Word: self-help
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Thousands of these book buyers are flocking, with new converts' passion, to the myriad "Anonymous" groups; 500,000 self-help meetings are held weekly across the country. Codependents Anonymous is among the most rapidly growing of these free, confessional meetings. Addiction is a big industry these days, with expensive treatment programs, seminars, books, magazines and, yes, even "sobriety vacations." Flinty Americans may find this new commercialism discomfiting, but many anguished souls have found their salvation in 12-step programs, which owe a debt to Alcoholics Anonymous, the novel effort by two heavy drinkers who, in 1935, learned to stay sober...
...therapist. "We're talking about a group of people like myself who bottomed out so badly that we didn't have the time to waste on things like penis envy, Oedipus complexes -- however you pronounce it," laughs Beattie. "We were ready for some real basic stuff, and the self-help movement gave us that...
Although it is impossible to assess the troop strength of this grass-roots movement, it is significant enough to spark a backlash. Recently Oprah Winfrey, no slouch of a trend barometer, featured "self-help addicts" on her TV show. Some reconsideration is coming from movement leaders, like Anne Wilson Schaef, author of When Society Becomes an Addict and Co-Dependence: Misunderstood, Mistreated. She now calls the term outdated and argues that it should be modernized with a new concept of relationship -- sex, love or romance -- addiction. Social psychologist and therapist Stanton Peele, author of Diseasing of America: Addiction Treatment...
After Earth Day, a torrent of self-help environmental books and pamphlets hit the stands. Replete with tips for ecologically conscious living, these publications tried to make environmentalism accessible to the ordinary public...
...their professional ones. They are now Lamaze-class regulars and can be found in the delivery room for the cosmic event instead of pacing the waiting-room floor. They have been instructed to bond with children, wives, colleagues and anyone else they can find. Exactly how remains unclear. Self-help books, like Twinkies, give brief highs and do not begin to address the uneven changes in their lives over the past 20 years. "Men aren't any happier in the '90s than they were in the '50s," observes Yale psychiatrist Pruett, "but their inner lives tend to be more complex...