Self-help or self-improvement are self-guided improvements - economically, intellectually, or emotionally - often on a substantial psychological basis. Many different groups of self-help programs exist, each with its own focus, techniques, related beliefs, supporters and, in some cases, leaders. Concepts and terms derived from Twelve-Step self-help culture and culture, such as recovery, dysfunctional families, and codependency have become highly integrated in the main language.
Self-help often makes use of publicly available information or support groups, on the Internet as well as in private, where people in similar situations join together. From early examples in self-propelled law practice and self-spinning advice, the connotation of the word has spread and is often applied primarily to education, business, psychology and psychotherapy, commonly distributed through the popular genre of self-help books. According to the APIC Dictionary of Psychology, the potential benefits of self-help groups that professionals can not provide include friendship, emotional support, experience knowledge, identity, meaningful roles, and ownership.
Groups related to health conditions may consist of patients and caregivers. As well as featuring long-time sharing members, these health groups can become support groups and clearing houses for educational materials. Those who help themselves by learning and identifying health problems can be said to set an example of self-help, while self-help groups can be seen more as peer-to-peer support.
Video Self-help
Histori
In classical antiquity, Hesiod's Works and Days opened with moral defection, hammering home in every way that Hesiod could think of. "Stoic offers ethical advice" on the idea of ââeudaimonia - prosperity, prosperity, growth. "The genre of the prince's mirror banner, which has a long history in Greco-Roman and Western Renaissance literature, symbolizes the secular authenticity of the literature Biblical wisdom Proverbs of many periods, collected and not collected, embody the traditional moral and practical advice of various cultures.
The compounded word "self-help" often appears in the 1800s in the context of law, referring to the doctrine that parties to disputes have the right to use legitimate means of their own initiative to correct mistakes.
For some, George Combe " the Constitution " [1828], in a manner that advocates personal responsibility and the possibility of self-improvement naturally through education or proper self-control, largely inaugurated self-sustaining movements; "In 1841, an essay by Ralph Waldo Emerson, entitled Compensation, was published showing" everyone in his lifetime needs to thank for his mistakes "and" acquire a self-reliant habit "as" our strength grows from our weakness. "Samuel Smiles (1812-1904) published the first self-help self-help self-help book entitled Self-Help - in 1859. The preamble to the phrase:" Heaven helps those who help themselves " , provides variations of "God helps those who help themselves", a quoted saying that also appeared before in Benjamin Franklin Poor Richard Almanac (1733-1758). In the 20th century, "success remarkable Carnegie as self-help writer "developed the genre with How to Win Friends and Influence People in 1936. After failing in several careers, Carnegie became fascinated with the success and connection with confidence, and the book his book has sold over 50 million copies.Earlier, in 1902, James Allen published As a Thinking Man , resulting from the belief that "a man is literally what he thinks, his character is the complete sum of all his thoughts. "The noble thought, this book defends, becomes a noble one, while the low mind makes the miserable; and Napoleon Hill Think and Grow Rich (1937) describes the use of recurring positive thoughts to attract happiness and wealth by utilizing "Infinite Intelligence".
End of the 20th century
In the late third of the twentieth century, "the remarkable growth in self-help publication... in self-improvement culture" really takes place - something that must be linked to postmodernism itself - in a way "the subjectivity of postmodern self-constructing Subject-in-reflective. "At least, at least," in the self-improvement literature... that the crisis of subjectivity is not articulated but enacted - is shown in the growing sales of self-help books. "
The conservative turn of the neo-liberal decades also means a decline in traditional political activism, and increasing "social isolation; the Twelve Step recovery groups is a context in which individuals seek a sense of community... but other phenomena of personal psychology." more radical. Indeed, "some social theorists [sic] have argued that the twentieth-century preoccupation with oneself serves as a tool of social control: to calm political unrest... [to] pursue self-discovery." '
Maps Self-help
Market
In the context of markets, groups and corporate efforts to help "seekers" have moved into "self-help" markets, with Awareness Group Training, LGATs and psychotherapy systems represented. It offers solutions that are packed more or less to instruct people who seek their own individual improvement, just as "self-improvement literature leads the reader to a familiar framework... what is done by the French fin de siÃÆ'à ¨cle The social theory expert Gabriel Tarde calls the 'borrowed line of thinking'. "
A subgenre of self-help book series also exists: such as the for Dummies and the Complete Idiot Guide for... - compare the guidebooks. Statistics
At the beginning of the 21st century, "the self-development industry, including books, seminars, audio and video products, and personal coaching, is said to be an industry of 2.48 billion dollars per year" in America. In 2006, Marketdata research firm estimated the US $ 9 billion "self-improvement" market in the US - including infomercials, mail-order catalogs, holistic institutions, books, audio tapes, motivational-speakers seminars, private coaching markets. , weight-loss programs and stress management. Marketdata projects that the total market size will grow to over $ 11 billion in 2008. In 2012 Laura Vanderkam writes about a turnover of 12 billion dollars. In 2013 Kathryn Schulz examines the "$ 11 billion industry".
Self-help and professional service delivery
Self-help and mutual assistance is very different from - although they can complement - service delivery by professionals: consider eg interfaces between local self-help and International Aid service delivery models.
