Self-Help (History & Theory)

Ahmed, Sara. “The Happiness Turn.” New Formations, vol. Winter 2007/2008, no. 63, 2007/2008, pp. 7-14.

—. The Promise of Happiness. Duke University Press, 2010.

Andreas, Steve and Faulkner, Charles. Nlp: The Technology of Achievement. Harper, 1994.

Anker, Roy M. Self-Help and Popular Religion in Early American Culture: An Interpretive Guide Greenwood Press, 1999.

Berman, Marshall. The Politics of Authenticity: Radical Individualism and the Emergence of Modern Society. Atheneum, 1970.

Binkley, Sam. “Happiness, Positive Psychology and the Program of Neoliberal Governmentality.” Subjectivity, vol. 4, no. 4, 2011, pp. 371-94.

Blackman, Lisa. “Self-Help, Media Cultures and the Production of Female Psychopathology.” European Journal of Cultural Studies, vol. 7, no. 2, 2004, pp. 219-236, doi:10.1177/1367549404042496.

Brinkmann, Svend. Stand Firm: Resisting the Self-Improvement Craze. Polity, 2017.

Burkitt, Ian. “Subjectivity, Self and Everyday Life in Contemporary Capitalism.” Subjectivity, vol. 23, no. 1, 2008, pp. 236-45.

Butler-Bowdon, Tom. 50 Self-Help Classics. Nicholas Brealey, 2003.

Cawleti, John. Apostles of the Self-Made Man. University of Chicago Press, 1989 (1965).

Cederström, Carl. The Happiness Fantasy. Polity Press, 2018.

Cederström, Carl and André Spicer. The Wellness Syndrome. Cambridge [u.a.] : Polity Press, 2015.

Cederström, Carl and André Spicer. Desperately Seeking Self-Improvement: A Year inside the Optimization Movement. OR Books, 2017.

Chowdhury, Nilima. “The Affective-Discursive ‘Pruning’ of Neoliberal Selves: Introducing the Notion of Self-Othering.” Subjectivity, vol. 15, no. 4, 2022, pp. 205-22.

Currell, Susan. “Depression and Recovery: Self-Help and America in the 1930s.” Historicizing Lifestyle. Mediating Taste, Consumption and Identity from the 1900s to 1970s, edited by David Bell; Joanne Hollows, Ashgate, 2006, pp. 131-144.

Dolby, Sandra K. Self-Help Books. Why Americans Keep Reading Them. University of Illinois Press, 2005.

Effing, Mercè Mur. “The Origin and Development of Self-Help Literature in the United States: The Concept of Success and Happiness, an Overview.” Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies, vol. 31, no. 2, 2009, pp. 125-141.

Ehrenreich, Barbara. Bright-Sided: How Positive Thinking Is Undermining America. Picador, 2009.

Elias, Ana Sofia and Rosalind Gill. “Beauty Surveillance: The Digital Self-Monitoring Cultures of Neoliberalism.” European Journal of Cultural Studies, vol. 21, no. 1, 2018, pp. 59-77.

Foucault, Michel. “Technologies of the Self.” Technologies of the self: A seminar with Michel Foucault, vol. 18, Amherst, 1988.

Furedi, Frank. Therapy Culture: Cultivating Vulnerability in an Uncertain Age. Routledge, 2003.

Harrington, Anne. The Cure Within: A History of Mind-Body Medicine. Norton and Co., 2008.

Hobart, Hi ‘ilei Julia Kawehipuaakahaopulani and Tamara Kneese. “Radical Care: Survival Strategies for Uncertain Times.” Social Text, vol. 38, no. 1, 2020, pp. 1-16.

Hochschild, Arlie Russell. The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling. University of California Press, 1983.

Hochschild, Jennifer L. . Facing up to the American Dream: Race, Class, and the Soul of the Nation. Princeton University Press, 1995.

Huber, Richard M. . The American Idea of Success. McGraw-Hill, 1971.

Illouz, Eva. Saving the Modern Soul: Therapy, Emotions, and the Culture of Self-Help. University of Califormia Press, 2008.

