The best self-help books that aren’t about self-help

DeSanctis is a witty and lyrical writer, and she observes the world with astonishing acuity and insight.

I read this at a moment of feeling unbearably stuck emotionally and I was transported to a worldly sense of fresh possibilities and rich adventures. Restlessness can be a superpower and finally I got validation for being a restless psychotherapist (a profession that prides itself on patience).

This book made me come alive and it bolstered me psychologically in a way that felt incidental and not forced the way self-help books might. It sparked my appreciation for oddities and eccentricities and I urge anyone looking for mischief to start reading this immediately. 

Oh the joys of Saul Steinberg’s drawings! More psychologically attuned than most therapy books or self-help, Steinberg’s illustrations are brilliant illuminations of what goes on in the inner lives of human beings.

I want to play and celebrate and express and engage with nature when I look at this book, and seeing my internal angst depicted visually consoles me. As a psychotherapist, I cherish words but I also see the limitations of language. It’s liberating to see what can’t always be described.

As for the labyrinth theme, it’s universal and shockingly apt as a metaphor for what goes on in our emotional lives – we are so often seduced by labyrinths – we get drawn into situations and patterns that feel impossible to resolve and yet somehow too hard to leave.

Our inner conflicts are full of mazes we feel we can’t exit but also can’t sort out – should we leave a relationship? Is this friend a good friend or a bad friend? We lament about small details and agonize over steps and missteps and Steinberg’s book reminds us that we put ourselves into labyrinths and demand solutions. Steinberg’s illustrations are the closest thing I’ve found to a solution – radical acceptance and psychological freedom. 

This book will make you playful – essential at every age and stage throughout life. Playing and creating can be tragically unprioritised in adulthood. I’m not very good at drawing but looking through these pages inspires me to pick up a pen and draw in a hugely satisfying, even if unskilled, way.

There’s such joy in Steinberg’s wisdom but also his perpetual beginner’s mindset.

Soaring and powerful, this is the story of my beloved friend and his disability. He’s also gay. He’s spent his life feeling trapped by reductive definitions along with his physical challenges.

His writing is joyous and giddy with freedom. He sees everything and feels life’s social nuances with piercing insights. Everyone should read this book not just because it’s poignant and profoundly edifying but also because it’s written so darn well. Words jump and dance and reading this feels like flying.

There’s a pace and excitement even at haunting moments and joy and beauty sit with sorrow and pain in such a real, relatable way, it’s much more about lived experience than any psychological study I’ve come across on this subject.

There’s depth and air throughout. I don’t always like the writing of people I know, and I don’t always like the people whose writing I admire. What a wonderful rarity it is when the personality and prose are equally enchanting. 

The story of Holly Golightly is really about freedom and attachment.

Holly doesn’t even name her cat anything but Cat. Charming and delightful and utterly terrified of intimacy in some ways, she’s the most loveable flawed character in history. The narrator is understandably enamoured and bothered by her elusive and mercurial nature, and their rapport and connection are heartwarming.

It’s deeply consoling to return to Capote’s familiar passages and what’s gripping for me is how Holly Golightly is always the same character but my feelings about her continue to change. When I was fourteen I admired her and saw her as a stylish icon. At twenty-two I found her distressing and traumatic. In my thirties I ignored her and tried to outgrow her and I’ve returned to her again and feel fondness for her. Our relationship with characters can be in motion. 

Breakfast at Tiffany’s is charming and chic but it’s also profoundly tender. Holly Golightly is all alone when she is vulnerable and the story is a reminder of the trappings of charisma, the danger of having to be on form.

Roth’s intolerance of closure is brilliant. Even if it’s a character who loathes the concept of closure, and not Roth himself, this book is incredibly helpful for thinking about cancel culture, the reductive judgments about sex, the cultural purity binges that shame and destroy thinking.

Roth is bold and brave in his writing and the exquisite candor about sex is sometimes upsetting but also enlivening. Roth is not always nice in his writing but the cruelty he describes is an act of service to humanity and he stretches the psyche, 

The Human Stain will expand your attitudes towards race and sexual judgment. Helpful in myriad ways.