Can self-help be a personality disorder?

A friend of mine told me how he went on an all-fruit diet for 3 days. This made me really curious and I asked him all sorts of details.

I added, "I think I want to try that. I think I'm up for something like that for some reason. I feel the need to go on a fast, or try an all-fruit diet, or maybe Epsom salts or something."

My friend responded back, "Oh yeah? You itching for some life-hacking?"

I think there's a certain kind of personality for this. Maybe it will eventually be put in the DSM-V. They could call it, "Self-Help Personality Disorder," wherein the patient constantly seeks to modify themselves, by going through various rituals, such as consuming self-help books, or engaging in fanciful diets or programs.

There's always this thought lingering in the back of my mind whenever I get sucked into a self-help book. There's always the question, "Is this impulse itself a problem?" I've been aware of this possibility for years, and based on my understanding, it can be. I've certainly been overly zealous about a self-help book that has caused damage to myself, and even to those around me. But I've also been fantastically liberated by self-help books.

Do people become experts in areas of deficiency?

Jason Kottke is spot on with this observation. In the past few days, he's read of two men in science who are experts in areas where they're personally deficient. George Vaillant's area of expertise is relationships, yet he himself has intimacy issues. And then V.S. Ramachandran has done some very fascinating research in areas related to strange brain behaviors, and yet he himself has a pathologically incapable memory (he can never remember his wife's birthday—or even birthmonth—for the life of him!).

At the end, Kottke ponders:

Beethoven was deaf. Monet had vision problems when he painted some of his most well-known work. I wonder if there's something to this beyond coincidence.

I think there definitely is. I've noticed that many self-help gurus are working out their own issues on a public platform. For example, Dr. Laura (the stern advice queen on the radio) has had a love life that would be considered a failure given her message. Also politicians seem very genuine when they expound about virtue, but I wonder if they are able to get passionate about what they're saying because they're really just talking to themselves on the stump.

Self-Help Reality Show

I really want to see a show that accomplishes this:

Prediction: 50 years from now, a secular self-help book will compete in popularity and influence with the Bible.

This was inspired by this passage by Micki McGee's Self-Help, Inc.: Makeover Culture in American Life.

The solution Dr. Covey [author of 7 Habits of Highly Effective People] proposes—that women who are rearing children ought to cede (or at least postpone their ambitions for self-determination—is legitimized through a robust sort of nostalgia that appeals to scriptural wisdom, traditional metaphors, and American myths. Although he substitutes "under the sun" for "under the heavens"—perhaps a turn of phrase to appeal to his more secular readers—Covey's paraphrase of Ecclesiastes ("to every thing there is a season") aligns his advice with centuries of biblical wisdom. The reference might also remind the close reader that Covey writes in a tradition that goes back to the introduction of Johannes Gutenberg's Bible in 1456, when the development of mass printing techniques made possible, for the first time, not only widespread literacy but also the codification of manners and the emergence of the genres of advice manuals or self-improvement books. Some social observers have suggested that the Bible is perhaps the first and most significant of self-help books. Others have argued that the success of self-improvement literature, whether secular or religious, is contingent on its ability to function as inspirational literature.

7 Habits of Highly Effective People makes little mention of God. And the New Age hit The Secret speaks about the Universe conspiring to get you what you really want.

These are all just preludes and prototypes for the killer self-help book that will take the people by storm in 50 or so years. Another prelude is that a religious self-help book, The Purpose-Driven Life, is already competing with the Bible as far as influence. You hear of Church groups organizing themselves around Purpose-Driven workbooks more so than the Bible itself.

A Unifying Theory of Self-Help

I wrote an article about self-help:

Here's a unifying theory for self-help from an avid fan of the genre. What is it that you actually get when you purchase a self-help book? Most likely it will deliver on four value categories: Empowerment, Kinship, Tactics, and Creativity. Whether or not self-help delivers on its promise for personal change, there is a reason people keep coming back (to the tune of $11 billion spent on self-help in 2008).

Why I don't judge people who do self-help, tarot, therapy, or religion

Anybody who's into self-help should read at least a couple books of skepticism toward the field. Right now, for example, I'm in the midst of reading Stumbling Upon Happiness and SHAM: How the Self-Help Movement Made America Helpless.

