Comments on: “SHAM- How the Self-Help Movement Made America Helpless” by Steve Salerno. A review.

By: Gloria

Gloria — Sun, 04 May 2008 01:04:17 +0000

I stumbled on this book while looking for another book in the library, called “Excuse Me Your Life Is Calling.” I was told by my life coach to read “Excuse Me” (I won her services in a contest; I was actually more interested in winning the $50 Borders gift card that was part of the prize package) and checked that and SHAM out of the library. I couldn’t get through “Excuse Me,” it was poorly written and made me more paranoid than I already was. The theory was that if you had any negative thought, it would bring disaster upon you. I became too nervous to think and was worried sick about any negative thought that came my way. I told her I couldn’t read it anymore. I did finish SHAM and thoroughly enjoyed it. I recently read it again. It’s not a very inspiring book, but it IS funny. Salerno acknowledges that sometimes s–t DOES happen, even in the best of times, and we need to deal with it as best as we can. Sometimes you can “want” something very badly and still not get it. The truth is, some things in life are a gamble and sometimes we win, sometimes we don’t. I’m sorta going through that right now and instead of dreaming of a better life, I’m just looking for a job that will feed me and keep the utilities on. I was raised to expect a middle class life, but the last few years have been very hard. Anyway, SHAM should be required reading for self-help book addicts like my neighbor. She must have six dozen of the things, yet her life hasn’t seemed to have changed much (cluttered house, low-paying jobs, extremely unhealthy weight) whereas I have changed careers (although not necessarily successfully) but at least I set out to gain a new career skill and I did it without reading a self-help book!

By: andyscathouse

andyscathouse — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 02:41:54 +0000

Thanks PJ,

I know Dr. Phil gives out counseling after the shows so he is not all bad. As in the case of health quackery there can be good placebo results that seem to help. Is this similar? I am just asking and not accusing. Churches give out charity and that is very good but the goals of the “church” ultimately is to promote itself and the god meme. Likewise, Dr. Phil is more interested in promoting drama for ratings and not necessary the best interest of the guests. This is a dangerous line to balance. I don’t think he pushes as much crap and new age pseudoscience as Oprah.

Thanks for the feedback as a teacher and for making it through my grammar mistakes. I must of had a similar teacher. That’s good because I like to feel well.

By: pjbottoms

pjbottoms — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 12:41:41 +0000

Thanks for your post! As someone who watches Dr. Phil (because I find his shtick to be entertaining), and who has commented a lot about him, I can say that Dr. P always qualifies his ten minute “pop-psychiatry” bit by telling everyone that he will offer his “resources at the Dr. Phil Show” to the guests. He always asks if the guests want them and usually they say “yes” and the audience claps. So Dr. P gets more praise for actually getting the guests to accept the long-term, legit help they should have gotten beforehand, but perhaps couldn’t afford it or needed a kick in the butt on national TV first. Guests have often said,”Coming to the Dr. Phil Show is the only way I could get my family/girlfriend/ to stop…(doing bad things).” It’s sad that guests don’t seek the help they need, but the talk-show people know that what their future guests are doing is sitting around watching TV instead! Unfortunately, when it comes to self-help, I think the media focuses too much on the “before” and “after” stories, when what’s important is the journey people take to get to the “after.” (For a good laugh, see the Dr. Phil Random Quote Generator link on my blog)

One more thing—I taught middle school English ten years ago and it drove me crazy that spelling was not a part of the curriculum because if we circled misspelled words, it would hurt the student’s self esteem. The result: happy kids who were poor spellers!

By: mightymjolnir

mightymjolnir — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 20:35:52 +0000

Yeah, um, my fault.

I left a comment on another post, and it didn’t show up right away, so I looked in the spam filter…I thought that comment was legit, so I saved it from deletion. (Until just now, that is.)

That’s what you get for nosing through the trash, I guess.

By: Anon

Anon — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 09:58:24 +0000

It’s called a pingback

There are legitimate uses for pingbacks, but the comment you are inquiring about is not one of them. It’s an attempt to use a real blog (i.e. this one) to add legitimacy to a sham (no pun intended) blog by, literally, creating a mutual link between them.

Hopefully the admins of this site will delete the pingback comment.

By: andyscathouse

andyscathouse — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 22:35:21 +0000

Could someone tell me what the above comment means? I am still new to this blogging world. Is this an auto-sourcing type of website?

Where are the teachers? I would love to hear what you have to say about the SHAM ideas in education.