Self-help guru seduces female client as a part of personal development

If a person really succeeds in adopting the advices of the self-help books of personal development, she really gets a problem. Not only does she have to fight with the never-ending development, and the Egoism. She is also becoming a serious problem for her surroundings. Because she is now, as the Danish psychologist, Nina Østby Sæther, says, a potential psychopath.

On a course about psychopaths Nina Østby Sæther realized, that there was many similarities between psychopathic traits, and the advices, which are given in self-help books. It made her point out some frightening resemblances.

Though some of the self-help books´ advices might sound similar to true spirituality, taken out of context, then you have to remember how the wholeness and Otherness have been removed. And when this happens it takes a totally wrong course.

An example is the question about guilt:

The psychopath: The psychopath doesn´t know what a sense of guilt is. He has a conspicuous tendency to explaining away, or rationalizing, his social problem-creating behaviour.

Personal development: The Danish self-help guru, Søren Thorsøe, writes in his book A little guide to modern quality of life, that: “Guilt is meaningsless, when it comes to feelings. Actual I would like to have the word guilt removed from language.”

Though guilt is a negative feeling, then Thorsøe obviously doesn´t understand, that this negative feeling contains a message about that there is something you have to change in your behaviour, precisely because you can´t escape an order of reality, which is beyond your control. But in a typical subjectivistic and relativistic way, he thinks, that you only feel guilt, because humans have constructed this concept.

Similar things are happening, when for example Law of Attraction coaches think, that they without consequences can re-formulate the karma thought, so that it supports the ego, because this is a much more “positive” interpretation, than the old “negative” interpretation.

This distinction between old-thinking (negative) and new-thinking (positive), is happening again and again in the personal development culture.

The below example illustrates Thorsøe´s rationalization of behaviour, which in the eyes of many people will be regarded as unethical, egoistic and irresponsible. The personal experienced story is an extract from Thorsøe´s self-help book, and are, without any self-reflection at all, introduced with the purpose of teaching his readers about personal development and modern quality of life:

Gymnasium teacher Thorsøe´s young student Line entrusts him, that she is sexual attracted by her new stepfather Erik. Teacher Thorsøe analyses the situation, and  tells his student, that ”the structure in her emotional world quite clearly is an attraction towards experienced, charming men”, and that she must accept herself. The student accepts the analysis, and…

The solution came from an unexpected angle: on a school journey to London Line discovered, that Erik wasn’t the only answer to her fascination by experienced men. She had such a crush on me (Thorsøe), that I for a short while had trouble controlling the course. But since my own life of feelings also was in an un-released proces of renewal, it became a positive, and in reality necessary experience for both of us. When we came back to the usual surroundings – her school and my wife – we had to shorten the course, what influenced Line more than actually planned. But otherwise it is a good model: two persons, in each their crisis, help each other with taking the tiny step, that can bring them forward. (Thorsøe 1996: 36).

While Thorsøe legitimates the affair with his student using the concept about personal development (= psychology), it can, when using a moral perspective (= philosophy), be critized on several points. Thorsøe´s relationship with Line can be regarded as both manipulative and instrumental, and moreover can his behaviour be understood as irresponsible and without compassion for his wife.

So, with starting point in moral (philosophy), we see, that it in practice is difficult to separate the personal developing person from the psychopath. We also see, that a subjectivistic moral – that is: a moral defined by the individual´s feelings (psychology) – is no moral at all.

Nina Østby Sæther concludes, that the self-help books don´t have any alibi against producing psychopath-like, personal developing humans. The psychopathic traits are simply lying smouldering in the books. Her moral is, that the personal developing psychopath can be seen as an “actual social character in the Western society”, supported by a whole industry of self-help books.

Related articles:

The Self-help industry is the development of the modern psychopath

Humanistic psychology, self-help, and the danger of reducing religion to psychology