Lamb, Sarah. “On Being (Not) Old: Agency, Self‐Care, and Life‐Course Aspirations in the United States.” Medical Anthropology Quarterly, vol. 33, no. 2, 2019, pp. 263-81.

Lears, Jackson. Fables of Abundance: A Cultural History of Advertising in America. Basic Books, 1994.

Lears, T. J. Jackson. “From Salvation to Self-Realization: Advertising and the Therapeutic Roots of the Consumer Culture, 1880-1930.” Advertising & Society Review, vol. 1, no. 1, 2000, doi:doi:10.1353/asr.2000.0009.

Lewis, H. “What Happened to Jordan Peterson.” The Atlantic, 2021.

Lupton, Deborah. “The Diverse Domains of Quantified Selves: Self-Tracking Modes and Dataveillance.” Economy and Society, vol. 45, no. 1, 2016, pp. 101-22.

McGee, Micki. Self-Help Inc.: Makeover Culture in American Life. Oxford University Press, 2005.

McKeen, Gayle. “Whose Rights? Whose Responsibility? Self-Help in African-American Thought.” Polity, vol. 34, no. 4, 2002, pp. 409-432.

Miller, Perry. “”Preparation for Salvation” in Seventeenth-Century New England.” Journal of the History of Ideas, vol. 4, no. 3, 1943, pp. 253-286.

Moskowitz, Eva S. . In Therapy We Trust. America’s Obsession with Self Fulfillment. The Johns Hopkins UP, 2001.

Nehring, Daniel; Alvaredo, Emmanuel; Hendricks, Eric; Kerrigan, Dylan. Transnational Popular Psychology and the Global Self-Help Industry: The Politics of Contemporary Social Change. Palmgrave Macmillan, 2016.

Odinokaya, Maria et al. “The Culture of Professional Self-Realization as a Fundamental Factor of Students’ Internet Communication in the Modern Educational Environment of Higher Education.” Education Sciences, vol. 9, no. 3, 2019, p. 187.

Peck, M. Scott. The Road Less Traveled: Spiritual Growth in the Age of Anxiety. Simon and Schuster, 1978.

Phelan, James. “”Self-Help for Narratee and Narrative Audience: How “I”– and “You” — Read “How”.” Style vol. 28, no. 3, 1994, pp. 350-60.

Reichardt, Ulfried. “Self-Observation in the Digital Age: The Quantified Self, Neoliberalism, and the Paradoxes of the Contemporary Individualism.” American Studies – Amerikastudien, vol. 63, no. 1, 2018, pp. 99-117.

Romalov, Nancy Tillman. “Mobile Heroines: Early Twentieth-Century Girls’ Automobile Series.” Journal of Popular Culture, vol. 28, no. 4, 1995, p. 231.

Rose, Nikolas. Powers of Freedom: Reframing Political Thought. Cambridge university press, 1999.

Schlesinger, Arthur M. Learning How to Behave: A Historical Study of American Etiquette Books. Cooper Square Publishers, Inc., 1968.

Schüll, Natasha Dow. “Data for Life: Wearable Technology and the Design of Self-Care.” BioSocieties, vol. 11, no. 3, 2016, pp. 317-33.

Scott, John C. . “The Chataqua Movement: Revolution in Popular Higher Education.” The Journal of Higher Education, vol. 70, no. 4, 1999, pp. 389-712.

Storr, Will. Selfie: How We Became So Self-Obsessed and What It’s Doing to Us Picador, 2017.

Weiss, Richard. The American Myth of Success. U of Illinois Press, 1988 (1969).

Woodstock, Louise “Vying Constructions of Reality: Religion, Science, and “Positive Thinking” in Self-Help Literature. .” Journal of Media and Religion vol. 4, no. 3, 2005, pp. 155-7.

Woolsey Biggart, Nicole. “Rationality, Meaning, and Self-Management: Success Manuals, 1950-1980. .” Social Problems, vol. 30, no. 3, 1983.

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