Friends and Enemies by Dorothy Rowe

The chapter I am really struggling with at the moment is on "Popular Psychology."
Now, the term "popular psychology" is sometimes interchangeable with self-help, but in my dissertation it is referring to books that specifically draw upon the writings of Freud and Jung, normally written by trained psychologists and psychotherapists.
The author I am using principally is Dorothy Rowe, an Australian clinical psychologist who established a very successful academic career in the UK and has been a prolific writer of books of popular psychology.
I have been reading her book Friends and Enemies: Our Need to Love and Hate, but have been finding it terribly hard to really get writing the attendant chapter. I guess I feel a little uncertain because I don't really know much about psychology. Of course, I am not pretending to make any comment on psychology, as I am looking at quite distinct aspects of the books - but at the back of my mind is always this lingering fear that I am out of my depth.
Fortunately Rowe is an Anglican, and makes reference to her religious life in her books, so that is helpful - gives me an angle.
But every day I sit in front of my computer, a huge pile of books at my elbow and think, "I can't do this." I am having a crisis, I guess. The psychologists I am writing about would probably thoroughly approve.
Friends and Enemies is a long and meandering book whcih drifts from psychological analysis to political commentary and autobiography. Rowe frequently references Australia and her life in Australia, so that is helpful - that is what I wan to be writing about.
It is a book about personal growth in relation to groups, and the ways in which we operate as a member of the group and the community. Quite a quirky topic, I guess, and periodically fascinating.
Rowe wants us all to "understand the nature of our existence" so that we may grow and become better adjusted and happier people. Of course, at the basis of all this is the assumption that growth is what we should be aiming for - the basis of all self-help books. Psychological evolution is taken for granted.
It's hard to place Rowe's own philosophy. At times she can be painfully politically correct, with the exact assortment of right-on plolitical positions that go much of the way to building a somewhat cliched vision of the world. And, as I mentioned before, she also admits in the book that she is a Christian, with an affiliation to the rituals of High Anglicanism. And so I am perplexed when I come across a phrase like:

"I do not create theories that have to do with the influence of the planets or evil spirits or God's mysterious ways..."

The absence of God's mystery leaves me wondering about the nature of her Anglicanism.
Anyway, leave me with the book for some time longer (not too much longer - I am already behind schedule) and I may have figured out just what exactly her theories are.

New Books - Self Help

Oh dear.
Here is the pile of books I need to knock over for June. There are actually more - these are just the new ones. No wonder I get to feeling a little anxious. Anyway, from the top:

The Power of Intention by Dr. Wayne Dyer - I bought this one at the books stand when I took my mum to Dr. Brian Weiss' day-long workshop in Sydney. I quite enjoy Dyer's recent work, and find his drift towards a more overt religious expression quite interesting. And I love this kind of large-format Hay House production.

4 Dale Carnegie books - The Leader in You, Pathways to Success, How to Enjoy Your Life & Your Job and How to Stop Worrying and Start Living

Rich Brother, Rich Sister by Robert & Emi Kiyosaki - One is a stock trader the other a Buddhist nun. I love the conceit of this book, and it almost perfectly describes the trajectory of my thesis. I have been wanting to read it for ages.

Worshipping Walt by Michael Robertson - I heard the author being interviewed by Ramona Koval on ABC Radio National's The Book Show ages ago, and it sounds absolutely fascinating. An account of the bizarre people who gathered around Walt Whitman and became his acolytes.

Prayer & Living Without Fear by Ernest Holmes - Now that I have finally finished The Science of Mind I can probably start reading Holmes' other books more closely.

Pragmatism by William James

The Art of Spiritual Healing by Keith Sherwood - My chapter on self-help and health is coming up soon.

Personal Development for Smart People by Steve Pavlina

Success is Not an Accident by Tommy Newberry

Eat That Frog by Brian Tracy - I have doscovered that Brian Tracy is one of the clearest and most concise communicators of self-help currently working. Even in my cynicism I find myself called to action by his books. This one will fit into my business chapter.

Representative Men by Ralph Waldo Emerson - This will come in handy because I am delivering a lecture next month on Emanuel Swedenborg's influence on self-help writing, and Emerson includes him as one of his Representative Men.

Essays and Aphorisms by Arthur Schopenhauer - I have only recently discovered Schopenhauer. Of course, I have always seen his name bandied about, but once I finally started reading him I couldn't believe how practical and "self-help" his philosophy was. Quite a fascinating figure.

New Religions and the Theological Imagination in America by Mary Farrell Bednarowski

Evil Plans by Hugh MacLeod - I have heard this one being discussed on many of the podcasts I listen to. Actually, this one is more for pleasure/interest.

Steering by Starlight by Martha Beck

The Tyranny of Guilt by Pascal Bruckner - Promises to be a controversial read.

Stoking the Creative Fires by Phil Cousineau - Also because I am researching a possible book on creativity.

Daily Word for the Spirit by Colleen Zuck - Also a Unity FM Hooked on Classics book that I have to catch up on.

