Foreword
This is one of the most
illuminating and unconventional books about
self- help that you will ever
read. Author Albert Amao eludes either/ or thinking on nearly every page. He rejects
the false and intellectually withering choice of “take it or leave it,” which
often clouds our political, cultural, and social dialogues.
Rather, Albert examines the
question of what really works in self-
help, at once rejecting overdone promises that emanate from certain
quarters of the field (and he names them), while at the same time eschewing the
practice of lumping together all
self- help under the overused
label of “snake oil,” as do many academic and journalistic critics. Rather,
Albert writes from three fresh and original points of view:
1) As an author, Albert has
personally experimented with the therapeutic philosophies he critiques in this
book. This gives him rare insight into the agencies and pitfalls they present.
Born into an impoverished urban family in Peru, Albert movingly writes of how
his life took an unexpected and fruitful path because he had access to self-help
literature as a boy. Specifically, he read works of New Thought, which deals
with the question of mind causation.
2) He is deeply sympathetic to
the needs and wishes of the individual self- help reader— he does not mock,
distance himself from, or place himself above the “motivation junkie,” as
Barbara Ehrenreich and other critics sometimes term the dedicated seeker.
Rather, in understanding the drive and dignity of the therapeutic and spiritual
inquirer, Albert can clearly evaluate, as a sociologist and critic, what
programs are promising (such as Napoleon Hill’s Think & Grow Rich), and
what modalities rest on oversold claims and are bound to leave readers dejected
and confused.
3) Finally, Albert writes as a
dedicated, lifelong spiritual seeker. He is not only deeply serious about conventional
self- help philosophies, but is a student and searcher within mystical,
metaphysical, and occult lines of thought. I first met him at a summer
conference of the Theosophical Society in America, where I was delivering a
talk on my first book, Occult America. At the time, Albert was a completing his
previous book, Healing Without Medicine, an evaluation of placebo and mind- therapeutic phenomena. As you will
see, Albert locates some of the deepest and most effective aspects
of self- help practice within the continuum of traditional esoteric
thought. This is historically accurate. I’ve argued that you cannot fully
understand today’s self- help culture without realizing how
it arose, in its earliest iterations, from mystical and occult movements,
which today would seem as culturally out of place as magician’s robes at a
business motivational conference, but the thought lineage is nonetheless there,
particularly with regard to the
positive- mind movement, and its key contention that thoughts are causative.
You need not
share Albert’s interests in the esoteric (as I do) in order to profit from his
insights. Whatever your intellectual and therapeutic tastes, this book gives
you a deepened perspective on the culture of self- help and self- improvement,
now an $11 billion yearly industry; a better understanding of what works and
what does not; and a new sense of the hopes and needs of self-
help readers, who are rarely seen or understood in critical literature.
To evaluate an
ethical, spiritual, or therapeutic philosophy, and to grasp its values,
weaknesses, and strengths, one must — as Albert
does— bring a participatory
element to the investigation. William James believed this deeply and lived and
worked by this ethic. I attempt to, as well. Albert’s role as a critical observer-
participant allows him to open windows that many conventional observers are
unaware of. His revealing perspective will not only add to your own but may,
depending on your outlook, enrich your personal experiments into self-
development.
— Mitch Horowitz New York City
Mitch
Horowitz is a PEN Award– winning historian whose books include Occult
America and One Simple Idea: How Positive Thinking Reshaped Modern Life. Former
vice president and executive editor at
TarcherPerigee, his latest book is The
Miracle Club: How Thoughts Become Reality.
