Psychologist Asks New Leaf on Self-Help Books

Enter any bookstore and you’ll find walls of self-help manuals. They’ll save your marriage, cure your phobia, release the “inner you,” or enable you to stick to the only diet you’ll ever need.

Many of them make claims on the covers or jackets that the contents don’t deliver, and some use theories that have not been proved, said psychologist Gerald Rosen, who wants his fellow professionals to do something about that.

He suggests a kind of Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval from the American Psychological Assn. Books would be required to state how methods had been tested, on whom, and how effective they were. And now the market includes cassette tapes too.

“We have to have these products marketed with accurate claims and not take advantage of the public,” said Rosen, who is in private practice in Seattle and has written a self-help book of his own, about phobias.

Rosen had hoped to present a “Golden Fleece Award” for self-help psychotherapies at the APA’s convention last August in New Orleans to embarrass therapists who made exaggerated claims about untested programs. He had planned to pass out noisemakers, and make awards based on the level of honks and boos each book received.

But the APA nixed the idea.

“Very bad taste,” said Charles Spielberger, APA president. “It’s not scientific evaluation, people booing.”

If an APA member writes a book that violates the organization’s ethical principles and if someone files a claim, the APA will investigate, said Spielberger, a psychology professor at the University of South Florida, Tampa.

“We don’t shrink for a minute from expelling or censuring a member who doesn’t follow APA code,” said Raymond Fowler, a psychologist and APA chief executive officer, but “you can’t just let one member speak for the association and say, ‘Here’s a bad guy doing a bad job.’ ”

But the APA may consider regulating member authors.

“We will start a serious consideration of APA’s role in looking at self-help books and . . . (whether) we need to develop a task force to draw up guidelines or inform our members of general standards,” Fowler said recently.

“The truth is, I wouldn’t want to underestimate some of these books. They are very sound and very sensitively thought out,” said Fowler, “and for some individuals it may be the only psychological help they’ll obtain.”

And evaluating every self-help book would be an enormous undertaking.

Rosen’s book, “Don’t Be Afraid,” has its share of exaggerated claims, he said, and the experience taught him it would be possible for the APA to set up a standard contract for psychologists to negotiate control of book promotion.

One way to deal with book jacket hyperbole, Rosen said, is for authors to take a tough stand with publishers. But Herbert Holtje, a literary agent, said it is nearly impossible for writers to maintain that kind of control.

It is unrealistic that self-help books “should be marketed without consideration of the competitive climate created by publishers,” Holtje wrote in the journal American Psychologist.

Albert Ellis, president of the Institute for Rational-Emotive Therapy and a psychologist in New York City, has written more than 50 self-help books.

“I’m critical of some self-help books but definitely in favor of others,” said Ellis, who would approve of a program to test a book for effectiveness. But he said he doubts publishers would wait around for that.

“I must say there’s something frustrating about the hard work of research day in and day out just to get a little way and someone reels out a pot-boiler and makes thousands,” said Patricia Keith-Spiegel, a professor of psychology at Cal State Northridge who teaches a course in ethics.

She was on the APA’s ethics committee at a time when a psychologist couldn’t give out professional advice except in a client-patient relationship.

“Then everything exploded,” she said, and psychologists were on radio and television, they were writing columns, they were writing books.

She is writing her own how-to book, how to get into graduate school.

“I’ve been a vocal critic of self-help books,” Keith-Spiegel said. “I’m going to have to research and check out everything I say.”

Rosen cites a number of books he feels exaggerate their claims. One is “The Doctors’ Guide to Instant Stress Relief: A Psychological and Medical System,” by psychologists Ronald G. Nathan and Thomas E. Staats, and Dr. Paul J. Rosch.

“I don’t believe there’s any such thing as instant stress relief,” Rosen said. “It could have been called ‘The Doctors’ Guide to Stress Relief You Can Learn in a Few Weeks.’ ‘

But Nathan said the title was suggested by the publisher and agreed upon only after much discussion among the authors. Although it may take six months to learn the technique of instant relaxation, it then can be applied in seconds, he said.

One danger in self-help books is that people can misdiagnose themselves and fail to seek help, Rosen contends. But Nathan said he and his co-authors provided a test for the reader to determine if professional help is needed.

“My pitch has been trying to convince psychology professionals that it’s time to take self-help books seriously because they’ve set up an alternate therapy system, and the books reach many more consumers than we will,” said Steven Starker, chief of psychological services and professor of medical psychology at Oregon Health Sciences University in Portland, Ore.

He also made that point in an article debating the topic in the magazine American Psychologist.

“I have talked to a lot of people over the years who have found a great deal of help in self-help books,” said Bernie Zilbergeld, a psychologist in private practice in Oakland and co-author of “Mind Power: Getting What You Want Through Mental Training.”

“If they can go out and pay $5 for a paperback book and get help from it without seeing me, why not?” Zilbergeld said.

Rosen admits he sounds self-serving: He charges $95 for an hour of therapy. But, he said, professionals should not promise the public more than they can deliver.