Together with a new-religious aspect in the form of a worldview this time, p.2 of this investigation (as a whole, aptly written essay form), will show how in addition, the  folklore process fits in  here.

One is in the writing of the books. Though some books of popular nonfiction are strikingly original in tone or voice, the process involved in their composition can be compared to the performance of highly formulaic folklore, such as the epic. Like the griot singing an epic, the writer of a self-help book makes use of certain traditional resources and combines them in ways that have come to be expected by the audience or reader. Self-help books are formulaic and didactic; that is, they all follow a basic pattern of critique and solution. Other kinds of popular literature are often compared to folklore because of their formulaic nature-romances, mysteries, adventure stories, rags-to-riches sagas. But, as we saw in chapter 2, there is no one predictable style or subtype of popular nonfiction. Self-help books take a variety of forms-some parables or framed stories, some sequential steps in a guidebook, some analytical segments built upon a well-known text, some a series of short essays expanding upon a list of insights or themes. The formulaic structure of self-help books is more abstract, tied as it is to the overarching objective of teaching the reader to replace fearful and ineffective thinking and behavior with insight and acceptance of reality along with love and confidence and its many positive effects. However, many other elements of the books are more concrete and clearly traditional, and these other traditional elements are significant in our understanding of how writers create rhetorically effective self-help books.

If I were concerned only with the process of writing such books, we could move immediately to a discussion of what these traditional elements are and how they figure in the process of composition. In fact, chapters 5, 6, and 7 do exactly that; they examine the proverbs or sayings, the stories, and the traditional beliefs used in popular nonfiction. But my focus here is not simply on the authors and their performances as reflected in the variety of selfhelp books-or texts-examined in this study. Rather, an equally important question asks how these books are used by readers in their efforts to build a personal philosophy. This question highlights a second way the folklore process is implicated in the study of popular nonfiction. And, strangely, it is a question that strains our current understanding of what is meant by the "folklore process."

Normally, folklorists engage in ethnographic research in an effort to address how "artistic communication in small groups" happens. Even when we stretch the "small group" to include mass media productions or museum exhibits, we still expect to deal with "artistic communication" in some way; specifically, in what we can treat as a "text." We record a bluesman singing, a storyteller talking, children riddling; we photograph quilts and carvings, houses and barns; we videotape people dancing, teenagers playing the dozens, graffiti artists painting, healers healing, worshipers worshiping. Always we expect to provide ourselves with a text, an artifact, a performance we can then study. One of the best examples of this research practice can be seen in Richard Bauman's Story, Performance, and Event: Contextual Studies of Oral Narrative (1986), a book in which the author looks at a few oral stories and discusses at great length how the context affects the text-how everything in the storyteller's cultural surrounds conspire to give us those very particular texts.

While we  could work back from each book and try to account for its final form and content by citing the cultural and personal elements that influenced each author's literary "performance." In doing this, we would be invoking two assumptions currently a part of most folklore research: that the artifact we study is composed in performance and that the performer uses the cultural frame of reference shared with his or her audience to create a performance that is meaningful. There is no reason to quibble with these assumptions; they work very well for any "artistic" text actually any artifact at all that can be captured in some form that allows us to examine it. The problem here is that these assumptions derive from a verbal model. Performance theory grew out of studies of oral epic and the ethnography of speaking. It helps tremendously with the analysis of texts. Even the performance of a traditional ballad like "Barbara Allen," in which the singer tries to sing the song just as she learned it, benefits from attention to what happens as the performer brings to bear all of her cultural frame of reference as she sings.

An author like Wayne Dyer, writing his tenth best-selling self-help book, could fruitfully be studied using the methods associated withperformance theory. Dyer even helpfully cites other writers whose self-help books he has read. Careful analysis would reveal how the cultural context and the genre of self-help books have been incorporated, consciously or not, into the writing of his latest book. But when we look at how Dyer's book is used by an approximation of the stated assumption of this study-that the reader hopes to build a personal philosophy. The wildcard is the reader's own self and life history. In every case, the reader must supply concrete examples to flesh out the principles discussed by reflecting upon his or her own life.

Some insights can be gained from looking at research in adult education, in particular the work of French scholar Pierre Dominice. Along with American educators interested in what Jack Mezirow calls"transformative learning," Dominice examines the role that reflection on an individual's life history plays in solidifying .learning. In Dominice's book Learning from Our Lives: Using Educational Biographies with Adults (2000), we can see how the practice of creating "educational biographies" encourages adult learners to examine the effects of various educational experiences on their understanding oflife. In other words, there is an increasing awareness among adult educators that the process of reflection-of building a personal system of understanding, a personal philosophy-is essential to the overall process of adult education. And Dominice's book discusses at length the advantages in requiring adult learners to tie together their own life stories and their sense of themselves as people who have learned from the lives they live.

We can see, then, that without such required and formalized reflection, the more typical folklore process at play when a reader reads a self-help book leaves us with an un articulated "text." The object or thing that grows out of an individual's reading and thinking remains an unexpressed amalgam of inchoate ideas, a personal but tacit belief system. Nevertheless, this "product"-this unarticulated educational biography-functions well for the reader. And within it are some components that we can more easily identify and study-the traditional elements that make up the cultural frame of reference.

The notion of a "cultural frame of reference" derives from two separate concepts in the field of folklore research. When the two concepts are brought together, we have a particularly rich analytic tool. The first concept is tied to the common phrase "frame of reference." Usually, in day-to-day speech, this phrase is used to identify a set of accepted values or a body of shared information that allows a person to interpret the meaning or relative importance of a given item. Thus, in his book Frame Analysis, Erving Goffman sets out "to isolate some of the basic frameworks of understanding available in our society for making sense out of events" (1974,10). Having a frame of reference allows us to understand; without one, we have only our instincts and raw senses to guide us. The source of a frame of reference is thus either subjective experience or interaction with other people, a reference group.

The concept of a folk or culture group is the second part of the larger concept of a cultural frame of reference. Dan Ben-Amos, in offering a definition of folklore in context, wrote, "For the folkloric act to happen, two social conditions are necessary: both the performer and the audience have to be in the same situation and be part of the  reference group" (1972,12). To be part of the same reference group may mean something so limited as to be members of the same nuclear family, or it may mean simply to be members of the same country. Ultimately, what decides whether one person is part of the same reference group as another person is whether they share the "stuff" that would be referred to-in effect, whether they share traditions. E. D. Hirsch Jr., in his book Cultural Literacy (1987), capitalizes on this notion of a shared cultural frame, emphasizing the advantages to students in being a part of the "educated" group whose cultural references are most highly valued and most often alluded to in our society.

