The problem with many popular self-help books is not that they are completely false. The problem is that they often fail to present the whole truth. Many of the half-truths of self-empowerment have become conventional wisdom in our culture and are stated without challenge. Axioms such as “A positive attitude is the key to success,” “Low self-esteem is the reason for failure,” “Guilt is an unhealthy emotion,” are assumed to be proven facts.

But they are not.

In his book, The Last Self-Help Book You’ll Ever Need, Paul Pearsall incorporates scientific research to debunk self-helpisms’ conventional wisdom.

Us-Help vs. Self-Help

At the heart of his critique is his belief that self-help takes the focus away from what really comprises a good life: healthy relationships. Self-empowerment is not at the heart of a good life; self-giving love in the context of mutual and beneficial relationships is. Pearsall warns that we must not mistake “an intense personal life for a shared meaningful one” (146).

Contrary to the principles of self-empowerment, the strengths of any one individual do not reside exclusively within, but between – in our interactions with others. Most of our problems and joys in life do not arise from our own self as much as they arise from our self-in-relationship to others. “Self-helpism looks for problems within one person, but it is ultimately in our relationships that health and happiness reside” (100). If we are wise, we will “focus on strengthening a relationship that we hold in even higher esteem than we hold ourselves” (100).

What we need is not “self-help” as much as “us-help.” Pearsall writes, “None of us can really ever help ourselves. The real power is not personal but interpersonal. The good life is an illusion, but a shared good one is ours for the having when we realize that our problems and strengths do not rest within us. They resonate between us” (x).

Self-Centered Esteem

In our affluent society we have “become more self-centered and our expectations have risen to unrealistic heights. With most of our basic needs met, we have the time to think about new ones.” (12) Popular self-help material feeds this self-centeredness with its emphasis on individual improvement instead of relational enhancement.

One of the most obvious ways self-centeredness is fed is through the conventional wisdom that high self-esteem is essential to mental health. Contrary to this self-help mantra, research has shown “that those with the highest self-esteem were often also those who were more likely to be obnoxious, to interrupt, and to lecture people instead of speaking to them with respect (a skill learned at a calm family dinner). Some of the world’s worst villains have had ‘high-self esteem.’ Violent gang leaders usually think highly of themselves, and some of the current rogues in the growing gallery of corporate corruption, who have been strong advocates of self-potentialism and personal power seminars, have recently demonstrated the perils of relentlessly high self-esteem” (126-127).

High self-esteem is not always a positive trait. “High self-esteem can be damaging to you and others around you. Think about it: When someone lacks the faculty for self-criticism, she can run roughshod over another's feelings – or rights – with no remorse” (40).

Alongside this uncritical embrace of high self-esteem as a mark of mental health is the labeling of guilt or shame as healthy emotions. The self-help mantra is that guilt and shame are damaging to high self-esteem. Both emotions are negative and destructive and should never motivate anyone. Thus, popular self-empowerment material has no place for guilt.

However, the lack of guilt feelings is dangerous. “The spouse who cheats, the person who makes a cutting remark about a friend, the parents who neglect their child – all of them ought to feel guilty. Without guilt, we might become at best totally self-absorbed beings, or maybe even sociopaths. As the psychiatrist Willard Gaylin told an interviewer, ‘All the pop psychologists are misleading people about things like guilt and conscience. Guilt is a noble emotion; the person without it is a monster’” (42).

Self-Centered Love

Self-helpism also distorts the meaning of love by making it primarily about meeting one’s own needs. After years of counseling, Pearsall writes, “I realized that people were not only mistaking lust for love, but they did not really want to love someone else at all. Self-helpism’s focus on adoring and enhancing the self was distracting us from the real source of lasting love. Enduring interpersonal loving relationships are based much less on regard for the self and much more on concern for the relationship” (92).

Our emphasis should not be on how much we can get from a relationship but on what we can contribute to it. Lasting love is not based on passion: “Passion may spark love, but it isn’t love and it can’t maintain love.” (93) Instead, “love tends to last ‘when lovers love many things together, and not merely each other’” (100).

The Treasure of Lasting Love

Lasting love is the most cherished resource available to sharing the good life with others – including our children. In the context of family, popular self-help material often forgets the most foundational aspect – the love between husband and wife. The love that husband and wife share has more positive value than anything else. Instead of attempting to provide a “better life” for our children, we should focus on living a “good life” with them. “Parents would be wiser to show that they have a loving life worth emulating, that they are not consumed by the pursuit of a better one either for themselves or their children. The greatest gift parents can give their children is the message that they are savoring their own good life together right now” (113).

Through the self-giving love of husband and wife, children are given a model to emulate. “The purpose of a family is not to produce happy children but to produce loving interdependent responsible adults who hold others in higher esteem than they do themselves” (112). Thus, contrary to the conventional wisdom that “children are our most precious resource,” Pearsall argues that “our most important social resource is not our children. It is two adults behaving selflessly and teaching their children the same way of altruistic loving. No society will be stronger than its parents’ ability to teach and model a connective love over constant self-enhancement” (125).

The Perfect Mess

Mental health professionals have spilled much ink to emphasize how “sick” we are. It is becoming increasingly difficult to escape the accusation of dysfunction.

According to self-helpism and the field of psychology, we are all growing mentally sicker. The bible of dysfunction, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, has grown from eighty-six pages in 1952 to almost nine hundred in 1994. The number of mental disorders has increased from 106 to 297 and counting. But this is not an accurate picture of how to establish mental health. If everything we think, feel, do, or desire that is not perfectly logical or adaptive is labeled as mentally ill, then mental health itself becomes so rare that it is the ultimate abnormal condition.

It is important to remember that what we now diagnose as disease and emotional or mental dysfunction were not always there, waiting to be discovered. They are categories created by a sickness-oriented health-care system and they are as much opinion as fact. (160)

If we listen uncritically to the self-help machine, we will always feel that we are not living the good life. Sadly, in our frantic search for the good life we may miss out on a good life – the life we presently possess in the muddied mess of our current situation.

For this reason, Pearsall’s words are inspiring: “If you feel you are working too hard, under too much stress, don’t have enough time, and if your life is in chaos, enjoy it. Again, that’s life. Start savoring it. Focus less on saving time than savoring the time you have. Worry less about balance and start enjoying the perfect mess you are in” (143).

Yes, and make sure you enjoy it with others!

© Richard J. Vincent, 2005