The interpreting audience: The therapeutics of self‐help book reading

Since the “second wave” of the women's movement, psychological self‐help books have been an important resource for many women regarding issues of relationships and identity. This audience study examines how the use of self‐help books is enacted in everyday life, and how this use illuminates aspects of women's lives in contemporary America. Although the genre has been criticized for its recipe format, readers use self‐help books in complex, and often empowering ways. Readers often read for the purpose of extricating themselves from patriarchal authority and establishing personal autonomy. Yet, they simultaneously construct an experience with the texts which helps them establish a sense of what is culturally shared among a community of readers. This “abstract” community of others provides a sense of what constitutes shared cultural knowledge, something which readers are unable to glean from their everyday interpersonal interaction.