Sometimes the traditions that are referred to are not easily identified; often they might more correctly be called "patterns" or "worldview" or "folk ideas," and often, especially in those instances, the "reference" is not a conscious one but rather a functional but unconscious use. Still, some specific kinds of folklore-a group's corpus of sayings, stories, practices, and beliefs do constitute much of the cultural frame of reference. I would offer the following as a definition for the concept: A cultural frame of reference is a mental framework that holds the cumulative repertoire of traditions and cultural patterns of behavior and thought shared by members of a group. Tied to this definition are three assumptions: There must be something to refer to: the traditions. The frame of reference is group-based (cultural) rather than idiosyncratic. 3.- Though the frame is culture-based, not everyone will share every element that makes up the frame with everyone else who is a part of the group; furthermore, because every person has a separate life history, each individual's constellation of groups to which he or she belongs is unique.

The cultural frame of reference is what allows a listener to make sense of communications from other people, and often it is what attracts people, by its very familiarity, to the message conveyed or convinces them of its truth.

The cultural frame of reference is used at both ends of a communication by the encoder and the decoder. But, again, the resources used in this way are not simply verbal ones but all traditions. The field of folklore study is essentially a two-hundred-year-old effort to identify the traditions that make up the world's discrete and cumulative cultural frames of reference. It is important to view this accumulation of cultural knowledge as only one portion of the whole that contributes to the individual's construction of a personal philosophy. The individual's own life and experience (including biological, psychological, and environmental factors) and the goal of self-education itself influence the process. The cultural frame of reference is a significant part" it is the part that both feeds and draws upon socially constructed reality. In this study of popular nonfiction, it is the cultural frame of reference that is most influential. It is the cultural frame that adds a social dimension to the solitary act of reading a self-help book.

Self-help books are read primarily by adults but only rarely as part of the regular college and university curriculum. Such books certainly could be a part of the college curriculum. Edward LeRoy Long Jr., in Higher Education as a Moral Enterprise, suggests that there are three functions or responsibilities that must be addressed by any college or university: (1) "maturation and enrichment of selfhood"; (2) "discovery/construction, extension, and dissemination of knowledge and culture"; and (3) responsibility for "the well-being of society" (1992,6). Most often, the second function is allowed to dominate, with the first and third seen as less significant aspects of college life. While some colleges are making efforts to balance these three functions, most have not incorporated all three into the curriculum. The enrichment of the "self" in particular is left to the individual as an extracurricular choice.

Still, the current decade promises to be a period of great change among institutions of higher learning. Curriculum is being reexamined. Perhaps more striking than curriculum revision is the growing attention to vocational training, service learning, human and organizational management, continuing education, "returning" students, distance education, and on-line courses; these and other emerging features of the contemporary expanding university are bringing a new challenge to the enterprise of higher education. One aspect of this challenge is a renewed and more urgent interest in practical rather than theoretical questions about how learning happens, no matter what the subject. Does learning happen best in well-organized group presentations? Can learning happen in solitary programs or one-on-one interactions via the Internet? Should learning be participatory, or are lectures effective? Are adult learners more likely to set their own goals for learning the institution to tell them what is most important?

As institutions of higher education are grappling with these issues, the unofficial self-help "movement" has found ways of addressing them as well, especially as these issues affect learning about the self and the learner's own behavior. A major consideration in either case is whether the individual learner will work with others in a group or instead independently, with only authoritative resources and his or her own learning goal as a guide. Looking at my own involvement with the learning process as an example, we can say that for all but the first five years of my life, I have been a student or a teacher; my own experience with the process of learning clearly has involved the context of a group-the typical classroom setting. I appreciate and endorse the advantages of learning in a group setting; there is nothing in a solitary learning situation to match the effects of a stimulating discussion.

Nevertheless, circumstances cannot always offer that ideal. Joseph Kett's 1994 study chronicles the emergence of adult education and attests to the efforts people have made to find group contexts for learning, even in nonacademic settings. In America, from the colonial period on, there has been a strong interest in clubs, library societies, books, and institutions that support self-improvement among adults not enrolled in regular schooling-in other words, in self-education. Kett's survey takes account of the group venues historically available for intellectual, social, and spiritual improvement of the self. Today, churches, synagogues, health clubs, library discussion groups, noncredit college workshops, even bookstore coffee shops continue this tradition. In addition, there are a growing number of institutions, such as the California Institute of Integral Studies or the Whidbey Institute in Clinton, Washington, dedicated to the process of "transformative learning," as Jack Mezirow named this self-developmental adult learning practice some years ago (1978).

Kett mentions as well the positive response people in the earlier decades of the twentieth century had to the few self-help books just beginning to appear on publishing lists-books such as Dale Carnegie's Art of Public Speaking (1915) and How to Win Friends and Influence People (1936). Such books attested to an increasingly popular independent self-help reading practice that grew up alongside the group-oriented venues for self-education. By the 1960s, there began a surge in publishing such books of popular nonfiction that continues unabated into the present. Readers are now offered a wide selection of books that can be discussed in group settings or, more often, read in private and used by the individual as part of a self-directed learning program. As noted earlier, by 1994, the abundance of books had already created a need for The Authoritative Guide to Self-Help Books, which culled through more than one thousand self-help books available in order to help people decide which would be most worth reading.

K. Patricia Cross, in her classic study Adults as Learners, devoted several pages to a discussion of the incidence of "self-directed learning," reviewing in particular the work of Allen Tough, who, in the early 1970S, had introduced the concept of a "learning project." Tough's definition of a learning project brings together a series of related episodes: "In each episode more than half of a person's total motivation is to gain and retain certain fairly clear knowledge and skill, or to produce some other lasting change in himself" (qtd. in Cross, 1981, 63). Other researchers have considered more generally the way learning projects function within the sphere of adult education. Malcolm Knowles identifies the "problem-centered orientation" as most characteristic of adult learning in general. It is in the articulation of the problem itself that most adult learners seek assistance through outside sources-paid experts, friends, and books. According to research in the late 1970S, books were the third most common resource consulted in individual learning projects. I would suspect that they are an even more common resource today, along with a growing dependence on the Internet.

 

A typical learning project is self-initiated, self-planned, and self-directed.

However, the individual learner, as Knowles suggested, often has trouble articulating the problem he or she feels compelled to address. Self-help books serve this need well. As I suggested earlier, every author states a lack that needs liquidating, a problem that needs solving, and the problem is stated in terms that are personally relevant to the individual reader. In choosing and reading a book, readers recognize the theme or problem addressed in the book as their own, or at least as one related to the question at the heart of the often unorganized but yet compelling learning project guiding the choice of reading matter. Self-help books are not bought on whim but rather on purpose. And that purpose is to serve the goal of the reader's learning project, even if that learning project has not yet been clearly outlined, even if it is implicit and emergent rather than explicit and fixed.

How does reading yet another book on career choices or how to break an addiction or how to manage after a divorce represent an attempt to build a personal philosophy? The bricoleur will seek out and use what is at hand. These are the books that are available, and their usefulness can be assumed to some degree by their popularity. The implication would be that people who are undertaking their own learning projects are buying and reading the self-help books that stay in print, and especially the books of authors who more than once make the best-seller list. Still, we must assume that something other than simply availability determines which books are found most useful. The book needs to fit into each reader's individual learning project.

