Norman Vincent Peale

One of the giants of self-help writing is Norman Vincent Peale. He almost single-handedly defined the genre in the 1950s and 60s, starting off with his monumental bestseller The Power of Positive Thinking, and he established for decades a particular style of self-help writing, a style which is still being emulated today.

I have written before of the overt religiosity of Peale's writing, and his radical re-casting of Christianity as a positive aid to lifestyle and success both captured the zeitgeist of mid-20th century America and helped, in part, to shape it. The stolid Protestant friendliness of Peale's utterances, coupled as they were with just the right degree of acknowledgement of science and medicine, set the minds of a generation at ease. His great genius of expression inspired other writers, most notably the Catholic Bishop Fulton J. Sheen, who sought to do with Catholicism what Peale had done with mainline Protestantism. In Australia Peale's style was copied by the Presbyterian clergyman Gordon Powell.

Peale sought to reconcile Christianity with psychiatry, something M. Scott Peck managed so successfully a generation later with The Road Less Travelled. Peale established the American Foundation of Religion and Psychiatry right next door to his church, and from here he attempted a kind of Christian psychotherapy, employing professionals from both camps. It would seem that counselling was his great passion, and his books are filled with case studies of people he had counselled. He seemed inordinately proud of the new hybrid he had created. Of course, this movement seems these days to have come to nothing and at the very most Christian-tinged counselling and psychology has acquired a dubious name, associated as it has become with the extreme right-wing fringe of Christianity, and the mental and spiritual abuse of young women and gay people.

Peale, I think, would have been shocked by the state of things now. He was most certainly not a fundamentalist, and saw himself as a part of the great tradition of American liberal Protestantism. Though the language of his books is almost shocking to a contemporary secular audience, it's worth keeping in mind that his reading of the Bible and his theological understanding was distinctly progressive. Though he claimed all his life to be a conventional Protestant clergyman, and was lionised by people like Billy Graham and Ronald Reagan, he was deeply influenced by the ideas of New Thought, and was for a time a student of Ernest Holmes.
Like most successful self-help writers, he diversified into other forms of media, and was particularly successful on radio, where his program 'The Art of Living' ran for 54 years. He was also one of the first to produce audio versions of his books, and you can still buy recordings of him reading The Power of Positive Thinking.

These days Peale is deeply unfashionable, though his books remain in print. It is hard to imagine that his worldview, as unashamedly religious as it was, will ever again be mainstream. Self-help critic Wendy Kaminer, in her book I'm Dysfunctional, You're Dysfunctional, accuses Peale of being a magical thinker and "oblivious to social injustice."

The Law of Attraction

Probably one of the most vilified tenets of self-help philosophy is the concept of The Law of Attraction. This "Law" has achieved a significant amount of cultural currency in recent years due to The Secret - basically, the Law of Attraction WAS The Secret (sorry if that's a bit of a plot spoiler!), and many millions of people encountered the idea for the first time there.
But it is a mistake to think it is a recent invention. Rhonda Byrne herself freely admits that she came across the idea of LOA while reading the works of Wallace Wattles, books published around the turn of the 20th century. The idea in its recognisable form can probably be dated back to Charles and Myrtle Fillmore and the Unity School of Christianity in the closing decades of the nineteenth century.
What is the Law of Attraction? Simply put, it is the idea that whatever you think about, you attract. As the Buddha used to say in the opening credits of Monkey, "With our thoughts, we create the world."
This idea goes well beyond the pioneers of New Thought, of course. This kind of "mind only" philosophy has a long history in Buddhism and, before that, Advaita Vedanta schools of Hinduism. I think the real difference between these Eastern and Western forms is where the emphasis lies. For the most part, this realisation in Hinduism and Buddhism is meant to lead the seeker to try and transcend this world, realising that ultimately nothing is real, and all is meaningless, a creation of our desire. Law of Attraction as it has manifested in popular American thought has been directed in a thoroughly more worldly manner: since we're creating our world, how about we create a really nice one.
Nothing wrong with that, of course. Indeed, many of the spiritual practices of Mahayana Buddhism involve just this process, visualising the jewelled Buddha lands and the extraordinary treasures of various divine realms. The Law of Attraction enthusiasts are, if anything, a shade more honest than most of their consumerist counterparts, by recognising that they want nice things in their world, and seeking to create these things at a metaphysical level. Whether or not you believe this is possible is a whole other question, and one in which I do not engage.
What I do find interesting is the vehemence with which such beliefs are denounced by those who don't share them. As religious beliefs go, I consider the Law of Attraction a pretty benign one. It certainly beats a whole lot of other worldviews, including those of most who pour such scorn on the LOA scene.
At its simplest I really just see LOA as a Western re-casting of the same ideas of karma and rebirth that are subscribed to by pretty much most of the Hindu and Buddhist world. As such, it attracts many of the same criticisms and is subject to all the same shaky logical and philosophical premises. It's just that, being an idea seen (incorrectly) as the product of modern consumer culture, it is subjected to the kind of paternalistic scorn that people would never dare direct toward a Hindu or a Buddhist.
The fact that it is always described as a "Law" is also significant. The new religious movements that emerged in America at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries were all, to some extent, responding to modernity. One of the ways they did that was by casting their new ideas not as religious revelations, but as much more scientific-sounding "Laws", "Principles" and "Sciences."
Apart from The Secret, the great proponents these days of the Law of Attraction are a cuddly pair of middle-American trance channelers called Esther and Jerry Hicks. Esther channels the voice of a disembodied entity called "Abraham" and this material sells wildly throughout the world, making the Law of Attraction more and more one of the strongest contemporary popular religious beliefs.

Yes You Can! - Behind the hype and hustle of the motivation biz

From where I sit here in Australia, one of the most esoteric and quintessentialy American occupations must be that of professional speaker. It almost seems unbelievable that someone can earn their living from talking to rooms full of people. It seems to hark back to an earlier age, to the times when Dickens, Wilde and Twain travelled the US lecturing to vast audiences.
In Yes You Can! ex-Playboy editor Jonathan Black examines this amazing industry, and is drawn into its high-energy milieu to the point of seeking to become a motivational speaker himself.
Refreshingly, he never sets out to "expose" the industry, or to tear it apart. As he points out, he simply never met anyone who was manipulative, hypocritical or unusually avaricious. The motivational speaking industry is like any other, and Black does a brilliant job in explaining just how mundane - and often corny - its particular machinations are.
The speakers, both obscure and struggling and stellarly successful and wealthy, are shown here to be a wonderful crowd of eccentrics, each constantly working an angle and trying to stand out in a monstrously competitive field. His descriptions of their schtick are somethimes hilarious, and Black retains a cynic's eye throughout. But along with him you can't help but admire the incredible drive of these people to be successful.
Conceding that it is the type of career that normally attracts a bad rap, he speaks about the efforts being made to quantify the impacts of motivational speakers on company morale and - ultimately - profit. Unsurprisingly, this still looks like being almost impossible.
I was conscious throughout of the ways in which the self-help industry employ a wide range of media and technology to spread its message and, of course, to make money. The presence of so many celebrity speakers reminds us that this whole philosophy was born on the pulpit something which Black himself ultimately realises, in a moment of great personal significance. The speakers promote their audio material and their books, and vice versa, ad infinitum. This multiplicity of media marks motivation and self-help as distinctly modern phenomena, born in the age of modernity and in reaction to the changes it forced upon society.
Yes You Can! is a great book - well written, well researched and sensitively rendered. Jonathan Black has approached the subject in a uniquely thoughtful way and offers, for a change, some genuine insight into the business of self-help, instead of the usual blanket condemnation.

The Science of Mind on The Universe

"The Universe gives us what we ask; experience alone will teach us what is best to have."

The Science of Mind, p. 462

Each Mind a Kingdom

One of the things that is most apparent when studying the history of self-help literature is the dominance of women. Since the earliest days of New Thought women have been the movement's principal leaders and followers. Certainly in the early literature of Australian self-help, immersed as it is in the philosophy of New Thought, women are the real pioneers.
American historian Beryl Satter has written an excellent book called Each Mind a Kingdom, which details the phenomenon of women in the New Thought movement.
In my research on Sister Veni Cooper-Mathieson, a wonderfully eccentric Australian author, publisher and spiritual leader, I noticed that she led something called the White Cross Crusade. I was surprised to discover that this was a society to promote celibacy aming young women. They met weekly in the Domain, and there was a companion group for young men. By the brevity of the mentions, I can only assume that both movements were not particularly well subscribed. Sister Veni wrote extensively on the subject of female emancipation, a key component of which she saw as being chastity among the young.
It wasn't until I read Satter's fascinating book that I realised that these crusades for morality and celibacy were an intrinsic part of the New Thought movement in America. Indeed, the position was seen as a progressive one, helping to combat the problems of unwanted pregnancy, venereal disease and the abandonment of unmarried mothers.
The New Thought movement saw itself as ushering in a new, purer age, in which women were empowered, and would no longer be enslaved to what was characteristically cast as the baser sexual demands of men.
Physical desire - and sexuality in general - was posited in this early movement as a problem, something to be overcome. It is fascinating how these early feminist visions were tied in with ideas of chastity and sexual purity.

