Self-help books: bibliotherapy for happiness

Abstract

The aim of this article is to specify several functions of bibliotherapies, focusing the case of self-help books. By the analysis of a sample of 60 books, we propose a number of parameters to classify self-help as a specific discursive genre. That characterisation involves theme, composition structures and literary style, all typical of the genre. The examination of self-help discursive devices enables to understand their performance on discomforms in subjectivty.  Sef-help books are answers imbuid both in hegemonic ideology and in common sense that characterize this period. In this way, its historical developement has had different stages recognizables by the explicit objectives of the books, the foundations of their efficacy and the fields to which their influence is restrincted. The systematization of this evolution –that this article presents- makes easier to understand the eclectisism of this contemporary phenomenom.