Regulating Self-Help, Part 1: Defining Some Terms
I expect that, once James Arthur Ray's manslaughter trial begins, calls to "regulate self-help" will become louder and more widespread. Because there's a lull in media coverage of the Sedona incident, I think now is a good time to soberly consider some questions about whether and how the government could go about regulating personal development, and the impact regulation might have.
I'm going to raise some of those issues in this series. I think the first question to address is what we mean by "regulation," since we can't go into the particulars of what and how to regulate without that understanding.
What Is Regulation?
After all, self-development books, seminars, and so on are already subject to many generally applicable laws -- meaning laws that weren't specifically designed for personal development, but apply to it anyway.
The criminal laws obviously apply to personal growth teachers, as we see in the Sedona matter. Contract and tort law applies to self-development -- if someone sells a book or leads a workshop that doesn't do what its advertising promised, they can be sued for fraud or breach of contract. In this sense, self-development is already "regulated."
But in my experience, this isn't usually what people mean when they talk about regulation. My sense is that "regulation" typically refers to laws and rules tailored to a particular business or area of life -- for example, self-help, or securities trading.
Normally, regulations, as commonly understood, are also preventive -- meaning they require us to take precautions to prevent harm, rather than punishing people for inflicting harm. Laws against driving without a license are a good example -- they don't punish people for causing accidents, but rather for failing to pass tests that, in the state's view, ensure that they will drive with some degree of safety.
Some areas of personal development are "regulated" in this sense. To hold yourself out as a therapist, in most of the U.S., you need a license, and to get that license you need to -- among other things -- earn an advanced degree in psychology and pass a test. Other areas are not. For example, I (thankfully) don't need a license to be a self-development blogger.
The Need For Cost-Benefit Analysis
So, the next important question, in my view, is: do we need more regulations of the preventive sort in the self-development field? To answer that question, we need some idea of the costs and benefits of personal growth ideas and techniques.
I think this is a key point, because the criticisms and calls for regulation around personal development tend to focus solely on its costs. But that discussion is incomplete. For example, we often hear people decry the outrageous price of a product or workshop. But without an understanding of that offering's benefits, we can't fairly judge whether its price is "too high."
A new car in the U.S. typically costs tens of thousands of dollars, which to most people seems like "a lot of money" in the abstract, but people are often willing to pay that kind of price for a car because of the benefits they expect from car ownership -- being able to go various places quickly, and so on.
Importantly, as a society, we regularly do this kind of cost-benefit analysis even when it comes to activities involving a risk of serious injury or death. To go back to an earlier example, driving is obviously this kind of activity.
If we only looked at the number of deaths and injuries that happen while driving, we would instantly decide that a total ban on driving was justified. But that hasn't happened, because the benefits of being able to drive are widely recognized.
Hold On, What's A Benefit?
This brings us to yet another series of questions: what are the benefits of personal development? What qualifies as a "benefit"? Who gets to make that judgment?
For instance, if someone subjectively reports that they "feel better" due to some personal growth practice, does that mean they benefited from it? Or will we require a "benefit" to be objectively measurable -- for instance, will we judge a product or service as worthwhile only if people who use it tend to make more money, "find the one," or something along those lines?
All this and more . . . coming soon!
Can Politics And Science Cure All Ills?
It’s been a long time since I rock and rolled, but I was inspired to write here again after my recent review, on my other blog, of Robert Augustus Masters’ Spiritual Bypassing: When Spirituality Disconnects Us from What Really Matters.
Spiritual Bypassing is about how we tend to use spiritual practice to escape from, rather than confront, our psychological wounds. One thing that particularly struck me in the book was Masters’ statement that, ideally, spiritual practice is about releasing everything in our lives from the “obligation to make us feel better.”
The point is that spirituality is certainly far from the only thing people use to “take the edge off” their pain. Drugs are another obvious example, but there are subtler and more “socially acceptable” examples as well. I regularly notice instances of what I’d call “political bypassing” and “scientific bypassing” in our culture.
To illustrate the former, some people I know came close to hailing Obama as a messiah when he was elected — looking, for the next few days, like they were in a spiritually-inspired state of bliss, and their personal tribulations were healed or at least put out of their minds. (Ironically, the same people usually scoff at the mere mention of spirituality, associating it with evangelical Christians and/or Republicans.)
Most importantly for our purposes, we can also see the embrace of political and scientific “bypassing” among critics of personal growth and spirituality.
Political Bypassing and Personal Growth
I’ve commented before on personal growth critics who basically claim — much like Marx — that the main source of discontent among human beings is economic inequality. Personal development distracts people from this issue, by encouraging them to focus on their private achievements and relationships. Thus, self-development is not only ineffective — it retards social progress.
These critics’ vitriol often obscures the wide-eyed idealism of their basic assumption: that, if everybody only had equal material resources, nobody would suffer again. No more loneliness, depression, or alienation for the human race, ever.
