The Lem Reviews 2020 - #1 "Help Your Self"

In “Help Your Self”, Peter Dannem has attempted the seemingly impossible – he has written a self-help guide to self-help books.  Those of us who have been waiting years for the appearance of this ground-breaking volume will be delighted to discover that the result is a navigational device to satisfy all but the most erudite or deluded self-helpist.

As he explains in his introduction, Dannem’s project began in the late 1980s with two simultaneous realisations: first, that the post-modern worrier may no longer be clear as to what, exactly, the worry is.   And, second, that the range and complexity of help available markedly reduces the likelihood that any particular self-helpist will find the actual help they need.

With this in mind, he began – he explains – to build a giant spreadsheet, with the names of things to worry about across the top and possible sources of help down the side.  So, across the top he listed things like “Diet” and “Stress” and “Clutter”; and, down the side, he listed “Cognitive Behavioural Therapy” and “Motivational Messages” and “Crystals”.

He then started to fill in the spreadsheet with all the self-help books he could find, imagining that this would provide an easy way to find the help your self really needs.

In practice, however, and quickly, he encountered two substantial problems. One: the things to worry about do not form a straightforward and tidy list.  Perhaps, for example, your obesity is related to your stress.  Or your poor relationships with your children are to do with your job.  Or the amount of clutter in your house is a function of your addictions.  The inexperienced self-helpist might focus on, say, “Diet” but, in fact, their real problem is, say, “Poverty”.

His second problem was even bigger: self-help books, too, are more complex than might be supposed.  The motivational messages from, say, a motivational speaker might actually rely on techniques derived from neuro-linguistic programming; while a life-coaching manual that appears to be based on the experiences of the life coach may in fact turn out to be based on tarot readings or astrology.

Worse, he realised that the concept of ‘self-help’ is very poorly defined.  Is moral philosophy self-help, for example?  Are recreational drugs self-help?  And what about fiction?  What if – for example – the best way to treat some ill-defined sense of poor self-worth in a patriarchal society is a good dose of Jane Austen? Or the best way to tackle a nagging sense of purposelessness is to read Spinoza?

Thoughts such as these sent Dannem on a thirty-year odyssey – and “Help Your Self” is the remarkable result.

From the reader’s point of view, the task is now simple.  In Part One, “Symptomatology”, the reader simply references and cross-references his or her worries.  I started with “Bewildered”, the entry for which provides a narrative overview and, crucially, a concise set of links to other worry entries.  Following these links took me variously to “Anxiety”, “Overload” and “Obsessive Compulsive Disorder”, each of which comprised its own narrative overview and links to further worries.

Part of Dannem’s genius, here, is in the linkages.  It turns out that, irrespective of where you start, the reader almost inevitably identifies a set of precisely SIX worries.  With each worry carefully numbered, the self-helpist leaves Part One of the book with a personal numeric worry code.

In Part Two of the work – “Sources and Schema” - Dannem has done something similar with all possible types of help.  In this case, the user’s challenge is merely to express their preferences.  Do you like to read fiction?  What type?  Do you read your horoscope, or not?  Do you enjoy listening to tall Americans with ear-pieces and big teeth encouraging large audiences to admit to their failings in public; or not?  And so on.  As in Part One, some extraordinary wiring behind the scenes – clearly the fruit of Dannem’s decades of labour – guides the reader in a curious looping fashion, so that, reasonably quickly, the same preferences appear again and again.

Emerging from Part Two is, rather than a numeric code, a sequence of shapes and symbols.  This sequence – Dannem assures us – represents the pattern of your help-need.

And thus to Part Three – “Helpism” - where the results come miraculously together.  Using your numeric worry code and your self-help symbol sequence, you navigate quickly to half-a-dozen perfectly tailored recommendations for precisely the help your particular self really needs.  I can assure the reader that my personal combination of the Upanishads, trans-personal psychology, regular exposure to the Daily Telegraph and weekly psilocybin is already working wonders.

At nearly 2,000 pages “Help Your Self” is unlikely to fly off the shelves; and the reactions from some sections of the self-help author community (who may well perceive the volume as something of a threat to their livelihood) could also help to limit sales.  But if you’ve been buying half a dozen self-books a year for the past decade or two, and yet somehow everything still seems shit, then this could be just the book you’re looking for.  Go on.  Help your self.