Self-help: Self-help a hit as Harvard goes pop

CAMBRIDGE: The setting is an august, wood-panelled lecture hall at Harvard University but the content of the class comes straight from a confessional TV talk show. Tal Ben-Shahar regales his students with the inspirational story of how he became squash champion of Israel at 16 only to get injured and realise that what truly matters is what you feel inside. The moral, he explains, is to learn to overcome failure because it is inevitable. His slogan for today's session is: "Learn to fail or fail to learn." Mr Ben-Shahar, 35, has become the most popular lecturer at Harvard by teaching the university's over-achieving students how to be happy - no simple task. His "positive psychology" course is this year's most popular, attracting 855 undergraduates. "I see myself as creating a bridge between the ivory tower and main street," Mr Ben-Shahar explained. "Right now, there is a disconnect. You go into the bookstore and you see the self-help section and it's huge. Many of these books are well-written, relevant and accessible but with very little substance. "You go to academic libraries and take out journals. They are focused on research and rigorous but are not accessible." Mr Ben-Shahar is helping to pioneer a new movement to teach self-help on campuses, and positive psychology is now on the curriculums of more than 100 colleges across the US. The movement's founder is Martin Seligman, author of about 20 books and head of the Positive Psychology Centre at the University of Pennsylvania. Mr Ben-Shahar's Harvard class is light on research and heavy on popular culture. His lecture on perfectionism is illustrated with the REM song Everybody Hurts and a comedy skit from the TV show Saturday Night Live. The lecturer displays a respect for the TV talk-show queen Oprah Winfrey that other academics reserve for Plato, Shakespeare or Einstein. "I think she ... does make the world a better place," he said. "I look at what she does as 'positive psychology'. She exemplifies what I mean to give oneself 'permission to be human'. She does not hide behind the eternal smile."