Self-help and Self-improvement

Thinking Allowed

• Episode: Self-help and Self-improvement
• Website: Thinking Allowed
• Feed URL: http://podcasts.files.bbci.co.uk/b006qy05.rss
• Duration: 00:28:17
• Published: 2014-12-31 17:45

Self-help & self-improvement. As thoughts turn to resolutions and making a fresh start in 2015, Laurie Taylor wonders if his scepticism about self-help books and self-improvement programmes is well founded. He goes for advice to Christine Whelan - Professor in the School of Human Ecology at the University of Wisconsin and a self-help author. Further enlightenment is provided by Meg John Barker - Senior Lecturer in Psychology at the Open University - who has studied self-help literature dealing with sex and relationships and has also written what she describes as 'an anti self-help book'. And Rebecca Coleman - Senior Lecturer in Sociology at Goldsmiths, University of London - explains how TV makeover shows and online dieting sites create powerfully gendered and class-based messages about changing our bodies. Producer: Torquil MacLeod.