Every year on 23 April, UNESCO designates World Book Day. It's just that at the moment, "reading" is already a very distant thing for many people.
Compared to a heavy physical book in a bag, the small mobile phone screen has taken up most people's fragmented time. Turning a paper book page by page has become an increasingly rare experience.
At a time when the trend of physical books has been difficult to change, there is a category like the clear flow of physical books, and sales have increased without decreasing - psychology books.
Bucking the tide of physical books, what do these psychology books say? Why do people have such a firm love for psychology books?
Psychology books, the winning general in physical book sales
When it comes to "bestsellers", the first thing that pops up in most people's minds is mostly popular novels, classic masterpieces and the like, but in fact, in the book sales list in recent years, psychology books are the winning generals.
In 2018, an autobiography "Happy to Die", written by American writer Jenny Rosen, which focuses on various psychological and mental illnesses, was introduced into China, and within 24 hours of listing, sales on the three major e-commerce platforms of JD.com, Amazon and Dangdang soared to the first, and even claimed to be "an average of one book sold every 3 seconds".
In 2020, the classic psychology book "The Ragged Crowd: A Study of Mass Psychology" by french social psychologist Gustav Le Pen made it into the top 10 of the Dangdang book bestseller list, even though it has been 125 years since the book was first published.
Last year, a new psychological work called "Mr. Toad Goes to the Psychiatrist" directly climbed to the top of the sales of the year, with annual sales of more than 2 million copies.
Chinese book retail data detection agency OpenBook also shows that among all non-fiction books in 2021, "Mr. Toad Goes to the Psychiatrist" also ranked first in sales.
For these psychology books, people not only like, but also highly tolerant, different genres, writing methods can be favored by the public.
Usually, the papers can't read a few, but they can nibble on the obscure academic monographs such as "The Crowd: Mass Psychological Research"; the wonderful novels in the mobile phone are often closed after reading half of them, but they can read both professional and story works such as "Genius on the Left, Madman on the Right" and "Mr. Toad Goes to see a Psychologist" in one breath.
Perhaps it is the mysterious charm of the psychology department itself that makes people both interested in the in-depth exploration of the self-heart like "The Amazing Me: The Psychology of Self-Development" and the possible interpretation of universal human nature such as "Murphy's Law".
Just as the human psyche is complex and profound, the content of books in this category also has its own characteristics. But what is the same is that even if the book best-selling list changes every year, there is always a place for psychology books.
In fact, not only physical books, psychology books have also been remarkable in the e-book market. According to the 2021 Kindle Reading List released by Amazon China, "Mr. Toad Goes to the Psychiatrist" also ranked first in the best-seller list; Japanese author Fang Yan's new psychology work "Don't Think Too Much" won the first place in the "Kindle Annual Paid E-book New Book List".
When did people who were busy with all kinds of life chores every day become so interested in exploring their hearts? Which of these best-selling psychology books on the Internet has hit the pain point of contemporary people?
When people read psychology books, what are they actually looking at?
Some media have summarized the development of psychology bestsellers into two stages, in the "1.0 stage", most of the popular psychology books on the market are boiled a bowl of chicken soup for the soul, filled with a variety of "life mottos", especially like to draw the big pie of success learning big and round.
Today, as the book market has gone through a lot of waves and rough and refined, the best-selling psychology books that have entered the "2.0 stage" are no longer full of empty clichés as before, but can really accurately capture the confusion of modern people and inject a dose of medicine into people's depressed lives.
For example, last year's popular book "Mr. Toad Goes to the Psychiatrist" describes a depressed Mr. Toad, through the communication with the psychological counselor Heron, layer by layer to uncover the origin of his weak, inferior, vain personality and depression, and finally found the story of confidence and hope.
The book's process of constantly stripping away the cocoon of the true self has inspired many readers with a strong sense of substitution - "never before has A book made me feel such a strong pain of being excavated".
As a result, the exploration of "oneself" and even the environment in which one grows up, the perception of various "emotions" such as joys and sorrows, and the deeper understanding of the expertise in the field of "psychology" have become the three most prominent themes in people's reading experience of this book.
In these comments, the real feelings that people once buried deep in their hearts gradually surfaced, and they also explained the reasons why different readers chose to read this book:
Some people face psychological crises, but they are ashamed to turn to psychological counseling, hoping to "come out" through reading.
Some people are troubled by the depression brought about by the original family and the misfortune of childhood, and want to make themselves "suddenly enlightened" through the relief of this book.
There are also people who fall into an "emotional dead end" because of the pressure of work, hoping to find the direction of the way out through reading.
Letting people "save themselves" by reading is actually the theme that many psychology books revolve around. For example, in works such as "Reconcile with the True Self" and "First Learn to Love Yourself And Then Meet the Right You", the word "self" is often a key word that begins to stand out from the title of the book, revolving around the excavation of the self's heart.
In addition to facing oneself, intimate relationships such as family and children have also become propositions that psychology bestsellers pay special attention to, such as "Accompanying Children through Adolescence" and "Family on a Hot Pot: The Psychological Truth Behind the Problems of the Original Family" and other works are representatives of them.
In addition to these specific objects, the titles of these best-selling psychology books also show the psychological problems they focus on:
Some focus on the emotional ills that plague more and more modern people: anxiety and depression, such as "Seven Days of Self-Healing for Anxiety, Depression, and Insomnia."
