Anthropologists have tried to make the study of worldview a more precise art. They have given us helpful units of comparison. But the study of worldview shared by a diverse and well-educated population is potentially much more complicated than would be the study of worldview shared by a homogeneous, traditional culture. And in either case it is not an easy task, as the "stuff" of worldview is embedded within the culture and is variously affected by the individual voices that are recognized as articulating it. Still, I think that some light might be shed on this complex issue of American worldview through an examination of the self-help books that are currently so popular. Ultimately, worldview is best studied through an ethnographic process-eliciting individual responses to a specific set of research questions. But a careful study of self-help books can be a first step in this process.

The writers of popular nonfiction are by definition intentional "authors" with every desire that their works be widely read and widely sold, even become best -sellers. This tradition of the popular nonfiction paperback has not always been a part of the American publishing scene. Just as German literary historian Rolf Engelsing argued in Der Burger als Leser that in Europe, the nature of reading as an activity was itself transformed by the greater availability of books in the nineteenth century (see Davidson, 1989, 15), we could argue here that the growth of the paperback book industry in the 1960s changed the nature of book buying and consumption in America. The low price and easy availability of paperback books in the past four decades means that readers can now easily buy books that, with little regard for cost, they mayor may not read, may never finish, may sell to a used-bookseller or recycle at a garage sale, or may keep and treasure while buying a second or third copy to give to friends. The convenient technology and booming marketplace have supported the growth of popular literature, both fiction and nonfiction. It will be interesting to see how the Internet and desktop publishing will affect our literary behavior over the next few decades. The last half of the twentieth century may well represent a unique period in publishing history, one that fostered this boom in nonfiction paperbacks. But there are other catalysts that have in particular spurred the development of a popular nonfiction tradition, especially nonfiction usually designated (often on the back cover) as "self-help" or spiritual enrichment.

Thus the popular nonfiction tradition that has expanded over the last four decades had its beginnings in the ancient fables and proverbs. It has flourished for a number of reasons, but four ingredients that have been particularly influential are individualism and the concept of the "self," the tradition of adult self-education, the literary tradition of the didactic essay, and the new paradigm of social activism. These factors, along with developments in book production and marketing, the proliferation of training and self-improvement workshops and classes, and a growing introspection among those responsible for American commercial and political activities, have encouraged the emergence of a popular nonfiction tradition.

 

Overview

Most self-help books, are of the essay type, and rhetoric is the winning card in a good essay. The essay form invites the writer to pull out all the stops; it is nonfiction's poetry, the writer's chance to use language and effective example to intrigue, stimulate, and ultimately persuade the reader. Little wonder, then, that many of the most successful selfhelp books adopting the expanded essay form are often metaphorical even in their titles: James A. Kitchens's Talking to Ducks (1994); Wayne Dyer's Your Erroneous Zones or The Sky's the Limit (1980) or Real Magic (1992); Sam Keen's Fire in the Belly (1991); Claudia Bepko and Jo-Ann Krestan's Too Good for Her Own Good (1990); Harriet Goldhor Lerner's Dance of Anger (1985) or The Dance of Deception (1993); Lillian B. Rubin's Intimate Strangers (1983); Gary Zukav's Dancing Wu Li Masters (1979) or The Seat of the Soul (1999); Robert H. Hopcke's There Are No Accidents (1997); Wayne Muller's Legacy of the Heart (1992); even Scott Peck's Road Less Traveled or John Gray's runaway bestseller Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus (1992). The objective in all such expanded essays is to sell the thesis, to persuade readers toward a new, enlightened perspective, and perhaps as well to convince them to try new behaviors that just might lead to a happier life.

