Do frum self-help books contain ancient Torah wisdom - or pop psychology?

The following is an excerpt from Strictly Kosher Reading  page 50- 51 by Dr. Yoel Finkelman. It is truly required reading by any chareidi Jew who wants to understand the relationship between Torah and general culture as manifest in popular English language chareidi literature. This is related to the previous post of whether there is a Torah Psychotherapy?    [A longer selection of the book was posted on Seforim Blog]
Conclusion - Update 8/16/13 It is apparent from the comments to this post is that there is no such thing as Torah Psychology or Torah Therapy that was given at Sinai. There are psychological insights which are found in our Tradition which can be used in therapy - but they don't constitue a program of therapy. A psychology or therapy based primarily or exclusive on Torah sources might be desirable - but it doesn't exist at present and it clearly is not part of our Tradition from Sinai.

Lawrence Kelemen's parenting guide, To Kindle a Soul, for example,  claims in the subtitle to contain "ancient wisdom." "At the foot of a  mountain in the Sinai desert, the Creator of the universe directly re­vealed His profound wisdom to approximately three million people ....  Those present received ... a comprehensive guide for raising great human  beings." The book attempts to describe "this ancient, Torah approach to  education" which is "more comprehensive and effective ... than any of the  schools of child psychology I studied at university." Kelemen describes  the "significant" differences between these supposedly "ancient traditions" and the practices of contemporary parents."

"Yet Kelemen's parenting approach fits neatly within late twentieth­  century American parenting discourse, and it differs significantly from  that of pre-modern Jewish sources. Kelemen combines an American  religious-right critique of supposedly decadent American family life  with a child-centered parenting approach advocated by endless Ameri­can mass-market parenting guides in the 1990s. Criticism of American  materialism and permissiveness; advocacy of limiting the mother's time at work; polemics against spanking; emphasis on good nutrition, proper  sleep time, and bedtime routine; concerns about the adverse impact of  television viewing; claims to provide a "system" for raising moral children; and advocacy of "quality-time" for empathy and close communica­tion between parents and children, all characterized American experts'  suggestions to worried middle-class parents at the end of the twentieth  century. Even Kelemen's claim that his approach derives from the Bible follows the pattern of American religious parenting guides. Indeed, the  book's unstated assumptions - that parenting is a full-time endeavor,  and that parents should actively monitor their children's moment­  by-moment lives - typify experts' advice and popular assumptions in  America during the so-called "century of the child."

Not only does Kelemen's approach match that of contemporary  parenting experts, but it differs from traditional Jewish sources on the  topic. While a complete history of Jewish approaches to children and  family has yet to be written, it is enough in this context to note that  traditional Jewish literature speaks of childhood and parenting in spotty  and unsystematic ways, scattered in works focused on other topics. This  reflects a historical past in which families were considerably less child centered than they are today, and parents learned how to parent more by imitation, instinct, face-to-face conversation, and osmosis than from  the written word of experts. Pre-modern Jews did not write parenting  manuals since they assumed that knowing how to parent was an intui­tive or natural thing.

Take the example of Kelemen's approach to corporal punishment and  spanking. This is a particularly important example because traditional  sources do say quite a bit on the topic, and what they do say clashes rather  dramatically with the approach of contemporary Haredi parenting literature. Kelemen polemicizes against corporal punishment of children, and  even harsh verbal reprimands. Instead - reflecting both contemporary  notions of individual autonomy and the voluntary nature of modern  religious commitments, which make it difficult to coerce people into reli­gious conformity - he insists that parents should calmly explain to their  children what is proper and improper. Parents should then serve as living  role models of the proper, hoping thereby to help children come to their  own appreciation of and identification with the parents' values.[...]