09 - Origins.

Origins.  The New Thought movement was based on the teachings of Phineas Quimby (1802–1866), an American mesmerist and healer. Quimby had developed a belief system that included the tenet that illness originated in the mind as a consequence of erroneous beliefs and that a mind open to God's wisdom could overcome any illness.[10] His basic premise was:  The trouble is in the mind, for the body is only the house for the mind to dwell in [...] Therefore, if your mind had been deceived by some invisible enemy into a belief, you have put it into the form of a disease, with or without your knowledge. By my theory or truth, I come in contact with your enemy, and restore you to health and happiness. This I do partly mentally, and partly by talking till I correct the wrong impression and establish the Truth, and the Truth is the cure.  During the late 19th century, the metaphysical healing practices of Quimby mingled with the "Mental Science" of Warren Felt Evans, a Swedenborgian minister. Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of Christian Science, has sometimes been cited as having used Quimby as inspiration for theology. Eddy was a patient of Quimby's and shared his view that disease is rooted in a mental cause. Because of its theism, Christian Science differs from the teachings of Quimby.  In the late 19th century, New Thought was propelled by a number of spiritual thinkers and philosophers and emerged through a variety of religious denominations and churches, particularly the Unity Church and Church of Divine Science (established in 1889 and 1888, respectively), followed by Religious Science (the Institute of Religious Science and Philosophy was established in 1927). Many of its early teachers and students were women; notable among the founders of the movement were Emma Curtis Hopkins, known as the "teacher of teachers", Myrtle Fillmore, Malinda Cramer, and Nona L. Brooks; with many of its churches and community centers led by women, from the 1880s to today.  Alongside these ecclesiastical developments, others like Henry Wood in Boston, provided some of the movement’s most systematic literary foundations. In works such as The Symphony of Life, and New Thought Simplified, Wood articulated a structured philosophy of mental causation grounded in disciplined thought and constructive affirmation. His writings presented New Thought not merely as devotional religion but as a practical mental science, emphasizing inner law, character formation, and the deliberate direction of consciousness. Through these works the principles of mental discipline and self-transformation became central to the movement’s broader development.  Suggestive Therapeutics and Auto-Suggestion.  The psychological framework that later entered New Thought through the language of affirmation, mental discipline, and self-transformation can be traced to the clinical work of the nineteenth century Nancy School in France. Physicians such as Ambroise-Auguste Liébeault and Hippolyte Bernheim advanced the position that hypnosis was a normal psychological state governed by suggestion rather than by occult force.  In the United States, these clinical principles were first institutionalized at the Chicago School of Psychology, founded in 1896 by Herbert A. Parkyn. At a time when much of New Thought operated through churches and independent lecturers, the Chicago School framed mental influence in clinical and instructional terms, using the language of scientific psychology rather than theology. Its teaching emphasized that suggestion operated according to fixed mental laws that were termed the Law of Suggestion.  Emerging from the Chicago School of Psychology were figures who carried its teachings far beyond the clinic and classroom. Among the most prominent was William Walker Atkinson, who translated the school’s clinical principles of suggestive therapeutics into broader concepts of thought force, personal magnetism, and will development, presenting them as practical methods for everyday life rather than techniques confined to therapeutic treatment. Atkinson also joined with another of the school’s leading protégés, Sydney B. Flower, to establish New Thought magazine, which became the most influential journal of the movement.  In 1905, Parkyn’s Auto-Suggestion set out the first sustained, systematic presentation of self-directed suggestion in American mental science. Building on the mental science formulations advanced by his close family friend Henry Wood in Ideal Suggestion Through Mental Photography (1893), Parkyn framed repeated affirmation and disciplined thought as a deliberate method for reshaping character, health, and circumstance, supplying what became the practical backbone of New Thought’s self-empowerment ethos.  Growth.  New Thought is also largely a movement of the printed word.  Prentice Mulford, through writing Your Forces and How to Use Them, a series of essays published during 1886–1892, was pivotal in the development of New Thought thinking, including the Law of Attraction.  In 1906, William Walker Atkinson (1862–1932) wrote and published Thought Vibration or the Law of Attraction in the Thought World. Atkinson was the editor of New Thought magazine and the author of more than 100 books on an assortment of religious, spiritual, and occult topics.  The following year, Elizabeth Towne, the editor of The Nautilus, published Bruce MacLelland's book Prosperity Through Thought Force, in which he summarized the "Law of Attraction" as a New Thought principle, stating "You are what you think, not what you think you are."  These magazines were used to reach a large audience then, as others are now. Nautilus magazine, for example, had 45,000 subscribers and a total circulation of 150,000. One Unity Church magazine, Wee Wisdom, was the longest-lived children's magazine in the United States, published from 1893 until 1991. Today, New Thought magazines include Daily Word, published by Unity (Unity.org) and the Religious Science magazine; and Science of Mind, published by the Centers for Spiritual Living.  Major gatherings.  The 1915 International New Thought Alliance (INTA) conference – held in conjunction with the Panama–Pacific International Exposition, a world's fair that took place in San Francisco – featured New Thought speakers from far and wide. The PPIE organizers were so favorably impressed by the INTA convention that they declared a special "New Thought Day" at the fair and struck a commemorative bronze medal for the occasion, which was presented to the INTA delegates, led by Annie Rix Militz. By 1916, the International New Thought Alliance had encompassed many smaller groups around the world, adopting a creed known as the "Declaration of Principles". The Alliance is held together by one central teaching: that people, through the constructive use of their minds, can attain freedom, power, health, prosperity, and all good, molding their bodies as well as the circumstances of their lives. The declaration was revised in 1957, with all references to Christianity removed, and a new statement based on the "inseparable oneness of God and Man".  Wikipedia: Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License.This episode includes AI-generated content.