Conflicts can and do appear at the interface, however, with some professionals considering that "the twelve-step approach encourages some sort of contemporary version of 19th century amateurism or enthusiasm where self-examination and social observation are so common enough to draw more major conclusions. "
Research
The emergence of a culture of self-help inevitably causes boundary disputes with other approaches and disciplines. Some would object to their classification as "self-help" literature, such as "Deborah Tannen's rejection of the self-help role of his books" in order to maintain his academic credibility, aware of the dangers "of writing a book that became a popular success... all but ensuring that one's work will lose its long-term legitimacy. "
The placebo effect can not be completely discounted. Thus, careful study of "the power of self-help unconscious tapes... shows that their content has no real effect... But that's not what the participants thought." "If they think they're listening to a record of self-esteem (even if half the labels are wrong), they feel that their self-esteem has gone up.No wonder people keep buying subliminal tapes: although the tapes do not work, people think so." saw many self-help industries as part of the "leather trade." People need haircuts, massages, dentistry, wigs and glasses, sociology and surgery, and love and advice. - the leather trade, "not the profession and science." The practitioners will serve as "part of the personal service industry rather than as a mental health professional." While "there is no evidence that the twelve-step program is superior to other interventions in reducing alcohol dependence or problems which is related to alcohol, "at the same time it is clear that" there is something about 'harmony itself' that is curative. "So for example" smoking increases the risk of death by a factor of only 1.6, while social isolation does it by a factor of 2.0... show additional [values] for self-help groups such as Alcoholics Anonymous as a replacement community. "
Some psychologists favor positive psychology, and explicitly embrace an empirical, self-help philosophy; "The role of positive psychology is to be the bridge between the ivory tower and the main road - between the rigors of the academy and the pleasure of the self-help movement." They aim to improve the field of self-improvement by means of a deliberate increase in good scientific research and well-designed models. The division of focus and methodology has resulted in several subfields, in particular: general positive psychology, with a primary focus on the study of phenomena and psychological effects; and personal effectiveness, with a primary focus on the analysis, design and implementation of qualitative personal growth. This includes deliberate training for new thoughts and feelings. As business strategy communicator, Don Tapscott says, "The design industry is something that is done for us, I propose each of us to be a designer, but I think 'I like the way he thinks' can take on new meaning."
Both self-talk, the tendency to engage in self-directed verbal and mental conversation and thought, and social support can be used as an instrument of self-improvement, often by empowering, messages that promote action. Psychologists have designed a series of experiments intended to explain how self-talk can produce self-improvement. In general, research shows that people prefer to use a second person instead of a first person pronoun when engaged in self-talk to achieve goals, regulate one's behavior, thoughts, or emotions, and facilitate performance. If self-talk has the expected effect, writing about personal problems using language from the standpoint of their friends should result in greater motivational and emotional benefits than using language from their own perspective. When you have to complete a difficult task and you do not want to do something to accomplish this task, try writing a few sentences or goals that your friends tell you, giving you more motivation sources than you write yourself. Research conducted by Ireland and others has revealed that, as expected, when people write using many physical and mental words or even typing a standard prompt with these words, adopt a friend's point of view while writing personal challenges freely can help improve people. intent to improve self-control by promoting emotional positives such as pride and satisfaction, which can motivate people to achieve their goals.
The use of self-talk goes beyond the scope of self-improvement to perform certain activities, self-talk as a linguistic form of self-help also plays a very important role in regulating the emotions of people under social pressure. First of all, people who use non-first language tend to exhibit higher levels of self-vision during the introspection process, which suggests that using the first person's pronoun and name alone can lead to an increase in self-distance. More importantly, this specific form of self-help has also been found to increase the ability of people to organize their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors under social pressure, which will lead them to assess the events that trigger social anxiety in more challenging terms and less threatening.. In addition, this self-help behavior also shows a real self-regulating effect through a process of social interaction, regardless of their dispositional vulnerability to social anxiety.
Criticism
Scholars have targeted self-help claims as false and misleading. In 2005 Steve Salerno described the American self-help movement - he used the acronym SHAM: Self-Help Movement and Actualization - not only ineffective in achieving its goals, but also socially dangerous. "Salerno says that 80 percent of self-help customers and motivation are regular customers and they keep coming back 'whether the program works or not.' Other people also point out that with self-help book "inventory increases demand... The more people read it, the more they think they need it... more like an addiction than an alliance."
Self-help writers have been described as working "in the field of ideology, imagined, re-negotiated.... though the scientific layer permeates the work [ir], there is also an underlying moral symbol."
Christopher Buckley in his book God is My Broker asserts: "The only way to get rich from self-help books is to write one".
In media
Kathryn Schulz states that "the theory underlying the self-help industry goes against the existence of self-supporting industries".
Parodies and fictional analogy
The world of self-help has become a target of parody. The strange genre freak of Walker Percy Lost in the Cosmos has been described as "a parody of self-help books, philosophy textbooks, and a collection of short stories, quizzes, diagrams, thought experiments, mathematical formulas, create ". In their 2006 book Secrets of The Superoptimist , author W.R. Morton and Nathanel Whitten reveal the concept of "superoptimism" as a cute clerk for an excessive self-help book category. In comedy in particular, Complaints and Complaints (2001), George Carlin observes that there is no such thing as self-help: anyone seeking help from others is not technically getting "self" help; and people who get things done without help, do not need help getting started. In the semi-satiric dystopia of Margaret Atwood, the study of university literature has refused to the point that the protagonist, Snowman, was ordered to write his thesis on self-help books as literature; more revealing the authors and the community that produced them than actually helped.
See also
References
External links
- Self-Help in Curlie (based on DMOZ)
Source of the article : Wikipedia