Editing Self-help (section)

==In the media==
[[Kathryn Schulz]] suggests that "the underlying theory of the self-help industry is contradicted by the self-help industry’s existence".<ref>{{cite news | title= The Self in Self-Help: We have no idea what a self is. So how can we fix it? | first = Kathryn | last = Schulz | author-link = Kathryn Schulz | url = https://nymag.com/health/self-help/2013/schulz-self-searching/index2.html | newspaper = [[New York (magazine)|New York Magazine]] | publisher = New York Media | issn = 0028-7369 | date = 2013-01-06 | access-date = 2013-01-11 | quote = It is a somewhat beautiful fact that the underlying theory of the self-help industry is contradicted by the self-help industry’s existence.}}</ref>

===Parodies and fictional analogies===
The self-help world has become the target of [[parody|parodies]]. [[Walker Percy]]'s odd genre-busting ''[[Lost in the Cosmos]]''<ref>{{cite book|last=Percy|first=Walker|title=Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book|location=New York|publisher=Farrar, Straus|year=1983}}</ref> has been described as "a parody of self-help books, a philosophy textbook, and a collection of short stories, quizzes, diagrams, thought experiments, mathematical formulas, made-up dialogue".<ref>{{cite web|first=Tom|last=Bartlett|date=2010-05-10|url=http://chronicle.com/blogPost/Walker-Percys-Weirdest-Book/23835/|url-status=dead|title=Walker Percy's Weirdest Book|website=The Chronicle of Higher Education|access-date=2010-05-14|archive-date=2010-05-14|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100514125703/http://chronicle.com/blogPost/Walker-Percys-Weirdest-Book/23835}}</ref>

[[Al Franken]]'s self-help guru persona [[Stuart Smalley]] was a ridiculous recurring feature on [[Saturday Night Live]] in the early 1990s.

In their 2006 book ''Secrets of The SuperOptimist'', authors W.R. Morton and Nathaniel Whitten revealed the concept of "super optimism" as a humorous antidote to the overblown self-help book category.

In his comedy special ''[[Complaints and Grievances]]'' (2001), [[George Carlin]] observes that there is "no such thing" as self-help: anyone looking for help from someone else does not technically get "self" help; and one who accomplishes something without help did not need help to begin with.<ref>{{cite video | people = Carlin, George | title = Complaints and Grievances | medium = DVD | publisher = Atlantic Records | date = 2001-11-17}}</ref>

In [[Margaret Atwood]]'s semi-satiric dystopia ''[[Oryx and Crake]]'', university literary studies have declined to the point that the protagonist, Snowman, is instructed to write his thesis on self-help books as literature; more revealing of the authors and of the society that produced them than genuinely helpful.