America Should Be Ashamed of SHAM

Albert Mohler | President, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary | Wednesday, August 24, 2005

America Should Be Ashamed of SHAM





America's SHAM empire includes an army of therapists, authors, motivational speakers and "corporate coaches," all ready to offer help, encouragement, motivation, correction, and assurance--for a price.


There's a good reason for that, Salerno explains. Self-help business is repeat business. The self-help industry would go out of business if its books and products actually solved the problems--real or perceived--that led customers to buy the products in the first place.

Of course, comedians are quick to jump on the oxymoron that lies at the very heart of the industry. If people could genuinely help themselves, they wouldn't need the self-help movement. As comedian George Carlin has quipped: "If you're reading it in a book, folks, it ain't self-help. It's help."

No matter what it is called, the self-help movement is big business and a growth industry. Last year, Publishers Weekly reported, "Self-help books are a Teflon category for many booksellers. No matter the economy or current events, the demand is constant."

The repeat business is often no accident. Salerno served for some time as editor of the books program associated with the magazine, Men's Health. Part of the giant Rodale publishing empire, Men's Health offered a book service directed towards male customers. The company conducted surveys in order to identify "the customers' worst fears and chronic problems," which then became fodder for future books and products. The secret behind the program's success was, Salerno reports, the fact that many customers could be enticed to buy yet more books on self-help within eighteen months.


Salerno acknowledges that the self-help tradition has a long pedigree in the United States. After all, Benjamin Franklin wrote what may be identified as America's first self-help book, Poor Richard's Almanack. But the real rise of the self-help industry, at least in publishing, can be traced to 1937 with the publication of Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People and Napoleon Hill's Think and Grow Rich. Thirty years later, Thomas A. Harris redefined the industry with his best-seller, I'm OK-You're OK, which revolutionized the genre.

Once again, a book's title was the reverse of its content. As Salerno understands, Harris "explicitly posited that the average person is damaged early in childhood and walks around thereafter in a paranoid, self-pitying state." His book supposedly offered a way out of that state of victimization.

In reality, victimization has become a major theme of the entire industry. Salerno suggests that the SHAM industry is divided into two camps. The first is Empowerment and the second is Victimization. He explains: "Victimization and Empowerment represent the yin and yang of the self-help movement. It is likely that this schism will always exist, no matter which guru or message becomes the flavor of the day."

The focus on victimization allows Americans to blame other persons--or impersonal forces--for their problems. Salerno sees Alcoholics Anonymous [AA] as the "template" for the victimization worldview. Human problems are translated into the vocabulary and categories of victimization so that persons can speak of overcoming what has been done to them, what has happened to them, or those who have afflicted them.

The truth is that virtually everyone can find someone to blame. In her spoof of the self-help movement, I'm Dysfunctional, You're Dysfunctional, skeptic Wendy Kaminer asserted that the victimizers are usually close at hand: "Grandfather was an alcoholic, mother is a compulsive rescuer, Uncle Murray weighs 270 pounds. Father is a sex addict, your sister is anorexic,"--and the beat goes on.



Salerno identifies "five overlapping messages" of the Recovery movement--one of the central streams in the self-help river. These messages include: 1. You're damaged goods. 2. Good is bad. 3. It's all about you. 4. All suffering is created equal. And 5. It's not your fault. Together, these five messages explain everything from the nation's current focus on addiction and a general proclivity to self-centeredness, to the moral evasions of President Bill Clinton and the executives caught in recent business scandals.





See also the most recent entry on Dr. Mohler's Blog:

Pat Robertson's Words and Our Responsibility