Those who help themselves: Women readers of self-help books.
Item
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Title
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Those who help themselves: Women readers of self-help books.
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Identifier
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AAI9029980
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identifier
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9029980
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Creator
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Simonds, Wendy Susan.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Barbara Katz Rothman
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Date
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1990
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Sociology, General | Women's Studies | Sociology, Individual and Family Studies | American Studies
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Abstract
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My interest in self-help reading began several years ago when disparaging assessments of bestselling psychological manuals for women started to appear in the popular press. I was convinced that journalists omitted a crucial side of the picture: those who actually bought and produced the books were rendered invisible by dismissive reviews.;I conducted interviews with thirty readers and with several editors of self-help literature. My methodology draws on ethnographic and feminist traditions within sociology, and reader response criticism within literary theory. I have evaluated bestselling self-help book published since 1963 (beginning with Friedan's The Feminine Mystique). Thus, I combine various "readings" of this cultural phenomenon, exploring its meanings from all sides of what Wendy Griswold terms "the cultural diamond"; audience, creators, object, and social world.;In Part One, I focus on the audience for self-help books, examining readers' assessments of the appeal, meaning, and effectiveness of self-help literature. Readers talk about why this cultural commodity has become especially appealing recently; compare self-help books with other ways of gaining advice or assistance; and discuss the intersection of self-help reading with formal therapy, traditional religion and New Age philosophy. Readers' spontaneous and immediate responses to their reading as manifested in fan letters to two authors are explored (discussions "untainted" by the interview process).;In Part Two, I shift my examination to creators: evaluating editors' assessments of the books; their descriptions of their work to publish marketable products; and authors' written explanations of the meaning of, uses for, and defenses of their work.;In Part Three, I offer my own reading of what these books mean in terms of the American ethos, and specifically for women. I begin by discussing self-help books for a general audience (which paved the way for the sub-genre of self-help books focusing on relationships geared primarily to women), and evaluate women's self-help books in terms of the socio-political terrain these books reflect and, indeed, shape.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