If the notion that spirituality can address all our “issues” is unrealistic, I think, the same can surely be said of the utopian notion that state-mandated “equality” will cure all human ills.
Scientific Bypassing and Spirituality
As for scientific bypassing, I think we can see this in the “New Atheist” critiques of religion that have been so popular over the last few years, by authors such as Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. These critics say that spirituality and science/reason are in irreconcilable conflict, and we’d have a much better world if we only discarded the former and embraced the latter.
One problem these critics face is that science seems incapable of answering moral questions. Some have no problem with this, and simply deny the existence of objective morality, because “there’s no scientific evidence for it.” But this answer is instinctively unsatisfying for many people — to use a timeworn example, can we really accept the idea that Nazi medical experiments on prisoners weren’t objectively wrong?
Others respond that science can, at least, tell us what actions and policies will advance “human flourishing” — how to eat nutritiously, for example. However, these critics need to explain why our actions should serve the goal of human flourishing at all — why shouldn’t kangaroo or algae flourishing be our priority? Science can’t tell us why we ought to prefer the well-being of one species to that of another.
My point is that I think it’s important to be wary of “bypassing” — relying on one particular practice or institution to “make us feel better” — in all areas of human life. The realm of spirituality and personal development certainly isn’t the only place where this happens.
Guest Post At Mindful Construct: “3 Things The Personal Development Critics Got Wrong”
I've published a guest post at Melissa Karnaze's blog Mindful Construct called "3 Things The Personal Development Critics Got Wrong." It mainly deals with critics' arguments against personal development's ethic of taking responsibility for your circumstances, including the claims that this ethic encourages selfishness and self-blame.
I think this article will be a useful summary for people who have recently discovered my work at this blog. I think you'll also appreciate Melissa's articles, which take an approach to personal development that's rooted in cognitive science and psychology. Enjoy!
Personal Growth’s “Victim Culture,” Part 1: The Threat of Therapy?
In our earlier discussion of the "responsibility ethic," we talked about critics' common claim that personal development promotes an unrealistic sense of personal responsibility.
In this series, I'm going to respond to critics who take the opposite view -- that much self-help writing actually teaches people not to take responsibility for their lives. A frequent criticism of personal growth is that it encourages people to sit around whining about their emotional issues, rather than getting up and accomplishing something in the world.
Is Therapy Just A Blame Game?
The biggest offender, to the critics, is psychotherapy, because it often involves exploring how our past -- particularly our childhood development -- shaped the way we think and behave today. Therapy, in the critics' view, often gives us an excuse to blame our present problems on our parents, rather than simply bucking up and dealing with them.
For instance, in SHAM, Steve Salerno accuses psychiatrist Thomas Harris and similar authors of claiming that "you were basically trapped by your makeup and/or environment and thus had a ready alibi for any and all of your failings." Similarly, in One Nation Under Therapy, Christina Hoff Sommers and Sally Satel lament that "what the older moralists spoke of as irresponsible behavior due to bad character, the new champions of therapism . . . speak of as ailment, dysfunction, and brain disease."
I think these critics take a misguided view of psychotherapy. To them, it seems, people turn to therapy simply because they wish to stop blaming themselves for parts of their lives that aren't going well, and instead blame their parents or somebody else.
I doubt most therapists who explore their clients' histories would explain their methods this way. Of course, there are many possible reasons why a therapist and client might delve into the client's childhood. However, I suspect one common goal is to help the client let go of dysfunctional behaviors they continually find themselves doing.
Why Our Histories Matter
The theory goes, roughly, like this: many behaviors we do today developed in response to our childhood circumstances. For example, if our parents often scolded us when we asked them for something, we may have decided it was best to act totally self-sufficient, and never tell others what we want and need.
This show of self-sufficiency may have "worked" for us as children, because it protected us from our parents' anger. However, it may not work quite as well for us as adults. If we can't ask for what we want and need, intimacy with another person becomes very difficult.
Suppose a client came to a therapist with this sort of concern. The therapist might explore the client's past in order to show the client that this self-sufficient facade developed in response to the client's childhood.
The Power of Awareness
Now that the client is grown up, the therapist may help the client see, they no longer need this behavior to protect them from their parents. This awareness may help the client understand that it's now safe to let others know what they need and want.
As psychologist Kevin Leman whimsically puts it in What Your Childhood Memories Say About You, therapists' common practice of "asking about dear old Mom helps reveal patterns, and psychology is a science of recognizing patterns in human behavior."
For the therapist, then, exploring the client's past is not simply intended to help them blame their parents for their problems. Instead, the purpose of this exploration is to help the client let go of behaviors that aren't serving them -- to solve their own problems, we might say -- and thus to lead a more fulfilling life.
