The Power of Positive Thinking popularity today. Norman Vincent Peale, born in 1898 in southwestern Ohio, graduated from Ohio Wesleyan University and later received his bachelor's and master's degrees in sacred theology from Boston University's School of Theology. Peale then attended Syracuse University where he received a doctor of divinity degree. After serving 10 years as a Methodist clergyman in New York, Peale became the pastor of New York City's Marble Collegiate Church where he stayed for 52 years, until his retirement in 1984. Throughout his career as a pastor, Peale wrote over 40 books, became a sought-after motivational speaker, started weekly radio and television
Magical thinking thinking: "Magical thinking is no less characteristic of our own mundane intellectual activity than it is of Zande curing practices." Bronisław Malinowski's "Magic, Science and Religion" (1954) discusses another type of magical thinking, in which words and sounds are thought to have the ability to directly affect the world. This type of wish fulfillment thinking can result in the avoidance of talking about certain subjects ("speak of the devil and he'll appear"), the use of euphemisms instead of certain words, or the belief that to know the "true name" of something gives one power over it, or that certain chants,