A learning project that involves self- help books may take on different guises at various times. Someone working on a learning project may choose to participate in workshops or discussion groups in which a particular book is used. For example, Linda J. Vogel stresses the importance of the group in adult religious education: "Teaching and learning in communities of faith must incorporate a dialogue-where all have an opportunity both to listen and to be heard. Teaching begins with what people already know and offers tools for working toward a consensus where all can benefit. ... [This process] compels us to listen to others, to build community, to clarify problems, and then to work toward a more just world" (1991, xii). Often such involvement in community is as important as the subject matter itself. Some people learn much more easily through dialogue and discussion and the stimulation of a workshop. But, in general, Americans seek a balance between community involvement and individualism, as Robert Bellah and his colleagues suggest in Habits of the Heart. Clearly, for many readers, reading a book in solitude and pondering its message in private can be equally satisfying.

A number of writers of self-help books have assumed this second alternative and have offered throughout their books opportunities for reflection, questions or assignments that readers mayor may not use in their own learning projects. Sam Keen and Anne Valley-Fox' s early success with the 1973 version of Your Mythic Journey (1989) speaks to the need many people (authors and readers) feel for having a "text" or artifact that captures the reader's learning in some fixed form. Drawing upon their work with Joseph Campbell, Keen and Valley- Fox introduce~the notion of a "personal mythology" and encouraged readers to answer questions and build a story (or several stories) that' would represent the reader's own"" expressive myth. Some books leave open spaces on the page for readers to write their own thoughts. Some encourage readers to keep a daily journal. Some suggest ways that readers might express their thoughts through various creative activities-art, dance, poetry, or music. Some direct people toward social service. In every such case, one objective is to have some "thing" to show for the learning that has taken place.

As we discussed earlier, often the bricoleur's task is to build a formless system of belief, a personal philosophy that cannot be (or at least is not) expressed in a concise and fixed text. In this case, the learning project has a clear goal, but that goal does not entail the creation of a text, artifact, or performance. Our query becomes that of the tree falling in the forest-is there a philosophy if it is never expressed, never written down or given voice, even in a rudimentary way? As a teacher, I will argue that better learning is achieved when learners articulate what they have learned. So I will side with those writers who offer opportunities for readers to record their own thoughts in some way. On the other hand, we must assume that reading alone also has its effect. Self-help books are useful in learning projects that seek to build for the reader a personal philosophy, even if that philosophy remains in the tacit dimension. Furthermore, the real "application" of a tacit belief system or personal philosophy occurs in the personal behavior of the individual, in real life, rather than in the creation of a written or performed text. Life lived becomes the true application, the text.

At the heart of all self-help books one could also say, is a professed disenchantment-profound or mild-with conventional ways of thinking, with the worldview that is a part of American culture. The authors of self-help books universally adopt the premise that what they have to offer is a new way of thinking that will to the benefit of the reader and ultimately the world-replace the old. Their task is a rhetorical one; they must persuade their readers to adopt the new and cast off the old. As have teachers and prophets from earlier times, they claim to bring a new philosophy to the common people, and they want to present it in a way that people will find convincing. This means that some aspects of the presentation will have to be already familiar to the audience. Like Jesus in the New Testament, many writers have used the everyday genres of story and aphorism to teach and persuade. But they have also simply addressed directly the faulty "ways of thinking" they deem in need of revision. They have identified and challenged the "folk ideas" that comprise our worldview.

In the first few paragraphs of his article "Folk Ideas as Units of World view, " Alan Dundes explains the distinction folklorists make between the category "myth" and other larger, more amorphous and inclusive notions often called "myth" by people outside the field of folklore studies. He admits that the practice of using the term "myth" to refer only to sacred oral narratives is confined to folklorists and anthropologists, and he raises the question of what might be done about the looser view of myth that includes ideas, beliefs, faulty reasoning, themes, and other general elements of worldview. He proposes that the term "folk ideas" be used for seme aspects of this loose category and offers the following definition: "By 'folk ideas,' I mean traditional notions that a group of people have about the nature of man, of the world, and of man's life in the world. Folk ideas would not constitute a genre of folklore but rather would be expressed in a great variety of genres" (1972,95). Clearly, as his title indicates, Dundes is searching for a unit of analysis but is also implying that these "folk ideas" are recognizable, autonomous entities, each with a history of its own .•.. They mayor may not depend on narratives, on myths, for their most potent means of expression. And any given folk idea may be summarized in a single word (for example, "individualism") or a sentence ("Science can solve any problem") or phrase ("the principle of unlimited good").

Not all ideas routinely called "myth" by media writers would be "folk ideas," and not all folk ideas would find their way into the stories folklorists call myths. However, collectively, the folk ideas that are taken up and given expression through popular self-help books may well function as does myth-to allow for the expression and evolution of a significant set of beliefs. In 1926, noted anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski wrote the following observations on myth in his Myth in Primitive Psychology: Myth fulfills in primitive culture an indispensable function: it expresses, enhances, and codifies belief; it safeguards and enforces morality; it vouches for the efficiency of ritual and contains practical rules for the guidance of man. Myth is thus a vital ingredient of human civilization; it is not an idle tale, but a hard-worked active force; it is not an intellectual explanation or an artistic imagery, but a pragmatic charter of primitive faith and moral wisdom. ([ 1926] 1954,101)

The role of myth as pragmatic charter of faith and wisdom is easily seen in the penchant of self-help book writers for examining folk ideas.
Yet as Dundes warned us, folk ideas are not easily identified. They do not have a single form, style, or genre. A folk idea must be recognized purely on the basis of content. And that person doing the "recognizing" cannot simply surmise that a given notion is a folk idea; the classifier must also be able to demonstrate that the idea is traditional, that it has a "history" of transmission through time and space. The process is similar to that of identifying "cultural patterns" or, more recently, "memes" in culture and perhaps even themes in works of literature or music. In fact, the well-worn term "theme" often used in literary studies is probably most appropriate to our study of self-help books since they are a genre of literature. But the process of transmission more closely follows that of folk motifs in oral literature.

Many of the same concerns that folklorists have brought to their study of folktales have reemerged in the "new science of memes." Aaron Lynch, in his book Thought Contagion, offers the following observations: Like a software virus in a computer network or a physical virus in a city, thought contagions proliferate. by effectively "programming" for their own retransmission. Beliefs affect retransmission in so many ways that they set off a colorful, unplanned growth race among diverse "epidemics" of ideas. Actively contagious ideas are now called memes ... by students of the newly emerging science of memetics. (1996,2)

One thing that is clear in Lynch's choice of words (and in the language of other writers on the topic as well) is the sense of human inadequacy in the face of this challenge by a hostile, invading force. Memes, according to the theory, take on a life of their own and simply "use" people as a means of transmission.