But not all writers of self-help books are eager to take on the role of nonfiction's poets. Some prefer the more sober form of the academic study subtype, the form closest to the scholarly genres they may be used to. The style, content, and function of the academic study subtype, nevertheless, are different from those associated with model academic studies written by scholars with the aim of addressing some thorny and unresolved issue in their discipline. It is a fact, however, that the academic study subtype of the selfhelp book is usually written by a Ph.D. who has put on his or her popular writer hat or teamed up with a second writer or editor whose writing style is more suited to a lay audience. The distinctive feature of the academic study subtype is the book's emphasis on information over instruction. While it is clear that the author has presented the material in such a way that the reader will find it easy to "use" it-that is, the information is more accessible than would be a more scholarly presentation-still, the author has not assumed a more direct instructive role. The book is intended to enlighten, and the author seems motivated by a desire to help people improve their understanding of life or the cosmos, but it is left up to the reader to determine how that new enlightenment might be applied in daily life-the opposite extreme of the how-to book.

One author who uses the academic study subtype is Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, a productive scholar with publications in traditional academic journals and university presses. However, his first really popular publication with a trade book press (Harper and Row) was Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (1990). In his preface to that book, he articulates a position that I believe is held either consciously or implicitly by most writers who use the academic study form: This book summarizes, for a general audience, decades of research on the positive aspects of human experience-joy, creativity, the process of total involvement with life I call flow. To take this step is somewhat dangerous, because as soon as one strays from the stylized constraints of academic prose, it is easy to become careless or overly enthusiastic about such a topic. What follows, however, is not a popular book that gives insider tips about how to be happy .... There is no promise of easy short-cuts in these pages. But for readers who care about such things, there should be enough information to make possible the transition from theory to practice. (xi)

Csikszentmihalyi goes on to explain that he has tried to make the book "user friendly," having avoided "footnotes, references, and other tools scholars usually employ in their technical writing" but including easily accessible endnotes and a substantial bibliography. He examines the topic of his book through the process of summarizing past research and integrating its lessons into his own thesis. He is eager to bring enlightenment to his readers, but he leaves the "transition from theory to practice" up to them.

Other examples of the academic study subtype include such books as Gail Sheehy's bestselling Passages: Predictable Crises of Adult Life (1974), Ellen J. Langer's Mindfulness (1989), Robert L. Van de Castle's Our Dreaming Mind (1994), David Darling's Soul Search: A Scientist Explores the Afterlife (1995), and Paul Brockelman's Cosmology and Creation: The Spiritual Significance of Contemporary Cosmology (1999). Some authors, such as Peter Senge (The Fifth Discipline) and Daniel G{'t1eman (Emotional Intelligence [1995]), follow their popular research-based books with a related workbook or guide that makes suggestions on how to apply the"material presented in their earlier books (Peter Senge, Art Kleiner, Charlotte Roberts, Richard B. Ross, and Bryan J. Smith, The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook [1994], and Daniel Goleman, Working with Emotional Intelligence [1998]).

The academic study subtype of the self-help book is the one most obviously in the tradition of self- improvement established early on in American culture through the Chautauqua movement and other such forums for involved public intellectuals. Lectures in that context were expected to be informative, not necessarily instructive. Similarly, some self-help books are offered in something very much like that traditional academic study form. The author has confidence in the effectiveness of the academic study form and chooses to write in a form as close to it as possible. Yet in choosing to address a popular audience, the writer, in a way, sets aside for the moment full participation in the culture of his or her discipline and instead moves into another culture group-that of self-help book writers-and brings along a form that can serve there as well. Still, books in the self-help tradition are distinctive by more than form alone.

Along with content, it is the function of self-help books that sets them apart. They are intended to be educational, and supposedly, when effective, they will not only enlighten the reader but also transform or convert the reader into a happier and more successful person. In terms of the actual consequences of reading self-help books, there is little research available to document how effective such books are, little proof that people do in fact change their behavior as a result of reading self-help books. On the other hand, there is abundant anecdotal evidence that people have become self-help "literate" by virtue of having read many such books. They know what is supposed to be good for them, and they have enhanced their knowledge and understanding of the cosmos, relationships, and good mental, emotional, and spiritual health. They have gained some level of enlightenment. Clearly self-help books are successful at educating readers. But what exactly have they learned? We shall return to this question of applied self-education in the third part.

