The Power of Positive Thinking Peale's work in an article in "The Nation" dated May 7, 1955. He compares Peale's message in "The Power of Positive Thinking" to that of hypnosis, writing that "self knowledge, in Mr. Peale's understanding, is unequivocally bad; self hypnosis is good." Murphy explains that such repeated hypnosis defeats an individual's self-motivation, sense of reality, and ability to think critically. He describes Peale's understanding of the mind as inaccurate and his description of the workings of the mind as deceptively simplistic and false. Murphy states that if man's unconscious “can be conceptualized merely as a container for a small number of
The Power of Positive Thinking “reacted to the image of harshness with flight rather than competitive fight.” Meyer later quotes Peale as saying, “No man, however resourceful or pugnacious, is a match for so great an adversary as a hostile world. He is at best a puny and impotent creature quite at the mercy of the cosmic and social forces in the midst of which he dwells." Meyer argues that positive thinking is disempowering to the individual; for, Peale presents individuals as weak compared to the “hostile world” with only the help of his techniques to overcome negative circumstances. In addition, Meyer also questions the