I was teaching a memoir class and a woman in the class, a journalist, said she is not permitted to use the phrase "
child within" in her writing because her editor is so disgusted with it.
Oh, the codependency movement, the big cross (no pun intended) between "traditional" 12-step programs and the new-age movement. I pretty much bought into the "inner child" thing myself for a little while. John Bradshaw ("self-help" guru, not the football player of that name) was perhaps the biggest name in the field, with all his books and PBS TV shows repeated during pledge drives. But I think the field had its big heyday in the '90's, I don't think it's as popular now.
There ARE publishers who won't have a problem with phrases such as "child within" - there's Hazelden Publishing, associated with the treatment center:
http://www.hazelden.org/web/public/authorsubmission.page
Though there's this:
"Hazelden discourages submissions of poetry, fiction,
memoirs and other unrelated non-fiction, dissertations, and art."
But my guess is that doesn't preclude a "self-help" book that has occasional personal reflections by the author.
There's also Health Communications, "Changing Lives One Book At A Time" - with a tagline based on the popular slogan "one day at a time" from the Serenity Prayer, they surely won't blink at the words "child within" in a manuscript:
http://www.hcibooks.com/
Can I at least write about my Inner S.O.B.?
The comment took my breath away. How can anyone afford to be burned out by the story of human potential?
Do you even know what you just said... those other two words I bolded are another keyphrase I recognize - there's a "Human Potential Movement" which I see as an umbrella term for lots of things I might call "secular religions," but still fall within "new age" thought (and I hesistate to use the word "thought" in this context). The Wikipedia page on it is interesting, especially the "See also" section with a long list of groups, some quite recognizable ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Potential_Movement
I need to check out that book in the "bibliography."
Whether the "human potential movement" ever originally had anything to do with the ordinary meanings of the words "human potential" I don't know, but from what I've seen, it hasn't for the last several decades.
But it appears memoirs are still being published, by unknowns as well as big stars, as in this thread earlier this year:
http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=94319