scholarly journals The Self-Help Book in the Therapeutic Ontosphere: A Postmodern Paradox

2014 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 755-771
Author(s):  
Jean Collingsworth
Keyword(s):  
Lived Experience ◽  
Social Space ◽  
The Self ◽  
Value Systems ◽  
Advice Giving ◽  
Self Help ◽  
Generic Term ◽  
Self Actualization ◽  
Stable Core ◽  
Critical Theorist

he self-help book is a prominent cultural and commercial phenomenon in the therapeutic ontosphere which permeates contemporary life. The generic term ’ontosphere’ is here co-opted from IT to describe a notional social space in which influential conceptualisations and shared assumptions about personal values and entitlements operate without interrogation in the demotic apprehension of ’’. It thus complements the established critical terms ’discourse’ and ’episteme’. In the therapeutic ontosphere the normal vicissitudes of life are increasingly interpreted as personal catastrophes. As new issues of concern are defined, it is assumed that an individual will need help to deal with them and live successfully. Advice-giving has become big business and the self-help book is now an important post-modern commodity. However a paradox emerges when the content and ideology of this apparently postmodern artifact is examined. In its topical eclecticism the genre is indeed unaligned with those traditional ’grand narratives’ and collective value systems which the postmodern critical project has sought to discredit. It endorses relativism, celebrates reflexivity and valorizes many kinds of ’personal truth’. Moreover readers are encouraged towards self-renovation through a process of ’bricolage’ which involves selecting advice from a diverse ethical menu along-side which many ’little narratives’ of localized lived experience are presented as supportive exemplars. However in asserting the pragmatic power of individual instrumentality in an episteme which has seen the critical decentering of the human subject, the self-help book perpetuates the liberal-humanist notion of an essential personal identity whose stable core is axiomatic in traditional ethical advice. And the heroic journey of self-actualization is surely the grandest of grand narratives: the monomyth. Thus the telic self-help book presents the critical theorist with something of a paradox.

Effects of Fictional, Autobiographical and Self-Help Literature on Personality Measures

1997 ◽  
Vol 80 (1) ◽  
pp. 91-96 ◽  
Author(s):  
David F. Scholz ◽  
James J. Forest
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
Eysenck Personality Questionnaire ◽  
Control Groups ◽  
Personal Orientation Inventory ◽  
Self Help ◽  
Reading Condition ◽  
Self Actualization ◽  
Two Measures ◽  
Group Reading ◽  
Personal Orientation

This study evaluated three types of books under different reading conditions and using two measures of personality. Data from 163 women were analyzed in a 3 × 2 × 2 multivariate design, with control groups, which varied type of book (fiction, autobiography, self-help), reading condition (supervised and unsupervised), and order of testing (Eysenck Personality Questionnaire and Personal Orientation Inventory). None of the groups who received books to read had mean scores significantly different from those of the control groups. However, the group reading the self-help book had significantly higher scores on scales of self-actualization than the groups using fictional or autobiographical books.

Treading the tightrope of femininity: Transforming gendered subjectivity in a therapeutic community

2019 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
pp. 390-404
Author(s):  
Inna Perheentupa ◽  
Suvi Salmenniemi
Keyword(s):  
Lived Experience ◽  
Therapeutic Intervention ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Transformation Process ◽  
The Self ◽  
Escape Route ◽  
Self Help ◽  
Feminist Discourse ◽  
Femininity And Masculinity ◽  
Self Help Group

This article examines the therapeutic self-transformation process in a self-help group in Russia. Drawing on participant observation and interviews, and engaging with debates on therapeutic technologies and the transformation of gender relations, it explores how the self-help group shapes how participants come to understand and act upon themselves. It shows that the process of self-transformation is profoundly gendered, problematising femininity and identifying it as an object of therapeutic intervention. Rather than collectively contesting gendered power and disadvantage, participants are invited to cultivate traditional notions of femininity and masculinity and learn to draw pleasure from them. We argue that this message may be appealing to women because it speaks to their lived experience of exhaustion and precarity, and offers them the prospect of overcoming it through a mythologised heteronormative order. It offers solace and a potential escape route where room for political agency is limited and feminist discourse heavily vilified. Yet the article also shows that participants do not merely internalise the ideological messages of the group, but engage with them in contradictory and ambivalent ways.

