One Simple Idea: How Positive Thinking Reshaped Modern Life by Mitch Horowitz
Review By Pat Weeks
Mitch Horowitz
Anyone who is interested in the history of the New Thought movement will find this carefully researched book fascinating. I thoroughly enjoyed the careful and thorough history this author presents in this lively and provocative book. I highly recommend it.
The author says that New Thought is simply the belief that “our thoughts possess some kind of power, both on ourselves and on events around us.” Of course, this has meant different things to many people. One Simple Idea corrects several historical misconceptions about the positive-thinking movement and introduces us to a number of colorful and dramatic personalities—many who were influential during their time, but who are not well-known now.
I encountered many persons that I had never heard of but who were very influential in their day. For instance, he talks about Wallace Wattles (don’t you love that name?), who was a Methodist minister and socialist in the early 1900s. Wattles preached that the mind, if used properly, worked like a magnet to attract favorable circumstances. This idea was repackaged and appeared a century later in the immensely popular best seller, The Secret.
Phineas Quimby, one of the first American proponents of the possibilities of a mind-body connection, became convinced that disease occurred in the mind and could be cured there. Among the people he helped on their path to healing was Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of Christian Science. She adapted many of his ideas but minimized his influence on her (which was major) and, at one time, dismissed him as a mere “mesmerist.”
Hororitz delves into a wide range of personalities in the history of the New Thought Movement, that began in the early 1800s. In its early years, New Thought was dominated by progressives and political radicals, suffragettes, and other free thinkers . The author discusses almost every contributor to the movement—the famous and infamous and the forgotten. The cast of characters in this excellent book includes Napoleon Hill and Norman Vincent Peale, whose books and influence have touched the lives of tens of millions across the world. “ We learn about Prentice Mulford who expanded the influence of the mind on “wealth-building potential;” Dale Carnegie who used the ideas of positive thought in his book about influencing people; and Alcoholics Anonymous founders Bill Wilson and Bob Smith, who introduced the concept of a “higher power” and a spiritual solution to addiction.
I especially enjoyed the section of the book about the Fillmores and the development of the Unity movement. The author goes into detail about their childhood backgrounds and how they met. He shows how their publishing operations, distance-prayer ministry, radio broadcasts, and their magazines and pamphlets were some of the first use of the mass media to spread a particular message. He said, “This was the first full-scale realization of the modern media ministry, built on positive-thinking ideas.”
The author notes how the pioneers of the positive-thinking movement explored the possibilities and capacity of our psyches “earlier than any scientists, theologians, or psychologists of the modern industrialized age. He feels that the founders of New Thought and affirmative thinking created a fresh means of viewing life, “one that was rough and incomplete, rife with mistakes and dead ends, but also filled with possibility and practical application.”