Sham: How the Self-Help Movement Made America Helpless [Paperback]

Steve Salerno (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 26, 2006

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


From the Hardcover edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

You! Yes, you! Are you addicted to self-help books? Do you require "empowerment" to reverse your "victimhood"? If so, relax—you're far from alone. The Self-Help and Actualization Movement (the titular SHAM) is, according to Salerno, an $8-billion-a-year industry that depends on legions of repeat customers. Salerno presents a carefully researched—and devastating—exposé on SHAM's predatory and fraudulent practices and its corrosive effects on society. As former editor of Men's Health magazine's books program, Salerno knows the terrain from the inside. With judicious delight, he exposes the grandiloquent bluster and blithe hypocrisy of Dr. Phil (who, psychologists say, shames rather than helps his guests) and Dr. Laura (the preacher of family values who didn't know when her own mother was murdered), among many others. He cites examples of junk science, such as Tony Robbins's talk of "the energy frequency of foods," and charges that untested alternative medicine draws people away from proven medical treatments. In addition to detailing the raw facts, Salerno excels at pinpointing the self-abnegating strategy the self-help industry employs: namely, tearing you down in the name of building you up. And the positivity yields questionable results in any case. The self-help industry should not be dismissed as "silly but benign," says Salerno, and he documents how it has undermined psychology, education and health care in this blistering critique. (June 28)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

The all-caps title is an acronym that expresses Salerno's assessment of what it signifies, the Self-Help and Actualization Movement, which he subdivides into the camp of victimization and the camp of empowerment, both of which excuse inaction. The movement fosters victimization by telling adherents they can't escape their pasts, and empowerment by exalting attitude (e.g., self-esteem) over achievement. Salerno keeps both camps in mind as he dissects the checkered--especially in terms of qualifications--careers of SHAM stars John Gray, Dr. Laura, Marianne Williamson, Suze Orman, and in their own chapters, Dr. Phil McGraw and Tony Robbins, both creators of lucrative SHAM empires by copycatting lesser entrepreneurs' wares. Salerno asks why, if SHAM programs and treatments supposedly solve their purchasers' problems, SHAM enterprises thrive on repeat customers, and why the proposed next step, should program or treatment fail, is always more of same. In the book's sobering second part, Salerno powerfully argues that SHAM does real harm through its influence on love relationships, schooling, and health care. A wonderfully lucid, angeringly cogent polemic. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Three Rivers Press (September 26, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1400054109
• ISBN-13: 978-1400054107
• Product Dimensions: 5.1 x 0.6 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (97 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #478,755 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

372 of 420 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Dreadfully argued, June 25, 2005

By 

Susan Wise Bauer (East Coast) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Sham: How the Self-Help Movement Made America Helpless (Hardcover)

I bought SHAM after reading the glowing PW review. It's true that Salerno's tone is "blistering," but his arguments are so lousy that the I couldn't help thinking to myself, "Yes, but...." (and I'm no friend of self-help movements, believe me).

When Salerno is following the money, he's excellent. (Who knew that Hooked on Phonics, a program unceasingly promoted by Dr. Laura, was created by one of the partners in the company that owned Dr. Laura's show?) His chapter on Sportsthink and the corporate world is also worth reading. But when he tries to prove that the self-help movement has caused various other social trends (this occupies most of the book, unfortunately), he relies on vague assertions and rhetorical overstatements. "Politicians and their operatives also saw the possibilites here [in self-help theories]," he writes. "They stirred the pot, adding to the sense of disenfranchisement among already disgruntled factions while reinforcing their feelings of oppression and entitlement....Inexorably, such notions began to undermine clear-cut judgments about morality." Good gracious me. Who were these politicians? Who were their operatives? What disgruntled factions? Whose clear-cut judgments got undermined, and how do we know?

Salerno not only throws out this sort of unsupported statement over and over, but also draws clear connections between cause and effect while claiming not to. Here's a typical statement, following on his assertion that the self-help movement is damaging boys because it teaches them to behave like girls: "Boys have been playing with toy guns and soldiers, and before that toy cowboys and Indians, pretty much since toys existed. But it is only in recent years--since the advent of 'sensitivity,' 'self-esteem,' and 'getting in touch with your feelings'--that America has seen so many boys and young men acting out in horrific ways. Is it fair to draw a straight line of psychological causation that connects the two? No. But the coincidence is hard to ignore." Salerno uses this horrendously deceptive rhetorical technique again and again, apparently as a way of avoiding an actual claim of causation (that might require actual proof).

