PUTTING THE SELF IN SELF-HELP

Western-influenced self-help is not an entirely new genre in Egypt. An early entry onto the scene was Samuel Smiles' Self-Help; with Illustrations of Character, Conduct, and Perseverance, translated into Arabic in the late 19th century. Already popular in Europe and the United States, Smiles' book proved inspirational for those British administrators and Egyptian leaders who saw individual self-improvement as key to future national success: “The spirit of self-help is the root of all genuine growth in the individual; and, exhibited in the lives of many, it constitutes the true source of national vigor and strength.”Footnote ¹⁸ But, as Timothy Mitchell has noted, Smiles' upbeat message took on a contrary meaning in turn-of-the-century Egypt, for his insights about self-improvement reinforced colonial attitudes, held by both Egyptian and British critics, about “defects in the Egyptian character” that accounted for, if not justified, the British occupation.Footnote ¹⁹ In the end, the analysis of the self in Smiles' early, self-help classic possessed little depth. It served primarily as a mirror for the character traits individuals were supposed to develop in order to achieve their full potential and contribute to society. These traits—industry, perseverance, energy, courage, frugality, truthfulness, and ambition—were exemplified through the life stories of men who had overcome difficult situations (personal, historical, or both) to make something of themselves. Thus one learned how to help the self by attending to the success stories of others and modeling one's life accordingly.

In much of the new self-help literature, by contrast, the self is imbued with depth and ontological status, which is to say that the genre reflects a world shaped by modern psychology and related notions of the individual as a reflexive project. Inspirational stories continue to play an important role, but they are accompanied, and often overshadowed, by discourse about the self and the need to understand it. Self-help books assume an audience alienated from the deepest reaches of being and, as a result, lacking in self-control, confidence, happiness, purpose, and success. Book titles reflect these conditions and hold out hope for solutions: Saytar ʿala Hayatak (Control Your Life), Quwat al-Tahakkum fi al-Dhat (The Power of Self-Mastery), Hayat bi-la Tawattur (Stress Free Life), Fan al-Ilqaʾ (The Art of Dumping), Kayf Tuhaqqiq Dhatak? (How to Realize Your Self), Kayf Tuwajih Mushkilatak maʿa al-Akharin? (How to Face Your Problems with Others), ʿIraf Nafsak (Know Yourself), Istakshaf nafsak min Jadid (Discover Yourself Anew), Kun Wathiqan bi-Nafsak (Be Self-Confident), Salih Nafsak (Find the Inner Peace).Footnote ²⁰

If the self of self-help literature is hidden from view, it is not inaccessible. It can be contacted, explored, and empowered with the right knowledge and technique. Indeed, knowing the self is the centerpiece of all self-help literature. As one guide to success puts it, nothing does more harm to self-confidence than ignorance of the self.Footnote ²¹ Books differ on the best way to overcome this ignorance and to begin to know the self, though common patterns do emerge. Most works begin with a self-assessment or personal stocktaking that draws readers into an inner-directed process of discovery. This process might entail “exploration and contemplation of what lies inside” the self.Footnote ²² Or it might require a willingness to measure the depths of one's self-worth through “meditation, objective reflection, intellectual immersion, autosuggestion, and self transformative power.”Footnote ²³ In some books, readers are introduced to psychological analysis of the self, with expositions of the conscious and subconscious mind and its impact on thought and action.Footnote ²⁴ In others, psychology lies in the background, part of the subtext of the journey into the self or the exploration of one's self image.Footnote ²⁵ The psychological turn in the genre presents the self as a complex mass of needs, desires, thoughts and emotions, all of which press upon the individual, clouding judgment and interfering with one's ability to decide and act. And this psychologized image of the self, in turn, legitimizes the need to explore what lies at the depth of one's being.

Coming to know the self through self-assessment is not a free-flowing process; it is typically a structured affair that involves question prompts prepared by authors. In some instances, a basic question such as “Who are you?” or “Do you have goals in your life?” begins the dialogue with the reader. In others, questions form the backbone of the entire book, with preparatory questions at the outset of chapters and drill questions at the end.Footnote ²⁶ Some authors walk readers through a series of personality tests that supply immediate, practical results indicating whether one is a particular type: happy or sad, optimistic or pessimistic, a striver or a slacker.Footnote ²⁷ Self-assessment brings readers into dialogue with themselves, sometimes inviting them to narrate the self either in silent contemplation or through journal writing. Directing readers to engage in a conversation (ḥiwār or ḥadīth) with the self is a typical technique in the genre, as is guidance about the topic of conversation and suggestions about format. Readers might be told, for example, to “procure paper and pen . . . and sit in seclusion with the self.”Footnote ²⁸ Ayhab Kamal, author of a number of self-help books in a series titled “Knowledge for All,” stipulates that the conversation be a “positive session” (jalasa ijābiyya), since people sometimes tend to blame and rebuke themselves.Footnote ²⁹ Ibrahim al-Fiqi, perhaps the best-known and most prolific self-help guru in Egypt, also warns against allowing a negative inner voice, which he calls “the silent killer” (al-qātil al-ṣāmit), to undermine the potential good that can come from talking with the self.Footnote ³⁰ The general expectation, then, is that the insights gained from a conversation will be helpful to the individual's development, which is essential since “whoever does not advance does not remain in place but rather moves backward.”Footnote ³¹

Whatever the starting point of the assessment, the self is not presented as a fixed, unchanging part of human nature. As one author points out, the question “Who are you?” actually has two aspects to it: the question of who you are today and the question of who you will become in the future. The simple message of this author is the stock and trade of all self-help literature: “It is possible to become something different.”Footnote ³² What one will become, however, depends on whether the reader takes seriously the introspective challenge posed in the literature and the effort it requires. Wanting to change is only the first step, and is no doubt signaled by the purchase of a self-help book. More important to long-term self-understanding and self-transformation is the willingness to work on and with the self.Footnote ³³

The questions that readers address during inner dialogues may appear too simplistic to give rise to anything as dramatic as self-transformation: What do you like and dislike? What are your highest goals? What are your strengths and weaknesses? What makes you happy and what makes you sad?Footnote ³⁴ But the answers are important because of both the location from whence they emerge and their practical results. Indeed, these two points are intimately connected. According to self-help discourse, when one actually converses with the self, one has reached the inner core of human nature, where an individual's authentic thoughts, attitudes, and desires reside—a place safe from the superficiality of everyday life dominated by personal fear and peer pressure. Answers about the self from this psychological depth manifest the knowledge individuals require to realize the practical and highly desired results promised by self-help books: happiness, success, and a satisfying life. Thus the turn inward to work on the private self leads, over time, to the emergence of an improved public individual, one prepared not simply to take on the challenges of self-actualization, marriage, child rearing, and work, but to embrace and triumph over these challenges. For this reason, self-help encompasses a range of activities linked to the body, with the individual as an “action system” seeking self-conscious control over all aspects of life: time and stress management, public speaking, health, diet, exercise, weight loss, relationships, love, and sexuality.Footnote ³⁵ Books related to each of these subjects have witnessed a marked increase in Egypt and the wider Middle East.Footnote ³⁶

The emergent and idealized subject in most self-help literature bears little resemblance to customary, though changing, understandings of the way individuals are socialized. Egyptians typically gain their sense of identity and worth within a corporate structure—family, community, and society—not as lone actors striking out on their own to make a name for themselves or turning inward to discover something undetectable at the level of social relationships and obligations. As Andrea Rugh notes, “Egyptians tend to see themselves as members of groups, or in the context of their structural roles. They rarely think of themselves as individuals with unique potentials to develop or unique needs to satisfy.”Footnote ³⁷ These attitudes are in keeping with the conservative, though shifting, values of Arab societies, which subsume the desires of the individual to those of the family and community. In fact, whether an individual succeeds or fails is tied to the well-being of the family.Footnote ³⁸ The subjectivity advanced in self-help literature also conflicts with notions of the self found in the Qurʾan and in the Islamic medical tradition. In Islamic sources, great emphasis is placed on physical and mental health, with special attention to the moral and spiritual development of the self according to the stages outlined in the Qurʾan: a progressive movement of the self from a passionate state in which the self is driven to evil (al-nafs al-ammāra) to a conflicted state in which the self recognizes its shortcomings (al-nafs al-lawwāma), ending eventually in a state of tranquility in which the self finds balance and harmony with all things (al-nafs al-muṭmaʾinna).Footnote ³⁹ An Islamic framework of good mental health and happiness takes into consideration the needs of both body and soul, the demands of this life and the next. The “Muslim self” is a work in progress, but it is part of a god-ordained system in which human meaning and purpose are predetermined, as are the psychological and social virtues required to realize said purpose.Footnote ⁴⁰

Of course, neither Egyptian nor Islamic conceptions of subjectivity, and the practices associated with them, have remained stagnant, especially as the country became integrated into modern capitalist markets. As a case in point, the reformist Muhammad ʿAbduh recognized the material and intellectual challenges of European colonialism and, in response, crafted an image of a Muslim self prepared to live in a modernizing society while holding fast to a distinctive Islamic identity. What ʿAbduh wished to prevent, according to Samira Haj, was the incursion, and eventual triumph, of Western modernity—secularism, materialism, and individualism—in the Muslim world.Footnote ⁴¹ Drawing on Muʾtazilite theology, he created an authentic moral framework for Muslims to live the kind of life expected of modern citizens, a life that is “self-regulating and self-disciplining but also orderly, productive, rational, and healthy in body and mind.”Footnote ⁴² But this life would be embedded in ongoing patterns of Muslim socialization, of valorizing the community over the individual, which would ensure a different moral experience of modernity, much as Rugh's above description of Egyptian self-perception suggests. For Haj, ʿAbduh was trying to preserve something that he and other reformers viewed as essential to the experience of being Muslim: “Rather than aspiring to be autonomous and self-constitutive, a Muslim subject strives to be good and virtuous by belonging to a particular community where individuals are identified and constituted in and through a set of given beliefs and assigned practices.”Footnote ⁴³

In contrast to ʿAbduh's embedded Muslim self, the self in current self-help literature tends toward a disembedded individualism, which promotes the good of the individual, not the social good. It has a distinctive rootless quality to it—a neutrality or open-endedness in terms of culture, ethnicity, nationality, and religion. More accurately, it is a self that easily accommodates any cultural, ethnic, national, or religious environment because it is intended for a global audience. And in contrast to the Muslim self, the self in current self-help is characterized by pure this-worldly empowerment, a vessel of unmet desires and potential discovering the means of its fulfillment. It can best be described as an “enterprising self” equipped with techniques of psychological exploration for enterprise culture. According to Nikolas Rose, this enterprising self “is to be a subjective being, it is to aspire to autonomy, it is to strive for personal fulfillment in its earthly life, it is to interpret its reality and destiny as a matter of individual responsibility, it is to find meaning in existence by shaping its life through acts of choice.”Footnote ⁴⁴ The enterprising self in Egypt exists alongside an array of other ethical formations of the self located within the broader cultural context.Footnote ⁴⁵ Indeed, the pluralization of selves parallels the pluralization of lifestyles, both signs of the social differentiation and consumption-driven identity formation brought on by modernity.

While the enterprising self may have emerged in a Western, capitalist context, it has become a global phenomenon, though one filtered through local custom and style. Self-help literature has become a primary medium for the transmission of this global cosmopolitan consciousness. It is the epitome of the new public culture that is shaping people around the world “without regard to the limits of family, locality or social category.”Footnote ⁴⁶ Public culture promotes the mixing and matching of traditions and styles, and challenges individuals to interpret its various formations and determine their authenticity. As never before, hybridity and cosmopolitanism are part of the everyday experience of Egyptians, which raises interesting questions about how useful “cosmopolitan” is as a term of social differentiation.Footnote ⁴⁷ Its seeming accessibility to all, with so many overlapping experiences and encounters, creates an interpretive dilemma. For when it is no longer the preserve of an elite few, cosmopolitanism can appear, as Will Hanley has pointed out, a “thin practice.”Footnote ⁴⁸ But this is precisely the dynamism inherent in cosmopolitan public culture: its thinness, its accessibility, its incessant blending of global and local, its challenge to distinctions between traditional and modern—all contribute to the potential for individuals to (re)imagine and (re)invent themselves. Self-help is a product of and for such an environment. It takes people on a path of self-development that facilitates “the creation of a personal belief system by means of which the individual acknowledges that ‘his first loyalty is to himself.’”Footnote ⁴⁹

At first glance, the self of self-help seems unrelated to religion. It operates at levels of life more clearly related to capitalist practices and psychological exploration, especially at the popular level. But as will become clear in the next two sections, the global character of the enterprising self is grounded locally, in Egypt, through references—sometimes brief, sometimes extensive—to Islamic tradition. The twinned pattern of objectification and functionalization of Islam is certainly common among those seeking to promote specific utilitarian ends.Footnote ⁵⁰ It takes on special significance, however, when the end being promoted is not simply a rational, self-disciplining subject but a subject psychologically empowered to determine its own true self and life purpose. Put differently, when faith in Islam facilitates ultimate faith in self, then tradition is being repositioned to authenticate a whole new discourse, one that sacralizes the self and the choices it makes.

KNOWLEDGE OF, KNOWLEDGE FOR THE SELF

One wonders how individuals so plagued with problems, so burdened by lives of diminished worth and achievement, could help themselves. But the very appeal of self-help literature rests in its promise to empower individuals to overcome all obstacles, and to do so with the knowledge and techniques mastered by the authors and transmitted to readers. This power, as it turns out, actually resides in the self, and writers of self-help literature merely serve as conduits, allowing individuals to see the self and its true potential. The field of psychology provides the insights and authority for unlocking the inner self, but the degree of psychological knowledge found in the literature varies greatly. Few Egyptian self-help authors have specialized training in psychology, despite the number of “doctors” among them. Most infuse their writing with scientific and medical references, drawn largely from Western medical professionals and self-help experts. In a very real sense, self-help authors serve as popular interpreters of a complex field of knowledge, and in the process they create their own areas of expertise, such as human development or the science of happiness. Nikolas Rose characterizes these people as “‘experts of subjectivity’ who transfigure existential questions about the purpose of life and the meaning of suffering into technical questions of the most effective ways of managing malfunction and improving quality of life.”Footnote ⁵¹ Self-help subordinates knowledge, whether traditional or modern, to the demands of how-to, to the best techniques to achieve the desired end: health, wealth, confidence, happiness, and popularity.

In the opening chapter of Qawanin al-Saʿada (The Rules of Happiness), Nahid al-Dib compares the self to an iceberg as a way to introduce the conscious and unconscious mind; once the metaphor-cum-theory is in place, the author spends the rest of the book exploring the means to build characteristics that will bring about happiness: love, tolerance, self-confidence, fulfilling a task, etc.Footnote ⁵² In a work subtitled Dalilak al-ʿIlmi li-l-Saʿada wa-l-Najah (Your Scientific Guide to Happiness and Success), Sherif ʿArafa, a dentist by training, introduces his readers to the latest psychological research on self-help and happiness emerging in the West; with the aid of noted “scientific” experts—such as Martin Seligman, Dan Gilbert, and Ellen Langer—he then surveys the positive and negative aspects of the often-cited sources of happiness: money, circumstances, religiosity, pleasure, relationships, lifestyle, etc.Footnote ⁵³ For the genre as a whole, psychological knowledge legitimizes the turn inward and facilitates the techniques of self-exploration, self-narration, self-assessment, and self-discipline—all in an effort to change (i.e., improve) the condition of the self. A sure sign of the inroads of psychology and self-help in Egyptian culture is the trend among authors to start with the techniques themselves, to assume that readers are already prepared to take up the challenges of meditation, autosuggestion, and intellectual immersion.Footnote ⁵⁴

For some authors, success itself becomes the source of authority and knowledge, and the task is to present, in shorthand fashion, examples of success that might motivate readers. In al-Najah al-Saʿb (Hard Success), Rauf Shabayk relates the stories of twenty-five people who overcame a variety of challenges to make their mark in the business world, such as Pierre Omidyar, founder of eBay; the Chinese entrepreneur Jack Ma; the founders of Honda and Sony Corporation, Soichiro Honda and Akio Morita; Debbi Fields of Mrs. Fields Bakeries; Joanne Rowling of Harry Potter fame; and one of the often-cited names in self-help books, Ray Kroc, who built the McDonald's chain.Footnote ⁵⁵ Ibrahim Fiqi adopts a similar approach in his best-selling al-Mafatih al-ʿAshr li-l-Najah (The Ten Keys to Success), in which he claims to have discovered, after years of study and research, the secrets of successful, happy people.Footnote ⁵⁶ His ten keys—motivation, energy, knowledge, visualization, action, expectation, commitment, flexibility, patience, and discipline—are means and ends, techniques and life goals. Al-Fiqi's communicative style models the packaged messaging that is typical of many self-help books: rapport-building questions, followed by a few relevant stories, select quotes from well-known figures, insights into the best practices for change, and a concluding summary of takeaway strategies to facilitate implementation. Readers with busy lives no doubt find this kind of practical, easy-to-learn, self-help instructional attractive and comforting. The style itself is reflective of al-Fiqi's background in neurolinguistic programming (NLP), a psychotherapeutic method of personal development that emerged in the 1970s as part of the human potential movement and was later popularized by figures such as Paul McKenna and Tony Robbins. Books written by Robbins are widely available in Egypt (in Arabic), and NLP has gained a strong foothold among Egyptian self-help practitioners.Footnote ⁵⁷ Al-Fiqi is one of many to have gained certification as an official NLP trainer, and he became a regular on the motivational speaker circuit (until his death in February 2012), invited to help businesses teach employees negotiation and goal-setting techniques.Footnote ⁵⁸ NLP is based on modeling the best practices of experts, an imitative learning method. Its creators, Richard Bandler and John Grinder, take a very pragmatic view of personal development and how to motivate people to pursue it: “We have no idea about the ‘real’ nature of things, and we're not particularly interested in what's ‘true.’ The function of modeling is to arrive at descriptions which are useful.”Footnote ⁵⁹

Since what is most useful is success itself, all other factors are secondary, if not irrelevant. The result is an odd and sometimes ironic mixing of authorities from different ethnic, religious, and national backgrounds, all shedding light on the potential to change the self. Life stories of the Prophet Muhammad, Abraham Lincoln, and Helen Keller mix easily in an effort to provide readers with inner peace.Footnote ⁶⁰ A paragraph in a chapter on self-confidence can include references to Thomas Edison, Beethoven, Ibn al-Athir, and Ibn al-Qayyim.Footnote ⁶¹ Helen Gurley Brown, Bo Derek, Charlie Chaplin, and Imam Shafiʿi can provide insight into whether money is the source of happiness; William James, Saʿd Zaghlul, Mohamed ElBaradei, and Thomas Jefferson can weigh in on whether luck is the dominant factor.Footnote ⁶² A motivational epigram from Gandhi can be followed a few pages later by a quote from ʿAli b. Abi Talib, and still later by one from Jean-Paul Sartre.Footnote ⁶³ Those seeking assistance to improve specific character traits, such as motivation and hope, can consult a series of pocket books with “quotes and acts” by a variety of historical and modern figures, representing a range of racial, ethnic, national, and religious backgrounds: Mother Teresa, Malcolm X, Confucius, Che Guevara, C.S. Lewis, Ronald Reagan, ʿAli b. Abi Talib, Tagore, Socrates, Gautama Buddha, Ovid, Bruce Lee.Footnote ⁶⁴ The common denominator here is recognized achievement or, at least, fame. The impression conveyed to readers by the pastiche of wisdom offered up in self-help might best be summarized by one of al-Fiqi's confessions: “I believe it is possible to learn anything, from anyone, anywhere.”Footnote ⁶⁵

The diffusion of religious authority in modern Muslim societies is well established. But the genre of self-help takes this development to a new level, mixing secular and religious voices, and blurring the boundary between psychology and spirituality. Under the banner of improving the self, Albert Einstein and an American management expert such as Stephen Covey blend seamlessly with the Qurʾan.Footnote ⁶⁶ And the Qurʾan and Michel Foucault contribute to the discovery of the self.Footnote ⁶⁷ Individuals seeking to build self-confidence can take comfort from Allah's desire for people to lead successful lives and from the insight of George Bernard Shaw.Footnote ⁶⁸ Drawn out of their traditional framework, the Qurʾan and sunna are transformed into wellsprings of self-help advice, part of a larger body of decontextualized, universal wisdom literature on the self. The words of the Prophet Muhammad communicate important characteristics of a successful business manager.Footnote ⁶⁹ A Qurʾanic verse about heeding the advice of stories sanctions the telling of Helen Keller's difficult, yet uplifting, life.Footnote ⁷⁰ And the famous verse “God does not change the condition of a people unless they change themselves” (Qurʾan 13:11) becomes an all-purpose justification for transforming the self.Footnote ⁷¹

Self-help, then, is the great equalizer of authority and knowledge, relativizing everything in its path, including religion, all in the service of the self. Even wisdom from other religious and philosophical traditions is a legitimate source within Egypt's vast array of self-help literature. Confucius, Gautama Buddha, Lao Tzu, and Gaozu are worthy of quotation, as are Jesus and Robert Schuller.Footnote ⁷² While Islam is the tradition most often mentioned by Egyptian self-help writers, it is the practical benefits of belief itself that gain the most attention: the consolation provided in knowing that people are part of god's creation, that life has meaning, that god wants people to enjoy life, that turning to god in supplication and gratitude leads to satisfaction and contentment.Footnote ⁷³ The theology is not specifically Islamic, though the language and references are. It is a hope-driven, religiously infused worldview for a hopeful readership.

This kind of “success gospel” is not new to self-help. Dale Carnegie, the master of the genre, inspired generations of Americans with it, and his message gained a worldwide following. Carnegie's books have gone through a number of translations in Egypt, and they are often cited in Egyptian self-help books. Perhaps just as often his words are quoted or paraphrased, sometimes without attribution.Footnote ⁷⁴ Carnegie translates easily into other cultures because he approached the human condition in universal terms and wrote, seemingly, with a global readership in mind. In How to Stop Worrying and Start Living, Carnegie valorizes the Buddha, Confucius, Jesus, and Muhammad; and he promotes the idea that “prayer fulfills . . . basic psychological needs,” even for those who are not really religious. His practical approach to prayer, and openness toward religion in general, is evident in the invitation he makes to readers: “So why not make use of it? Call it God or Allah or Spirit—why quarrel with definitions as long as the mysterious powers of nature take us in hand? Why not close this book right now, go to your bedroom, shut the door, kneel down, and unburden your heart?”Footnote ⁷⁵ One Egyptian writer found Carnegie's written thoughts about the tangible benefits of prayer and belief so convincing that he adopted them completely, adding only specific Islamic references to make the material seem more suitable to a Muslim audience.Footnote ⁷⁶

In self-help literature, self-fulfillment and self-achievement drive the search for what is best to know. Religious knowledge facilitates the search, but it does not define the outcome. In fact, the search itself takes on an aura of ultimate ends when the turn inward holds out the promise of uncovering one's true self and thus life's purpose for the individual. Self-help authors in Egypt do not challenge, directly, the primacy of religious tradition, of Islam. They do, however, foster an ethic that (re)orients human nature and divine purpose to the fulfillment of individually defined goals and desires. As such, they provide moral impetus to capitalist beliefs and practices, and imbue choice of lifestyle with the authority of a spiritual pursuit.

THE VIRTUE AND LIMITS OF AUTHENTICITY

It is no coincidence that the explosion of self-help literature in Egypt—from the 1990s onward—paralleled the entrenchment of economic liberalization and the resultant burdens placed on the middle classes following the retreat of the state. As the state tried to implement policies to secure the country's competitive standing in the global market (policies dictated by international financial institutions and Western governments), Egyptians were left to negotiate their own pathway to financial security, if not survival.Footnote ⁷⁷ Self-help speaks to an audience that understands, consciously or not, the competitive challenge of modern economic life, and it hopes to develop in that audience the right habits of mind and body that will enable success. The extent of these habits is itself testimony to the transformed thinking about the self that informs modern popular culture. The self consists of mind and body, of deep psychological needs and desires inextricably linked to a physical form that can, depending on how one treats it, enhance or inhibit the self's ability to reach its full potential. For this reason, self-help books address a range of concerns related to the self as an “action system,” and some authors advise readers not only to gain insights into their inner selves but to get healthy and physically fit. If you want a good job, a good public image, good relationships, a good marriage, a good family, a good sex life, good health, and a good body, you must work on and for these things. And this work is itself competitive, a competition within the individual to become the best self one can be and among other individuals seeking self-improvement and a spot in the job market.Footnote ⁷⁸

Self-help maximizes the potential of individuals to succeed in this competitive environment by fostering an ethic of authenticity. It is an ethic that liberates the individual from the constraints of traditional systems of meaning and values, that reorients the individual inward toward self-exploration, that equips the self-aware individual with tools to make successful life choices, and, finally, that validates the subjective agent of choice who emerges from the process. In a very real sense, self-help fixes an ethical horizon geared toward the practical desires of its readers. Like therapy, “it seeks to create a confident and prosperous individual without a sense of higher moralities; it dispenses with the great riddles of life in exchange for a modest and durable sense of well-being.”Footnote ⁷⁹ Such moral relativism accounts for the universal appeal of the enterprising self, for it allows individuals, in different settings and with different backgrounds, to fill in the specifics of what constitutes “fulfillment,” “destiny,” “responsibility,” and “meaning.” Authenticity, then, is a normative aspiration that, with the right effort and follow through, leads to affective realization and transformation of the individual. Being true to the self need not come at the expense of responsibilities to family, society, nation, and god. But the majority of self-help literature advances individuals above all other concerns, transforming them into the central focus of living a good and fulfilling life. In this sense, self-help in Egypt, like self-help in general, reflects the “subjective turn of modern culture.”Footnote ⁸⁰

In the West, the rising tide of individualism flowed from a set of interconnected philosophical, political, and economic developments: freedom of thought gave rise to freedom from religion and tradition; freedom of expression led to political tolerance and liberal governance; and all was carried along by—some would say driven by—the expanding free market. Therapeutic culture, including self-help, has been cast as both the highpoint of individualism's expansion in the West and its nadir. For advocates, it signals the ultimate freedom to chose one's life course, to seek authenticity, within the framework of a secular, liberal state that refrains from instructing citizens on how to live a good life. As Rose puts it, “we [in the West] can now be governed through the choices that we will ourselves make, under the guidance of cultural and cognitive authorities, in the space of regulated freedom, in our individual search for happiness, self-esteem, and self-actualization, for the fulfillment of our autonomous selves.”Footnote ⁸¹ For critics, the ethics of authenticity that underlay therapeutic culture lead on a personal level to narcissism and on a political level to unengaged and uncaring citizens.Footnote ⁸²

Egypt, of course, did not modernize along the same cultural and political path as the West. It is neither liberal nor democratic, despite a period of political openness in the first half of the 20th century and attempts following the Arab spring to shape a new democratic future. But the country has been drawn into the global capitalist system, and consumer culture has taken firm root. Market-driven habits of consumption have reshaped notions of individuality and selfhood—a subject explored with dark humor in Sonallah Ibrahim's 1992 novel Dhat (Zaat), in which the eponymous protagonist comes to see her identity and self-worth in terms of her purchasing ability.Footnote ⁸³ While Egyptian citizen-consumers may not share the same political freedoms as their counterparts in the West, they are free to express their consumptive desires within the limits set by the same socioeconomic framework: class. So forceful have consumerism and individualism become in Egypt that traditional religious values, typically a bulwark against seeming Westernization, struggle to contend with them. Indeed, as Patrick Haenni has noted, Muslim societies, Egypt included, have witnessed a “mutation of religiosity toward market-friendly, individualistic beliefs that are hedonistic and open to cultural extroversion because this new religiosity is based on class.”Footnote ⁸⁴

Self-help did not give individualism its start in Egypt, but it has expanded the register of its expression by legitimizing the psychological techniques that inform perceptions of the autonomous self and life lived in pursuit of one's inner desires. Conservative Muslim thinkers have responded to the growing popular interest in individualistic concerns with alternative versions of self-help that offer dramatically different understandings of living an authentic life. Similar to their counterparts, these thinkers still address success, a stress-free life, self-empowerment, well-being, love, and happiness, but they do so within the framework of faith and other-worldly authority. On the subject of happiness, for example, one author writes:

On the reality of this life, another author concludes: “We should realize that this life is not the yardstick of success when we see that the disbeliever often lives a life of opulence, while the believer is often precluded from many worldly pleasures, a phenomenon that merely indicates the paltry value of this world.”Footnote ⁸⁶

Here the focus is on the believing self, not the enterprising self. Here authenticity is collective, not subjective; it comes with an ordered set of commitments and values, not a fill-in-the-blank sense of meaning based on individual choice. Here the reader is advised to find contentment and purpose in a life made sacred by a higher power, not in a subjectively defined life. These contrasting voices—the conservative believing self and the enterprising self—are not necessarily in conflict, but they do reveal tensions that emerge as people with religious identities interact with, and react to, the forces of capitalism. Similar tensions arose during the spiritual revolution in the West, which led to a valorization of autonomy and “subjective-life” outcomes—the same outcomes promoted by Egypt's dominant trend in self-help literature. According to Paul Heelas and Linda Woodhead, growing numbers of people in Western societies have come to “emphasize inner sources of significance and authority and the cultivation or sacralization of unique subjective-lives.” This spiritual revolution, they argue, contrasts with traditional “life-as” expressions of religion, “which emphasize a transcendent source of significance and authority to which individuals must conform at the expense of the cultivation of their unique subjective-lives.”Footnote ⁸⁷ The result of this revolution in the Western context was the growth of New Age religiosity, with its attendant emphasis on an interconnected universe (i.e., pantheism), healing therapies, alternative medicines, and cultural appropriation of Eastern ideas and practices (yoga, chakras, etc.). The origins of this spiritual revolution are the broader subjective turn mentioned previously, which in Europe gained impetus from Enlightenment challenges to the Church and the gradual secularization of society, including a decline in faith and participation in organized religion.

In Egypt, religion shows little sign of waning, and New Age religiosity is rare, though some spirituality literature, such as Ronda Byrne's The Power, have entered the book market, and other works on yoga and natural medicines and foods could signal an emerging trend of home-grown, New Age spirituality.Footnote ⁸⁸ But what Egyptians believe, and why they believe it, is undergoing transvaluation as new expressions of individualism, rendered legitimate in part by psychology, nurture spiritual exploration and challenge social conformity. How far Egyptians are prepared to take the open-ended invitations of self-exploration and self-realization in self-help is difficult to determine. An article on positive thinking in al-Ahram Weekly suggests that some feel empowered not only to search for but also to identify new spiritual realities. The author, Salonaz Sami, interviews a woman who consciously decides to avoid bad news “because the words we speak and those we hear have a direct effect on our thoughts, and if we only allow positive thoughts into our minds we will end up with positive ideas and attitudes.” The interviewee had entered upon a personal journey of self-exploration, traveling to India where she experimented with meditation techniques and eventually found “her own enlightenment through practicing Vipassana meditation.” The lesson for readers, according to Sami, is simple: “the next time you find yourself feeling emotionally drained about a certain issue, take a step back and try to see things from a different and more positive perspective. After all, you attract what you allow your mind to dwell upon, so take responsibility for your happiness and start thinking positively.”Footnote ⁸⁹

While such a life transformation may not be mainstream in Egypt, expanding consumerism has heightened the affective sensibilities of all Egyptians. How people feel, what they desire, the choices they make—all inform social interaction, advertising, political discourse, and identity formation as never before. And both religion and psychology are competing to address these issues. In self-help literature, in fact, religion and psychology are often indistinguishable, both validating individualism and the ethics of authenticity. The result is a sacralization of the self and psychologization of religion. Muhammad can be reimagined as life coach or the Muslim Dale Carnegie; god's will easily elides with that of individuals seeking self-fulfillment; and the inward journey to self-understanding, as well as the resulting life choices, morphs into a spiritually sanctioned endeavor. Self-help, then, communicates an intellectual development that Egyptians would otherwise find objectionable if expressed as pure theology or politics: “The engagement of psychology with religion is, on the whole, the history of the privatisation of religion and the reconfiguration of religion in terms of the private psychological self.”Footnote ⁹⁰ Within Egypt's public culture, however, such expressions of subjectivity have found a home, part of the shape-shifting landscape of global cosmopolitanism.

Self-help literature not only advances and legitimizes individual choice; it also serves as a gauge of the way religion, and its role in identity formation, is being marketed. Those seeking self-help guidance have their choice of books and self-help experts, both of which vary in their approaches, styles, and reliance on religious discourse. Some books adopt a psychological approach and largely ignore religion; others weave religion (sometimes not just Islam) into their psychological analysis; and still others, such as the works by the conservative thinkers mentioned above, provide an Islam-centric insight into self-understanding that largely eschews Western sources. The prolific Ibrahim al-Fiqi has published an array of self-help books that, each in its own manner, offer varying degrees of religious insight and legitimacy. Choice also operates within particular self-help works. In one book, for example, readers seeking advice on weight loss and proper eating habits discover a range of medically approved options, including a section on fasting (al-ṣawm) and the highly recommended “Islamic diet” (al-rījīm al-islāmī).Footnote ⁹¹ In another work, readers looking for success and happiness find a chapter-by-chapter overview of its supposed sources: money, circumstances, pleasure, relationships, luck; a chapter on religion weighs its pros and cons, and finds it somewhat wanting.Footnote ⁹² Viewed as a whole, the self-help genre demonstrates the extent to which religion has been commodified. Like laundry detergent, cars, and cell phones, it is being marketed according to consumer taste, which itself is determined by class and advertising. Self-help, then, offers a pathway to the authentic self for every religious and nonreligious sensibility.