A world full of self-help books and we still need help. One self-help book followed by another, like cars rolling off an assembly line. And so the cycle of reading continues. We've become addicted to self-help books. What's gone wrong? As we grab the next self-help book, barely having finished the last, we've assumed the genre reflects and satisfies our need for self-fulfilment. And yet, it's always playing catch-up. I examine how the self-help genre is embedded in a dominant ideological current running through ever-increasing parts of our culture. The individual is the site where all the fixing work takes place. Single answers. Easy fixes. Single individuals. Through detailed analysis of the mundane practices of everyday life, I show that there is another ideology, operating in tandem but