History of New Thought : From Mind Cure to Positive Thinking and the Prosperity Gospel

Haller, John S., Jr.; Fuller, Robert C. (FRW)

ISBN 10: 0877853487 / ISBN 13: 9780877853480

Published by Swedenborg Foundation Publishers, 2012

About this Item

Seller Inventory # 19006183-n

Bibliographic Details

• Title: History of New Thought : From Mind Cure to Positive Thinking and the Prosperity Gospel
• Publisher: Swedenborg Foundation Publishers
• Publication Date: 2012
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0877853487
• ISBN 13: 9780877853480
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

Long before The Secret, writers and healers in the New Thought movement argued that the mind shapes reality. In this clear, wide‑ranging history, John S. Haller Jr. traces New Thought from its nineteenth‑century roots—Phineas P. Quimby, Emma Curtis Hopkins, and others—through William Walker Atkinson, an early popularizer of the “law of attraction,” to its imprint on modern self‑help and popular psychology.

Rather than centering on denominations, Haller follows people, practices, and ideas: mental healing, affirmations, prosperity teachings, and the movement’s dialogue with science and religion (including the influence of the Swedish scientist, mystic and theologian Emanuel Swedenborg). He shows how New Thought migrated from lectures and magazines into boardrooms, pulpits, and bestsellers, shaping a durable American optimism: the conviction that thought can transform life.

The History of New Thought is essential reading for anyone interested in American religious history, psychology, or the roots of contemporary self‑help.

About the Author

John S. Haller Jr. is an emeritus professor of history and medical humanities at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. He has written more than a dozen books on subjects ranging from race to sexuality and the history of medicine. His most recent books include Modern Spiritualism: Its Quest to Become A Science and Swedenborg’s Principles of Usefulness: Social Reform Thought from the Enlightenment to American Pragmatism. He is former editor of Caduceus: A Humanities Journal for Medicine and the Health Sciences and, until his retirement in 2008, served for eighteen years as vice president for academic affairs for Southern Illinois University.