One of the most fascinating areas in psychology for me has always been the relationship between creativity and reality. In the future of this web site, I hope there will be one or two articles on this subject. Today I would like to write about one of the less-noticed areas where creativity and reality meet:  Self-help books.

Curious and troubled people differ in the way they seek information. We're curious, we look up Wikipedia. We're troubled, we take to a self-help book. If we're more curious, we sign up a journal; if we're more troubled, we make an appointment. These are fundamentals of brain chemistry.

There are self-help books about every possible subject. Relationships, success, how to fight mental problems, problem solving, decision making, relaxation, management, leadership, meaning of life, career, self awareness,  personal growth, and many more.

The amount of those of us who buy them is huge. The amount of those who write them isn't that big, but is still remarkable. No wonder. There is something attractive in the thought of taking an observation, an experience, or an existing idea, modifying it, renaming and finally selling it.

The amount of readers who feel they have gained something from reading those books is also big, be it just after having read them, or even long after.

The amount of people who have managed to change something in their lives or in specific areas as a result of reading such books is surprisingly small.

This frequent failure to deliver real changes would have been easy to understand if the majority of self-help books were bad. But the fact is, if we buy some and go through them we are often taken by how many good, wise, well-thought, and highly original, ideas and insights they contain. Yes, with regard to quality, very many of those books are just good. Very good indeed.

So the question is, how come. How can good books written by smart and serious writers be so successful in the way they make us feel, but fail so often in making a real change in real life take place?

Is it because of cultural differences between the writer and the reader? Or because the readers are not motivated enough to change? Is it because there are so many of them in the market that it confuses the readers? To my view, the answer is none of the above but somewhere else.

I think it's because self help books repeatedly ignore the existing arrangement of things in our lives. Every one of us is already having a complex of things and habits and actions, a solid network of people and routines and duties, limitations and rights - like a big tight puzzle - however with some missing or thorn parts. The typical self-help book offers a new piece to add to the puzzle... with absolutely no way for the piece to fit so that it makes sense. What usually happens then is, we buy the book, we get excited about it, and we try, really try to fix some problem with a really good tool that it provides. And it would have worked, hadn't there been real life attached to the problem from the other side.

There are plenty of examples. Failing to use that great technique against anger because anger happens too fast for us to remember in real time that the technique exists at all, or in a place where the technique is not applicable; failing to use a great imagery-based relaxation technique because some of us simply tend to better react to words than to pictures; being on an unhappy and unsuitable career path but failing to make that big existential decision about changing it simply because we have no other choice that makes sense.

Sometimes when I encounter such situations in therapy I find myself thinking: To come up with a new idea requires creativity. To fit it into the existing arrangement of things requires the touch of a genius.

^{A great piece but does it fit in?}

Well then, many good self-help books fail on ignoring our already existing life. Are they then just useless? No, I think they can be helpful. To my view, a good self-help book keeps its set of suggestions, ideas and advices a bit loose, without putting them into a too distinct system of theory or strategy. If it's loose, it is easier for the reader to pick one or two pieces - small ones perhaps - that are easier to find a place for, in the existing arrangement of things. On the other hand, a set of ideas with no frame of thought is less easy to understand and remember. The trick is therefore, to keep it loose but still put it together in a way that's easy to remember. But that's the writer's challenge.

Self help books also help in a different way. When we are suffering from a mental trouble, we are often less creative and in such times it can be helpful to meet new ideas - it gives us the feeling that we are not alone, other people have suffered from such problems before, and some people have been thinking about how to resolve them. It helps us feel that we are not different, and it gives us hope. I think that a good therapy helps more than a good self-help book because it doesn't ignore the existing so easily, but sometimes even therapy doesn't know how to provide more than a good piece of solid hope.

A set of tools within a neatly-made system - nice, attractive - and often useless? 

Watch for new articles to come soon!