Review of ‘SHAM: How the Self Help Movement Made America Helpless’ by Steve Salerno

Whether attending AA, tuning in to Dr. Laura, or spending thousands of dollars to hear Tony Robbins give a motivational speech on some remote island in the Pacific, Americans spend upward of $8 billion a year on self-help products and programs. In SHAM: How the Self-Help Movement Made America Helpless, investigative reporter and essayist Steve Salerno chronicles the self-help and actualization movement (the words “felicitously enough” form the acronym SHAM), profiling the gurus who have made a fortune on tautology and the core philosophies that have infiltrated virtually every aspect of American Life.

The money spent on SHAM would be okay if the programs actually worked, but for the most part, they don’t. Though SHAM promises to cure whatever ails you, it counts on failure — failure keeps you coming back for more and keeps the movement making money. Thus at best, Salerno argues, the self-help and actualization movement has a placebo effect, and at worst, it cons a person out of thousands. But Dr. Phil or Tommy Lasorda fail to make any one shudder in fear, and because of that SHAM slips under the radar.

Salerno investigates not only the different kind of self-help movements (Sportsthink, Victimization and Empowerment camps, financial wizards), but also the people behind the movements, the so-called experts with loose credentials. Dr. John Gray, for example, who has made millions on his Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus books (there was even a Broadway play), is not a medical doctor all. On the contrary, he received his PhD in 1982 from Columbia Pacific University, a non-accredited correspondence college in California that was eventually ordered by the state to shut down.

SHAM also looks at the ancillary products that are virtually useless to the consumer, but incredibly profitable for the prophets. Motivational speaker Tony Robbins and spiritualist Deepak Chopra sell something called QLink, a pendant designed to enhance a person’s resistance to ambient radiation that comes from cell phones. Yet there’s little scientific verification that the pendant actually works. Dr. Phil McGraw recently launched “Shape Up!,” a line of weight loss supplements, bars, and shakes that engendered a class-action suit alleging the products’ ads made dubious nutritional claims.

Ironically, while SHAM criticizes self-help gurus for recycling and repurposing information, the book’s author does it quite well himself. Other things Salerno’s quite good at include inserting himself into the text almost incessantly, sarcasm that gets down right annoying, and poor citation habits. Salerno uses statistics and surveys, but his “End Notes” are seriously lacking.

Without a doubt, “mass-market self-help is a contradiction in terms,” but the movement does provide something people crave, a kind of religion, a kind of salvation. In a world filled with so much violence and inequity, SHAM gives individuals a kind of hope. That hope may take us for a ride, but isn’t that better than standing still?