A self-help book is one that was written with the intent to instruct readers to solve personal problems. The books took their name from Self-Help , a bestselling book of 1859 by Samuel Smiles, but also known and classified under "self-improvement", a term that is a modern version of self-help. Self-help books moved from a special position to a postmodern cultural phenomenon in the late 20th century.
Video Self-help book
Sejarah awal
An informal guide to everyday behavior can be said to exist almost as long as the writing itself. "The code" ancient Egyptian behavior "has a very modern record:" You traced from the street to the street, smelled the beer... like a broken wheel, no use.... You have been found doing acrobats on the wall! ' "Micki McGee writes:" Some social observers claim that the Bible is probably the first and most important self-help book. "
In Western culture, the lineage can be traced back to Smiles' Self-Help when the "Renaissance's attention with self-fashioning produced a flood of educational and self-help material": thus "Florentine Giovanni della Casa in his book on manners published in 1558 shows: 'It's also an unpleasant habit to lift other people's wine or food into your nose and smell it ' . " The Middle Ages saw the genre personified in " Conduir-amour " ("the guide in love"). In classic Rome, Cicero's On Friendship and On Duties became "guidebooks and guides... for centuries," and Ovid wrote Art of Love and Remedy of Love . The first has been described as "the best sex book, which applies to San Francisco and London as for the ancient Romans", deals "with the practical problems of everyday life: where to go to meet women, how to start a conversation with them, how to make they are interested, and... how to be friendly and not athletic in bed "; the latter has been described as containing "a series of instructions, as honestly as they are cleverly and brilliantly expressed, in love."
Maps Self-help book
Postmodern phenomenon
Nevertheless, in the last half-century or so that humble self-help books have jumped to cultural excellence, a fact recognized by both advocates and critics - often highly polarized - from the genre of self-improvement. Some people will 'see the purchase of such books... as an exercise in self-education'. Others, more critical, still recognize that 'too common and powerful a phenomenon to be missed, even though it includes "pop" culture.
For better or for worse, it is clear that self-help books have a 'very important role in developing the social concepts of disease in the twentieth century', and that they 'disseminate these concepts through the general public so that ordinary people acquire language to describe some features of emotional life and complex and ineffable behavior '.
Where traditional psychology and psychotherapy tend to be written in a way that is not personal and objective, many self-help books 'involve first-person engagement and are often a conversion experience': according to self-help groups in which they often draw. and horizontal peer validation is offered to readers, as well as "top" suggestions.
Yet practically with the movement of the self-help group to individual self-improvement "readers something of the lost peer support, reflecting the broader way that 'over the last three decades of the 20th century, there was a significant shift in the sense of "self-help". A collective enterprise has become an individual rejuvenation: "in less than thirty years," self-help "- once synonymous with mutual assistance - has been understood... as the work of most individuals.
Behind the self-help book explosion
Social theorists call "detraditionalization" - the tendency to advance capitalism to disrupt cultures and traditions that might hinder profit accumulation have been seen as the foundation behind the self-help phenomenon in two ways (overlap). The first is the eclipse of informal communal transmissions and folkways and folk wisdom: 'the accusation that when self-help authors become simple and repetitive, they are also superficial and unoriginal, only offering persuasion to the readers... on behalf of the best part of wisdom people ', perhaps simply because they provide a formal channel for such "home truth" delivery in an increasingly unstructured and anomic world.
Another consequence of the loss of traditional 'Weber' behavior... ordinary everyday actions into human habits' 'is the increasing social pressure for Self-fashioning:' while a person's identity may have been previously anchored in (and limited by) a community... self-created self must create a written narrative of his life. 'Self-help books' are written and read for the purpose of helping people build personal philosophy' contribute to that goal.
The danger may arise, however, overly exaggerating the possibility of change, given that 'we are not in the sense of meaning or intention of choosing our birth, our parents, our bodies, our language, our culture, our thoughts, our dreams, our desires. , our death, and so on '. In PsyBlog-Understanding Your Mind , Dr. Jeremy Dean states that "the dark side of expectation is that claims about a potential increase can be, and, over-inflated, to open our wallets, a bright and windy approach to potential change can make us believe that self-change is easy, big, sometimes monumental, ". The "Twelve Step" Tradition... has grown the notion of individual self-control or restraint as limited... the use of Silent Prayer encourages individuals to accept what they can not change, to find the courage to change what they can change, and seek wisdom in distinguishing differences'. Self-help books will indeed often formally acknowledge that 'this book does not replace the need for therapy and counseling for troubled relationships or dysfunctional family survivors'. But in practice, driven by competitive advertising, often 'such books give readers the promise of instantaneous "instantaneous" transformations; and there is something of the 'inherent contradiction in the celebratory arc of the self-help book combined with the stubborn reality' of the human world.
Readers may leave disappointed; or perhaps looking for answers the in the next book, so that "self-help books can become addicted in and of themselves" - a process that will "foster self-controlled" rather than liberating it. In that perspective, since all self-help books' have at least one common message. They tell you that you have the power to change yourself.... By implication all these books say, if you are in pain, if you are stuck and can not change, it is not someone's fault but your own '.
It is important to note that the popularity of self-help books can lead to a placebo effect and thus seems to be an effective way to change the way individuals think about their lives and selves. This is because individuals will believe these books will change their lives like others are supported.
Characteristics
Self-help books often focus on popular psychology such as romantic relationships, or aspects of human thought and behavior that are confident in self-confidence can be controlled with effort. Self-help books usually advertise themselves as capable of raising self-awareness and performance, including satisfaction with one's life. They often say they can help you achieve this faster than with conventional therapy. Many celebrities who market self-help books include Jennifer Love Hewitt, Oprah Winfrey, Elizabeth Taylor, Charlie Fitzmaurice, Tony Robbins, Wayne Dyer, Deepak Chopra, and Cher.
Like most books, self-help books can be purchased offline and online; 'Between 1972 and 2000, the number of self-help books... increased from 1.1 percent to 2.4 percent of the total number of printed books'.
Fictitious Analog
Stephen Potter's "Upmanship" books are satyrists who take the status of seeking under the cloak of sociableness - 'remember, that only on such occasions that appearance of likeness is of the utmost importance' - is cast in the form of a guidebook. Decades later, with neoliberal turns, such suggestions - 'Remember the reality of self-interest' - will be seriously advocated in the self-help world: in bestsellers like Swim with the Shark , all 'kind of trickery which seems benignly encouraged ', on the principle that' status indicates things: just do not be let down by their own '.
Perhaps the most famous fictional embodiment of the self-help world world is Bridget Jones. Taking 'self-help book... [as a new form of religious] -' a kind of secular religion - a kind of moral lite '- it struggles to integrate often conflicting instructions into a coherent whole. 'He has to stop beating above the head with A Loving Woman Too Much and instead think more towards Men Are from Mars, Women of Venus ... see Richard's behavior less as a sign that he is very dependent and loves too much and more in the light he becomes like a Mars' rubber band. Even he, however, has an occasional crisis of faith, when he wonders: 'Maybe it helps if you have never read a self-help book in your life'.
In the BookWorld Companion, it is suggested that 'for those of you who are bored with the fancy shopping world and inappropriate boyfriends at Chicklit, a trip to Dubious Lifestyle Advice may be the next step. An hour in the holy halls of the created disease will leave you with at least ten problems you never knew existed, let alone exist. '
Example
See also
- Behavioral books - Precursors for self-help books from the Middle Ages to the 18th Century
- Mirror for the prince
- New Thought
- Occultism
- List of occult authors
- Positive thinking
- Spirituality
- New Age
References
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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