It is a joy to read that the research by Joanne Wood and her colleagues at the University of Waterloo in Canada has suggested that “positive self-statements cause negative moods in people with low self-esteem because they conflict with those people’s views of themselves” (“Words of Wisdom,” June 13, 2009). As many readers of so-called self-help books that encourage positive self-statements are likely to suffer from low self-esteem, they may be more than useless. Actually, such books may only encourage low self-esteem. Your report seems to be incomplete, though. That is, you fail to mention that the research also points at the main reason why self-help books do so well in the marketplace. Low self-esteem people are dying for continual punishment!