Popular Psychology and Self-help
Popular psychology is an essential ingredient of the self-help industry.
According to Fried and Schultis, criteria for a good self-help book include "claims made by the author as to the book's efficacy, the presentation of problem-solving strategies based on scientific evidence and professional experience, the author's credentials and professional experience, and the inclusion of a bibliography."
Three potential dangers of self-help books are:
- people may falsely label themselves as psychologically disturbed;
- people may misdiagnose themselves and use material that deals with the wrong problem;
- people may not be able to evaluate a program and may select an ineffective one;
Read more about this topic: Popular Psychology
Famous quotes containing the words popular, psychology, self-help:
“Heroes are created by popular demand, sometimes out of the scantiest materials, or none at all.”
—Gerald W. Johnson (1890–1980)
“A writer must always try to have a philosophy and he should also have a psychology and a philology and many other things. Without a philosophy and a psychology and all these various other things he is not really worthy of being called a writer. I agree with Kant and Schopenhauer and Plato and Spinoza and that is quite enough to be called a philosophy. But then of course a philosophy is not the same thing as a style.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“The American people are doing their job today. They should be given a chance to show whether they wish to preserve the principles of individual and local responsibility and mutual self-help before they embark on what I believe to be a disastrous system. I feel sure they will succeed if given the opportunity.”
—Herbert Hoover (1874–1964)