In that sense, I think it's fair to say that therapy actually promotes, rather than retards, the growth of personal responsibility.
The Responsibility Ethic, Part 5: The Politics of Responsibility
This is the final installment in my series on what I've been calling the "responsibility ethic" in personal development -- the notion that it's best to see ourselves as responsible for our life circumstances, as opposed to seeing our situation as the product of chance or forces beyond our control.
Today, I'll address an argument often made by critics of personal growth that has to do with the relationship between the responsibility ethic and politics. This is a complicated argument, but I think it's an important one, so bear with me as I flesh it out a little.
Is The Responsibility Ethic Anti-Political?
The critics argue that, if I believe I'm responsible for my circumstances, I am unlikely to participate in politics -- to vote, protest, debate issues with others, and so on. In other words, if I think I hold the power to change my life situation, I won't see any need to use the political process to improve my circumstances.
Say, for instance, that I run a business, and a tax imposed by the city is hurting my bottom line. If I believe I have full control over my destiny, I won't see any reason to lobby the city government to reduce the tax. After all, because I have the power to fix the situation, I can solve the problem myself -- by, say, moving elsewhere, or just increasing my revenues to make up for the loss.
To the critics, because it convinces people there's no need to participate in politics, the responsibility ethic is anti-democratic, in that it discourages an informed, politically active public. What's more, the critics argue, we do need the political process to change aspects of our life situation. Critics with a left-wing bent commonly argue that only the government can remedy the economic unfairness in our society, and the responsibility ethic blinds the "have-nots" to this by deceiving them into thinking they, individually, can solve their financial problems.
Thus, they might say, the responsibility ethic serves as a kind of "opiate for the masses." As sociologist Micki McGee writes, personal growth teachings tend to trap their followers in a futile "cycle of seeking individual solutions to problems that are social, economic, and political in origin."
Clearing Up Some Confusion
Simply put, I think this argument misunderstands the responsibility ethic. All the responsibility ethic says is that I am responsible for the situation I'm in, and I have the ability to change that situation if I wish to do so. It does not address the specific actions I should take to improve my situation, or whether "political action" is a good option.
We can understand this by returning to my earlier example, where my city imposes a tax I think is bad for my business. If I accept the responsibility ethic, I will believe I'm capable of improving this situation. But the question remains: what is the best way to change it? Should I move to another city? Try to increase my revenue? Lobby the city council to repeal the tax? The responsibility ethic is silent on this issue.
In other words, it doesn't follow from my belief that I can improve the situation that political activity will not be an effective method of doing so. Supporting a politician who pledges to repeal the tax might indeed be an effective method of getting what I want. Thus, I think it's a mistake to cast the responsibility ethic as inherently anti-political.
The Politics of "Non-Responsibility"
This becomes even clearer when we consider the extreme opposite of the responsibility ethic, which I'll call the "non-responsibility ethic." A person who accepts the non-responsibility ethic (in other words, someone with an external locus of control) sees events in their lives as the product of luck, or of forces they can't control.
Suppose I believe in the non-responsibility ethic, and I'm faced with the same situation where the city tax is hurting my business. If I believe my actions are unlikely to make a difference, what will I do to improve my situation? If I really think I'm a helpless pawn of fate, I'll probably do nothing.
As this example illustrates, it's also a mistake to call the responsibility ethic inherently politically conservative, as left-wing critics of personal growth tend to do. If these critics want to see more redistribution of wealth, it won't help them to have a nation of people with an external locus of control who feel powerless to change the status quo.
In light of this, it's no surprise that some of the most popular personal growth books use political leaders to illustrate their ideas. Even the much-maligned Think and Grow Rich cites Gandhi as "one of the most astounding examples known to civilization of the possibilities of faith." Gandhi's faith in his ability to change the world, writes Napoleon Hill, drove his contribution to ending British rule of India.
The Psychology of Responsibility
I won't harp too much on the psychological evidence, because I've done it a lot in past posts. Suffice it to say that several psychological studies have suggested that people with an internal locus of control -- a belief in their own capacity to affect events -- are actually more inclined to participate in politics.
For example, one study surveyed some newly voting-aged college students, and found that the ones who described themselves as having an internal locus of control were more likely to vote in a presidential election. Another found that people who tended toward an internal locus of control were more likely to participate in political activism.
In other words, it seems that a person's belief that they're responsible for their circumstances leads them to be more politically active, not less, which also belies the critics' claim that the responsibility ethic is somehow anti-political.
In my next post, because I find this issue fascinating, I'll talk more generally about the political implications of personal growth and spirituality.
Other posts in this series:
The Responsibility Ethic, Part 4: Responsibility And Compassion
We're talking once again about what I call the "responsibility ethic" that's common in personal development -- the idea that it's best to see ourselves as responsible for our life circumstances, as opposed to seeing our situation as the product of chance or forces beyond our control.
