Normally, my job consisted of browsing copies of Dun & Bradstreet publications, scouring piles of annual reports and interviewing dozens of people about their companies’ policies, practices and profits — all so that my clients could keep ahead of their competition.

This time, however, I was asked to actually infiltrate the ranks of several multilevel sales companies. These companies, namely Amway, NuSkin, Avon and Mary Kay, use the term multilevel sales (instead of the more common term “pyramid scheme”) in reference to the voluntary, non-salaried sales force that hawks their wares. My first assignment was to penetrate the towering powerhouse of positive pink thinking, Mary Kay Cosmetics. My client wanted to know what the recruits were getting, financially or otherwise, to maintain their high degree of loyalty and service (which resulted in considerable financial returns) to a company that didn’t employ them.

Before I started my literature search into the company’s history, the one fact I knew about the company’s founder, Mary Kay Ash, was that she ain’t no feminist looking to empower the female masses. The mention of the company immediately conjured up images of eternally perky, well-coiffed, manicured suburban women in their 40s and 50s, who believed that not understanding whether or not your color scheme is spring or summer is what Theodore Dreiser meant by “An American Tragedy.” Mary Kay obviously appealed to women with too much time on their hands, desperately in need of some panacea of feel-good Tony Robbins-like meaning in their lives, with lip liner.

I later discovered that she had gone on record to declare her feelings about the F word. “Mary Kay dislikes the word feminist, but has made a lifelong commitment to help women aspire to greatness.” The difference? After 25 years of direct sales experience with other companies, Ash was “frustrated with the obstacles women faced in the workplace and wanted to create a company where women had unlimited potential personally and professionally.” Sounded like feminism to me, but, obviously, this was just a slick marketing ploy to appeal to the ’90s woman while still keeping her in her pink little place. Or so I thought.

To begin the subterfuge, I needed to become allied with a “beauty consultant” who would pull me into the business so that I could observe her recruiting tactics firsthand. Enter my new Mary Kay best friend, Paula, whom I “innocently” contacted via the Yellow Pages for a beauty makeover. She was a 50ish, single, ex-airline stewardess turned cosmetics biz grand dame, thanks to the ample training and motivation of Mary Kay. She had worked her way up from the bottom to attain the coveted title of national sales director, and had won several Cadillacs and furs over the past five years. Paula had earned $69,000 in the prior year alone.

She enjoyed immediate familiarity, calling me “sweetie,” “dear” and “honey” within the first 10 minutes of meeting me at her downtown San Francisco apartment. (I was convinced I would be headed to the suburbs for this venture but, as it turned out, Mary Kay is everywhere, including the Amazon.)

“Sweetie, are you ready for the new you? Let’s do it!”

With those words, she ushered me into her Ethan Allen air-conditioned nightmare of an apartment for my transformation. She had laid out the complete Mary Kay line on the dining table along with worksheets, various disposable dishes of lotions and liquids, applicators and cotton swabs.

“Now Kristina, how old do you think I am? Wait. Feel my skin.”

Paula grabbed my hand as shock and horror overcame me.

“Smooth as a baby’s bottom, isn’t it?”

Paula had an incredible ability to answer her own questions. This served two purposes. First, it allowed her to overcome any weak-willed opposition she may have faced by telling potential customers what they thought before they had a chance to think it. Second, the answers provided her with the perfect segue to the next point in her watertight sales script (without which she would be lost.)

I thought I was off the hook but she repeated, “Now guess my age.”

I hesitated, hoping to God she would fill in the answer, but she didn’t. She was beginning to remind me of that Texas cheerleader-killing mom. What would Paula do if she didn’t get the answer she wanted? Finally I squinted and grossly underestimated.

“Forty?” I whispered.

“Fifty-one,” Paula announced proudly, slapping her hand down on the table.

My real guess was 53.

“My skin was a mess before I went on the Mary Kay regimen six years ago. You’re young and you have good skin but, trust me, it won’t stay that way forever. Oh, what I wouldn’t give to have started on these products at your age.”

I already hated Paula. I never wore makeup, and, at this point, was still in the midst of a raging, sophomoric feminist period. A preoccupation with looks was, to me, tantamount to suckling the devil. She was as abhorrent as I’d imagined she would be.

“The moisturizer is scientifically created to compliment the work begun by the cleansing system. You really won’t receive the full benefits unless you are committed to the entire regimen.” Seeing as the only daily regimen I could commit to at the time was feeding my cats, this was the wrong tactic to take with me. But I acquiesced dutifully to any and all ploys that would lead me into Paula’s confidence.

The skin pitch over, it was time to color-coordinate my features. Paula layered my face with more makeup than I had cumulatively ever worn in my previous 25 years. She did one eye at a time to demonstrate how I was scientifically becoming more beautiful with every stroke of the brush. I cringed at the decimation of my features. As my natural appearance began to fade, Paula set about probing into my work life.

As she dusted, stroked and massaged my face, she gently prodded me into a full confessional. I knew she was on the lookout for any signs of weakness so as to launch into the Mary Kay sales opportunity speech, and I didn’t let her down. Fortunately, I had come prepared with a story about “my job” as a marketing assistant, which, of course, I found very “disappointing.” With each frustrated word out of my mouth, Paula’s eyes grew bigger and hungrier. “The better to recruit you with, my dear.”

