One Simple Idea: How Positive Thinking Reshaped Modern Life

Horowitz, Mitch. One Simple Idea: How Positive Thinking Reshaped Modern Life. New York: Crown, 2014.

The simple idea is that positive thinking works, and the author assigns Christian Science a prominent place in the development of American affirmative-thinking (his term) philosophical systems. Although the author’s claims could be better documented, he provides a useful guide to dozens of mind-healing and positive thinking schemes that have attracted Americans from the mid-19^th century to today. He acknowledges Mary Baker Eddy’s interest in Phineas P. Quimby (19^th-century mesmerist) and her debt to him during a prolonged time of illness, but it is Horowitz’s viewpoint that “Quimby was not the covert founder of Christian Science” (45). Horowitz describes Eddy as founder of a ‘strict church,’ which caused some independent-minded followers to branch off from Christian Science. Consequently, Eddy “unintentionally created a cohort of ardent curious, dedicated—and churchless—experimenters … a brigade of spiritual freethinkers” (52) who became New Thought leaders who in turn gave rise to a dizzying sequence of self-improvement, healing, and prosperity and success movements. Horowitz argues that even if these systems and methods are suspect, “something has to only be a little bit true to change everything” (275). His final claim is that New Thought and positive thinking schemes are at least a little bit true.

ISBN-10: 1510707905
ISBN-13 (Softcover): 978-1510707900

See also annotations:

“Christian Science and the Puritan Tradition” by Thomas C. Johnsen

“New Thought’s Prosperity Theology and its Influence on American Ideas of Success” by Dawn Hutchinson

“Christian Science and its Christian Origin” by Shirley Paulson