New Thought

Quimby and mind-based healing in Maine

Phineas Parkhurst Quimby was born in Lebanon, New Hampshire, in 1802, grew up in Belfast, Maine, and died there on January 16, 1866. A biographical sketch published in 1895 reports that he began experimenting with mesmerism around 1838, then concluded that a mesmerized subject's diagnoses reflected what the patient or bystanders already believed. He gave up mesmerism and relied on conversation and explanation, and practiced in Portland from 1859.

Quimby is described in these sources as holding that disease was an error of belief rather than an independent reality, summed up in a phrase quoted by his editor: disease is a deranged state of mind whose cause lies in belief. Both sources were produced by members of the Dresser family, who were followers of Quimby, so their account of his teaching and of his influence on others is partisan and should be weighed accordingly.

Eddy and the founding of Christian Science

Mary Baker Eddy visited Quimby's Portland clinic in 1862. After a fall in 1866 she credited Bible reading and spiritual insight for her recovery, which the church dates as the discovery of Christian Science. Her textbook Science and Health appeared in 1875, a church was organized in Boston in 1879, and the Christian Science Monitor followed in 1908.

Whether Eddy drew on Quimby has been disputed since 1883, when Julius Dresser and another former associate argued that Quimby was the true founder. One reference entry treats the question as controversial and argues that Quimby's methods rested on mesmerism while Eddy's rested on Christianity. A research overview likewise presents Christian Science as a distinct religion that shared roots in mental healing.

Hopkins and the later branches

Emma Curtis Hopkins, described as one of Eddy's most promising students, left in 1884 and became a founder of what came to be called New Thought. Her students included Malinda Cramer, who founded the Home College of Divine Science in San Francisco in 1888 and the International Divine Science Association in 1892, and Ernest Holmes, who published The Science of Mind in 1926 and founded an institute in 1927.

Unity describes its own founding as taking place in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1889, when Charles and Myrtle Fillmore began publishing after Myrtle Fillmore reported using prayer and affirmations in relation to long-term ailments. Unity's archive page describes the movement as growing out of New Thought, which it calls a successor to Transcendentalism. These are the movement's own accounts and are not independent verification of the healing claims.

Organization and consolidation

Religious Science developed a denomination in 1949, with later organizational branches in 1953 to 1954, 1972 and the 1990s, before the two main branches reunited in 2012 as the Centers for Spiritual Living. The sources reviewed do not give a founding date for the International New Thought Alliance, so its early history is not described here.

New Thought as an umbrella name

New Thought is described as a mental-healing movement that began in the United States in the 1800s, and a research overview states that Religious Science grew out of it. The label covers separate organizations rather than a single church, and the sources reviewed do not date when the name itself came into use, so no date is given here.

The International New Thought Alliance, which describes itself as incorporated in the District of Columbia as a religious not-for-profit organization, publishes a Declaration of Principles. That document is one body's statement of shared belief, and the branches differ in vocabulary and polity.

Christian Science compared with New Thought

Christian Science is a separate church with its own textbook and structure. A research overview describes it as a distinct religion whose adherents hold that reality is wholly spiritual, that God as divine Mind cannot create evil or matter, and that disease arises from a false belief in a material universe. The same source distinguishes it from the broader mind-over-matter approach sometimes called Quimbyism.

Eddy and her followers are not described in the sources reviewed as part of the later New Thought organizations. The reference entry instead records that former students who left her movement became leaders in New Thought, which makes the relationship one of common roots and later separation.

Terms used by the branches

Religious Science uses the name Science of Mind for its core text and philosophy, and its practitioners offer what it calls Spiritual Mind Treatment, a form of affirmative prayer. Unity speaks of affirmations and the creative power of thoughts among its Five Principles. Divine Science is used by a separate line of churches, one of which describes God as the nature of all being.

How the branches are organized

Unity describes more than 600 study groups and churches that grew from the Fillmores' students, with headquarters at Unity Village, Missouri, which was incorporated in 1953. The Centers for Spiritual Living describes more than 400 spiritual communities in 30 countries, teaching a New Thought philosophy based on Science of Mind.

Divine Science is represented in the sources reviewed by one local church, which gives its own account of the movement's founding by Nona Brooks and others in 1887 and the incorporation of a Denver college in 1898, and which offers a course of study. The Centers for Spiritual Living operates a School of Spiritual Leadership whose graduates earn the title Science of Mind and Spirit Minister. The sources reviewed describe no independent accreditation of these titles.