Other examples of the academic study subtype include such books as Gail Sheehy's bestselling Passages: Predictable Crises of Adult Life (1974), Ellen J. Langer's Mindfulness (1989), Robert L. Van de Castle's Our Dreaming Mind (1994), David Darling's Soul Search: A Scientist Explores the Afterlife (1995), and Paul Brockelman's Cosmology and Creation: The Spiritual Significance of Contemporary Cosn1Ology (1999). Some authors, such as Peter Senge (The Fifth Disciplme) and Daniel GbleI?an (Emotional Intelligence [1995]), follow their popular research-based books with a related workbook or guide that makes suggestions on how to apply the material presented in their earlier books (Peter Senge, Art Kleiner, Charlotte Roberts, Richard B. Ross, and Bryan J. Smith, The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook [1994], and Daniel Goleman, Working with Emotional Intelligence [1998]).

The intimate, personal tone of the essay apparently, permits the unabashed enthusiasm and sense of epiphany the writer is often required to keep subdued in more scholarly writing. Often the sense of personal ardor, even proselytizing, is apparent throughout a given book-for example, in Anthony Robbins's Awaken the Giant Within (1991) or Marsha Sinetar's Ordinary People as Monks and Mystics (1986) or Margaret J. Wheatley's Leadership and the New Science: Learning about Organization from an Orderly Universe (1992). Such authors typically include in their books not only a "story" about a particular incident that, like James Joyce's epiphanies, captures the essence of their conversion to the idea presented in the book but also a recurring tone of earnestness and zeal that conveys the authenticity of their emotional involvement with the topic at hand.

Wayne Dyer's account of finding and visiting his father's grave. In his book You'll See It When You Believe It (1989), Dyer relates the story in great detail, though he refers to the incident again in later books. In telling his story, he also comments on how the incident fits into his own decision to write the kind of books he is now best known for. He begins the narrative after relating how he, his mother, and his two brothers had been abandoned years before by his father.

In 1970 I received a call from a cousin I had never met, who had heard a rumor that my father had died in New Orleans. But I was in no position to investigate it. At the time I was completing my doctoral studies, moving to New York to become an associate professor at St. John's University, going through a painful divorce, and "stuck in place" when it came to my writing. In the next few years I co-authored several texts on counseling and psychotherapy. I knew that I did not want to continue writing for strictly professional audiences, and yet nothing else would come to me. I was stuck, personally (divorce), physically (overweight and out of shape), and spiritually (a pure pragmatist with no thoughts about metaphysics). (4)
Dyer goes on to tie the finding of his father's grave to his own eventual success as a writer of self help-books:

In one pure honest moment I experienced feeling forgiveness for the man who was my father and for the child I had been who wanted to know and love him. I felt a kind of peace and cleansing that was entirely new for me. Though I was unaware of it at the time, that simple act of forgiveness was the beginning of an entirely new level of experiencing life for me. I was on the threshold of a stage of my life that was to encompass worlds I could not even imagine in those days. When I went back to New York, miracles began to appear everywhere. I wrote Your Erroneous Zone? with ease. An agent arrived in my life through a series of "strange" circumstances at exactly the right moment .... In the years that followed, my writing seemed10 by taking me in new directions. I went from writing about "How to" utilize specific strategies in self- understanding to "How to" become a more assertive human being. I went from telling people how to do something to writing about the importance of being at transcendent levels as a human being. (7-8)

Dyer's own" conversion" has clearly been significant in bringing him into the society-or as Marilyn Ferguson calls it, the "conspiracy"-of self-help book authors. Most of the successful writers in the genre are people like Wayne Dyer-professional or academic individuals who experience their own enlightenment as a motivation, a force compelling them to educate others about the good effects their new understanding can produce if given a chance. And they are keenly aware that writing in the stuffy, though rigorous and academically sound, style of the scientist is no way to bring new converts into the fold. They take on the mantle of the self-help writer with all the earnest goodwill of a newly enlightened prophet.

