The house is immaculate. The children are organically-reared and apple-cheeked. The spouse is still in love with you, still stimulated at work and in the bedroom. And you, with your personal trainer and flexible hours (it’s your thriving web consultancy, after all) are the envy of the school run. But are you happy?

This you cannot answer honestly while staying true to your creed, because your creed is personal perfection. Your secret is an acute dependence on self-help literature which says all your negatives must become positives, and this has set you on an endless quest for negatives to be corrected. So your shortcomings glare out at you from every Pledged corner cupboard and furtively inspected mirror. And no, you are not happy.

Jennifer Niesslein wasn’t, anyway – not after deliberately ignoring her distaste for the “Mind, Body, Spirit” shelves and devouring everything on them for a year in the hope of upgrading her life, her universe and everything. As times2 reports today, it didn’t work. She started sleepwalking. She had panic attacks. She lost faith in herself as a role-model for her son. She lost weight as well, but promptly put it on again. Then she decided she had had enough of navel-gazing, stopped doing it and felt better.

One self-help guru to emerge from the Niesslein experiment with reputation intact was Oprah Winfrey. Her mantra ( “honour the truth about your life”) recalls the Oracle at Delphi, (“know thyself”). Delphi was “the navel of the world”, and therefore not to be gazed at for too long. But the Oracle’s advice was ever sound, to wit: “Nothing in excess.” Especially self-help.