“Barbara Sher was a product of the Human Potential Movement,” said Christine Whelan, who has studied self-help books as a professor in the School of Human Ecology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “She focused on self-actualization, with a bit of the more modern ‘just do it’ pragmatics that readers have flocked to in recent years. She was part of the self-help movement that talks about work as a source of identity, self-fulfillment and a way of living one’s purpose in the world.”
Office of Strategic Communication