Stephanie Dowrick - An Introduction

Australia's leading writer on matters of spirituality and personal transformation is without a doubt Stephanie Dowrick. Her lyrical and frequently literary books are also bestsellers, though they sometimes defy categorisation in any of the usual sub-genres of self-help. Drawing from a deep understanding of religion, mythology, psychology and literature, Dowrick's oeuvre is pretty much all her own, and is these days increasingly imitated.
Dowrick emerged from a background in publishing, which probably goes some way to explaining the great commercial success of her books. There is no doubt she has a flair for marketing, publicity and promotion which has seen her emerge as one of Australia's leading media commentators. In London in the 70s Stephanie was the founder and first Managing Director of The Women's Press, proving her pedigree as a feminist. It is that aspect of her writing that particularly interests me academically. I think she was among the first in the self-help genre to really speak to a female readership, though the books are in no way intended for women only. I am interested in reading the books closely to find out in what ways (if any) feminist ideas are engaged and explored.
She later worked as a publisher at Allen & Unwin in Australia. This, too, would be an interesting avenue to explore, though I doubt I'll have the space in my thesis. Maggie Hamilton is another publishing industry executive who went on to write self-help books. And, perhaps obliquely, Rhonda Byrne was a successful television producer before she branched out into the field of personal transformation. It's certainly an interesting phenomenon, and I wonder if I could find parallels in America or the UK.
These days Stephanie Dowrick is one of the pioneers of the burgeoning Interfaith movement, and noting the different religious references in her books would also be a fascinating endeavour. She has a background in Jungian psychology, and has been deeply influenced by Quaker thought. She also seems to have a clear understanding of both Buddhism and Sufism, which speaks to the extraodinary depth of her learning and her spiritual understanding.
I plan on bringing you a few little potted analyses of some of Stephanie Dowrick's books as I slowly piece together my PhD thesis. I hope you'll find them as interesting as I do.

The Eternal Mind in The Science of Mind

Ernest Holmes' own specialised terminology flows thick and fast throughout his mammoth text The Science of Mind. I suspect that at times terms are interchangeable, but I may be wrong - he may be completely thorough and consistent in his subtle use of terminology. I would have to read the book many times over to be able to ascertain that, and to be honest I don't think that's going to happen.

There are many terms for God, and they are quickly identified by the capitalisation of the first letter. One of the most common is Mind, occasionally more clearly signified as Eternal Mind. This Eternal Mind is the creative, unifying force at work in the universe, the thing to which we are all attached, and from which we all emerged. It is separate from the small-m mind that we all possess, but only because we have limited our material minds, and enforced our own separation. In fact, the goal of Science of Mind (i.e. Holmes' philosophy) is to re-unify us with the Eternal Mind, so that we can experience one-ness with the absolute.

Holmes tells us that "the Eternal Mind knows all things" and this assures the reader that what we are talking about here is the old-fashioned God, re-cast as something more scientific, less loaded. It is subtle theology, and I imagine quite effective - few could quarrel with the notion of the mind, something we all possess.

These two minds - the material and the Eternal - are the essence of Science of Mind philosophy. What the spiritual practitioner is doing is training the small mind (Holmes says "renewing") to work in accord with the Eternal Mind, so that we might recognise our own divinity. This is an individual project, and the work can only ever be done by the individual - we cannot hope to change the mind of another.

By turning our thoughts toward good, the mind is retrained, and material circumstances are changed. In Holmes' philosophy (as in the Fillmores' and Mary Baker Eddy's) good must always trump evil - a good thought held in the mind will drive out all evil, for only good is real. Good is of the Eternal Mind - it is its essential nature.