If Paula seemed happy when I told her she looked 40, she was ecstatic at my career misfortunes. I later came to understand why. I was young, college-educated and working in a business field. The average Mary Kay sales rep has a high school education and typically works in non-professional, female-dominated occupations. My goal had been to seem a believable candidate for recruiting, but, compared to the unhappy secretaries and dental hygienists Mary Kay usually attracted, I had inadvertently become Paula’s wet dream.

By the end of the makeover, Paula had successfully roped me into an upcoming meeting to learn more about the business and meet some of the “great gals in this company.” She was glowing. It was clear I had become recruit target No. 1 for an ex-airline stewardess turned perky makeup pusher, and that was beginning to frighten me.

I knew I was getting in a little over my head when I realized the importance I had suddenly taken on in this woman’s life. When I started the job, I knew I would be lying to people, but I hadn’t thought anyone was going to get hurt. Even from our first encounter, I could see that Paula wanted me bad, and that she would be hard to shake when my work was done. As much as I disliked what she represented, I was already feeling the guilt of ultimately rejecting her, like a pretty girl turning down a date from a guy who doesn’t realize she’s out of his league.

Paula’s ability to disregard what didn’t fit into her scheme of things became apparent when she picked me up for my first meeting. I lived on the corner of Haight and Ashbury, and when her pink Cadillac pulled up, one of the local transients was relieving his bowels between two cars. This should have been her first clue that I was not exactly as I seemed. How could a potential Mary Kay beauty consultant willingly live in such filth? Perhaps she took it as a further sign of my desperate state of need. Dressed in a pink suit with white piping and pink pumps, the official national sales director uniform, she floated above it all and ushered me proudly to her new pink Caddy.

Earlier, I had tried to put the makeup on as she had instructed, but some willful part of me just couldn’t do it. No, no more slate-gray lid shadow enhancer! I was suspiciously clean-faced. But again Paula didn’t seem to notice.

When we arrived at the Marriott, Paula went into hyper-drive, introducing me to all the top consultants as her prize new recruit.

“Isn’t she pretty? And she went to college, too.”

I was trying to surreptitiously collect information on each woman I met in order to assemble some basic profile of a Mary Kay consultant, but, so far, all I could see was that they smiled a lot and were very enthusiastic. “Well, we are so happy to have you here, Kristina! This is a magical company! We think you’ll see that today!”

These women didn’t know me from a hole in the ground, but, gosh darn it, they wanted to like me. Perhaps they wanted to like me in that cult-like, brain-washing, prey-on-human-weakness-and-bring-me-into-the-fold kind of way. That was a distinct possibility. But how would I have felt if their makeup and hairstyles didn’t scare the beejesus out of me? Or if I were less of a cynical bastard? I think I really would have felt good about the warm reception I was getting.

The meeting was to begin with a fashion show, to showcase the evening wear that the year’s top performers would be taking to Mary Kay’s annual awards event, Seminar. Seminar, held in Dallas each year with none other than Mary Kay herself presiding, is a knockdown, drag-out, feel-good tear-fest, rife with testimonials from women who were sucking Cheez Wiz straight from the can before the goddess in pink spoke to them and changed their lives forever.

I was alone for a few minutes before the show began, since Paula was one of the models. I started to feel a little excited. Maybe I was getting into my undercover role — or maybe this experience was more like porn. No matter how much your brain disdains the idea of it all, if forced to watch it, your body will have a physiological response. Was I being dragged into a treacly “feel-good” state against my will?

The lights went down. The pounding beat of Roy Orbison’s “Pretty Woman” came blasting from the speakers and a voice cried out:

“Ladies, are you ready for some glamour?”

The crowd went nuts as the lights came up and a thin, bleached blond, highly-coiffed, chiffon dream of a woman hit the stage. I later learned she was a well-known motivational powerhouse who traveled around the country to participate in regional events like this one. She was well-known for seeking out women who were having a hard time, and personally devoting herself to helping them get their business off the ground. These stories became fodder for her show, and she was universally adored. Throughout the course of her speech, I found my thoughts vacillating between sarcasm and sincere introspection.

“You deserve some glamour and we’re gonna give it to you!” Oh please don’t.

“That’s right, ladies. You’ve worked hard all year and today we’re celebrating you. What other company is gonna do that for you?”

The crowd roared, “None!” I thought. My clients don’t celebrate me.

“That’s right. Who else is gonna put a fur coat on your back when you’ve been out there building your business like crazy?”

“A pimp?” I thought.

“No one” was the correct response.

“That’s right. And where else are you going to be surrounded by a bunch of fabulous gals who are all here to support you and help you reach your career goals?” Not any of the companies I’ve worked for. “Nowhere!”

The emcee became solemn for a moment. “Nowhere. Nowhere but Mary Kay. Because Mary Kay is about helping you become the best you can be.” OK. She had lost me again due to the schmaltz factor, but she’d had her moments. I wanted to hate her, but it was hard.

As each women was introduced on the catwalk, her recent achievements were enumerated by our perky emcee. There was the Queen’s Court of Sales, The Queen’s Court of Recruiting, the Go-Give Award for doing the most to help others and a variety of other rewards for excellence in business and strength of character. For all the competition it must take to win these awards, I was genuinely surprised at the lack of competitiveness among the consultants. Achievement at Mary Kay was defined by competing against oneself, not others, and the company placed its highest value on helping others succeed. Mary Kay consultants make most of their money when the women they recruit do well. By nature of the compensation scheme, every consultant must develop other women’s careers in order to be successful herself. Combined with Mary Kay’s focus on women, this resulted in a definitive air of sisterhood — in a scary, Southern sorority kind of way.

In sequined gowns and heavily bejeweled, the women came in all shapes, sizes and ages, and varied widely in their attractiveness. While other makeup companies use 15-year-old stick figures with high cheekbones to push product, Mary Kay pushes the idea that every woman can feel beautiful and be successful. There were women strutting their stuff on that catwalk who were kicking ass in their businesses at age 70  not to mention weighing in at some hefty proportions. And they felt glamorous and looked happy.

Paula’s turn came. She walked quickly, with a smile so wide I thought her face would burst, jutting her shoulders and hips back and forward in opposite strokes like an insane rumba. She was wearing a black silk pantsuit with (what else) a sequined top in a sort of rainbow-speckled design. As the emcee finished enumerating her accomplishments, a look of concern came over her face. She exited quickly through the audience, as all the other models had, but then doubled back to the side of the stage to whisper something to the emcee. Then she dashed backstage and reemerged on the catwalk. The emcee had forgotten to mention one of her many accomplishments. Paula did the same crazy rumba routine, which conjured images of her practicing for hours in front of her mirror at home. The disappointment she felt at having it not go perfectly the first time was palpable.

Following the fashion show, speakers’ topics ranged from “How to Change No to Yes Every Time” to “Advances in Nail Color Theory.” These were followed by a string of personal testimonials on overcoming obstacles, followed by self-esteem affirmations straight from the makeup maven herself. We were then led through a cheer (one, two, three, four, get those recruits in the door); told that our priorities should be God first, family second and career third; and made to get up all at once, turn to the women next to us and shout “You’re awesome and so am I!”

Just as I was beginning to see how this could be a good thing for some women, I started to get pissed off again. If I was collectively referred to as a gal or lady one more time, I feared I would stand up on my chair, Norma Rae-style, and start chanting “Take Back the Night” slogans while holding up a sign that said WOMAN scrawled in lip liner. And God first, family second, career third was more than I could handle. While I didn’t argue that these were perfectly valid priorities for an individual to choose, having them dictated in the so-called workplace made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. Just as I started to get up and look for a paper bag in case I started hyperventilating, the next speaker began by asking “How many of you out there have heard of the glass ceiling?”

The face of Mary Kay in the ’90s had changed significantly. Realizing that the deep well of bored housewives had dried up and could no longer provide enough disgruntled and downtrodden women desperate for something to do, Mary Kay revised its message. It was no longer good enough to offer entry into the workforce to escape the isolation of being at home. Now women had to be convinced of the limitations of their current jobs, and see Mary Kay as the key to reaching full career potential. The pitch included co-opted feminist constructs like the glass ceiling to explain why many women felt unappreciated in their jobs. Fortunately for Mary Kay, the hordes of secretaries and dental hygienists among the recruits didn’t realize that the glass ceiling didn’t apply to them. They were not MBAs hovering in the purgatory of middle management, and that is just what Mary Kay is counting on. But at the same time, these women felt rejuvenated by the prospect of working hard to establish their own businesses, and Mary Kay was teaching them to do it. Why, then, did Mary Kay co-opt feminist messages to appeal to these women, and then turn around and patronize them by dictating their priorities? I was baffled. Boiling Mary Kay down to a few choice tidbits for a dry business report was becoming a greater challenge than I had anticipated. Was all this equivocation part of a brilliant marketing ploy or just a sign of ignorance?

Driving back from the meeting, Paula proceeded to tell me that you can’t count on men in this world. Listing all her failed relationships, and all the men who had left her high and dry, she told me that without her Mary Kay success she would be nowhere. I was taken aback. This was not the party line I expected after hearing Ash on the subject of life’s priorities. But Paula was not the automaton I thought she was. She had her own exceptions to the system. Remembering all the shitty things that had happened to her just reaffirmed her commitment to a company that had restored her faith in living. And she wanted to share that life lesson with me, genuinely, as a cautionary tale.

I found myself respecting this blurring of boundaries between the personal and the professional. Mary Kay had a human face, and it embraced people. It didn’t demand that a woman’s identity be subsumed into that of a neutered corporate drone in the interest of efficiency, like most of the companies I worked for. But Paula’s final words to me before I got out of the caddy to return to my safe haven of bohemian squalor were chilling.

“I love my furs and my diamonds and I love this car. But do you know what Mary Kay has given me that she can never take back? My self-esteem. I had no self-esteem before Mary Kay came into my life.”

I knew that I would never see Paula again, and that I would spend the next few months dodging her phone calls and ultimately disappointing her by not buying into the dream. She stood to make money off me if I was successful, as she felt certain I would be. But more than that, she truly felt that I, a young college graduate from a business field, would bring a new respectability to her and the company. If Mary Kay could begin to offer opportunities to the likes of me, the company had stepped up to a whole new level of legitimacy. And, ultimately for Paula, that’s what Mary Kay offered her: respectability and legitimacy in the professional world.

Political ideas can be so well-crafted as to get in the way of reality when you let them. At 25, I was so full of raging feminism that I had already decided what I thought of Mary Kay and anyone who would get involved, before I even met Paula. Traitor. Enemy. But in the end, it was infinitely more complicated. For all her problems, Paula had the strength and perseverance to pick herself up, dust herself off and start building a career that she was proud of at the age of 45. Despite all my staunch beliefs, it was more than I could say for myself at the time. I was getting paid to lie to people and tattle, and I wasn’t proud of myself. I wasn’t being brave and going for what I really wanted. So on what pedestal did I stand to judge her?

