I don’t believe that reading self-help books is a bad idea. Yet the reputation of the self-help industry and its ideas is tarnished and deservedly so.
Some of what we believe about ourselves and how we function comes across as pseudoscience nonsense in a new age of woo.
We fail to do the necessary due diligence to check these claims and so we pursue them, wasting time, money and effort. Misleading ideas can also lead us into falling spiralling circles of negative thought and feeling.
Many ideas are bandied around about how to have better mental health, live a happier life, become more productive and so on.
Stephen Briers book Psychobabble questions the accepted wisdom and explains why many of its ideas are erroneous even dangerous. These ideas should not have the credibility and respect we give them.
Sceptical books like these are necessary because it’s so easy to take ideas on trust without understanding them.
Because the key to a better life can be described in one way by holding fewer false ideas and more truthful ones.
This book is one of those books you have to read to periodically get rid of the cobwebs that gather in your mind.
Many of these thoughts are not new, but this book neatly sums up and brings together some of the worst offenders.
Giving up on these ideas helped me in my day to day life. By letting them go I have found myself calmer, happier and more successful. Because growth, success and happiness are more to do with letting go of bad ideas than of adopting new ones. What could be called Creative Destruction LINK.
Growth is about being aware of and casting aside the illusions, lies and falsehood that lead us astray.
This book then is an essential read, like a spring cleaning of your mind. It stops us from being distracted and misdirected by questionable ideas and self-help myths that are part of the modern culture.