Practices associated with the movement

Adherents describe prayer, meditation, affirmative prayer and Spiritual Mind Treatment as central. In Religious Science, Spiritual Mind Treatment is described as having five named stages, and practitioners and ministers give treatments and guide others. Healing practices are said to include prayer, meditation and traditional medicine, which means that at least one branch describes its practice as used alongside conventional care.

Machipedia has practice pages tagged as connected to this tradition, including Manifestation and Numerology. The sources reviewed for this page document the movement's affirmation and prayer practices but do not document a link between New Thought and numerology.

Healing, prosperity and harmony

The Declaration of Principles states that people are spiritual beings in a spiritual universe governed by spiritual law, through which healing, prosperity and harmony are possible, and that mental states shape lived experience. Unity's own pages describe the power of thought and prayer to bring about healing, including mind over body. These are statements of belief by the organizations.

Religious Science teaches that positive thought and affirmative prayer promote healing and a full, harmonious life. A Divine Science church states that all change starts in the mind and shows up as personal experience through cause and effect, and that prayer is about accepting what is already given rather than asking for more.

Spiritual purposes

Beyond health and prosperity, the Declaration of Principles lists unconditional love, service and peace as the highest expression of spiritual principles, and holds that the kingdom of heaven can be realized in the present. Unity and the Centers for Spiritual Living describe themselves as drawing on teachings from many faiths and as welcoming people of all paths.

Historical scholarship

The origin of Christian Science and its relation to Quimby remain debated in the sources reviewed, with partisan accounts on both sides and reference works treating the question as unsettled. The sources here do not provide a scholarly study of New Thought as a whole, such as a sociological survey of membership or a history of the name, so those topics are not covered.

Clinical research on the movement

No controlled study of New Thought healing, affirmative prayer as taught by these groups, or the law of attraction was found. Web searches for randomized trials of New Thought, the law of attraction and manifestation returned none, and direct searches of the medical literature database could not be completed in this review. Absence of studies is not evidence of effect or of harm.

Related findings in psychology

A 2009 set of experiments by Wood and colleagues tested repeating a positive self-statement, such as a person describing themselves as lovable. Participants with low self-esteem felt worse after repeating it or thinking about how it was true than those who did neither, while participants with high self-esteem felt somewhat better, though the benefit was limited. Only the abstract was read for this review.

Self-affirmation research is a separate topic, in which people reflect on personal values. In one imaging study of sedentary adults, 67 adults were reported, and those who affirmed their top-ranked value showed more activity in reward-related brain regions than controls. The authors note a small sample, confounding with value content and the need for further between-subjects work, and the study does not test New Thought affirmations.

A review by Oettingen and Schwörer reports that simply fantasizing about a desired future leads to weak problem solving and little change, whereas mental contrasting, which pairs the desired future with obstacles, leads to better problem solving. This research concerns goal setting and does not evaluate the claim that thought shapes external events.

Reliance on prayer instead of medical care

A 1998 review in Pediatrics examined deaths of children in families that used faith healing instead of medical care. It included 172 children who died between 1975 and 1995, estimated that 140 had more than 90 percent expected survival with medical care, and concluded that preventable deaths were substantial. The abstract concerns faith healing in general and does not name denominations, so it should not be attributed to any group named on this page.

A research overview of Christian Science states that its members are accepted as having the right to refuse treatment for themselves and that disputes over parents declining medical care for children remain a major concern. By contrast, Religious Science is described as including traditional medicine among its healing practices. The sources reviewed do not report harms specific to Unity or Divine Science.

Psychological cautions

The experiments on positive self-statements found that people with low self-esteem felt worse after repeating them. That result concerns one lab task and does not show that prayer or affirmations taught in religious settings have the same effect, but it supports caution for anyone who is distressed. Anyone with a medical or mental health condition may wish to continue care alongside spiritual practice and not delay it.

Training and cultural attribution

No sources reviewed report cost, coercion or abuse in connection with these groups, and that absence is not evidence either way. Unity and the Centers for Spiritual Living describe drawing on teachings from many faith traditions, and the sources reviewed do not document how those teachings were adopted. Each organization speaks only for its own members, and the International New Thought Alliance's declaration is a statement of one body.