Perna:

As usual you are asking important questions. I am, of course, interested in hearing people opinions of different books. I have spent 30 years reading and reviewing self-help books (which doesn't make me a better critic than anyone else). What is a good book to a certain person depends on what problems you have, the ways of changing that best suit you, how much you want to read the details and the research (or just go to the key ideas), and so on.

There are 2,000 self-help books published every year and that has been true for at least 30 years, so that is 60,000 books. Many of the old books are so good they remain popular.

One of the things I like about my book is that my material is very comprehensive...you can find out almost any problem in Psychological Self-Help. And I try to briefly describe several 100's of problems and give directions for simple, clear self-treatment methods, plus giving references to well over 2000 books and how-to articles. In more recent years, the search engines are the best competition in terms of finding books focusing on specific problems. My broad survey book can very rarely be the best book for a very restricted problem area.

I wrote a 1750 page book that will surely never be published in print because (1) I wanted a text book that would address any problem that a student walking into a class might have and want to change and (2) because there are potential benefits from reading about concerns that you hadn't realized yet. Prevention may be as important as coping. That is why I recommend that readers skip around and explore areas of interest.

drclay