I still see Paula, and the whole Mary Kay culture, as being warped by materialistic ideals, patriarchal images of female beauty and half-baked nauseating self-esteem tricks. But would Paula be better off being jostled back and forth on some crappy commuter flight serving microwaved chicken Kiev and spiraling into a valium haze every time the latest boyfriend took a powder? She was driving a Cadillac, wearing furs and diamonds, running her own business and feeling better about herself. She walked up on a stage in front of thousands of women, and was cheered for her accomplishments. And she had loads of friends and a support system that really did care about her and helped her get where she is.

No doubt she still has problems. But so do I. I schedule in at least 30 days a year for lying in the fetal position praying for death and I’m not driving a Caddy. (Nor do I want to, but Paula really did.) Mary Kay delivered on her promise. She improved Paula’s life.

My biggest complaint about the Mary Kay philosophy is that it represents a cowardly form of feminism. Feminism is so splintered these days that, while I don’t agree with everything that falls under its rubric, I do call myself a feminist in support of its one common denominator: that women deserve the right to fully reach their potential and receive equal financial rewards for work performed. What does it mean to espouse a philosophy of helping women reach their full career potential and yet refuse to call yourself a feminist? Ash wants the same things I do, she just wants them to stay pretty and nice. She wants it not to seem like the ladies are making too much of a fuss about it. She wants to stay popular with men, and promote “family values” by placing her desires beneath those of others. Yet I truly believe there is not a cynical bone in Ash’s body. She fully believes the golden words that drip from her mouth into the eager ears of her followers. Whether she likes it or not, Ash is a feminist. And whether I like it or not, I have to give her props for what she’s done for the women who worship her.

Over the next year, I would recount to friends the story of Paula and other women I observed during my time as a spy to great comic effect. But as I played on the stereotypes they seemed to embody, I found myself becoming more sympathetic to their struggle and their strength. These women worked hard for their money and their sense of accomplishment. Two years later my fascination led to the development of three characters representing various facets of the women I met. Those characters were finally assembled into a solo show, which became my first writing and performing venture. So, in the end, Mary Kay improved my life as well. And that still makes me a little queasy.

But Robbins is the first to say that he understands completely. You see, years ago, Robbins was living in a 400-square-foot bachelor apartment in Venice, Calif. He was broke and he was exactly 38 pounds overweight and he was sitting around watching Luke and Laura on “General Hospital” when – Knock! Knock! – someone knocked on the door of his apartment. When he opened the door, there stood an old friend he hadn’t seen in years. Robbins was so humiliated that this person saw what a worthless, dumpy human parasite he had become (albeit one who, despite his depressed state, likely knew his exact fat-to-muscle ratio) that he immediately went on a long run on the beach. “I was making this radical change in my physical biochemistry,” Robbins half-shouts at us, making his impromptu jog sound roughly akin to teleporting or spontaneous combustion or time travel.

But that’s the glory of Tony Robbins, isn’t it? Despite his rather simple point — working out really helps soap-opera-watching shut-ins to feel less depressed — his story soon takes the shape of a personal epiphany. But then, this is a man who’s transformed common-sense wisdom into a multitiered global brand, a man who has the cojones to call himself a “human potential consultant” and a “peak performance coach,” a man who’s magically transformed his lazy-fat-guy jog on the beach and every other humdrum experience he’s ever had into a series of dramatic, life-changing narratives with which he can inspire an entire nation to “play the game of life higher than you are [now].”

“We have a need to feel important,” Robbins explains to one video chat participant a few minutes later in his earnest, scratchy voice, his tone hinting that, even after two decades of this, he’s still pumped up by his own simple wisdom nuggets. And even though he’s talking fast, dropping a flurry of oft-repeated gems like “We’ve entered winter (the recession), and winter will get rid of some of the old values” and “Everybody has something that will make them finally make change a must and not a should” and “Go read the stories of human beings who have been through hell and back and have taken their lives to a new level,” I’m starting to feel more inspired and energized in spite of myself. What the hell is wrong with me? I need to leave this pap behind and get back to work!

“There are six needs,” Tony says as if he’s speaking right to me. That’s it, I can’t escape. I’m in awe of this man. Exactly six needs! Think of what you or I could do, if we had half of Robbins’ courage of conviction!

We can only assume that Need No. 4 is “Star on your own self-help reality show on NBC,” but now that feel-good program “Breakthrough With Tony Robbins” (8 p.m. Tuesdays) has been pronounced dead on arrival thanks to horrific ratings (it was the lowest-rated network show in its time slot on Tuesday), Robbins may need to retreat to his Fiji mansion for a few weeks, hoping for his own breakthrough.

So what went wrong? How was the Midas of the self-improvement world unable to turn his big prime-time debut into gold? Most likely, audiences are fatigued by a steady flow of this kind of “help the nice family recover from tragedy” programming. After all, could you possibly find a more depressing story for the first episode? Frank and Kristen Alioto were having a great time at their fabulous destination wedding in Mexico. Then, at the reception, Frank jumped into the pool and broke his neck, instantly turning him into a quadriplegic. Now, instead of enjoying their life as newlyweds and starting a family together, Kristen is Frank’s caretaker, and they’re both totally devastated by their new reality. Does anyone really want to see Tony Robbins telling this doomed pair that they just need to “get a new insight” so they can “play the game of life higher than [they] are [now]“?

Incredibly, though, Robbins’ interactions with this couple are the highlight of the “Breakthrough” premiere. Whatever you want to say about Robbins, he demonstrates a lot of warmth and intuitive wisdom in his talks with these two quite obviously very depressed, traumatized human beings. In one particularly mesmerizing moment, he gets Kristen to go to the lowest point of her average day with Frank. She says that she sometimes moves him to the bed and forgets to take his glasses off, and then his glasses hurt him, and she feels furious at herself. Robbins has her say exactly what she would say in that moment — and you know that she’s really doing it, because the word “fuck” is bleeped over a few times.

Then Robbins turns to Frank, who says that he feels terrible and helpless whenever Kristen gets frustrated like that. “Here’s what you need to do,” Robbins says. “Whenever she’s in that place, instead of feeling sad and weak, you feel strong, and all she needs is your presence. The way you feel strong is in noticing all the things you haven’t been noticing before. Look at her. Look how horrible she feels.”

Frank looks at Kirsten. She looks at him. It’s hard to say exactly how this shows, but all of a sudden, Frank looks stronger and calmer and Kristen is leaning on him. And … well, it’s a goddamn breakthrough, is what it is!

“In this moment, he could take her from tears to feeling connected. And that’s what she’s starving for,” Robbins explains. “And now he’s starting to know, ‘Hey, I’m not helpless.’ Suddenly he starts feeling like, ‘Wow, I can really be her man. I can show her that I can make a difference.’ That’s the beginning of changing their relationship.”

“Being able to provide Kristen with an emotional shoulder to lean on?” Frank says to the camera. “That was very powerful. It was important for me to understand that I can still be there for her, and provide her with strength.”

Crazy as it sounds, everything else in the episode becomes possible because of this moment: Frank and Kristen go skydiving, Kristen goes to a spa, Frank plays Murderball; the rest of it is, quite honestly, just bland, rewarmed “Extreme Makeover” fare, with Robbins standing by, grinning from ear to ear, but never involved in quite the same intimate way that he was in that first crucial conversation.

Except I bet Robbins was interacting with them a lot, and that they discussed over and over the transformation taking place, but the show’s editors and the network executives still felt compelled to shove it all into the same shape as half a dozen other shows already on the air. And that’s too bad, because even though Tony Robbins is a cheesy, fist-pumping, fire-walking, tough-loving, self-parodying, product-pushing, self-branding kind of a guy, he’s also incredibly good at narrating the process of recovery from life’s disappointments and setbacks. The man is a good talker — Christ almighty, is he ever. But he also has an instinctive knack for locating the center of a person’s problem and working out from there. Robbins’ energy is boundless, and that boundless energy is obviously contagious to everyone around him.

I tuned in to his video chat mostly as a curiosity, and I ended up listening to the whole thing. I couldn’t close my stupid browser. Sure, I could intellectually recognize that the wisdom nuggets he was dropping were pretty run-of-the-mill, but I still found myself taking them to heart. Yes, Robbins is sort of a freak — clenched jaw, wild eyes, rambling asides — but he also comes across as a compassionate person.

So instead of cackling over the apparent failure of Robbins’ brand-new show, I almost wish that Robbins could host more of a live talk show for damaged, discouraged or just deeply lethargic, unambitious people (like me). I wish that, instead of plugging his products on infomercials and hosting expensive weekend seminars on peak performance, Robbins could just sit in a chair and invite guests to tell their stories, then he’d help them shake up their downward spiraling lives.

The problem is, Tony Robbins has sold himself so well, and he’s so recognizable as a franchise, that it’s tough for most people to encounter him as an earnest healer. Forget that none of our Earnest Healers from Oprah to Dr. Phil goes into the field without a multitiered international marketing strategy already in place. The gurus of the world have been thoroughly commodified, whether or not the Dalai Lama has his own Twitter feed yet. (Um, by the way? He does.)

As for Robbins, this disappointment may bring him down for a while, but I personally guarantee him that most of the planet would love to have his horrific problem — and his mansion in Fiji to go with it. This may be his personal winter, and winter will get rid of some of the old values (his ego-driven compulsion to create a cult of personality, just for example). But everybody has something that will make them finally make change a must and not a should, Tony. Go read the stories of other human beings who have had their TV shows canceled and then taken their lives to a new level in the wake of that.

And Tony? Good luck. Not that you need it. 

Not according to Steve Salerno, author of “SHAM: How the Self-Help Movement Made America Helpless.” “You may think Dr. Phil is the greatest thing since sliced bread,” he writes, “or you may chortle at his braggadocio and his sagebrush sagacity. But almost no one worries about Dr. Phil. Like the rest of SHAM [Salerno's acronym for the "Self-Help and Actualization Movement"], he slips under the radar.”

Dr. Phil is on Salerno’s radar, all right, and it’s certainly true that the author worries about the TV shrink, but saying that in this book Salerno has thought deeply about the self-help industry would be pushing it. “SHAM” is one of those slapdash fulminations — invented decades ago by the political left but recently perfected by the right — ranting on some current deplorable aspect of society. It’s spun out from a few well-researched articles Salerno wrote for magazines and padded with a grab bag of shopworn anecdotes and secondhand data culled from other, similar books. (Sally Satel’s dubious “PC, M.D.” is a favorite source.) You know the drill by now: Salerno’s stance is flabbergasted indignation at the countless outrages against common sense being committed on a daily, if not hourly, basis by people whose perfidy or idiocy is a cause for perpetual wonder.

Commentators rarely go broke when capitalizing on the pleasure Americans take in sneering at their fellow citizens, but Salerno doesn’t bring much clarity to the ongoing national infatuation with self-help. He casts his net so wide he winds up blaming the self-actualization industry for such grouch fodder as frivolous lawsuits (yes, that old spilled McDonald’s coffee story gets hauled out yet again) and the devolution of electoral politics into sloganeering. He’s done some solid, shoe-leather reporting on such self-actualization gurus as the infomercial icon (and hot-coal walker) Tony Robbins, and “SHAM” offers valuable glimpses into the empires built by these figures. But credit for coming up with real insight into the self-help juggernaut more properly belongs to Micki McGee, a faculty fellow at New York University and the author of “Self-Help, Inc.: Makeover Culture in American Life.”

McGee regards the self-actualization industry almost as warily as Salerno does, but she has a far more sophisticated grasp of its appeal. Self-help, she argues, is not (as the cultural commentator Christopher Lasch once insisted) the manifestation of a rampant “culture of narcissism.” Instead, it’s an understandable — if also misguided — response to fundamental changes in our economic and social worlds. Today, she writes, “constant self-improvement” is presented to us as “the only reliable insurance against economic insecurity.” The result is what McGee calls “the belabored self,” the personality as a perpetual renovation project, driven by the fear that “with lifelong marriage and lifelong professions increasingly anachronistic, it is no longer sufficient to be married or employed.” When your spouse might leave you or your boss might fire you at any moment, you have to be ready to hit the market again at any time; “it is imperative that one remains marriageable and employable.”

The way Salerno sees it, the self-help industry is a modern boondoggle and annoyance — more disturbing than, but akin to, that damn noise the kids call music these days. It’s a waste of money, it saps folks of their gumption, and no one can prove it works. In his self-designated role as the hardheaded Everyman journalist, Salerno claims he has never before “covered a phenomenon where American consumers invested so much capital in every sense of the word — financial, intellectual, spiritual, temporal — based on so little proof of efficacy.” During a brief stint as an editor at the Men’s Health division of Rodale, a book publisher specializing in the genre, he was astonished to learn that the most likely customer for a self-help book is someone who’d bought a similar book within the preceding 18 months. “If what we sold worked,” he observes, “one would expect lives to improve. One would not expect people to need further help from us.”

Salerno’s point is well-taken (McGee makes a similar one), but it’s not exactly revelatory. Hasn’t he noticed how one diet book after another roosts on the upper reaches of the bestseller lists, despite the fact that Americans keep getting fatter? People buy the books and often lose weight on the diets, but they eventually gain it back and so move on to the next plan, thinking that maybe this one will finally do the trick. If you ask, they’ll swear the original diet worked, and it was really their own fault for not sticking to it.

Probably, somewhere in the very back of their minds, these people realize that a particular diet or list of highly effective habits is not likely to “revolutionize” their lives as promised. But hope springs eternal that the perfect plan awaits somewhere. That prospect appeals to the optimistic, risk-taking side of our national character. And like a slot machine, these self-improvement schemes very occasionally pay off, if only for a while. As any behavioral psychologist will tell you, nothing fascinates a human being like intermittent reinforcement. It may not be rational, but that’s how human beings work.

So many words have been written about relationship-oriented self-help books sold mostly to women (from “Women Who Love Too Much” to “Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus”), that the light both Salerno and McGee shed on success coaches such as Robbins or Stephen R. Covey, author of “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People,” is particularly welcome. Salerno, who wrote a magazine profile of Robbins, details the gradual method by which the Robbins-industrial complex coaxes its adherents into spending first small and then eventually whopping sums on his various “Life Mastery” programs (including purchases of vitamins supplements and a pendant called the QLink that supposedly protects you from the radiation emitted by cellphones). Having sunk that much cash into this stuff, Robbins’ followers become invested in believing it works.

Salerno chooses to focus on success mavens because they give him the best ammo: It’s relatively easy to measure how well their programs work (and therefore prove that they don’t). If you want to figure out if sales went up after a daylong motivational seminar, you look at the numbers, but how can you tell when you’ve learned to love just enough? McGee studies success gurus because she believes that at heart what drives people into the self-help section of their bookstores is economics. For all his no-nonsense posture, Salerno’s analysis of the self-help industry is a haphazard collection of self-contradictory, sometimes extraneous and frequently knee-jerk attitudes. McGee has an analysis, one that essentially amounts to following the money, and despite her ivory tower gig and stiff, academic prose, she’s by far the more tough-minded of the two.

Salerno divides the self-help movement into two main branches: “Empowerment” (which promises total mastery over one’s self and one’s surroundings) and “Victimization” (which offers support to people it has diagnosed as so damaged they’re lucky to be alive). McGee prefers to divide the field into rational and expressive approaches. The rational ties your capacity for transformation to a system of self-discipline and control; the expressive encourages its adherents to surrender to the workings of some vague, New Agey, cosmic force (often called simply “energy”), which will guide the properly attuned person toward fulfillment. In an economy that grows ever more ruthless and competitive, faced with downsizing, outsourcing and stagnant wages, the rational school offers people the illusion of mastery while the expressive provides a dreamy sanctuary from the cruel marketplace.

McGee’s grasp of the philosophical underpinnings of both notions is formidable. She traces Robbins’ mind-power fantasies back to the New Thought movement of the early 20th century, led by Ralph Waldo Trine, who preached “a pragmatic idealism in which wealth and opportunity were characterized as equally available to all through a kind of cosmic abundance.” She finds threads in contemporary time-management gurus like Covey that lead back to Cotton Mather and Benjamin Franklin, and in New Agers that lead back to Emerson. (You have to love a book that describes Tony Robbins as someone who “leaves behind the Enlightenment notion of the reasonable creature and moves in the direction of a Nietzschean model of ‘giving style to one’s life.’”) Instead of Salerno’s born-yesterday notion of self-help as the folly of a post-’60s generation of navel gazers and complainers, McGee recognizes that most of these ideas have been with us for a long time.

Still, the particular conditions of late capitalism have added a new twist to the fantasy of self-creation. The current permutations of self-help reflect what McGee sees as a crisis brought on by the movement of women and minorities into the workplace. She points out that the “self-made man” (an idea traceable all the way back to ancient Greece) was never really that; the unpaid labor of a mother and usually a wife helped “make” him, and he often benefited as well from the underpaid labor of servants and others prevented by skin color or class from enjoying the same opportunities. Now that all those previous unpaid and underpaid workers are demanding their own shot at the brass ring, it’s become painfully apparent how impossible it is for individuals to really make it all by themselves. At bare minimum, someone still has to teach us to walk and talk.

No wonder, then, that child rearing and the roles of mothers stand at the center of so much controversy. What Salerno dislikes about the self-help industry is that it makes some people feel entitled to more than they can get and it permits others to shirk personal responsibility. What McGee sees as the problem with self-help is that it deceives us into thinking that we can function in complete independence, that every problem in our lives can be addressed as a purely individual challenge. Child rearing (and to a lesser degree caring for the sick and elderly) challenges this notion because it’s both essential to the survival of humanity and proof positive that everybody needs somebody sometime.

For centuries, raising kids has been the unpaid work of women. Now that they have the chance, if women instead choose to invest their time and labor in the kind of self-cultivation — networking, overtime, maintaining a marketable appearance, acquiring new skills — essential to survival in today’s unstable, loyalty-free workplace, you can hardly blame them. They’re only doing what every shrewd “self-made” person is supposed to do. In defecting from the home they’re also unwittingly demonstrating that the American ideal of rugged individualism is a big lie. No wonder career women make conservatives apoplectic. Nowadays, those women who do decide to donate their time to rearing their children can count on little job security and the decay of their employability. Rick Santorum likes to complain that “radical feminists” devalue stay-at-home moms, but it’s really the free market that treats their contribution as worthless (or worth only the pittance paid to childcare workers).

As shrewd as McGee is at teasing out the anxieties underlying our makeover fantasies, her views on the possible solutions are founded in an unexamined quasi-Marxism. This makes them seem as elusive as the promises of Tony Robbins and his ilk. Throughout “Self-Help, Inc.” she evaluates all self-help trends on the basis of how likely they are to lead to “progressive, even radical” political activism. Perhaps, she suggests, the inward-looking little communities formed to follow 12-step programs can be encouraged to agitate for “economic justice” and the “redistribution” of resources and opportunities?

Like a lot of academics, McGee seems to think that the general public is merely ignorant of the principles of socialism and, if properly educated by more informed persons like herself, will surely see that their best interests lie in this direction. This is the sort of well-intentioned but disastrously patronizing attitude that whips red-staters into a frenzy of Bush voting. Many of these citizens do crave a counterforce to the brutality of the marketplace, but they prefer to seek it in church and a retreat to “traditional values.” The old ways of life, to their mind, provide at least some emotional security. Socialism they see as thoroughly discredited, a proven recipe for deprivation and oppressive bureaucracy.

McGee has the sense to insist that activists ask themselves “why people have embraced self-help groups — what do they get there that they don’t get in political organizations?” What she fails to consider is the possibility that those organizations have yet to articulate a coherent, alternative and post-socialist vision of society that’s sufficiently appealing to lure people away from the siren song of capitalistic individualism. Many people look at the ever-widening gap between rich and poor in this country and think to themselves, Hey, it’s a great time to be rich.

As Salerno points out, a motivational speaker who tells all 250 members of a sales staff that with the right attitude every one of them can be the No. 1 salesman is obviously promising the impossible. No one laughs, though, because at that moment, sufficiently pumped up, each candidate believes she’s talking only to him. Commentators like to say that self-help speaks to the American faith in the Protestant work ethic. But perhaps what it really taps into is the same impulse that makes poor people waste their dollars on lottery tickets.

Our reckless inner gambler tells us that if we have to choose between a drab little portion of guaranteed security and a long shot at a big, glitzy jackpot, we’ll take the chance at winning big. Losing might leave us broke, but the giddy hope of striking it rich, of achieving Life Mastery, of becoming highly effective and having it all is just more exciting than the sober vision of a society whose resources are doled out equitably. Anyone who, like McGee, wants to see the American masses mobilized on behalf of economic justice will have to change this aspect of our national personality. By comparison, Tony Robbins’ famous stroll over that bed of hot coals looks like a cakewalk.

Yet, with optimism appropriate to his task, Lund is bullish about his new company, Dreamlife, the self-help portal founded by personal improvement coach and infomercial star Anthony (Tony) Robbins. The site offers chats with spiritual celebs like Shirley MacLaine, courses on everything from “Fitness for Absolute Beginners” to how to “Sell Your Screenplay the Hollywood Way” and member discussions with suggested topics like “How to Be a Better Lover.” Several dozen “experts” help run subsites devoted to subjects like “Money & Finance” or “Creativity & Fun.” And Dreamlife has partnered with other personal development organizations like the Learning Channel to expand its offerings. In short, the site has something for everyone who wants to learn how to become his or her best self.