Who are these writers? Some have started to attain a kind of cultural currency similar to that awarded literary figures or public intellectuals in the last century. When a book has had a significant impact, the author's name is remembered the next time a reader visits the bookstore, and if a new book by that same author is on the shelf (or the Internet list), it too will go into the shopping cart. Many authors have several books in print. Others become household names with the publication of only one very influential book. Some of these most successful authors are Joan Borysenko, John Bradshaw, Nathaniel Branden, Joyce Brothers, David Burns, Leo Buscaglia, Jack Canfield, Rachel Carson, Deepak Chopra, Norman Cousins, Stephen Covey, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Ram Dass, Barbara DeAngelis, Larry Dossey, Wayne Dyer, Robert Fulghum, Daniel Goleman, John Gray, Gerald G. Jampolsky, Susan Jeffers, Spencer Johnson, Jon Kabat-Zinn, Sam Keen, Ken Keyes Jr., Jack Kornfield, Peter Kramer, Harold Kushner, Alan Lakein, Harriet Goldhor Lerner, Phil McGraw, Thomas Moore, Scott Peck, Tom Peters, James Redfield, Anthony Robbins, Lillian Rubin, Theodore Rubin, Robert Schuller, Martin Seligman, Peter Senge, Gail Sheehy, Barbara Sher, Bernie Siegel, Marsha Sinetar, Deborah Tannen, Neale Donald Walsch, Marianne Williamson, and Gary Zukav.

Every month new writers offer their bid at selling wisdom to an eager public. I hesitate to suggest a profile for these writers. They are varied in background and personality, and yet there are some shared characteristics among them. They tend to be well educated. Though there are quite a few women among the authors of self-help books, there are more male than female authors. Most are white- though the number of African American writers is growing in the USA and also in India there self help authors who take on often the aura of a Guru, something also many American authors tend to do in their own way.

In the USA most are heterosexual and married, though often it is clear that they are in a second or third marriage; and almost all of them have found ways to promote their ideas through other media, lecture tours, workshops, and often even entire institutions established to teach their insights. Many of them are quite wealthy as a result of their writing.

These writers often represent a kind of popularizer only grudgingly tolerated within their academic disciplines. Some, like Wayne Dyer, can claim the privilege of writing for a popular audience by virtue of having already paid their dues to their discipline. Some, like Deborah Tannen, continue to write both scholarly and popular works, satisfying both "communities" of which they are a part. But in every discipline there is at least one ancestor, one figure of some stature, who broke away from the confines of scholarly writing and presented the discipline in a way that was both interesting and useful to readers outside the field. Earliest in American tradition was probably Benjamin Frank1in. His autobiography and many essays and aphorisms continue to influence thinking in the business community (see, for example, Peter Baida's Poor Richard's Legacy: American Business Values from Benjamin Franklin to Michael Milken [1990]). I have already mentioned the importance of early essayists such as Emerson and Thoreau, and certainly Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, and William James must be counted among the ancestors. But writers from the earlier part of the twentieth century are the more likely candidates for the title of ancestor, or perhaps literary mentor, people such as Abraham Maslow in psychology, Bertrand Russell in philosophy, C. S. Lewis in religion, John Dewey in education, Ruth Benedict in anthropology, Douglas McGregor in business, or Thomas Merton on the ascetic life. The more general category of "personal growth" as a subject has its outstanding mentors as well: Dale Carnegie, Norman Vincent Peale, and Maxwell Maltz, author of one of the earliest popular pocket-size paperbacks, Psycho-Cybernetics (1960).

