SELF-IMPROVEMENT

 In the classical period religious or literary literatures of the Western or Eastern world, there are advices for people to live more happily.  However, in these works, which can be evaluated under the title of "advice" in classical Turkish literature, it is seen that there are more advices to adapt to the divine order and social morality and decency rather than providing more profit.  In today's sense, personal development was defined in the Western world in the 1800s under the title of "Self improvement", as the right to solve a wrong by legal means and by using one's own initiative.  Kind's self-help book was published in 1859 with the title "Self improvement" by Samuel Smiles (1812-1904).[1]  The opening sentence of the book: "Sema helps those who help themselves."  It is a variation of Benjamin Franklin's sentence "God helps those who help themselves" in Poor Richard's Almanac (1733-1758).  In the 20th century, the great success of Dale Carnegie's personal development book How to Win Friends and Influence People (1936), translated into Turkish as "The Art of Winning Friends and Influencing People", encouraged the writing of new books of similar genre.  Previously, although not under Personal Development, ideas were put forward about the influence of people's thoughts on their lives, for example, in the book called As a Man Thinketh, published by James Allen in 1902, it is said that "a person is what he thinks as a line, his character is the sum of all thoughts".  In Napoleon Hill's Think and Grow Rich (1937), it is claimed that repeated positive thoughts will arouse "infinite intelligence" and attract happiness and wealth.[2]  In the child quarter of the 20th century, personal development has been associated with postmodern subjectivity built by self-reflection, and it has been argued that the crisis of subjectivity manifests itself in self-development books that are increasingly sold.  Some sociological theorists claim that such a preoccupation with the self of people in personal development is used as one of the tools of social control and to prevent political unrest.