Today, I'll look at another argument personal growth critics often make against the responsibility ethic. The argument goes like this: if I am responsible for my lot in life, it follows that other people are responsible for theirs. For instance, if I assume my own actions created my financial situation, logically I must also assume other people's actions created theirs, and thus I must accept that poor people's own actions created their poverty.
What's more, if I believe poor people are responsible for their situation, there's no reason for me to help them. After all, because their choices and actions created their situation, it's "their own fault." Thus, if we accept the responsibility ethic, we must jettison any semblance of compassion for others. Wendy Kaminer, for instance, decries the "antisocial strain of the positive thinking/mind-cure tradition," which holds that "compassion is a waste of psychic energy."
The Psychology Of Generosity
As in my last post, I think it's useful to begin this discussion with a reality check. Again, the critics are speaking hypothetically. No one, to my knowledge, has any evidence that people involved in personal growth actually give less to charity, or do anything else that might suggest they lack compassion for the less fortunate. What the critics say is that, if people took the responsibility ethic to its logical extent, they would stop being generous to others.
Admittedly, I don't have conclusive evidence that personal growth books or seminars make people more generous either. However, there is evidence suggesting that people who see themselves as responsible for their circumstances -- in other words, people who accept the responsibility ethic -- are actually more inclined to help others, not less.
You may recall that, in the first post in this series, I described a concept in psychology called "locus of control." As the psychologists have it, people with a more internal locus of control believe they have the power to determine their destiny, while people who tend toward an external locus believe their destinies are largely shaped by outside forces.
As it turns out, there has been much psychological research finding that people who tend toward an internal locus of control are actually more concerned for others' welfare. One study of children, for instance, found that children with a more internal locus of control were more likely to help another child struggling with an academic problem. Another study found that people who tended toward an internal locus of control were more likely to act in an environmentally responsible way.
Intuitively, this makes sense. If I believe I have control over events in the world, I'll be more inclined to think I can make a difference in someone's life. So, if I help another person study for a test, they'll probably do better. But if I don't see myself as capable of affecting events, why would I bother helping another student? If nothing I do seems to change anything, why should I expect them to benefit?
It stands to reason that, if self-development ideas are causing people to see themselves as responsible for their circumstances, those ideas may actually be promoting generosity and compassion, not stifling them.
And Now, Back To Philosophy Land
We've seen that, even if we assume that the responsibility ethic, taken to its logical extent, would cause people to lose compassion for others, it's not at all clear that people who believe they're responsible for their circumstances are -- in practice -- less generous. Now, let's turn back to the original, abstract question: if I see myself as creating my circumstances in life, does it follow that others' circumstances are "their own fault," and I shouldn't help them?
I think the answer is plainly no, for several reasons. To keep this post to a readable length, my discussion of each will be brief, and I may not approach them from every possible angle. I'll happily hash them out with you further in the comments.
1. I'm Responsible, You're Responsible? If I believe I'm responsible for my life situation, it doesn't follow that I must believe others are responsible for theirs. I may see myself as someone with the health, resources, social network, and so on that I need to have control over my reality. However, I might see others who lack the same advantages as helpless, or as less capable of influencing their situation than me.
Personally, this way of thinking strikes me as irritatingly paternalistic, but the point is that, at least, it's not illogical to think this way.
2. Responsibility Vs. Blame Redux. As we saw earlier, it's possible to see yourself as responsible for an event in your life without blaming yourself or beating yourself up over it. By the same token, I think, it's possible to see someone else as responsible for their situation without judging them as "at fault" and unworthy of help.
As I said to Evan in an earlier exchange, suppose you have a friend who has a decent job and is capable of supporting himself. However, he becomes addicted to drugs, and because of his addiction he falls into poverty. Would you lack compassion for him because he chose (at least, initially) to take drugs? I doubt you would. In other words, although your friend is responsible for his situation, that doesn't mean you'll automatically lose any desire to help him.
3. Unconscious Beliefs. We'll delve deeper into the concept of unconscious thoughts and beliefs later on. For now, I'll note that, according to many personal growth teachers, our situation in life often results from thinking that occurs outside our awareness.
In one sense, we're "responsible" for these beliefs, because we're the only ones who can become aware of and change them. No one else can do that for us. However, it would be hard to argue that we're "to blame" for our unconscious thinking, as it's often the product of our childhood conditioning, and letting go of those harmful ways of thinking can take a lot of time and energy.
For instance, suppose I harbor the unconscious belief that I'm unlovable, and thus I have trouble forming relationships. I'm "responsible" for this belief, in the sense that no one else can change it for me. However, I don't think anyone would claim in this example that the difficulties I'm having are "my own damn fault" and I'm unworthy of compassion.
Next time: Is the responsibility ethic anti-political?
Other Posts In This Series: