SHAM - is it for real?

Read excerpts from a book called 'Sham: How the Self-Help Movement Made America Helpless' by Steve Salerno. Very disturbing insights into what is now an $8 bn a year industry. Who would have known. BTW .. SHAM apparently stands for the Self Help and Actualization Movement - quite helpful for an acronym - is this for real?

The author follows the money trail laid down by several of the popular evangelists of the self help commune and I think it is so because you typically see these blurbs written by other 'gurus' on a new book that it changed his/her life and will transform you into whatever you wish to be. But, on the whole the industry thrives on selling a rather simple home-spun truth wrapped in a couple of hundred pages of mumbo jumbo and workbooks and action plans.

The business apparently thrives on the books and the ancillaries - the workshops,  the seminars, the personal coaching, the productivity assets, mugs, t-shirts, fridge magnets..phew, the list goes on. Why then do we buy this stuff?

The industry taps into the confused nature that is prevalent today, no one wants to be branded as not with it, kind of like the metrosexual male thing doing the rounds these days. Someday when I have a bit of time I want to dig into the etymology of the word.

Coming back to the book, it read in portions like a rant but there is no disputing certain facts that there is no single book that claims to have it all, once your in your hooked on it. I recognize that I am one of these too, but I feel that if I get a single usable idea out of the book then its worth it. 

No ancillaries for me please, thanks!