What Is the Self-Help Industry?

The self-help industry encompasses services and information sold to people for the purposes of helping them improve their lives. This would include everything from life coaching services to compact disc (CD) collections with subliminal messages to help people defeat addictions. Products and services provided by the self-help industry often appeal to people whose problems aren’t serious enough to seek professional help from trained therapists, but they may also be interesting to those who’ve tried professional assistance and found that it didn’t work for them. Some advice given by self-help gurus is considered relatively practical and may be very effective, but other bits of advice have been criticized for being incorrect or even hurting the people they are supposed to help.

Some of the concepts behind the self-help industry have been around for hundreds of years, but the full birth of the modern movement happened in the early 1900s with works like Napoleon Hill’s "Think and Grow Rich," and Dale Carnegie’s "How to Win Friends and Influence People." Over time, the movement has changed and some of the ideas have evolved. Many of the modern versions of self-help rely on a strong influence from popular psychology, while others are more grounded in spirituality. In all cases, the main focus is teaching the individual ways that he can actually help himself in dealing with his own inner turmoil and various life problems.

Often, the self-help industry deals with coaching an individual on every aspect of his life, from his physical health, to emotional weaknesses, addictions, and relationship problems. The vast majority of the industry is focused on book sales and home courses, but sometimes people will hire an actual life coach to help them stay on task in the effort to achieve their goals. Some of the more common self-help movements offer courses in life coaching, and sometimes trained therapists have been known to switch their practices over to a life-coaching setup. There are also cases where a person will become a life coach on the simple basis of some kind of past life experience or overcoming some personal hardship.

There is a lot of skepticism in the academic community about many experts in the self-help industry. Some scientists believe that the advice offered in self-help programs isn’t always practical or built on any kind of rationality. There are also many experts who see the entire industry as a kind of money scam where people are promised results that aren’t practically achievable. Many of those involved in the self-help industry deny the claims altogether while others acknowledge that there is a lot of variation in the quality of self-help works, urging consumers to be wary.