In addition, Salerno can't seem to restrain his loathing for his subjects. His analyses of the theories and profit-making techniques of self-help experts from Dr. Phil to Dr. Laura are plenty damning, but Salerno has to throw in gratuitous personal slams. "Perhaps [Marianne] Williamson is well aware that her ideas break down in the end, but she's just having a jolly time on her way to the bank." "Just as harmful as the photos were Schlessinger's coy efforts at damage control." "Orman has never married--a bit odd for a woman who spends so much time talking about balance in life."

And finally, he makes inexpert use of his sources. To prove that classrooms are damaging children by prioritizing feelings over learning, he quotes Grace Llewellyn's Teen Liberation Handbook, which says, "Healthy children can teach themselves what they need to know," as an example of this damaging trend. But Llewellyn's handbook is a radical tome on home education/unschooling; it has nothing to do with classrooms. (As a matter of fact, it recommends children get OUT of classrooms, because classrooms are damaging children." He quotes Leon Podles to prove that self-help is "feminizing" American culture (this, by the way, is a BAD thing, according to Salerno); Podles' book actually is about Protestantism and Protestant evangelical churches, and is itself very sketchily argued, since it depends heavily on Ann Douglas's outdated and polemical book on the feminization of America. He sums up his characterization of Dr. Phil by quoting Dr. Phil's ex-wife, as proof that Dr. Phil is a self-obsessed jerk. (What did he expect her to say?)

The sad thing about this book is that so much of what Salerno argues strikes me as being true. The self-help industry is out of control; it is wildly profitable at the expense of far too many desperate people; and I'm no fan of Dr. Phil, who does indeed seem to be a self-obsessed. Unfortunately, I can't give Salerno's book to any of the people who need to read it. It's just too easy to poke holes in his logic and dismiss his conclusions.

41 of 43 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Good Opening Salvo...But Much More Is Needed, August 15, 2005

By 

Peter Kobs "Peter Kobs" (Battle Creek, MI, USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Sham: How the Self-Help Movement Made America Helpless (Hardcover)

Steve Salerno's "SHAM" is worth reading despite its weaknesses and shortcomings. Essentially, this book is an angry, one-sided attack on the money-grubbing stars of the self-help industry -- the big name hucksters such as Tony Robbins, Dr. Phil, Marianne Williamson, John Gray, Dr. Laura and their ilk. Salerno demonstrates over and over again that they're motivated primarily by greed and lust for personal power. He's also concerned about the long-term effects of the "victim" mentality and "human potential" mindset on American society.

Salerno does an outstanding job following the money trail, which is not surprising given his background in financial journalism. He also unveils the fundamental dishonesty behind this burgeoning industry -- the idea that you never really "get better." Instead, followers are urged to keep buying more tapes / books / videos / etc. ad infinitum. The intellectual emptiness beneath most of these self-help programs is pretty obvious, as is the widespread tendency for gurus to use phony credentials and mail-order academic degrees.

Where Salerno fails is clear: He is so darn angry that he undercuts his own credibility from time to time. And, more importantly, he doesn't really answer the basic question: "Why are Americans pouring all this money and time into the self-help industry?" In other words, are we so overwhelmed with change that we can no longer cope? Have the old sources of value / direction / meaning failed us? And why have so many Protestant Christian congregations started mimicking the self-help movement?

These are profound questions that deserve answers. I'm not sure Salerno is up to that task, but I sure wish Karen Armstrong would tackle it. (See Armstrong's "The Battle for God" to find out why.) Bottom line on SHAM: Salerno exposes the darkness of the self-help industry but doesn't shed much light on our nation's seemingly endless hunger for shallow, simplistic solutions.

27 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Little scholarship here, July 19, 2005

By 

dick (Westport CT) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sham: How the Self-Help Movement Made America Helpless (Hardcover)

Several of the other reviewers cite Salerno's "arguments". And that is largely what we have here. Not a serious fact/theory- based study, but an extended journalistic article, shoehorning a wide diversity of 'teachers' to align with the author's two - scarcely original - central conceptual slants: empowerment and victimization. There is scarcely any discussion of the core ideas propounded by various self-help practitioners; scarcely any reference to evidence of the validity or - likely - invalidity of these teachings, their relationship to established psychological theories, or indeed the content of what is taught. Instead, we get a scattering of scornful examples of language used by people such as Tony Robbins, Dr. Phil, Dr. Laura, etc. and anecdotes discrediting their pasts. In the case of Tony Robbins, we get a criticism of his spelling.

There's an important job to be done in analyzing what's going on in the self-help movement. This book does not do it.

Dick Westwood