Mental Healing and the Birth of New Thought: How a 19th-Century Practice Shaped a Movement

Introduction

Mental healing—the practice of using thought, belief, and spiritual insight to cure physical and emotional ailments—stands as the direct progenitor of the New Thought movement. While Phineas Parkhurst Quimby (1802–1866) is widely recognized as the father of mental healing in America, it was Warren Felt Evans, a former Methodist minister, who first published extensively on the subject and gave the emerging practice a coherent philosophical framework. Evans’s six books, published between 1869 and 1886, decisively influenced the growth of New Thought, a loosely organized religious movement centered on idealism, optimism, and the power of the mind. This article traces the arc from Quimby’s clinical experiments to the institutionalization of New Thought under Emma Curtis Hopkins, highlighting the people, publications, and ideas that transformed mental healing into a lasting spiritual movement.

Historical Context

The emergence of mental healing must be understood within the broader intellectual and cultural ferment of nineteenth-century America. The transcendentalist movement, led by Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, had popularized the idea that the individual soul is directly connected to a divine Oversoul, and that intuition and inner experience trump external authority. Simultaneously, the rise of mesmerism—the theory of animal magnetism advanced by Franz Mesmer—introduced the notion that invisible forces could influence health and consciousness. Swedenborgianism, with its emphasis on correspondences between the spiritual and material worlds, further contributed to an environment ripe for metaphysical speculation.

Into this milieu stepped Phineas Parkhurst Quimby, a clockmaker and inventor from Belfast, Maine. Quimby had himself been healed of chronic illness through the mesmeric practices of Charles Poyen, and he subsequently developed a unique method of mental healing that rejected mesmerism’s reliance on magnetic fluids and instead emphasized the power of the patient’s own beliefs. Quimby’s approach was grounded in the conviction that disease is fundamentally an error of the mind, a false belief that can be corrected through spiritual understanding. He treated thousands of patients in Portland, Maine, and left behind a substantial body of manuscript writings, though he published nothing himself.

Quimby’s ideas circulated among his patients and students, including Mary Baker Eddy, who would later found Christian Science. But it was Warren Felt Evans who gave mental healing its first published voice. Evans, a graduate of Dartmouth College and a minister in the Methodist Episcopal Church, suffered a nervous breakdown and chronic disorder that resisted conventional treatment. He sought out Quimby in Portland and was healed. Deeply impressed, Evans studied Quimby’s method and then developed his own philosophical interpretation, blending transcendentalist idealism with Christian mysticism. His books, beginning with The Mental Cure (1869), laid the intellectual groundwork for what would become the New Thought movement.

Main Narrative

Phineas Quimby and the Origins of Mental Healing

Quimby’s practice was rooted in the conviction that illness is a product of false beliefs. He argued that the mind, not the body, is the primary reality, and that correcting erroneous thoughts could restore health. His method involved conversation, explanation, and a kind of spiritual counseling, rather than any physical manipulation. Quimby’s manuscripts, though unpublished, were copied and shared among his followers. They emphasized the idea that God is a principle of love and wisdom, and that the kingdom of heaven is within—a teaching that resonated with the transcendentalist ethos of the era.

Quimby’s most famous patient, Mary Baker Eddy, later claimed that his ideas were the foundation of Christian Science, though she also insisted on her own originality. Regardless of the disputes, Quimby’s influence on the broader mental healing movement is undisputed. He was the first to systematize the practice, and his patients carried his teachings far beyond Portland.

Warren Felt Evans: The First Author

Warren Felt Evans (1817–1889) was the pivotal figure in translating Quimby’s oral teachings into a published philosophy. After his healing, Evans began practicing mental healing in Salisbury, Massachusetts, and later in Claremont, New Hampshire. His first book, The Mental Cure, appeared in 1869, three years after Quimby’s death. In it, Evans argued that mental healing is not a form of suggestion or hypnosis but a spiritual discipline that aligns the individual with divine law. He drew heavily on the works of Emanuel Swedenborg, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and the German idealists, crafting a synthesis that was both practical and mystical.

Evans wrote five additional books, including Mental Medicine (1872), Soul and Body (1876), and The Divine Law of Cure (1881). These works were widely read and established the core vocabulary of New Thought: the idea that mind is causative, that disease is an illusion, and that health, happiness, and success are the natural results of right thinking. Evans’s books were not merely theoretical; they were manuals for practice, offering specific techniques for mental and spiritual healing. He is rightly called the first author of the mental healing movement, and his influence on subsequent New Thought writers, including Emma Curtis Hopkins, is profound.