The 21-Day Consciousness Cleanse by Debbie Ford.

"The Map of the Soul" by Tricia Brennan

I have noticed lately that one of the more significant trends in self-help books is the elevation of intuition as the main force behind finding one's true life purpose. Australian Paul Fenton-Smith has just published a book called Intuition, and British author Angela Donovan has written a book called The Wish which sets about helping the reader get into touch with her intuititive side.
Adding to the zeitgeist is this handsomely produced new book from Australia's Rockpool Publishing. Tricia Brennan, the author, is described as an "intuitive counsellor" and the entire book is about using intuition to help recognise the forces and conditions that most fully resound with your life's central purpose.
It is a rigorous 12 level program for personal discovery, and I think that following such a program would indeed prove enormously beneficial. It is certainly a book meant to be read over an extended period, as each level requires a signifcant commitment of time and personal exploration. Brennan is a geat exponent of many of my own enthusiasms, including journalling, meditation and the use of affirmations.
The central premis of the book is that we need to get into alignment with our "Authentic Self" - the premise of many self-help books, of course, and one that intrigues and perplexes those who don't understand the genre.
This isn't really the kind of book to buy and read on the train. It requires a large amount of practical engagement, and following the program would appear to be a significant commitment.
Brennan is a subtle writer, and she explores the different shades of self-enquiry with sensitivity and intelligence. She is also not a propnent of self-indulgence, as is evidenced when she says:

"Feeling genuinely compassionate toward yourself is what alters negative behaviour - not self-pity but compassion."

A fine point, and one worth making.
How do we shift our lives "from mediocre to magical?" Uncover a practical plan to lead us toward our true purpose in life? Discover once again the great depths of meaning in which we used to dwell? Tricia Brennan's practical book will show you how.

The Daily Word

Probably the most influential work of the New Thought church The Unity School of Christianity is its monthly prayer guide and day-book The Daily Word. This little square journal has been in print since 1924, and its influence has been credited by people as diverse as Will Smith and Toni Morrison! Rosemary Fillmore Rhea tells a great story in her autobiography about meeting Robert Wagner's mother at a Beverly Hills hotel and discovering that not only was she a long-time subscriber, but had given gift subscriptions to all of the hotel staff.
The Daily Word is a pocket-sized monthly magazine (which has recently become bi-monthly, and is also available on-line) which provides a daily inspirational quote and a relevant section of scripture.



The page-a-day format makes it pretty much a modern-day version of the antique format of the almanac.
Its longevity has afforded it a special place in American popular religious culture, and by all accounts it has fans across the Christian spectrum, despite its central theology being decidedly unorthodox. Each issue starts out with a couple of stories by devoted readers who credit the miraculous effect of The Daily Word during specific periods of struggle or hardship in their lives. The little journal seems to hold for some a talismanic power, an I have read stories of people giving away its pages to those they perceive to be in need.
The magazine also serves a function within the structure of the Unity church itself. It is the focal point of prayer and meditation for all members, and it is freely available to newcomers and visitors to the church.
The vast amount of text that must have been produced in creating the magazine over the years has been put to good use in recent times with the compilation of book-length guides on specialist topics, a la Chicken Soup for the Soul. Daily Word for Weight Loss and The Daily Word for Women are two examples.

In Tune With the Infinite - Ralph Waldo Trine

I am slowly working my way through the classics of New Thought, and have just finished what is probably the grandaddy of them all, Ralph Waldo Trine's 1897 In Tune With the Infinite.
In Tune With the Infinite is one of those books that you see referenced everywhere. Quotes from it regularly start chapters of New Thought books, and Trine's name is invoked even now in all kinds of self-help books. In Tune With the Infinite was motor magnate Henry Ford's favourite book of all time, and he gave copies of it to all of his executives, insisting they read it. Ernest Holmes, founder of the Church of Religious Science, was great fan of Trine's work, and to date In Tuune With the Infinite has sold over 2 million copies.
That said, it is not an easy book to read. Written in the slightly flowery language of its day, In Tune With the Infinite probably deserves some more careful re-reading to get past its stylistic failings. And yes, I acknowledge that it's foolish to criticise an author for conforming to the literary conventions of his day, just because expectations are different now. I just feel I should warn prospective readers that an amount of patience is needed when reading the book. Though not long, it is packed with ideas, and really is in many ways the sourcebook of New Thought teaching.
Trine was s tudent of world religions, and one thing that really does shine through the book is his deep indebtitude to the ideas of the Eastern faiths, particularly Hinduism and Buddhism. In many ways In Tune With the Infinite is a reworking of the doctrine of karma, rendering it in a more theistic way and making the idea more palatable to a Western mind trained in conventional Christian ideas.
And like most New Thought writers of the time (and since), Trine was keen to emphasise that he was not advocating a new religion or a new set of dogmas and fanciful supernatural ideas. He advocated rationality in the face of the mystical, and the book is surprisingly free of the overtly devotional language that one encounters when reading Charles Fillmore or any of the later New Thought writers. He saw the new attitude as one of science and reason yoked to a spiritual vision based on quite a sophisticated understanidng of God and the universe:

"Reason is not to be set aside, but it is to be continually illumined by this higher spiritual perception, and in the degree that it is thus illumined will it become an agent of light and power."