Rather than being discouraged by the attack, I feel safer knowing what the skeptics are liable to say. Here's what Steve Salerno, in SHAM, says about Marianne Williamson:

Even for some industry insiders, the unswerving fidelity of Williamson's sizable base constituency can be puzzling, since her books are so repetitive, and she spends so much time blithely stating the obvious: "A sense of separateness dissolves in the presence of real intimacy," Williamson tells audiences. Or, "The reason we feel powerless is simply because we're not expressing our power." Or, "The challenge is to create on Earth as it is in Heaven." ... Such lines, like so much of SHAM, have that whiff of contrived profundity that obscure poets often employ to mask the odor of dubious sense.

The thing is, even in the circular-sounding phraseology of Williamson, I find value. I feel moved by what she is saying. The one-line zinger format is precisely my methodology for self-help. My way is essentially principle-centered thinking, and it sounds similar to those quotes from Williamson.

For example, I have a principle that has been Re-Tweeted a handful of times on Twitter:

Happiness isn't about getting to a place where "everything's fine."

To someone like Salerno, that kind of sentence is meaningless. But to me, and apparently others, it means a whole lot.

People are moved by different things. Some people are moved by a priest invoking ancient texts. Others are moved by Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon. Whatever you're deal is, I won't judge you for it, as long as it tends to do more good than harm.

I kind of like Gretchen Rubin's use of the term "Happiness Project." Everybody must make it their own personal project to find happiness. Everybody who wants to grow needs to discover what medium moves them, and then receive as much material through that medium as possible. Regardless of what the doubters say.

Here is Marianne Williamson:



Honestly, this video doesn't work or even really make sense to me. But I know it will for a lot of people. And that's fine with me.

Negative-space thinking and its application to The 7 Habits

If I was a psychotherapist, I would include this in my mission statement:

My goal is to help my patients, if possible, live wonderful lives without my help.

Here's the same thought applied to the medical field: one of the goals for doctors, medicine, and hospitals, should be to bring you to a state where you don't need them. When you check in for something, the doctor prescribes you something to take care of the problem now. But they don't really prescribe you something that will make sure you never need to come back. Preventative healthcare seems inherently underdelivered.

Here's how I got this idea: After reading The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, I thought to myself, "there are some people who wouldn't ever need to read a book like this." There are people who are already centered. There are people who naturally practice win/win thinking. Why? Were they just raised better? Is it their temperament? How do I become that person?

This pattern of thinking could be termed, "the negative space approach to self-development." Look at this picture, for example. What do you see?



This is a classic figure-ground optical illusion. It takes a second for your mind to switch between seeing the vase versus the two faces.

A similar duality exists in healing; a kind of cause-symptom illusion. Having to take medicine is itself a kind of symptom. Whenever we reach for help, whether in the form of a self-help book, a couples counselor, or meds, we should be thinking about the meaning of our actions. Is our action a cure, symptom, placebo, or a combination thereof?

Here's this thinking applied to 7 Habits: The book has an overarching theme of principle-centered living, but shouldn't we ponder those people who don't need principles?

People who don't need principles don't need hard rules to live by. These people just may be more "intelligent." According to Sternberg's Triarchic Theory of Intelligence, there are three main areas of intelligence. Two of them we're generally familiar with: analytical and creative intelligence. But the third one is interesting: contextual intelligence. Contextual intelligence is, as its name suggests, about putting everything into context. Contextual thinkers don't look at traits in isolation. They look at what surrounds them.

Contextual thinkers, theoretically, wouldn't really need principles. A principle, in my understanding, is a context-free rule.

Actually, in a way, contextual thinkers seem to uphold a meta-principle that kind of annihilates principle-centered thinking:

The ultimate solution to everything should be case-by-case.

Sometimes, when you ask people for advice, they respond, "well, it's case-by-case." This usually happens when you ask a question that is too general, such as, "Should I only date men older than me?" A flexible, contextual, thinker would respond, "Well, that all depends." A rigid thinker would respond, "Never."

People with autistic spectrum disorder, in particular Asperger's syndrome (fyi: take the AQ Test) tend to have rigid thinking. They would, according to Triarchic Theory, have a poverty of contextual intelligence. They tend to, for example, treat questions literally, and don't weigh in other factors, such as the emotions of the asker.

Further Reading: