Year after year, personal development confirms its success. Company formations are multiplying, his books flood the shelves of bookstores and his videos and articles invade the Internet. Its typical expressions like “to challenge oneself” or “to capitalize on one’s performance” have even entered everyday language. Inspired by ancient wisdom – from Greek aesthetics to Buddhism – and embellished with modern scientific arguments, it promises its followers to release their cognitive potential, improve their productivity, their performance or even their social relations.
Some, however, cry scam after having invested hundreds or even thousands of euros without obtaining the promised profits. Others believe that it promotes fantasies of omnipotence and fosters narcissism and individualism. Nicolas Marquis, professor of sociology and methodology at Saint-Louis University (Brussels) and author of the Personal change. History, myths, facts (Ed. Humanities) and From well-being to the malaise market (PUF), deciphers its success, its techniques and its contradictions.
L’Express: What are the “big schools” of personal development?
Nicholas Marquis: Anyone who has tried to categorize it and even define it has broken their teeth because it encompasses a multitude of personal experiences. There is, however, a common denominator: suggesting that individuals take action on themselves in order to improve various aspects of their lives (work, social or romantic relationships, etc.). One of its great characteristics is to claim that most problems and desires can be addressed through a limited number of universal methods.
Historically, it has multiple teats. One of them is the popular psychology that the mind can take over the body. This concept, which was enormously successful in the 18th and 19th centuries in the United States, is present today in positive thinking. The beginnings of personal development are also observed within the very first Protestant books which explain how to be efficient in one’s life, in one’s way of tidying up one’s house. One of its modern fringes can also be read as an appeal to the secularized Protestant vocation: a successful life would be an efficient life where one would have taken advantage of all possibilities. This thought inspires content aimed at “making your life profitable” or “developing the capital of your life”, which are very successful among Anglo-Saxons. More generally, personal development is the symptom of a reading of life. that to succeed in life, you must not give up anything. It is a pursuit of well-being as one would pursue a foot of rainbow, in an infinite quest to invest in oneself .
Sociology, which studies the reproduction of forms of determination, is the sworn enemy of personal development, which on the contrary advocates a fierce anti-determinism.
Nicolas Marquis for L’Express
What are the trends that work best in France?
There are mainly three. The most popular proposes to work on oneself to become a better person. The promise or rather the fantasy of this method is that if each individual begins his inner revolution, it will lead to a major social change. The second is inspired by relatively new age content advocating a reconnection with what we would have lost: nature, our roots, forms of tradition or ancestral knowledge. The third tends to feed on cognitive neuroscience, or at least very vulgarized versions. It attempts to lodge in the brains of individuals the belief in the possibility of infinite work and development. Sometimes, these three tendencies mix, as in the books of Boris Cyrulnik. Together, all these contents propose a cosmology, a vision of the world according to which the individual abounds in resources not explored nor exploited by society.
What are the arguments that hit the mark?
The main one is the holistic approach to overcoming barriers. The logic and the lexicon consist in opening channels to show that everything is linked: “Are you having difficulties in your work and your couple? This means that there is something at the crossroads of the two: you can’t listen to each other -not being your inner child enough”. Then this approach gives the necessary keys. There, his argument consists in affirming that our societies exert a set of constraints weighing on our potential and that this would cut us off from our vital needs, which is why we would no longer be able to live normally.
Who are the most sensitive people?
Overall, those for whom self-care and the practice of a form of coaching in an area of life have become perfectly legitimate. A fringe, a minority, hyperlocalizes its practice to a problem: overcoming bereavement, improving the education of its children or its communication at work. But the majority see personal development as a universal language to solve everything and bring meaning to their lives. The content that sells the best tends to focus on a single issue while presenting itself as a bible offering the keys to achieving all of its objectives.
If it seems obvious that there is no global solution to solve everything, how to explain such success?
Perhaps because our interiority has probably never been valued as much as in our modern societies. And because one of the characteristics of individualistic societies is that the meaning of existence is not assigned at birth. We are not born only eldest, youngest or eighth of our siblings and our destiny is not limited to entering orders or becoming the heir. Personal development is the instrument that crystallizes a fundamental tension in our individualistic societies, which is not really knowing who we are. It then becomes a cultural resource, a tool available to individuals allowing them to give meaning to their lives, with an answer that consists of saying: “You are a being endowed with a potential equal to others and it must be developed, there is no limit.” Except that you just have to go outside to realize that inequalities are very real and that we don’t all have the same chances.
“It is a form of explanation of the distribution of misfortune”
Personal development therefore has a dual function, it represents the legitimate instrument when we expect a change in our life and it allows us to justify why some have more than others. It is a form of explanation of the distribution of unhappiness. This is easily verified today: try not to enjoy life, not to develop yourself to the maximum nor to enjoy all your abilities, you will be looked at with a curious, worried eye. Some will even attempt to “pathologize” your behavior. This illustrates that in an individualistic society, the weight of the norm on the individual is very important. Emile Durkheim had already understood this when he spoke of “the religion of the individual who addresses his followers in a tone as imperative as other religions”.
By proposing to change from the inside in order to solve everything, don’t these methods ignore the external impacts on individuals?
Sociology is the sworn enemy of personal development, because it studies the reproduction of forms of determination. If you attend such a school in such a context, it is more or less possible to predict your future, at least to advance statistics. Personal development rejects this outright. It has, instead, a claim to a democratic universalism according to which there are no good guys or bad guys, only people with potential to be exploited. This anti-determinist, who is the philosopher’s stone of personal development, argues that whatever your sufferings or hardships, it will always be possible to transform them into an asset and that you will never be stuck in your problems. No content dares to say, “Sorry, there’s nothing you can do about it.” It feeds the modern fantasy of action possible in all circumstances: “Were your parents bad? You can’t change them, but you can change your outlook on the situation, take it as a challenge.”
Doesn’t this vision push individuals to disempower, or even to disengage from politics?
It’s not so much that personal development disempowers individuals to society or politics, but rather that it almost never asks that question. He is fascinated by effective action and fundamentally hates the argument that an individual can do nothing in the face of the difficulties imposed by society. We are witnessing a reconfiguration of problems: now each person could change everything on their own. This discourse works particularly well when the rejection of responsibility on the outside is increasingly frowned upon.
The success of personal development, particularly in France, must also be understood through the failure of classic modes of collective action: some believe that politics does not work since there are still rich and poor, or that global warming climate is still not solved, etc. But it is less apolitical than politically strange, since it claims that the addition of individuals working on themselves will produce global evolutions.
Sociologists believe that the greater the distrust of individuals towards politics, institutions or the media, the greater the risk that they will be seduced by conspiracy or anti-vaccine theses. Does this analysis also apply to personal development and more broadly to magical thoughts and alternative medicine?
Absolutely. Today, followers of personal development, alternative medicine or conspiracy theses have a strong attraction for everything that makes up an anti-institutional atmosphere. They tend to join or create a small group whose main characteristic is to be misunderstood by the rest of society. Except ironically, even though personal development content continues to pretend it’s on the fringe, that’s no longer the case. On the contrary, it has become extremely socially valued, just like expressing distrust.
Does it then respond to distrust of society or does it, on the contrary, fit perfectly into its requirements for constant improvement of the individual aimed at better “performing” in society?
These two concepts are not necessarily contradictory. I caricature, but a right-wing person can want to be a better worker while accusing the state of preventing him from earning money and promoting welfare. From a sociological point of view, the fact of rejecting society because one sees it only as a straitjacket is a perfect social fact. I mean that by accepting the theses of personal development which see society as a set of constraints preventing individuals from developing their full potential, you remain perfectly within social norms! Personal development has thus become a norm and even a central trend in our societies.