It is instructive, I think, to remember the words that Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi used in writing of the historical path of memes: "Once a meme is well established, it tends to generate inertia in the mind, and forces us to pursue its logical consequences to the bitter end" (1993,124). It may seem surprising that researchers would adopt so easily such a pessimistic perspective, viewing people as rather spineless creatures willing and eager to do the bidding of powerful ideas. Certainly we do have the evidence of the Holocaust in World War II and even more recent genocides to point to. Still, the fear that that is the direction all humans will go when taken on by a hostile meme is itself a belief. And interestingly, it is the rhetoric-based community of selfhelp book authors rather than theoretical scholars that has relentlessly challenged that belief.

One of the clearest discussions of the "automigration" problem in folktale study was offered by Linda Degh and Andrew Vazsonyi in their 1975 article, "The Hypothesis of Multi -Conduit Transmission in Folklore." As Degh and Vazsonyi point out, the question of the transmission of intangible ideas-in this case, the plots of folktales-was already an issue when the Grimm Brothers published their famous collection of Kinder- und Hausmaerchen in 1812.

But it was not until early in the next century that significant theoretical discussion focused on the process and the "thing" -in this case, the folktale "type" or plot-that was being spread, supposedly through some super organic mechanism that simply used humans as vehicles of transmission. Thus it was postulated that a fairy tale plot such as "Cinderella" could move about as "the wave rings on water" or as an independent  steady stream. Challenges to this theory took the form of reminders that real individuals are the tellers and real people are the audiences for stories and that proper study of the process requires observation of the natural context in which stories are told. Degh and Vazsonyi were still cautious about the conclusions one could make, but tRey argued that "we can safely say that investigations neither justify the contention that oral transmission inundates like a stream covering everything, nor support the thesis that the once-established 'perfect' form of tradition is perpetuated merely by multiple and manifold reinforcement"
(1975,211).

In effect, folklorists battled the too-ready acceptance of the metaphor of the meme a long time ago. I point this out again only to emphasize how very seductive that metaphor is; it tempts us to see only that an idea marches relentlessly to "its bitter end." We lose sight of our own role as individuals who choose what we will do with an idea. Nevertheless, recognizing the meme or the theme or the folk idea as a real and powerful idea is important, is essential, if we are to choose wisely. If we see clearly what would likely happen if we continue to follow a path that leads toward a "bitter end," perhaps we can individually and collectively choose not to follow that path, even though it might offer us a personal or political advantage right now. That is the message of self-help book writers. And because awareness of the possible bitter end is so important, we must, they would argue, be very careful in identifying what the problem is before we consider how to solve it.

We have seen that there is a process that allows folk ideas to emerge and evolve and become a part of the worldview of a culture. Researchers have identified various cultural patterns that fall easily into the category of folk ideas. Richard M. Dorson names four "impulses" that characterize each of four periods in American history (America in Legend [1973]); Edward C. Stewart and Milton J. Bennett discuss a number of behavior patterns characteristic of Americans, such as pragmatism, competition, an orientation to action, informality, materialism, and individualism (American Cultural Patterns: A Cross-Cultural Perspective [1991]); and Robert Bellah and his colleagues have addressed at length the conflict between individualism and commitment to community (Habits of the Heart). These and other works speak directly to the assumption that there are accepted beliefs or ideas that are SD pervasive in American culture as to be characteristic of the culture as a whole.

Still, it is clear that while one can identify customary ways of thinking, individuals are bombarded with many conflicting ideas. America is not a homogeneous culture, even if there is a majority whose ideas on what is right and good seem to dominate. People are acquainted with many points of view. As Kenneth J. Gergen writes: "Beliefs in the true and the good depend on a reliable and homogeneous group of supporters, who define what is reliably 'there,' plain and simple. With social saturation, the coherent circles of accord are demolished, and all beliefs thrown into question by one's exposure to multiple points of view" (1991, xi). In contemporary American culture, there is a tendency for ideas to exist in a constant state of opposition or conflict, even when one side of the conflict seems to be stronger than the other.

This incidence of opposition between folk ideas is not unique to American culture, however, or even to the modern period. Perhaps no other writer has had a more profound impact on contemporary thinking about the construction of cultural ideas than Claude Levi -Strauss, and he was adamant about the universality of mythological thinking. In "The Structural Study of Myth," he says, "Some claim that human societies merely express, through their mythology, fundamental feelings common to the whole of mankind, such as love, hate,revenge" (1972,170). He contends that it is not so simple as that; he goes on to say that "the kind of logic which is used by mythical thought is as rigorous as that of modern science" (194). And that logic always involves the mediation of opposites. In other words, mythical thinking requires that folk ideas be both traditional and opposed, usually in a fairly complicated and richly creative way.

Where does this take us in our discussion of self-help books? First, we can agree to think of self-help books collectively as a cumulative expression of mythical thinking in contemporary American culture, much as Levi-Strauss was willing to include Freud's use of the Oedipus story as part of the cumulative cultural material comprising the Oedipus myth. Though the books are written rather than passed along orally, the work of individuals rather than tribal property, and, for the most part, expository rather than narrative, we can still acknowledge their functioning as vehicles for mythical thinking. And, we can assume that there will be identifiable units-folk ideas-that we can, with effort, name and corroborate as existing in American culture and recognize when we encounter them in self-help books. Finally, we can anticipate at every turn a mediation of opposites, or, in fact, an ambiguity in the culture about which folk idea is right and good-a disagreement about how we are to feel about the ideas our culture has provided.

 

This cultural ambiguity is precisely what engages self-help book writers.

 
They are eager to offer their interpretations, and those interpretations will always require a consideration of their opposites, of the "old" point of view. At a more popular level, they are doing what Alan Dundesdetermined to do in his book Interpreting Folklore: to discover patterns of culture and thus "provide the means of raising levels of consciousness" (1980, x). And, the self-help book writers usually go beyond this exercise in consciousness-raising and suggest expansions and applications that make this awareness of folk ideas more directly relevant to the lives of their readers. They offer New Age answers to the cultural ambiguity that accompanies these highlighted folk ideas.

It should be clare that the topics of self-help literature are not necessarily the same thing as the folk ideas addressed by self-help writers. For example, in Santrock, Minnett, and Campbell's Authoritative Guide to Self-Help Books, only a few of the thirty-two topics listed in the table of contents represent actual belief-based practices or attitudes that the authors hope to challenge with opposing ideational rhetoric-topics such as anger, anxiety, codependency, or depression. A few topics do represent the New Age themes the selfhelp books are particularly noted for addressing-understanding death and dying, finding love and intimacy, raising self-esteem, and improving motivation. But in general, the folk ideas central to the didactic purpose of self-help books are to be found embedded in the texts themselves, much as Dundes proclaimed folk ideas to be scattered and often camouflaged within the various genres of folklore.