An advocate of science and reason, Trine could also see the dangers of a more thourough materialism, and wanted his readers to negotiate a western Middle Way between the two. And while convinced of the infinite possibilities of the human mind, he was also no advocate of magical thinking. Like his more stolid Victorian forebears, people such as Samuel Smiles, he endorsed hard work as the very best way to ensure happiness, prosperity and good fortune.
Self-help critic Micki McGee suggests that Trine's work popularised the transcendentalism of his namesake Ralph Waldo Emerson, and melded it with a more materialist philosophy, the fusion becoming the very essence of New Thought.
"Thoughts are forces, subtle, vital, creative, continually building and shaping our lives according to their nature" says Trine, setting out clearly what would become the ultimate trope of self-help writing until the present day - the notion that our material reality is a product of our own thinking. As problematic an assertion as that is, it is one that carried (and continues to carry) an immense cultural power, and Trine's influence on the modern imagination and concepton of the self has been greatly undervalued.

New Thesis-Related Books for March

I am in a state of false security, having sent a chapter through to my supervisor last week. I really can't afford to feel self-satisfied, because I need to be sending him another chapter in about 3 weeks, but the mind plays tricks on one, and I can't help but feel I have all the time in the world. Here are some new books I have purchased for research. From the top:

Christopher Johnson Derrida - Philosophy is my weak point, modern philosophy especially so. To that end I am trying to educate myself with brief and simple introductions to key philosophers, in the hope that I'll be working up from there.

Robert Holden Be Happy - My next chapter is on pop psychology, and this book is perfectly suited. On a personal level, it looks interesting, useful and fun.

Louis Menand The Metaphysical Club - I was led to this book after reading Courtney Bender's fascinating new book The New Metaphysicals. Once Bender wrote about it and teh controversy it caused, I knew I had to read it.

Creative Mind by Ernest Holmes

Creative Mind was Ernest Holmes' first published book, written long before he was a celebrity preacher with a massive following. It's a nice little book which, considering how early along in his career he wrote it, stands as a surprisingly good (and wonderfully concise) introduction to Holmes' philosophy. Interestingly, it is said that Norman Vincent Peale read this book when he was a young man, and that it had a profound influence on him.
The book is an extended discussion of the New Thought idea of the creative mind - that Divine Mind which is innately creative and to which we are all (or at least should be) connected to. God - or Mind - is constantly creative, and this creation moves in an upward direction. We are all evolving into better beings and it is through our connection to Creative Mind that this happens.
In many ways this book sticks much more closely to a Christian Science idea of the Universe, which is not surprising because it was around this period that Holmes was studying with Emma Curtis Hopkins, the grandmother of New Thought and a woman who had once been Mary Baker Eddy's closest associate.
For the early Holmes the Universe was all spirit, and nothing material was reality - a notion familiar to anyone who has studied Christian Science. He says:

"There is no physical explanation for anything in the universe; all causation is Spirit and all effect spiritual. We are not living in a physical world but in a spiritual world peopled with spiritual ideas."

This is, of course, a reasonably complex and sophisticated theological vision, and one that is, if anything, even more difficult to grasp in our inherently materialist age than it would have been in 1918. In the book Holmes is radically anti-clerical as well, insisting that the path to realisation was available to us all, with absolutely no intermediary force required. He actually retained this hostility to religious organisation and institutonalisation all his life, though a huge church somehow managed to build itself up around him.
Holmes despised dogma, and he particularly despised the dogmatic churchmen of his day, who he saw as wilfuly misinterpreting scripture and trying to stop people from having a real and dynamic connection with God. He saw himself more as a man of science, and his method as genuinely scientific - hence calling his philosophy The Science of Mind. As he saw it, the metaphysician was dealing with immutable laws and principles, not the arbitrary judgements and positions more characteristic of conventional religion. He saw God as a complete reality, one who would ultimately be discovered by science. Holmes was the perfectly modern man, in love with the new ideas of his age. Science, he said, could never destroy true religion, because it "is man's true experience of Reality" (Living the Science of Mind, p. 40). Religion might peddle its false dualities and its childish fears, but ultimately science would expose us all to the truth of God.
Healing, too, is presented in this book as the ultimate outcome of a genuine understanding of God. For in our illness we are merely allowing ourselves to dwell in error, to grasp onto a false premise. The laws of the Universe must always be productive of good, and so once we abide by these laws we are healed as a matter of course. Health is our primal state of being.
Anyone familiar with The Secret will also find much in this old book that is familiar. Holmes sets out the Law of Attraction, and assures readers that what is needed is to speak into the Universe all that we require, and it will be supplied to us. Proving, of course, that The Secret is a very old idea indeed, with a substantial literature and religious culture behind it.