[billpatrianakos]

I see what you're saying so maybe we should clarify things because there are essentially two types of self help out there from what I see.

The first kind is the in-your-face, "this book will change your life and teach you to be happy", it comes with a charming spokesman too, type of self help. This kind is often cheesy, not scientific, and is often more likely to be eventually seen as a disingenuous money making scam later on.

The second type is self-help that isn't marketed as self help. It's essentially a book on how to master a subject or art form. A book on Buddhism and Buddhist practices would qualify. Books on how to meditate fall into this too. They're teaching how to do something and they may talk about the positive effects they have but they're not the kind of things that we normally think of as lame self help.

Now that I'm thinking along these lines I think theres a third type. This type falls in between. You can spot it by its firm basis in scientific research. It's the kind of thing backed by science and it explains the subject by telling you about the research but at the same time also telling you how to specifically apply the research to help you improve some aspect of your life. The book "Feeling Good" co,es to mind in this category. The author studied the subject of depression and then takes the findings and applies them to helping people with depression. It's a book widely held to be actually useful the majority of the time. It's not a "hey, I'll teach you to be happy" book nor is it just a narrative explaining experiments and the results.

I think what I'm talking about speaks directly to your point about people that lump the books into one genre. So when we talk about self help most immediately think of the cheesy kind. If we broadened out definition of self help to include types 2 and 3 that I mentioned then maybe people wouldn't feel such disdain for the genre and be more apt to read more helpful books. It's a shame that often times the wrong people get into writing self help and spoil the genre for everyone.