More telling are the titles of many of the self-help books themselves (Positive Solitude [Andre, 1991]; Stop Being Mean to Yourself[Beattie, 1997]; Minding the Body, Mending the Mind [Borysenko]; Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway [Jeffers]) or their subtitles (How to Transform Your Life by Telling the Truth [Blanton, 1994]; When Being in Control Gets Out of Control [Mallinger and DeWyze, 1992]; Getting Out of Your Own Way [Sills, 1993]; Creating Trust, Luck, and Joy [Sinetar]). Ultimately, as with the paradigmatic structures Levi- Strauss identified in myths, the themes developed and challenged by self-help books are in the eye of the beholder. The few writers or editors who have directly addressed the self-help book phenomenon as a topic of research have helped identify several themes.

Gary Greenberg, in The Self on the Shelf, for example, focuses exclusively on the theme of codependency-in this case, an "old" belief or behavior pattern that the many relevant self-help books hope to replace with a more effective philosophy. Greenberg is quick to point out the problems in the "new" ideas offered by the self-help writers; he acknowledges the continuing ambiguity of the culture. Most self-help book writers themselves are less inclined to recognize the need for mediation between the old and the new. A more recent study by Elizabeth Lesser, The New American Spirituality: A Seeker's Guide (1999), is clearly supportive of the folk ideas promoted by the spiritual self-help books she reviews for her readers. She incorporates the th&es she identifies into her own story of spiritual renewal, much more in the way that Levi-Strauss would envision a myth emerging in an individual’s telling. The sense of mediation of opposites is left, in this case, up to the reader.

Perhaps more helpful to our purpose here-identifying some of the primary folk ideas or themes at the heart of the self-help movement-is a book produced by Ronald S. Miller and the editors of New Age Journal. The book, As Above, So Below (1992), is published by one of the noted New Age publishers, Jeremy P. Tarcher of Los Angeles, and it includes as subtitles for each of its chapters phrases that, to my mind, identify the folk ideas Miller and the editors recognize as central to the New Age movement (and thus certainly a significant part of the self-help tradition). Often immediately apparent in the combination of chapter title and subtitle is that declaration of opposites so essential in mythical thinking. For example, chapter 1 is titled "The Emerging Spirituality," and its subtitle is "Falling in Love with Our World." Implied in the word "emerging" in the title is the suggestion that previously-before the new spirituality began to emerge-people were not "in love with our world." Or again, in chapter 12, the title is "Awakening Creativity," and the subtitle is "Liberating the Inner Artist." That creativity or artistry needs to be awakened or liberated again suggests that the old folk idea restrained such expression.

In writing So Self-Help Classics, Tom Butler-Bowdon groups books into six general themes: The Power of Thought (change your thoughts, change your life), Following Your Dream (achievement and goal-setting), Secrets of Happiness (doing what you love, doing what works), The Bigger Picture (keeping it in perspective), Soul and Mystery (appreciating your depth), and Making a Difference (transforming yourself, transforming the world). The subtitles, again, reveal the points of challenge and ambiguity. If to be happy, one must start "doing what you love," then clearly an older and contrasting belief is that to be happy, one must be dutiful or moral or obedient. While the writers are not ambiguous about which beliefs are right, the culture is. The themes that are central to self-help literature reflect the ambiguity of conflicting beliefs. "

We however can also view the emergence of New Age themes in selfhelp books as an accommodation of and response to folk ideas that have long been a part of American worldview but have been increasingly brought into question and held in a state of ambiguity. Selfhelp books make that ambiguity-that conflict of beliefs-apparent.

The writers of self-help books themselves are more often eager to challenge the old and promote the new. It is the reader's responsibility to reconcile the differing beliefs in his or her own evolving philosophy. Robert Wuthnow, in After Heaven: Spirituality in America since the 19505 (1998), suggests that in recent decades, people have adopted a "spirituality of seeking"-one that emphasizes negotiation rather than the security of a settled and shared belief system and worldview. Even with regard to more secular themes, people choose to seek out a variety of perspectives and reconcile the old and the new beliefs in their everyday behaviors. Writers of self-help books feed this practice of negotiation by presenting arguments that invoke the dominant folk ideas, only to challenge them and offer their opposites.

In keeping with their role as problem-namers and problem-solvers, selfhelp book writers address a number of concerns individuals are likely to themselves identify as their own problem. Readers often pick up a self-help book specifically because it is about their self-identified problem with insecurity, timidity, guilt, worry, shyness, underachievement, rigidity, lack of creativity, lack of intimacy, a sense of failure, fear of death, depression, or simple lack of faith in much of anything. Others look for even more specific problem areas: inadequacy in parenting, overeating, poor health, poor performance on the job, and especially poor performance or lack of satisfaction with regard to sexuality and personal interactions. Simply listing these concerns does not really bring these issues into the arena of mythical thought.

We can do this more effectively by returning to the framework of folk ideas presented in opposition-the framework of cultural ambiguity.
While recognizing the many specific concerns viewed as problems by both writers and readers of self-help books, I am going to suggest here that there are eight "mythic" themes, themes that are in conflict in American culture and to which self-help writers have offered and promoted the "new" perspective along with challenging the old. In effect, these are eight themes that are intended to evoke a mythical, or mediating, response from the reader, a response of informed choice, an enlightened and personally negotiated response. And I would argue that, despite the energetic efforts of self-help book writers, each of these themes will remain ambiguous in our culture though for those of their readers who are persuaded by their rhetoric and examples, personal philosophies may well change to accept the new and challenging side of the folk idea.

The eight themes can be presented as single-word concepts: (1) fear; (2) control; (3) competition; (4) judgment; (5) dishonesty; (6) individualism; (7) violence; (8) impatience. It may seem that culture gives us a clear attitude to bring to each of these. In American culture, competition and individualism are good; dishonesty and violence are bad. Generally, we would argue, control and judgment are good; fear and impatience are bad. However, in fact, there is an ambiguity tied to each of these. Fear is bad if it produces cowardice but good if it produces obedience to God or a law of nature. Control is good if it leads to effective work but bad if it stifles innovation. Competition is essential in a capitalist system, but it just might not be so good if it leads to suicide or war. Our system of justice requires that all citizens be prepared to judge their peers; on the other hand, the Bible teaches us to "judge not, that ye be not judged." Everyone knows that dishonesty is bad-even a very young George Washington could not tell a lie-but then there are times when the truth must not be spoken (Are you hiding Jewish war-victims in your attic?). Individualism is the backbone of American culture, yet Robert Bellah and his colleagues in Habits of the Heart point to its many negative effects, including the loss of a sense of community. Violence is awful, of course, but we resort to it time and again, thus reinforcing its real value. And impatience is if nothing else bad practice- "All things come to those who wait" -and yet our culture is strongly geared toward action, speed, and being first in line.