These writers-both those who wrote the classics in self- help literature and the writers living and writing today-drew upon a tradition of scholarship and popular literature and upon their own experience. Often it has been the experience of seeing the effects of their educational or therapeutic activities in the lives of real people that has compelled these authors to write their first self-help books. Susan Jeffers comments in a later book on why she wrote her first self-help book, Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway. She recounts a story of how she decided quite spontaneously to offer a course at the New School for Social Research: Teaching that course was a turning point in my life. My experience was so positive and felt so right that I decided to leave my job often years to become a teacher and a writer of self-help books. It is significant that the name of that first class I taught was Feel the Fear and Do it Anyway! I often wonder if! had not listened to my intuition that fateful day, if the book of the same name or any of my other books (including this one) would ever have been written! (1996,84)

Clearly, for writers such as Susan Jeffers or Wayne Dyer, the decision to write a book that serves a different function, that takes them into a different community of writers, and that allows them to make what they see as a needed contribution is a decision made almost as a reluctant surprise, even to themselves. It is this quality that gives their decision the flavor of a conversion experience. And it is this experience of being converted or born into a new community of practitioners that comes through in the related practice of meta commentary both in the books themselves and more strikingly on the front and back covers of these popular paperbacks.

In the middle of the twentieth century, there emerged in many disciplines an interest in the "meta-" dimension of subjects of research-meta-language, meta-communications, meta-narrative, meta-fiction, even meta-folklore (see Dundes, 1966). "Meta-commentary" would be commentary about commentary. In the case of self-help books, meta-commentary has been an essential element in promoting, authenticating, and maintaining the practice of writing self-help literature. The most visible instance of meta-commentary occurs on the front and back covers of self-help books, and often inside on the first few pages of front matter as well. Here we find quotes praising the current or past books of the jacketed book's author along with an identification of the author of each quote via the title of one or more of his or her own selfhelp books. It is assumed that the potential buyer of the book will recognize some or all of the names and books of writers offering brief commentary through these quotes. It is an important means of promoting the book as well as of authenticating the author as a writer known and appreciated by other successful self-help book authors.

An apt example of metacommentary is in the introduction to Richard Carlson's Don't Sweat the Small Stuff ... and It's All Small Stuff., where Carlson writes:
I'd like to share a personal story that touched my heart and reinforced an important lesson-a story that demonstrates the essential message of this book. As you will see, the events of this story planted the seed for the title of the book you are about to read.

About a year ago a foreign publisher contacted me and requested that I attempt to get an endorsement from ~t-selling author Dr. Wayne Dyer for a foreign edition of my book You Can Feel Good Again. I told them that while Dr. Dyer had given me an endorsement for an earlier book, I had no idea whether he would consider doing so again. I told them, however, that I would try. Carlson then relates how he tried to reach author Wayne Dyer but failed to get an answer. He told the publisher to leave the endorsement off, but it was put on the cover anyway. Upset, he called his agent and had the books pulled. He continues: In the meantime I decided to write Dr. Dyer an apology, explaining the situation and all that was being done to rectify the problem. After a few weeks of wondering about what his response might be, I received a letter in the mail that said the following: "Richard. There are two rules for living in harmony. #1) Don't sweat the small stuff and #2) It's all small stuff. Let the quote stand. Love, Wayne."

That was it! No lectures, no threats. No hard feelings and no confrontation. Despite the obvious unethical use of his very famous name, he responded with grace and humility. (1997,2-4)

This is not to suggest that the writers of self-help books do not have egos. It is just that, the overwhelming message conveyed through most of the books is that writers in the field of personal growth and self-improvement constitute a supportive community, one that rejoices in each new addition to the collective insights that draw them together. Metacommentary in the books themselves often reinforces this message. For example, Susan Jeffers, in End the Struggle and Dance with Life, tells the following story:

