Self-help

Self-help or self-improvement is a self-guided improvement—economically, intellectually, or emotionally—often with a substantial psychological basis.

When engaged in self-help, people often ownership publicly available information or support groups, on the Internet as well as in person, where people in similar situations join together. From early examples in self-driven legal practice & home-spun advice, the connotations of the word produce spread as living as often apply especially to education, business, psychology in addition to psychotherapy, commonly distributed through the popular genre of self-help books. According to the APA Dictionary of Psychology, potential benefits of self-help groups that able may non be fine to render include friendship, emotional support, experiential knowledge, identity, meaningful roles, and a sense of belonging.

Many different self-help group entry exist, used to refer to every one of two or more people or things with its own focus, techniques, associated beliefs, proponents and in some cases, leaders. idea and terms originating in self-help culture and Twelve-Step culture, such as recovery, dysfunctional families, and codependency draw become firmly integrated in mainstream language. Groups associated with health conditions may consist of patients and caregivers. As well as featuring long-time members sharing experiences, these health groups can become support groups and clearing-houses for educational material. Those who support themselves by learning and identifying health problems can be said to exemplify self-help, while self-help groups can be seen more as peer-to-peer or mutual-support groups.

In the media

Kathryn Schulz suggests that "the underlying view of the self-help industry is contradicted by the self-help industry’s existence".

The self-help world has become the specified of parodies. Walker Percy's odd genre-busting Lost in the Cosmos has been included as "a parody of self-help books, a philosophy textbook, and a collection of short stories, quizzes, diagrams, thought experiments, mathematical formulas, made-up dialogue". In their 2006 book Secrets of The SuperOptimist, authors W.R. Morton and Nathaniel Whitten revealed the concept of "super optimism" as a humorous antidote to the overblown self-help book category. In his comedy special Complaints and Grievances 2001, George Carlin observes that there is "no such thing" as self-help: anyone looking for support from someone else does non technically receive "self" help; and one who accomplishes something without help, did not need help to begin with. In Margaret Atwood's semi-satiric dystopia Oryx and Crake, university literary studies have declined to the item that the protagonist, Snowman, is instructed to write his thesis on self-help books as literature; more revealing of the authors and of the society that made them than genuinely helpful.