And personality traits that are often seen as "defective," such as inferiority and introversion, can also be found in books like Beyond Inferiority: How to Use Empathy to Overcome Inferiority and Out of introversion: A Healing Book for the Lonely.
There are also many topics such as procrastination, communication and emotional intelligence that seem to be far removed from "psychology", and psychology has also been recruited in these books. A book "People with High Emotional Intelligence, How to Soothe Wounded Souls", seeing the title of this book, it seems that the soul has been instantly appeased and obeyed.
In the face of a variety of "difficult and complicated diseases", in order to more directly and accurately awaken people's sleeping hearts, many psychology books have chosen to directly put the sharp "soul torture" in the title:
"Why are we always running away?" Why do you always get hurt? "Why would someone who loves me hurt me?" "Why do we always feel like we're not good enough?"
Did you emo today?
Without the consent of the director of yimou, the phrase "I am emo" has become the mantra of many young people at present. In the face of the "ups and downs" life, all kinds of emo moments are always menacing, and it is difficult to retreat for a long time.
However, while spontaneously blurting out a sentence of "I am emo" countless times, people have gradually realized the crisis behind this sentence. The "2020 Public Mental Health Insight Report" shows that various negative psychology such as "depression", "anxiety" and "stress" have become the most concerned mental health topics for the public.
Compared with the obvious physical pain, these psychological problems, which were once ignored because they could not be seen or touched, were finally brought to the spotlight.
The data shows that from 2016 to 2020, the proportion of multiple psychological problems has increased. Among them, the most obvious is depression, anxiety and other emotional problems, from 75.90% in 2016 to 81.81% in 2020.
Among them, some people have been diagnosed with depression, and their proportion of the total population has continued to rise in the past 20 years. According to the Institute of Health Indicators and Evaluation (IHME), the proportion of depression in China has reached 4.16% in 2017.
In addition to obvious emotional changes, long-term insomnia, poor concentration and eating disorders have become more and more common problems in modern people. Suicide, one of the most serious consequences of psychological problems, has increased by nearly 4 percent in the past four years.
Now, when people throw out the phrase "I'm emo," it may no longer be an unintentional self-deprecation, but really a sign that he is asking for help.
However, unlike the habit of people who immediately seek medical treatment when they feel physically unwell, when people encounter the invasion of psychological problems, seeking help from a psychologist is often only the choice of a few people.
The "2020 Public Mental Health Insight Report" shows that when the general public encounters psychological problems, less than 30% will choose to go to a professional psychological counselor or go to a psychological specialty in the hospital. There are even 15.37% of people who believe that dealing with psychological problems does not require any professional resources.
Behind the tendency to be reluctant to seek medical treatment, in addition to people's fear of spending energy and not taking psychological problems seriously, another particularly important influencing factor is the fear of spending money.
The above report pointed out that in the payment behavior of psychological products, only about 30% of people are willing to pay for psychological counseling, while more people would rather plunge into the mixed information on the Internet, and still think that spending money on psychological problems is wasteful.
The first place in the various paid projects is the purchase of psychology books. It can be said that for the group that is reluctant to easily appeal to others for psychological problems, these psychological books are indeed a good medicine for them, which is an important reason why psychology books have remained high on the best-seller list in recent years.
As psychology books continue to improve in quantity and quality, people walk into bookstores and seem to be able to prescribe their own medicines as they need. However, for a variety of complex and subtle psychological problems, relying entirely on "self-help" from reading is obviously not a real long-term effective solution.
But in contrast to the ubiquitous best-selling psychology books, when people finally want to seek professional counseling help, they often find that this path does not seem to be easy to follow.
The lack of talents in the psychological counseling industry is one of the most important reasons. Ma Xin, chairman of the China Mental Health Association, once pointed out that although the social demand for mental health services in the mainland is becoming more and more vigorous, of the about 1.2 million certified psychological counselors in 2018, only 30,000 or 40,000 are engaged in full-time or part-time psychological counseling, and the shortage of psychological counselors is as many as 1.3 million.
According to data from the World Health Organization's Mental Health Atlas 2014, in some high-income countries, an average of 1 psychiatrist per 2,000 people is available. But on the mainland, the National Mental Health Work Programme (2015-2020) states that there are only about 1.49 psychiatrists per 100,000 people in the country.
At a time when the emergence of various psychological diseases is becoming more and more frequent, even if all kinds of best-selling psychology books really deserve the phrase "there are good doctors in the book", it is still inevitable to treat the symptoms but not the root causes. If you want to solve psychological problems scientifically and safely, it is obviously not enough to rely on reading books.
When the surging emotional changes become more and more difficult, people must need more than just the golden words in the bestsellers, but also a professional who really knows how to "prescribe the right medicine". Acknowledging this is also the first step people need to take to confront the psychological problems that have plagued them for a long time.
Producer 丨 Yang Ruichun Editor-in-Chief 丨 Zhao Hanmo Responsible Editor 丨 Hao Hao Operation 丨 Vegetable Dish Liu Shuhan Writing & Data 丨 Dysprosium Li Zhang, Dysprosium Number Li Yiyao Design | Dysprosium Number Lu Ruifeng, Dysprosium Number Huang Rong Editor 丨 Vegetable Dish Production 丨 Tencent News Gu Yu Studio
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