Back in the mid-1990's, a close friend, male, Christian and (to my eye, anyway) well-adjusted, started listening to Dr. Laura, and buying her books. My reaction was incredulous. Self-help books have always bothered me; at the time, I was in the throes of investigating the "repressed memory" movement, and any kind of pop-psychology inspired real unease in me. The helpful bits seemed self-evident; the rest of it, hunting obsessively after one's faults, and refusing to cut others one's own slack (as the refusal to be "co-dependent" or a "rescuer" struck me) troubled me.

I do not view most of the people I've ever known as crippled by their terrible parents. Most people who've fallen into that trap, if you question them, had parents no worse than anyone else's. More, by the age of 30, you better have dealt with it. Most of the time, it's pure self-indulgence to blame your parents for your inadequacies and discontents.

Nor are we omnipotent, and responsible for every little thing. We cannot control other people; we cannot control the outside forces that impinge on us.

Where I end up, in the midst of my own confused search for answers, is that there are only two real pieces of wisdom we can offer each other. Where the situation is one of your own making, one where you can affect the outcome, all you can say is, "Pull up you socks and get on with it, dearie." For reference, that's pretty much what I say to myself about most things...I've had more than my share of personal disasters. They all hurt - God, did they hurt! - but weeping, wailing, and wallowing in self-pity did absolutely no good. So I pull up my socks and get on with it. Who knows, I might catch a football.

When circumstances overwhelm you, and the outside world has impinged on your life, disastrously, all you can do is say, "This, too, shall pass." And it does, one way or another. I'm not saying the outcome will be happy - in some cases, there's a fair chance that it won't - but the situation will pass.

Reading the book, SHAM: How the Self-Help Movement Made America Helpless by Steve Salerno, I was struck by two things - first, the sense that Salerno is absolutely right, and this book is necessary, but secondly, that though he senses what is wrong with the "actualization" or "empowerment" movement and its gurus, he can't quite articulate it. For instance, Salerno briefly discusses the movement to free us from shame. The most articulate response to that movement I ever read was in Tim Powers' book, Earthquake Weather, where one character thinks words to the effect that "the next movement would be to abolish shame, and that, in her opinion, would be a mistake." Guilt, within limits, isn't a bad thing - it leads us to make amends, and attempt to do better. Shame keeps us from doing things that, bluntly, are bad.