Norman Vincent Peale's Critics: Albert Ellis, a Con Man Charge and Heresy

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In October 1952 Norman Vincent Peale, born in southwestern Ohio in 1898, published The Power of Positive Thinking. It spent 186 weeks on the bestseller list, 48 of them at number one, sold 5 million copies and was translated into more than 40 languages. Peale held degrees from Ohio Wesleyan, Boston University and Syracuse, and led New York's Marble Collegiate Church for 53 years until 1984. With his wife Ruth Stafford Peale he wrote more than 40 books, ran radio and television programs, co-founded Guideposts and organized the American Foundation of Religion and Psychiatry. The episode ties the book's success to Cold War anxiety, suburban isolation and corporate life, and to his step-by-step method of replacing negative thoughts and visualizing success.

The backlash came from two sides. Psychiatrist R.C. Murphy and psychologist Albert Ellis compared his repetitive affirmations to dangerous self-hypnosis, Martin Seligman later ridiculed upbeat statements made without evidence, and Harvard scholar Donald Meyer called Peale a confidence man who made people subservient. Theologians John M. Krumm and Edmund Fuller called his work heretical, accusing him of turning God into a vending machine. None of it slowed him: Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon sought his counsel, Billy Graham praised him, and Robert Schuller drew heavily on his ideas.

• His books relied on anonymous case studies, such as an unnamed business executive, a trapeze artist and an alcoholic, which critics said could not be verified.
• Fred and Mary Anne Trump traveled from Queens to hear him preach, and Peale officiated Donald Trump's first wedding.
• Trump credited positive thinking with helping him survive his business's billion-dollar debt crisis in 1990.
• Texan Helen Hadsell read the book in 1959 and claimed she went on to win every promotional contest she entered.
• Baseball player George Foster credited Peale's visualization methods, and the episode traces the villain Maxwell Lord in the 2020 film Wonder Woman 1984 back to Peale's archetype.