A while ago, I gave a talk at an all-day symposium. Three other speakers were on the schedule, all of whom were household names in the self-help field. As I was getting ready to walk on the stage to face three-thousand people sitting in the audience, my adrenaline was flowing big time! My husband, Mark, kissed me on the cheek and whispered in my ear, "You'll be the best." In the past I had yelled hearing that, I needed to hear that! But this time, something didn't feel right about it. I suddenly became aware of the negative consequences of trying to be "the best." It created tension; it created alienation from the other speakers; and it took me off my Higher--Self purpose, which was to help others. As this Aha! hit me, I whispered in Mark's ear, "Thanks for the loving support, but next time just say, 'You'll be good enough.'" And with that letting go of my need to be the best, I walked confidently onto the stage, knowing that my only purpose was to put love into this world, not to compete with other people who are trying to put their love into the world as well. (1996,36-37)

Often authors refer to one another's work in their own books, or, more often, they offer the reader a quo~ from a given author without in fact identifying the source beyond simply listing the author's name. Another kind of meta-commentary that highlights the sense of community among self-help book writers is the growing number of anthologies or edited interviews that bring together some of the better-known individuals in the field of personal growth and spirituality. Handbook for the Soul, edited by Richard Carlson and Benjamin Shield (1995), for example, includes short essays by Lynn Andrews, Angeles Arrien, Sydney Banks, Melody Beattie, Jean Shinoda Bolen, Joan Borysenko, Nathaniel Branden, Jack Canfield, Richard Carlson, Stephen Covey, Wayne Dyer, Betty Eadie, Matthew Fox, Robert Fulghum, John Gray, Gerald G. Jampolsky, Jon Kabat-Zinn, Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, Harold Kushner, Linda Leonard, Stephen Levine, Thomas Moore, Ram Dass, Anne Wilson Schaef, Benjamin Shield, Bernie Siegel, Brian Weiss, Marianne Williamson, and Marion Woodman. All are writers whose books (as well as lectures and workshops) have brought them a certain celebrity status and have given them a ticket of admission into the club of self-help writers.

A few journalists have taken on the task of interviewing and writing about some of these popular authors. William Elliott, in his book Tying Rocks to Clouds: Meetings and Conversations with Wise and Spiritual People (1995), interviewed many of the people Carlson and Shield included in their anthology (more than twenty in all). And Tony Schwartz, in What Really Matters: Searching for Wisdom in America (1995), interviewed and researched the work of many of the individuals well known as wisdom writers or wisdom seekers. Though journalistic in tone and purpose, both books point to an emerging intellectual history of this often maligned and trivialized domain of popular discourse. And such historiography is the first necessity for identifying a field of study as having come into its own. It is the quintessential meta-commentary.

All is not as rosy as it may seem, however, as there has long been an abiding disparagement of self-help books, whether subtle or not so subtle, even by popular writers themselves. Often there seems to be an effort on the part the form-the chain of illustrative vignettes, too convenient to be fact, too predictable to be decent fiction. I have trouble imagining writing in the second person, the way advice books are written: You have this problem, you have that.I have more trouble yet deciding what it is 1 might know. (1997,15-16)

Kramer then proceeds to offer his reader a wonderfully creative book (I would classify it as a parable) in which his fictionalized mentor presents him with a kind of "dry run" on ...writing a self-help book, a book of advice. His mentor asks him to "advise" an acquaintance who seeks some help with answering the question "Should I leave?"-that is, should I end an intimate relationship? His mentor tells him that the person will come to see him in two hours. During that time, Kramer imagines who the acquaintance might be and writes out twenty different possible scenarios. The book is excellent, and it examines both the nature of advice itself (and by association the self-help book tradition) and the varying kinds of response to the question that make sense in light of each hypothetical situation and current psychological wisdom. Kramer's book playfully but effectively raises a serious question about whether academics-or anyone else-should take up this practice of writing self-help books.

In the next part, we shall look in earnest at some of the critiques that have been aimed, either directly or indirectly, at the self-help movement.

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