Lund says he’s not a devotee of Robbins, the author of books like “Awaken the Giant Within: How to Take Immediate Control of Your Mental, Emotional, Physical & Financial Destiny!” and the “Time of Your Life” 10-cassette time management course.” But Lund, who worked his way up the TV and radio ranks for decades before he got the top slot at CBS, is eager to try his hand at building an online audience.

How did you get involved with Tony Robbins? Have you attended his seminars? Read his books?

I’ve read the books, but I haven’t been to the seminars.

Why do you think there’s such a demand for these self-improvement programs?

I don’t have a smart answer for you. But it’s everywhere you look. Everything from “I want to look better, I want to feel better, I want to be smarter, I want to be a better person” — it certainly is part of the landscape. It’s always been there, and with the communication tools that we have in this era, it’s more possible to access it now.

What’s your relationship to Tony Robbins? What will his role be with you as CEO?

First, I would say that Tony and I are friends. We’ve known each other now for almost two years, and while it started out as a business relationship, it’s now both a business relationship and a friendship.

Tony is three things to this company: chairman of the board, the largest shareholder in this company and our most important content provider. So anything I do here that is different or any changes I make that are critical — I’ve told Tony that I’ll keep him informed.

That’s really all Tony wants. Tony’s a busy guy.

I have to say, when Tony comes on TV, most people I know laugh. He’s just so ubiquitous: What do you make of his presence?

Everybody of Tony’s stature, everybody who’s a star like that, always worries about saturation — am I on too much? Am I in too many places? The first thing that comes to my mind is Brent Mussberger. Back in the days when I was running CBS Sports, we had Brent on too many things. He was everywhere: He was on “NFL Today,” he was on NCAA basketball, he was everyplace. It was a problem and it was our fault because we let Brent become overexposed.

So I suppose that’s always a worry. But the fact of life is that Tony’s in such demand. They’re not holding any seminars or running any television programs that people don’t want to watch. So it’s always a difficult prospect to figure out when you’re sort of at the edge of overexposure.

But ultimately, the personal improvement market is huge. That’s one of the things that we looked at as a board. We said, “My God, it’s a $6 billion market now, and it’s going up by 20 percent every couple of years.” So it’s a huge marketplace.

How big is the market for Dreamlife? How many users do you have?

The Web site has a little over 100,000 members. We have course enrollments that are about 35,000 people now. What we have are six categories: mind and spirit, money and finance, relationships and family, health and fitness, career and business, creativity and fun. Whether that’s the end of it or not, I don’t know.

Do you think you’ll ever be more actively involved in this growing world, perhaps up onstage or on an infomercial with Tony Robbins, telling us how to take control of our lives?

No. Just the inference that you think I could do that makes my day. But there’s no groundswell that I can sense for me to get out of the administrative role and get up in front of that crowd.

You’re in charge not just of the Web business but of the whole company, right? The events, books and other offerings?

Yes.

According to the site’s mission statement, the company intends to be a “unique online network that enables its members to assess, define, and pursue their dreams through the unparalleled integration of technology, coaching, content, community, and commerce.” Is that consistent with your vision?

I believe in the concept. Maybe we need to tack one way or another, but I certainly believe in the direction. All of us on the board are very excited about this space. We think it’s a terrific space in terms of an industry that’s wide open.

What “space” do you mean?

We define the space as an online destination for personal and professional development. It’s education on the Internet; I think it’s something that’s going to be spectacular. Whether ultimately we can carve out a position and be one of the great educators, time will tell. But I think, broadly speaking, one of the great promises of the Internet is education. So I think Dreamlife has a great opportunity, having already rolled up and aggregated some interesting people — Tony Robbins and others — that give us a good start. There’s a terrific opportunity here.

Exactly how do you plan to capitalize on that opportunity?

I’ve been at companies that used [personal improvement courses] as part of their training, and that’s one of the areas that we’re looking at now. Part of what we think we need to grow into is the corporate arena, so that we’re not just a personal improvement company but a corporate improvement company.

Are you aiming to grow Dreamlife into a big company — something as big as CBS?

I don’t know. I’d like us to be a profitable, successful company that has a return to its shareholders that they feel is appropriate. But in terms of size, in terms of members or page views, [if I tried to project an answer] I’d just be making up numbers.

You spent a long time in television, at well-established organizations much bigger than Dreamlife. How will this experience help you build a company?

Well, for the last 15 or 20 years, I’ve been a manager. I ran something or another — television stations, the radio division, CBS Sports, the television network, the CBS television company, then the whole company. I have a background as a manager, a negotiator and a programmer. That’s what I spent my time doing, and that’s what’s needed here. While this is completely different from a television station, there are a lot of similarities in terms of it being a business that needs programming and that ultimately needs to attract people.

How did Dreamlife manage to attract you?

I’m here because I went on the board of Dreamlife at its inception in 1999. When they constituted the board about a year ago, I was one of the original members. I got involved because a couple of people on the board were people I had done business with and had known before. One thing led to another and here I am. There was nothing particularly magical about the whole thing.

How much of Dreamlife’s products have you taken part in? Were you a fan before becoming involved as a member of the board?

I certainly haven’t taken part directly. As a board member, as with most companies, you have a fiducial responsibility and an oversight responsibility, but you’re not an operator. So I was aware of them, and over the years I stopped down and talked to the management people.