It all started over 80 years ago with the first published self-help book How To Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie, which now has a cult-like status in the genre. To me, they are pointless, ineffective and delusional. One of my main issues with it is just reading the title 'self-help' itself suggests there is something wrong with me but fortunately the author has found the cure.
There's a difference between advice and this. Advice is free first of all. The intentions of these books are to help people, whatever it is they are trying to specifically achieve. You would therefore assume this was a form of altruism yet the author not giving this out for free, there's always a monetary transaction involved.
I find them fairly delusional as well, especially when it comes to the readership. Someone will read one of these books and tell themselves they are improving and becoming a better person but are they? I think it's down to a subconscious level, where they think their life is getting better because they've ignorantly convinced themselves they are, therefore not actually.
Another issue I have with these is that there's a major flaw just in the title. The 'self' hints at the individual and more precisely the inner life. How can these books personalise it for every single individual. One approach to life may be effective for one person yet it does not assure that it will work for someone else. Additionally, sometimes you can't figure your own problems and reading some impersonal and superfluous book about dealing with these problems is not a sure way of helping.
So if you're looking for that promotion and can't figure out how to do it, my advice would be to get very drunk, drunk call your boss and have an emotional breakdown on to phone to them. If that doesn't work, well you're hopeless then.
A good article to read about this can be found here on The Independent.
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