Overdosing On Oprah

NRO: The Side Effects Of Empowerment

(National Review Online) 
Empowerment has left its fingerprints on other areas of health care, too. It's at least a contributing factor in America's startling exodus from traditional medicine. One omnibus study reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association put the total number of patient visits to all types of alternative-medicine practitioners at 629 million per year, easily eclipsing the 386 million visits to conventional MDs. In theory, these defections from the mainstream represent a quest for "self-empowerment healing" that will "put people in charge of their health-care destiny," to quote the popular holistic-health portal, Oughten House. (Oughten's slogan: "Change your DNA, change your life!" Uh-huh.) In practice, the trend puts increasing numbers of Americans at the mercy of opportunistic charlatans who position themselves at the nexus of mind and body.

We will not know the ultimate impact of all this for some time; it's been barely a generation since the surreal optimism described herein first began to make the logic of victimization sound ugly and old. But common sense suggests that this relentless emphasis on personal satisfaction betokens grim news for marriage, workplace camaraderie, or unity of any kind. One wonders how a nation comprising 295 million individuals, each vowing not to let anyone take away his dreams, could arrive at a true sense of collective purpose, especially with humility now in such short supply. Pop-psychology once taught us to wallow in our faults and limitations. It now teaches us to deny them, if not revel in them (as anyone who watches early-season episodes of American Idol can attest). As a culture, we went from impotence to omnipotence, sneering at the more realistic middle ground we sped past en route.

If empowerment is a quasi-religion -- which is how Oprah and some of its other champions seem to frame it -- perhaps it could use an updated version of the serenity prayer made popular by the twelve-step regimens it disdains: Something like, "Lord give me the enthusiasm to pursue what I excel at, the modesty to admit what I stink at, and the wisdom to know that there is a difference."


Steve Salerno's book, SHAM: How the Self-Help Movement Made America Helpless, will be published by Crown in June.