scholarly journals MASYARAKAT SUNDA DALAM SASTRA: KOMPARASI MORALITAS DAN KEPRIBADIAN

LOKABASA ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
RETTY ISNENDES
Keyword(s):  
Social Structure ◽  
The Self ◽  
Value Systems ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
Human Form ◽  
Literary Works ◽  
Self Actualization ◽  
Literary Period

Tulisan ini mengangkat aktualisasi diri tokoh sastra dalam peranannya membentuk moral manusia Sunda. Tokoh sastra adalah refleksi berbagai struktur sosial, begitu pun dengan tokoh sastra Sunda yang bisa membiaskan kebenaran universal tentang sifat, sikap, karakter, dan kepribadian manusia Sunda pada tataran realitas. Karya sastra yang dianalisis adalah sample dari karya sastra Sunda dari tiga periode, yaitu: Periode Sastra Sunda Kuno atau Lama (Buhun), Periode Sastra Sunda Pertengahan (Bihari), dan Periode Sastra Sunda Modern atau Baru (Kiwari). Pada akhirnya, sistem nilai yang muncul dari kompleksitas aktivitas dipengaruhi oleh perubahan jaman dan bergantinya kekuasaan.  AbstractThis paper raised the self-actualization literary 􀂿gure in the role of moral human form Sunda. Various literary 􀂿gures are a re􀃀ection of social structure, as was the literary figures that can refract universal truths about the nature, attitude, character, and personality Sunda at the level of reality. Literary works are analyzed samples of literary works from three periods, namely: Ancient Sundanese Literary Period or Old (Buhun), Sunda Literature Medieval Period (Bihari), and Sundanese Modern Literary Period or New (Kiwari). In the end, the value systems that arise from the complexity of the activity is in􀃀uenced by the change of time and the alternation of power.

Beyond the self-help polemics.

1988 ◽  
Vol 43 (7) ◽  
pp. 598-599 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael J. Mahoney
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
Self Help

Co-opting the Self-Help Revolution

1986 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 132-133
Author(s):  
Nathan Hurvitz
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
Self Help

A Very Critical Look at the Self-Help Movement

PsycCRITIQUES ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Wayne Weiten
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
Self Help

Disequilibrium and Divinity Salience as Invariant Structures in The Halal Executives’ Experience of Eudaimonia

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 109
Author(s):  
Jalilah Ahmad ◽  
Rosmimah Mohd. Roslin ◽  
Mohd Ali Bahari Abdul Kadir
Keyword(s):  
Data Analysis ◽  
Lived Experience ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
The Self ◽  
Phenomenological Method ◽  
Sustainable Practices ◽  
Muslim Population ◽  
Living Well ◽  
Hard Skills ◽  
Invariant Structures

The global Halal industry is large and continues to grow as the global Muslim population increases in size and dispersion. There are 1.84 billion Muslims today spread over 200 countries and is expected to increase to 2.2 billion by 2030. The industry will be worth USD6.4 trillion by the end of 2018 with more non-traditional players and emergent markets. The stakes are high with pressures to generate novel and sustainable practices. This goes beyond systems and hard skills as it needs to cut into the self – the person of virtues in virtuous acts, not because they “have to” but because it is the purpose of humankind or his telos - to be “living well” and “acting well” or eudaimonia. This study seek to explore Halal executives’ lived experience of “eudaimonia.”. Using Giorgi’s descriptive psychological phenomenological method for data analysis, the study elicits two distinct invariant structures – ‘disequilibrium in status quo’ and ‘divinity salience’.

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