Self-Help Nation

I've been reading a rather jaundiced critique of self-help called Self-Help Nation, by one Tom Tiede.
There is a whole sub-genre of books criticising self-help books, Steve Salerno's fascinating SHAM being the most recent example. I find it interesting that most of these critics seem to come from the right of the political spectrum, though in general those people vehemently opposed to self-help come from all sides of politics. It must just be the conservatives who can cultivate enough wrath to get it all down on paper.
Mr. Tiede's book is quite a good read, apart from the inexplicable inclusion of his poetry, which I naturally skip. Oh, the inordinate vanity of authors who imagine that its ok to slip some of their sup-par poetry into a work of non-fiction. He can be funny, though he can also drag the joke on for rather too long. And while I concede that self-help writing does indeed represent a rich mine of things to make fun of, I do think it is rather a soft target. Mr. Tiede's complete contempt for the books he is analysing is, to my mind, a rather too-easy pose, requiring the author not to think too seriously about the texts he is condemning.
His criticism is quite standard - that self-help books are unrealistic and cause a dangerously overblown set of expectations to rise up in the hearts of the readers. He says they are too simplistic, and is fascinated by the semi-magical numerology of self-help solutions: four steps to relationship success, seven days to true riches etc. He also includes a rather peculiar chapter in defence of addiction, which I quite enjoyed if only for its sheer audacity and lack of political correctness.
But occasionally he makes statements that are downright offensive and simply stupid - declaring, for example, that he'd rather be leading a poverty stricken existence in Burkina Faso than earning a living advocating self improvement. He also gives away rather more than I think he intended, providing a fascinating insight into his psyche, and the reasons why he finds the ideas of self-help so threatening that he had to write a whole book condemning them. In a particularly touching passage he writes about his own problematic relationship with his father, and ironically it is at this moment of tenderness, honesty and self-confession that he is at his literary best.