Most of the concerns that self-help writers address can be grouped under one of these eight themes. In fact, a number of writers suggest that all concerns or problems are a result of the first theme-fear, that eliminating fear or at least learning to respond more appropriately to it is the one answer to all questions posed by self-help books. Ivan Hoffman writes, "Happiness, loving, caring, feeling about a situation in a positive manner, looking at the world without fear are all about the same thing" (1993, 69). Susan Jeffers, in her book Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway, says, "The fear will never go away as long as I continue to grow." But she adds, "Pushing through the fear is less frightening than living with the underlying fear that comes from a feeling of he'fplessness" (1987,30). I~ other words, pushing through the fear (eliminating it) is what is needed in the end.

James Kitchens brings a number of the themes together in one summary comment on this common process of coming under the spell of a fear-inspired set of folk ideas: As we grow older, we lose our souls. We learn about failure and disapproval and rejection, and we begin to fear. We risk less, and our natural creativity is swallowed up in our worry about inadequacy. We become careful and controlling as we compare ourselves to others, evaluate and grade ourselves, and compete in order to avoid being perceived as a failure. Caution and suspicion replace trust and openness. We live in order to collect things and achievements, which become badges we wear. We hope to prove to ourselves and to anyone else who might be looking that we are not losers. We forfeit ourselves, and life becomes hard. (1994,20)

This dismal litany evokes the dominant folk ideas very clearly, if completely negatively. No quarter is granted to the idea that sometimes fear is good, that sometimes competition produces desired results, that the meme of judicious control leads to progress. All that this writer sees is the "bitter end" to which such a fear-based belief system leads.

We must remember that it is the self-help writers' task to identify the problematic "old" beliefs and promote the opposite and "better" new beliefs they would hope their readers will come to espouse. Kitchens, in his review above of the fear and control, competition and judgment that make life hard, offers essentially one folk idea in contrast and as a solution. He calls his solution "joy"; he subtitles his book Rediscovering the Joy and Meaning in Your Life. But he goes on to say that "joy is a way of proceeding" (1994,39), and his description of that process is in fact the "folk idea" he hopes to promote: the process of eliminating fear, refraining from judgment, and loosening control brings joy, and we realize joy only by learning to trust-trust ourselves, trust the universe, trust God-and accept life.

Most of the writers who address the problem of fear in any of its guises timidity, insecurity, fear of death, fear of failure, a sense of inadequacy, doubt and disbelief-offer as a contrast and solution the idea of learning to trust the universe and accept life as it is. The folk idea asserts that life can be trusted-not necessarily that things will go as one might wish or that there will be no suffering, but rather that there is nothing to fear. In the larger perspective, life will provide what is needed, and what is given can be accepted as right and good.

A perhaps not -'so-subtle corollary here is the idea of the soul, the idea that, what is of ultimate concern is not the fate of the body but rather the fate of what we identify as a "self." Some writers do not identify this "self" as an eternal soul but rather as a psychological self-referential entity; however, a large number of writers do in fact write of the soul as a preexisting, death-surviving reality. Interestingly, in either case, the assertion is made that one must learn to trust that the "self" is safe, that the self cannot be harmed by life. Like Alexander Pope in the eighteenth century, self-help book writers assure us that "whatever is, is right." On the other hand, a fairly large number of "spiritual" writers (as distinguished from popular psychology writers) do also address the question of God or life after death, or both. But, again, the folk idea involved is less one of describing or even recognizing "God" and more a matter of general faith in the proposition that the universe is not to be feared but rather accepted.

This folk idea of trust is also offered, perhaps more indirectly, by writers addressing the issue of too much control or the perceived need to evaluate and judge. For example, in their book Too Perfect: When Being in Control Gets Out of Control, Allan E. Mallinger and Jeannette DeWyze draw a picture of the obsessive individual as someone who maintains a "myth of control": They come to believe that, through control of themselves and their personal universe, they can protect themselves against the dangers in life, both real and imagined. If they could articulate the myth that motivates their behavior, they might say: "If I try hard enough, I can stay in control of myself, of others, and of all the impersonal dangers oflife (injury, illness, death, etc.). In this way I can be certain of safe passage." (1992,15)

And while the authors offer some very specific suggestions of how to overcome the compulsive behavior associated with this kind of thinking, in general their message is tied to the larger idea of learning that control is ultimately not in our hands, that we must trust life rather than try to control it.

Similarly, the "issues" of judgment, prejudice, even dishonesty itself are seen as responses to the problem of fear, or the lack of trust. Often, the selfhelp book writers remind us, we prejudge people because we fear that if we don't, they will take advantage of us in some way. We are convinced that we need to be in control; we do not trust that we are safe in situations in which we must deal with people who are different from us.

Even in our most intimate relationships, deception is often the choice we make. As Harriet Goldhor Lerner says, "The human capacity to hide the real and display the false is truly extraordinary, allowing us to regulate relationships through highly complex choices about how we present ourselves to others" (1993,118).

Lerner goes on to echo the observation of many self-help writers: "Trust evolves only from a true knowledge of our partner and ourselves and a mutual commitment to increasing levels of sharing and self-disclosure" (170). In other words, what we call trust in an intimate relationship develops only when the fear of self-disclosure is abandoned, when we no longer fear being honest rather than cagey. For many of the self-help writers, the contrast between fear and trust, between dishonesty and trust, soon pulls into its domain a related worry over what happens when trust is absent-competition, self-centeredness, and isolation, and even violence. As I mentioned earlier, these ideas are often celebrated or at least consciously tolerated in American culture. "It's lonely at the top" is often seen as the price of competition and individualism, but Americans are loath to give up any hard-won victories on behalf of the rights of the individual.

The answering folk idea that many self-help writers offer in response to these very ambiguous cultural icons of competition, individualism, and violence is an assertion that the universe and all in it are one. In particular, many writers argue that there is a unity among all people, among all living beings, and that awareness of that unity will restrain the individual from the imbalances of aggressive competition, arrogance and self-centeredness, and violence. There are, however, surprisingly few practical suggestions offered for how to implement this folk idea in daily life. Those who seem most easily able to make such suggestions are writers who adopt from the very start an Eastern rather than Western stance. Ram Dass (previously Richard Alpert), noted counterculture figure of the 1960s, for example, took from his long immersion in teachings of India a new sense of how to respond to the "separateness" so characteristic of America. In Compassion in Action, reporting on his work with AIDS victims, he speaks very directly to the problem of how fear compels us to remain separate and also how we can overcome it: When people are dying they often feel alone in their pain and fear. Those around them are not going through what they are, so how could they understand? It takes a lover who is not afraid of the pain to be present and wipe away the loneliness. For over twenty-five years I have been often in the company of dying people. In the course of all those moments I have come to see just how in love I can stay with other beings in the face of their suffering. If I am afraid of pain, then in a subtle and sometimes not -so-subtle way I distance my heart from the dying person with whom I am sitting. If I am afraid of dying, then the very dying process of another awakens my fear and inevitably I push that person away so I can remain safe in my own "not dying" illusion. (80-81)

He goes on to speak of the disturbing experience of recognizing that he is distancing himself from the dying patet. He speaks of coming to grips with his own failure to be open and then describes the process of moving from this distancing to a sense of compassion: "I go deeper within myself, far behind my identification and fears, back into awareness, mindful of our predicament but no longer lost in it. The humanity is there, but so, too, is the spacious awareness. I have come into love, and I feel the barriers between me and this other being dissolve" (81).

