“If you are in the search of eternity—live in the present, live in love”: intersubjectivity and its relation to religion and spirituality in self-help literature

ABSTRACT Our era is marked by ‘therapeutic culture’, referring to the increasing prevalence of therapeutic concepts and psychological knowledge in the way people understand and make sense of their lives. A marked part of therapeutic culture is self-help literature. It comprises a wide array of items that centre around managing everyday life issues, self-development, and psychological growth. Existing research portrays self-help books as deeply individualistic. However, there is little knowledge about the spiritual and religious dimensions of the genre. The aim of this article is to explore human intersubjectivity, and its religious dimensions, in self-help literature. Drawing on a content analysis of eleven self-help books, we address the issues of whether, how, and to what extent self-help books represent humans as relational beings and how the notions of religion and spirituality underlying the books relate to these issues. The findings illustrate the centrality of intersubjectivity in the genre. The conclusions on religion are multifaceted: spirituality in the books has positive connotations, while institutional religion is seen as negative, or even as a threat, to well-being and intersubjectivity.