There must be something wrong with you if you don'tknow there's
something wrong with you,
blame the primordial ooze. If it hadn't woken up one day from its
nice warm bed of volcanic rock, looked around at all the Sturm und Drang,
and complained, "I don't like this. Why don't I go out and seek some
greater personal fulfillment?", none of this would have happened. But
primordial ooze went on to become hydrogen, and, ever since, the Earth
has simply teemed with self-improvement schemes. Of course, in those
days, transforming oneself didn't involve group hugs and confessions, no
one stood up and said, "Hi, I'm Molten Lava and I suffer from dreadful
hot flashes." That came later, with civilization.
I first came across the notion of self-help in 1982, with Werner
Erhardt's "est" promising self-awareness ("Know myself? If I knew myself
I'd run away," said Goethe), fulfillment, and how to get everything you
wanted, or "noblesse without the oblige" as one writer called it. Tired
of the evangelical zeal adherents displayed (and the nonsense they
spouted), I actually met with a bunch of esties (esters?) with a tape
recorder cunningly hidden in my bag and a misguided notion of writing the
Ultimate Expose as visions of Pulitzers danced in my head. (The article
never got written, but that's another story.) The conversation was
totally unremarkable; all I remember is one chap earnestly telling me
that, with est, I would learn how to separate from "my act" - look at "my
act," stand back and change "my act." I couldn't help myself. "Then can I
take it on the road?" I inquired. Which was when I discovered that those
who embark on the road to inner peace have absolutely no sense of
humor.
Much has changed in 10 years; alas, the "humor thing" has not, and
today's self-helpers are just as dreary today as they were then.
Self-help has grown to include every permutation of pop-psychology
possible, from positive thinking to family systems (est, incidentally, is
now the kinder, gentler "Forum"); as well as encompassing mainstream
medicine with every disease, disorder, condition, or illness ever known
(or imagined). Even the buzzwords have changed: Now, to err is
dysfunctional; to forgive, co-dependent.
Self-help is warmer and fuzzier than it used to be, says one
critic, but the focus is still self, self, self...
Self-help began truly proliferating in the 1980s with what humorist
Fran Lebowitz called "a rate of speed traditionally associated with the
more unpleasant amoebic disorders" - going from some 300 groups in 1963
to more than 500,000 in 1992. The reason, say the authors of Self-Help
Concepts and Applications (from Charles Press 1992), lies in our stars
-namely, Oprah, Geraldo, Phil, and Ann Landers; also New Woman
Cosmopolitan, and other magazines; plus prime-time TV dramas, which
refer, with increasing frequency, to self-help groups. These bastions of
popular culture no doubt appreciate that self-help fills a need in a
fragmented society, where many traditional sources of support - such as
the extended family - no longer exist. They also realize that misery is,
well, endlessly fascinating.
I had pretty much decided to ignore self-help after the est
debacle, but soon it became difficult. Not only was the language
permeating everything I read, from articles on the economy and politics
to features in women's magazines; but no less an authority than former
Surgeon General C. Everett Koop organized a workshop on self-help and
proclaimed that "the future of health care in these troubled times
requires cooperation between organized medicine and self-help groups."
Koop also said that "a partnership between professional traditional care
and the self-help movement can provide a superior service.' Various
self-help groups became politically active, lobbying governments for
funding and recognition. I started to get peeved. Then people came out of
the woodwork with bizarre phrases like "dysfunctional family"
(redundant?) and "I'm feeling my feelings." Finally, when a (former)
friend insisted to me that I was abused as a child (because my parents
had expressed disapproval when I declared - at 16, after appearing in two
school plays - that I was going to study acting), I had had enough. What
next? The vet suggesting my cat read Nurturing Your Inner Kitten? A
12-step program for conquering chronic nail-biting? A self-help group for
adult children (an oxymoron?) of absentminded parents? Orwell, I feared,
had been right - with the demise of language would come chaos.
Soon, whoever you were, whatever you had, might have, there was a
group you could join, and just in case you didn't know there was a name
for some of these things, much less support groups, "disease-of-the-week"
movies told you in graphic detail.
It matters little whether the threat comes from some modern
technology, from heart surgery or hemodialysis, whether it's a threat
based on a reaction to stress, or whether it is due to an addiction, to
violent behavior, or to trauma," says Leonard D. Borman, Ph.D., former
executive director of The Self-Help Center in Illinois and master of the
run-on sentence. (Pardon? Cancer equals heart transplant equals hives
equals PMS equals an unfortunate tendency to shop till you drop?)
Tags:
adherents,
confessions,
est,
esters,
evangelical zeal,
free will,
goethe,
group,
group hugs,
hot flashes,
hydrogen,
inner peace,
molten lava,
permutation,
personal fulfillment,
pop psychology,
primordial ooze,
self improvement,
self-help,
self-improvement,
sense of humor,
tape recorder,
volcanic rock,
werner erhardt
