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Be ye transformed!Apr 22 '01 (Updated Apr 23 '01) Write an essay on this topic.
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The Bottom Line It's a self-help jungle out there. Here's a guide to some of the flora and fauna.
The proliferation of self-help books (there are thousands of them now) demonstrates the continuing popularity of America's favorite pastime. No, it's not baseball or the WWF, nor is it collecting the malappropisms of the current president. It is, rather, the good old American passion for what was once called "self improvement" or, as it is currntly called, "self-help." The following introduction is by no means scholarly but is meant to be instructive. The earliest American self-help book was, doubtless, the Bible, with its admonition to "... be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind." (Rom. 12.2) An early, perhaps the first, secular foray into the field can be seen in Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography, where Ben uses an elaborate scoring system to engage in moral improvement. (Clutter was his downfall. However, he did write a pamphlet entitled "Advice to a Young Man on Choosing a Mistress," so perhaps there were other problems.) His Poor Richard's Almanac was a continuous catalog of self-help advice. The various waves of religious revival of the 18th and 19th centuries, the Transcendental Movement and the various home-grown American religions (Mormonism, Spiritualism, Christian Science, Seventh Day Adventism), all show a strong penchant for personal reform. There was, also, in the first half of the 19th Century a proliferation of utopian socialist colonies (what would be called in the Sixties "communes"), which attempted to change not only America's economic activity, but also its diet, sex problems and intellectual level. As society became more secular, in the latter part of the 19th Century, so did our favorite sport. In the 1890s, came something called "mental photography," which was an early form of what is now called creative visualization. In the 1920s, a movement arose called "New Thought," which raised many of the issues raised by the current "New Age." This movement is satirized, along with evangelical preaching, in Sinclair Lewis' novel Elmer Gantry. (Throughout the novel, whatever "religion" he is pursuing, the text of Gantry's major sermon "Love is the morning and the evening star," comes from the writings of Ralph Ingersoll, the great American Atheist!) In the 1930s, three books were published which, I believe, provide, along with the Bible, the foundations of modern self-help. They were, Alcoholics Anonymous, written, primarily by William (Bill) Wilson, the co-founder of the movement by that name, How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie and Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. These four volumes provide useful starting points for four major, heuristic (useful) categories of self-help books: spiritual, recovery, character development and prosperity. These categories, I must stress, are not meant to be exhaustive but, hopefully, they provide an overview of the field. They definitely overlap. I. SPIRITUAL (Prototype: The Bible) With its stories, parables, preaching, history, etc., the Bible provides the prototype for this class of books. I include in it books that try to set up an entire spiritual system, which provide a total guide to life or an introduction to such a system. Such books would include, The Celestine Manuscript (an extended parable about the search of lost manuscripts in Peru) and its sequels, A Course in Miracles (allegedly "channeled" by Jesus), The Way of the Peaceful Warrior and its sequels and the recent books involving Conversations With God. Readers can either "pick and choose" from these books or "buy the system." II. RECOVERY (Prototype: Alcoholics Anonymous a.k.a. The Big Book) In 1935, a sober alcoholic from New York named Bill Wilson met a still-drinking surgeon from Akron, Ohio, Dr. Robert Smith (Dr. Bob). Wilson had been sober for more than six months due to a combination of circumstances: knowledge he had received from a physician, Dr. William Silkworth, of Towns Hospital, in New York City, that alcoholism was actually a disease involving an allergy to alcohol combined with a mental obsession about drinking; spiritual information brought to him by a friend, received by that friend from a former patient of Carl Jung, that alcoholism required a "spirtual cure"; and a "spiritual experience that Bill had had pointing the way to a society of alcoholics, reaching out to each other with the "good news" of recovery. Dr. Bob got sober that night, and, with one lapse a few weeks later, stayed sober for the rest of his life. From the meeting of these two men sprung Alcoholics Anonymous. Four years after this meeting, the book Alcoholics Anonymous was published. Millions of copies have been published of its three editions, and it is now available in most languages of the world. This book is the model for similar books published by Narcotics Anonymous, Codependents Anonymous, Debtors Anonymous and many other programs. The first 164 pages of Alcoholics Anonymous present the program of recovery, not changed since the first edition, while the balance of the book presents stories of sobrity, beginning with early members of AA, up to the present. The best known part of the AA program is the famous 12 Steps. But rather than go on any more, here are the 12 Steps, copied here from AA's own website: http://www.alcoholics-anonymous.org/ (If you want to find out about AA for yourself or someone you know or love, e-mail me from my public profile.) The Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous 1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol - that our lives had become unmanageable. 2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. 3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him. 4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. 5. Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs. 6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character. 7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings. 8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all. 9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others. 10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it. 11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out. 12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics and to practice these principles in all our affairs. III. CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT (Prototype: How to Win Friends and Influence People) As industry spread during the Twentieth Century, from its earliest center in the industrial Northeast to the Midwest, there came a need for executives to staff the new companies. First Steel, then Auto, grew up in the Great American Heartland. Men (and it was only men back then) from small towns and farms had to be trained to manage large enterprises. One of the parts of this "training" was the development of a "corporate personality." Perhaps the leader in this kind of training was a public-speaking teacher named Dale Carnegie. His book, How to Win Friends and Influence People, is the classic in it field. Here is Carnegie's own summary, taken from the website http://www.westegg.com/unmaintained/carnegie/ Part One Fundamental Techniques in Handling People Don't criticize, condemn or complain. Give honest and sincere appreciation. Arouse in the other person an eager want. Part Two Six ways to make people like you Become genuinely interested in other people. Smile. Remember that a person's name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language. Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk about themselves. Talk in terms of the other person's interests. Make the other person feel important - and do it sincerely. Part Three Win people to your way of thinking. The only way to get the best of an argument is to avoid it. Show respect for the other person's opinions. Never say, "You're wrong." If you are wrong, admit it quickly and emphatically. Begin in a friendly way. Get the other person saying "yes, yes" immediately. Let the other person do a great deal of the talking. Let the other person feel that the idea is his or hers. Try honestly to see things from the other person's point of view. Be sympathetic with the other person's ideas and desires. Appeal to the nobler motives. Dramatize your ideas. Throw down a challenge. Part Four Be a Leader: How to Change People Without Giving Offense or Arousing Resentment A leader's job often includes changing your people's attitudes and behavior. Some suggestions to accomplish this: Begin with praise and honest appreciation. Call attention to people's mistakes indirectly. Talk about your own mistakes before criticizing the other person. Ask questions instead of giving direct orders. Let the other person save face. Praise the slightest improvement and praise every improvement. Be "hearty in your approbation and lavish in your praise." Give the other person a fine reputation to live up to. Use encouragement. Make the fault seem easy to correct. Make the other person happy about doing the thing you suggest. Anyway, I hope you get the flavor of Carnegie's approach. Modern day "trainers" such as Tony Robbins owe much of their style to Carnegie. IV. PROSPERITY (Prototype: Think and Grow Rich) Copies of Napoleon Hill's Think and Grow Rich can be found in the rack of almost any book or magazine store. It is, next to the Bible, the the best-selling of all self-help books. The core of the book, separate from a lot of incredibly dated analyses of society, character, is two-fold. First, a system of "charging up the mind" (my phrase) that I call passionate visualization. Unlike others, Hill specifies that visualization techniques, which are common today, should be "charged up" (again, my phrase) not only with sensual specificity but also with passionate, positive desire. Hill also gives seventeen Master Principles to Achieve Riches. Here they are, in no special order. - Applied Faith - Self Discipline - Going the Extra Mile - Personal Initiative - Accurate Thinking - Definiteness of Purpose - Controlled Attention - Learning From Adversity and Defeat - Positive Mental Attitude - Imagination - Enthusiasm - Maintenance of Sound Health - Cosmic Habit Force - The Master Mind - Pleasing Personality - Cooperation - Budgeting Time and Money Now, after all this, what are some principles to choosing self-help books? I advise the following. 1. From each of the four categories above: spiritual, recovery, character building and prosperity, get the basic text. (Yes, get a copy of Alcoholics Anonymous even if you're not in recovery. You'll learn.) And read them over. (No, you don't have to read the entire Bible. Try the Book of Proverbs and Mark's Gospel to start out.) 2. If your problem is recovery, especially from an addiction or a money problem (debting or gambling), join the relevant 12-step group. Get a sponsor and follow all suggestions. Especially, start work on the Steps. 3. Hunt around in a bookstore or online for one (and only one) book that serves you. Read excerpts from it in the store (many books have excerpts online) and see if it addresses the problem you need "help" with: spiritual, recovery, character development, prosperity. 4. Work the "system" of the book for at least six weeks. Do not work any other system. And do not buy any other self-help books during this period! 5. If, after this period of time, you do not find you are changing or you are not changing quickly enough, you may buy another book. Do not quit your 12-step group. If you would like a suggestion as to specific books, e-mail me at REDDAVENYC@AOL.COM. Love to you, one day at a time.  |
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