When self- help books treat the question of unity, often apparent is some confusion of individuality and separation with the notion of subjectivity. Again, the message or folk idea that New Age writers are sending is one that advocates cutting through subjectivity to see that people are all "the same". under the skin, all a precious expression of life-even, as Neale Donald Walsch tells us in Conversations with God: Book 1, an incarnation of the divine-and all, therefore, worthy of our love. Some of this confusion is apparent in Barbara Sher's book It's Only Too Late If You Don't Start Now. In discussing romantic love, she offers the following "exercise" for understanding how self-centeredness clouds the ability to love people in the more general sense: To experience real love is to understand that a unique creature, separate and different from you, is standing in front of you. When you can see another human that way, you can't help loving him. To do that, however, you need a stable identity, a sense of knowing who you are, and no desperation in your heart. ... You can get a very brief glimpse of what I mean if you try this experiment. Sometime when you’re out in the world, take a look at an ordinary stranger: a bus driver, or someone sitting near you on a train or in a restaurant. Spend a few seconds looking at him. Then imagine you just got a message from the future and found out he was going to die the next day.

Suddenly that person looks different. In an instant his value becomes clear to you and you see how unusual and unique he is. It's only a trick you've played on your senses, but it gives you an idea of how miraculous people will look to you one day, once you've learned how to see without the fog of self-interest. That's love. The real thing. To see someone else clearly, not to look into the mirror of your own desire or to dress up the beloved with the scrim of your favorite fantasy, or to reinvent him for your own uses. (1998,130-31)

Here, seeing the other as a separate being seems to be a goal rather than an obstacle, and yet despite the language used, we are still being coached to see the unity of all persons and to not, in this case, let our subjectivity deny that unity and instead substitute a mirror image. We need to escape our own island of perception and see that we are not the only real person in the universe. Or, as Jon Kabat-Zinn says in his book Wherever You Go, There You Are, "One practical way todo this is to look at other people and ask yourself if you are really seeing them or just your thoughts about them" (1994,26).

Ideally, one of the significant contributions that the fields of anthropology and folklore make to the world is in their promotion of the concept of unity in the midst of diversity. In general, self-help writers are looking not so much at unity in the face of cultural differences as at an awareness of unity in the face of a philosophy of separatism. Even intimate partners who share many aspects" of culture may feel a sense of alienation, competition, self-centeredness, a need to withhold or deceive, shame or arrogance, and even violence that comes from seeing each other as entirely separate. Self-help writers are eager to offer a philosophy that ties all human beings together, and yet they find it difficult to suggest practical applications of that idea. Perhaps that is why James Redfield felt it necessary to offer his insights in the form of a fictional story. In his second parable, The Tenth Insight, he has one of his characters, Wil, respond to the narrator's question "Aren't some people just inherently bad?" with the following comment: No, they just go crazy in the Fear and make horrible mistakes. And, ultimately, they must bear the full responsibility of these mistakes. But what has to be understood is that horrible acts are caused, in part, by our very tendency to assume that some people are naturally evil. That's the mistaken view that fuels the polarization. Both sides can't believe humans can act the way they do without being intrinsically no good, and so they increasingly dehumanize and alienate each other, which increases the Fear and brings out the worst in everyone. (1996,134)

And later the same character adds: "We know that no matter how undesirable the behavior of others is, we have to grasp that they are just souls attempting to wake up, like us" (149).

One surprising application of this awareness of unity is in Peter Senge's popular business handbook, The Fifth Discipline. Among his many other insights, Senge observes that "systems thinking" eliminates the need for casting others as villains. In mastering systems thinking, we giv~ up the assumption that there must be an individual, or individual agent, responsible. The feedback perspective sug~ gests that everyone shares responsibility for problems generated by a system. That doesn't necessarily imply that everyone involved can exert equal leverage in changing the system. But it does imply that the search for scapegoats-a particularly alluring pastime in individualistic cultures such as ours in the United States-.is a blind alley. (1990,78-79, emphasis in original)

In effect, Senge's practical advice presupposes a philosophy or folk idea that views all individuals as interdepenent, as equally tied to the system that sustains their interactions. From Redfield's rather mystical notion of unity to Senge's pragmatic one, there is a New Age reinforcement of the idea of unity and an awareness of its importance in overcoming self-centeredness. It represents a shift in awareness similar, Senge argues, to that "so ardently advocated by ecologists in their cries that we see ourselves as part of nature, not separate from nature" (78). It is the second major folk idea advanced by the writers of self-help books.

The third folk idea is tied to the previous two but includes the dimension of time in a new way. In his book Soul Search, David Darling quotes Albert Einstein to summarize the new philosophy to which Einstein was so clearly a contributor. A human being is part of the whole, called by us "Universe"; a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest-a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. The delusion is a prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this completely but the striving for such achievement is, in itself, a part of the liberation and a foundation for inner security. (1995,134-35)

Einstein saw time as part of the prison that confines people to a sense of separation and a mistrust of the universe. He does not offer suggestions one might follow to achieve release from this "prison" of time, but of course our self-help book writers do. The most famous articulation of the contrasting folk idea to the confining awareness of time is Ram Dass's classic statement in his 1971 book Be Here Now. In The New American Spirituality, Elizabeth Lesser writes of a meeting between Ram Dass and Indian-English spiritualist PirVilayat Kahn: At one of Omega's first programs Ram Dass joined Pir Vilayat and other spiritual teachers to lead a meditation retreat. I recall a conversation around the dinner table between Ram Dass and Pir Vilayat that I call the "to be here now or not to be here now" debate. In his erudite British accent, Pir Vilayat wondered aloud why anyone would want to only "be here now." "There are so many glorious planes of existence. The angelic realms are refreshingly different from the one here, and they are available to us at all times," he argued. "Why not leave here, and go there? That's what meditation is for."That's not why I meditate," said Ram Dass. "Well, I meditate to transcend the experiences of pain and separation of the here and now. Why remain in our stale, fossilized state of being, when we could dance in cosmic ecstasy?" Ram Dass, always ready with an answer, said, "Pain and separation occur when we regret the past or worry about the future. Here and now is ecstasy. And about those 'glorious planes of existence'? Those 'angelic realms'? I'm afraid I'm not familiar with them." (1999,95)

As Ram Dass suggests, problems such as guilt, worry, pain, alienation, and perhaps even anger and depression may reflect our inability to "be here now." I would see this third New Age folk idea as contrasting with the eighth theme above-impatience. In some ways this theme is second only to individualism as "the" mythic theme of our culture--like individualism, impatience is viewed with great ambivalence. Certainly we do not want to be forever worrying or feeling guilty or harried by the future. We do not want to be forever hurdling, as James Kitchens says-forever jumping one hurdle after another, always focusing on the next (1994,39). And yet even many self-help writers speak of the need to control time. Often lack of creativity or underachievement or dissatisfaction on the job is linked to the mismanagement of time.

