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 (self-help book) people's lives." The "Power" of the title is the power of love, the mainspring of the universe. A large portion of "The Power" describes how Byrne greets each blessed moment with overwhelming love and gratitude toward all creation. The book is based on the law of attraction and claims that positive thinking can create life-changing results such as increased happiness, health, and wealth. Byrne describes this as a fundamental universal law akin to gravity. There are observations in "The Power", such as the importance of being nice to your water. Researchers in several countries, she writes, "have discovered that when