The Mental Science Period

After Evans’s death in 1889, the movement entered what Horatio Dresser called the “Mental Science period.” During this time, a new generation of teachers and practitioners emerged, building on Evans’s foundations. The most important of these was Emma Curtis Hopkins (1849–1925), a former student of Mary Baker Eddy who broke away to develop her own more inclusive and intellectually expansive interpretation of mental healing. Hopkins is properly cited as the founder of the New Thought movement, as she organized the first formal institutions and trained a cadre of teachers who would go on to establish the major New Thought denominations.

Hopkins established the Emma Hopkins College of Christian Science (later renamed the Hopkins Metaphysical Association) in Chicago in the 1880s, and her journal, Christian Science (later renamed Truth), became a central organ of the movement. Her students included Charles and Myrtle Fillmore, who founded Unity; Nona Brooks and Malinda Cramer, who co-founded Divine Science; and Ernest Holmes, who later created Religious Science. Hopkins’s teaching emphasized the absolute goodness of God, the unreality of evil and disease, and the power of affirmative prayer. She also introduced the concept of “high watch” — a form of silent meditation and affirmation that became a hallmark of New Thought practice.

Institutionalization and Expansion

By the first decade of the twentieth century, New Thought had become a recognizable movement with a loose network of churches, study groups, and publications. The International New Thought Alliance (INTA) was founded in 1914, providing a unifying structure for the various branches. Key publications such as Unity Magazine, Science of Mind, and The Nautilus (edited by Elizabeth Towne) disseminated New Thought ideas to a wide readership. William Walker Atkinson, writing under various pseudonyms, produced dozens of books that popularized the movement’s core concepts, while Ralph Waldo Trine’s In Tune with the Infinite (1897) became a bestseller and brought New Thought philosophy into the mainstream.

The movement’s growth was not without controversy. Critics accused New Thought of being a shallow “prosperity gospel” or a form of autosuggestion. But its practitioners insisted that they were reviving the healing practices of early Christianity and the mystical insights of all great religions. The movement’s optimistic, practical idealism appealed to a rapidly modernizing America, and its emphasis on personal empowerment resonated with the emerging human potential movement of the twentieth century.

Why It Matters in New Thought History

Mental healing is the seed from which the entire New Thought tree grew. Without Quimby’s clinical insights and Evans’s literary articulation, the movement would likely have remained a scattered set of folk practices. Evans’s books gave New Thought its intellectual coherence, while Hopkins’s institutional genius gave it organizational form. The core New Thought belief that “mind is causative” — that our thoughts shape our reality, including our health and circumstances — is a direct inheritance from the mental healing tradition.

Today, New Thought denominations such as Unity, Divine Science, and Religious Science serve millions of members worldwide. Their practices of affirmative prayer, meditation, and spiritual healing are direct descendants of Quimby’s conversations with patients and Evans’s written instructions. Furthermore, the broader self-help and human potential movements, from Norman Vincent Peale’s The Power of Positive Thinking to contemporary mindfulness and manifestation practices, owe a profound debt to the early mental healers. Understanding this lineage helps students of New Thought history appreciate how a radical healing practice evolved into a major spiritual movement with lasting cultural impact.

Primary Sources

• Phineas Parkhurst Quimby Manuscripts (c. 1850–1865) — Quimby’s unpublished writings, including essays and case notes, which circulated among his followers and form the bedrock of mental healing philosophy.
• Warren Felt Evans, The Mental Cure (1869) — The first published book on mental healing, establishing the movement’s core principles.
• Warren Felt Evans, Mental Medicine (1872) — A more systematic exposition of Evans’s philosophy, integrating Swedenborgian and transcendentalist ideas.
• Emma Curtis Hopkins, High Mysticism (1918) — A collection of Hopkins’s teachings, offering insight into her influence on New Thought theology.
• Horatio Dresser, A History of the New Thought Movement (1919) — A foundational secondary source written by a participant, containing valuable details on Quimby, Evans, and the movement’s early years.
• The Christian Science Journal (early issues, 1880s) — Though later associated with Mary Baker Eddy, this periodical originally included contributions from mental healers, including Hopkins.