressionable, naive and self-deluding audience.

I've had this discussion with some top self-help gurus and they cynically laugh about the 'addiction' aspect of the self-help process. They know it's true and they profit hugely off it. It goes something like this:

1. Person reads self-help book.

2. Reader attends seminar, where she (there are more women than men) is sold thousands of dollars worth of tapes, CD sets, boot camps, etc. and pumped full of positive, can-do messages.

3. Person gets a huge buzz and feels like she is actually making substantial changes in her life simply by ATTENDING the event and BUYING stuff.

4. Person goes home. The buzz fades. The books and CDs collect dust on a shelf. Because most self-help programs are filled with glib, shallow advice and programs and little encouragement to become self-aware and face the fact that change is HARD, few consumers of this stuff make substantive changes in their lives.

5. Person wants to get that purposeful buzz back, so she buys the author's next book, goes to another seminar, attends a boot camp, pays $5,000 for coaching or a teleseminar, and so on. Buzz returns. She feels great for a few weeks more.

6. Repeat.

7. Self-help guru laughs all the way to the bank and never has to prove the effectiveness of his or her ideas because maybe 10% of the people who buy into them ever take any action at all.

This is a bit of an oversimplification, but not by much. As Niesslein found out, so much of the ideas in this subculture are facile, shallow and pretty lame. There are some good self-help figures out there, but I'd say they're maybe a 20% minority. The rest are all about getting 'em hooked and getting the check.
-- pacificwhim

Well done!

Both the idea of the book and the interviewer. All the questions I wanted to ask were here, and I thought Ms. Niesslein sounded funny and sensible. I'm a motivational psychologist, research-trained, who constantly rages at the "motivational speakers" and "motivational experts" whose main expertise is getting people fired up to buy their books, rather than in the actual field of motivational research. Indeed, David McClelland, the deceased leading light in this field, rejected approaches by any number of these people over the years wanting his name on their books and tapes.

But one person McClelland did respect, and I do too, is the only name mentioned positively twice in this interview: Martin Seligman. Unlike the Dr. Phils and Dr. Lauras, Dr. Seligman is a renowned research psychologist, like myself specializing in personality. I am not surprised that Ms. Niesslein liked him; he knows what can work and what is unlikely to work. Indeed, one of his books is called, simply enough, What You Can Change, What You Can't -- which sums up the reality of managing yourself nicely! As a psychologist, a consultant, and a sort of self-help author myself (on tapping motivational research to motivate writing -- see link), I recommend him highly. And I think I'll be buying Ms. Niesslein's book soon, as I want to support someone who can help people understand the smoke and mirrors surrounding most of these shills.
-- Steve Kelner (Ph.D)