It might seem that a writer such as Alan Lakein in his book How to Get Control of Your Time and Your Life is advocating, if not outright impatience, at least an overseer's manipulation of this quantity-time. But even Lakein, after speaking of ways to better use the time we have, suggests something very like the notion of "be here now":

I think you will find that if you arrange things so that you find time to relax and "do nothing," you will get more done and have more fun doing it.
One client, an aerospace engineer, didn't know how to "do nothing." Every minute of his leisure time was scheduled with intense activity. He had an outdoor-activities schedule in which he switched from skiing and ice hockey to water-skiing and tennis. His girlfriend kept up with him in these activities, although she would have preferred just to sit by the fire and relax once in a while. Like too many people, he felt the need to be doing something all the time-doing nothing seemed a waste of time. His "relaxing by the fire" consisted of playing chess, reading Scientific American, or playing bridge. Even . his lovemaking was on a tight schedule. For an experiment I asked him to "waste" his time for five minutes during one of our sessions together. What he ended up doing was relaxing, sitting quietly and daydreaming. When he was finally able to admit that emotional reasons caused him to reject relaxing as a waste of time, he began to look more criticall)'at that assumption. Once he accepted the fact that relaxing was a good use of time, he became less compulsive about being busy and started enjoying each activity more. (1973,53)

Lakein's "relaxing" may seem a far cry from the deep, meditative experience of "being" that Ram Dass and other New Age writers advocate. And yet the experience of "be here now" is pretty much whatever one makes of it. It is the one folk idea that is entirely subjective. Jon Kabat-Zinn begins one of his chapters with the following description of a New Yorker cartoon: "Two Zen monks in robes and shaved heads, one young, one old, sitting side by side cross-legged on the floor. The younger one is looking somewhat quizzicallyat the other one, who is turned toward him and saying: 'Nothing happens next. This is it'" (1994,14). Kabat-Zinn goes on to say that meditation is not a "doing" but rather a "being." And this "being" allows us "to let go of the past and the future and wake up to what we are now, in this moment." And washed away as well in this experience of "being here now" are many of the physical ills associated with stress and anger and, of course, that hallmark of "type A" personalities, impatience.

One of the more interesting developments of the "be here now" idea is the expansion of the general principle of engagement or "mindfulness" into what Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls "flow." In his book Finding Flow: The Psychology of Engagement with Everyday Life, Csikszentmihalyi writes of the "autotelic" personality. Here are some of his observations: Applied to personality, autotelic denotes an individual who generally does things for their own sake, rather than in order to achieve some later external goal .... They are more autonomous and independent, because dIey cannot be easily manipulated with threats or rewards from the outside. At the same time, they are more involved with everything around them because they are fully immersed in the current of life .... If there is one quality that distinguishes autotelic individuals, it is that their psychic energy seems inexhaustible. Even though they have no greater attentional capacity than anyone else, they pay more attention to what happens around them, they notice more, and they are willing to invest more attention in things for their own sake without expecting an immediate return. Most of us hoard attention carefully .... The result is that we don't have much attention left over to participate in the world on its own terms, to be surprised, to learn new things, to grow beyond the limits set by our self-centeredness. (1997, 117-18,123)

Flow is not so much a state achieved through meditation as it is a strong sense of engagement applied as consistently as possible throughout the day.  Studies prove that people in a "flow" state do not notice the passage of time; they are too absorbed. As Ram Dass would have it, they are "being here now." Furthermore, there is no evaluative dimension to their experiences until those experiences are over. People in a state of flow recognize their experiences as "ecstatic" or "satisfying" or "peaceful" only afterward. Like a jazz musician, they avoid self-consciousness lest they pull themselves out of the "now" experience and break the frame of engagement. Flow is the difference between the ecstasy of sex and the victory of conquest; it is the difference between the high of creative performance and the pride of accomplishment, the rapture of a religious swoon and the confession of awe and contrition. It is the difference between the excitement of thinking and the congratulations for impressive thought.

Csikszentmihalyi concludes his discussion of the process of finding flow with a reflection on how being present, being "in flow," can serve the good of humanity: The more psychic energy we invest in the future of life, the more we become a part of it. Those who identify with evolution blend their consciousness with it, like a tiny creek joining an immense river, whose currents become as one.
Hell in this scenario is simply the separation of the individual from the flow of life. It is clinging to the past, to the self, to the safety of inertia .... Within an evolutionary framework, we can focus consciousness on the tasks of everyday life in the knowledge that when we act in the fullness of the flow experience, we are also building a bridge to the future of our universe. (147)

It is perhaps ironic that Csikszentmihalyi himself feels compelled to attach a future goal to the "practice" of flow experiences in the everyday context. The point, of course, is that these experiences happen for their own sake; people are engaged not for a reason but for a fact.

Still, Finding Flow, for all its intellectual complexity and the erudition of its author, is in effect a self-help book. The writer suggests certain practices that will, if followed faithfully, lead to a life more replete with experiences of flow and a more autotelic personality. The three "new" folk ideas of trust, unity, and "be here now" come through in Csikszentmihalyi's book as clearly as in many of the other books written in response to the "old" themes of fear, control, competition, judgment, dishonesty, individualism or separation, violence, and impatience. These are the aspects of worldview examined, challenged, and interpreted by the self-help book writers. These are the ideas that are  in the culture and used by self-help authors in what seems to be an entirely acceptable "creative cultural plagiarism." No one will fault even three hundred self- help authors for all offering their readers the traditional advice “let go" and trust the universe.

Conclusion P.1: The field of folklore has always had to contend with bridging the chasm between the "public" and the "private." In considering the role of self-help books in the process of self-education and especially in the process of building a personal philosophy, we must move constantly between these two arenas. The larger cultural frame of reference is the source of many ideas and materials that writers and readers use in creating or reading a self- help book, and yet it is the individual reader who uses such books in the private task of building a personal philosophy. As mentioned earlier, Jay Mechling has suggested we borrow the concept of "mediating structures" in our efforts to understand how concrete artifacts and specific experiences relate to and interact with abstract American culture. He reminds us, in fact, that "Americans never experience abstract 'American culture'" (1989,347). Instead, we might view self- help books as "mediating artifacts" that allow us to see how abstract, impersonal ideas in the culture become a part of an individual's private philosophy. In their desire for self-education, people engage personally with each self-help book they read, and they allow these books to mediate between the values of the culture (both those values about which we cringe and those the writers would have us choose) and their personal values. Through the process of reading self-help books, readers "experience" abstract American culture concretely, personally. Each writer serves as a private mentor even as he or she writes in a public domain.

 

P.2  

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