The Positive Thinkers: Popular Religious Psychology from Mary Baker Eddy to Norman Vincent Peale

The Positive Thinkers: Popular Religious Psychology from Mary Baker Eddy to Norman Vincent Peale (1988 [1965])
By Donald Meyer

Synopsis: This book is an examination of popular psychology and its intersection with health, wealth, and peace of mind. It is divided into three parts: Part One: Theology as Psychology (nineteenth-century life brings increased fragmentation/compartmentalization; rise of nervousness brought on by modern life; Mary Baker Eddy's mind cure Christian Science of the 1880s as feminine way of passively making best of situation via attempt to "think the thoughts of God;" ideal was for one whole mind, a total coherence of environment, a giving up of one's self); Part Two: Peace in the System: Sociology as Psychology (rise of business culture and rise of scientific efficiency and rational order/mechanization, Taylorism, rise of managerial elite and organizational psychology; desire for happy and smoothly-running everything); Part Three: Peace in Peace: Psychology as Psychology (liberal Protestantism's loss of touch with sensuality/art; obsession with work ethic; rise of Norman Vincent Peale and mass services exalting "positive thinking"). Although the overall argument is a bit unclear, one interesting point I got out of it is that self-help culture and positive thinking are logical extensions of Protestantism's rejection of all things hierarchical (as embodied by their rejection of religious authority); the only real power lies within the individual. This might pave way for religious Right.

Interesting Specifics:

1881 = George Beard's American Nervousness

The rise of clean houses as a value represented the need for something to do (49).

"Mind cure rejected personality" (114). Personality represented fragmentation and lack of unity with the big picture.

Interacts With:

Again, one of the main points is that the modern era caused increased compartmentalization/fragmentation. Was there ever a moment in the 19th century in which people said, Fuck this holism, let's compartmentalize things!?
Also interacts with anything that focuses on the primacy of the individual. I can honestly also seem some connection to Storming Heaven with it's focus on the enlightening of the individual; really falls in line with transcendentalists as well. Hmm, if U.S. had remained homogeneous for longer, I wonder if there would have been enough momentum to create a strong community-based culture that could have withstood the individualistic competition of capitalism.. Because it really was with the influx of different kinds of people that the colonists were forced to use pluralism as their new ideal (not that pluralism is bad, but if pluralism - in the guise of acceptance of differences - had come along a little later, when a more stable community-based society had taken root, I wonder if we would be such an individual-focused society. Hmm.)
Warning: I skimmed this book pretty quickly.