Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Sham: How the Self-Help Movement Made America Helpless

Sham: How the Self-Help Movement Made America Helpless

Salerno, Steve

Paperback

Business GeneralGeneral PsychologyMental Health

ISBN10: 1400054109
ISBN13: 9781400054107
Publisher: Prh Christian Publishing
Published: Sep 26 2006
Pages: 288
Weight: 0.46
Height: 0.64 Width: 5.30 Depth: 8.04
Language: English
Self-help: To millions of Americans it seems like a godsend. To many others it seems like a joke. But as investigative reporter Steve Salerno reveals in this groundbreaking book, it's neither--in fact it's much worse than a joke. Going deep inside the Self-Help and Actualization Movement (fittingly, the words form the acronym SHAM), Salerno offers the first serious exposé of this multibillion-dollar industry and the real damage it is doing--not just to its paying customers, but to all of American society.

Based on the author's extensive reporting--and the inside look at the industry he got while working at a leading lifestyle publisher--SHAM shows how thinly credentialed experts now dispense advice on everything from mental health to relationships to diet to personal finance to business strategy. Americans spend upward of $8 billion every year on self-help programs and products. And those staggering financial costs are actually the least of our worries.

SHAM demonstrates how the self-help movement's core philosophies have infected virtually every aspect of American life--the home, the workplace, the schools, and more. And Salerno exposes the downside of being uplifted, showing how the empowering message that dominates self-help today proves just as damaging as the blame-shifting rhetoric of self-help's Recovery movement.

SHAM also reveals:

- How self-help gurus conduct extensive market research to reach the same customers over and over--without ever helping them

- The inside story on the most notorious gurus--from Dr. Phil to Dr. Laura, from Tony Robbins to John Gray

- How your company might be wasting money on motivational speakers, executive coaches, and other quick fixes that often hurt quality, productivity, and morale

- How the Recovery movement has eradicated notions of personal responsibility by labeling just about anything--from drug abuse to sex addiction to shoplifting--a dysfunction or disease

- How Americans blindly accept that twelve-step programs offer the only hope of treating addiction, when in fact these programs can do more harm than good

- How the self-help movement inspired the disastrous emphasis on self-esteem in our schools

- How self-help rhetoric has pushed people away from proven medical treatments by persuading them that they can cure themselves through sheer application of will

As Salerno shows, to describe self-help as a waste of time and money vastly understates its collateral damage. And with SHAM, the self-help industry has finally been called to account for the damage it has done.

Also available as an eBook

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