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:
“People try so hard to believe in leaders now, pitifully hard. But we no sooner get a popular reformer or politician or soldier or writer or philosopher—a Roosevelt, a Tolstoy, a Wood, a Shaw, a Nietzsche, than the cross-currents of criticism wash him away. My Lord, no man can stand prominence these days. It’s the surest path to obscurity. People get sick of hearing the same name over and over.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)
“Fundamentally the male artist approximates more to the psychology of woman, who, biologically speaking, is a purely creative being and whose personality has been as mysterious and unfathomable to the man as the artist has been to the average person.”
—Beatrice Hinkle (1874–1953)
“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)