Each Mind a Kingdom: American Women, Sexual Purity, and the New Thought Movement, 1875-1920

by Beryl Satter

The New Thought Movement was an enormously popular late nineteenth-century spiritual movement led largely by and for women. Mary Baker Eddy's Christian Science is but one example of the fascinating range of these groups, which advocated a belief in mind over matter and espoused women's spiritual ability to purify the world. This work is the first to uncover the cultural implications of New Thought, embedding it in the intellectual traditions of nineteenth-century America, and illuminating its connections with the self-help and New Age enthusiasms of our own fin-de-siècle.

Beryl Satter examines New Thought in all its complexity, presenting along the way a captivating cast of characters. In lively and accessible prose, she introduces the people, the institutions, the texts, and the ideas that comprised the New Thought movement. This fascinating social and intellectual history explores the complex relationships among social reform, alternative religion, medicine, and psychology which persist to this day.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, United States, Religion

394 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1999

Reviews

[Mir · Rating 4 out of 5]

This may sound like a narrow topic, a micro-history, but it was an incredibly important intellectual influence on American culture, with ideas that persist in disparate forums such as Alcoholics Anonymous, the New Age Movement, Positive Thinking, self-help, and popular psychology.

In the generation after its inception by Mary Baker Eddy (we're not getting into Quimby and Mesmer and how earlier pseudosciences led to Christian Science) New Thought took two directions, which can be loosely characterized as "desires should be expressed" and "desires should be denied." Both positions shared a common belief that the human mind was powerful, powerful enough to change the material world, almost God-like; therefore the mind needed to be controlled. For some reason (which I didn't quite grasp and can't be bothered to try to read more about right now) Eddy thought the best first step was for people to train themselves to ignore the evidence of their senses, which she thought were misleading, and focus on "spiritual reality." For instance, focusing on the spiritual reality of being well instead of the material evidence that one was ill. Thought-as-power.

Getting back to expression vs. suppression of desire. This was important in the historical context of the American shift to consumer capitalism. The author says that by encouraging Americans to both hold on to and let go of their egos, New Thought literature helped Americans manage the conflicting impulses that were roused by the transition from producer capitalism (with its calls for self-denail and strenuosity) to consumer capitalism (with its encouragement of spending and self-gratification). My passing thought: this seems similar to how the same demographics today are blamed for both not improving their personal finances through saving AND for not spending enough to support businesses/the economy.

New Thought also influenced the debate, in the context of psychology, over what constituted the ideal man and the ideal woman? Was society better served by male (desiring, rational, competitive. aggressive) qualities or female (spiritual, altruistic, virtuous) qualities? It goes almost without saying that in addition to gender essentialism, the society being considering was default Anglo-Saxon and middle class -- as was the membership and most of the readership of this material.

On a final note, ideas about the power of the individual to influence his or her material existence, health, state of mind, etc also play into arguments against welfare and other communal goods and social networks.

So: and excellent study of important and influential movements. It shed light on certain elements of modern (especially American) culture. That said, I don't know that it's necessary to read the whole thing unless this is a subject you're really interested in.


There are several pages of recommended primary and secondary sources. Here are a few suggestions for further reading:
Tokology: A Book For Every Woman (a popular 19th century text on women's health, marriage, and sex.)
The Positive Thinkers
The Varieties of Religious Experience
The Wisdom of Earnest Holmes: The Science of Mind, Creative Mind and Success, Creative Mind

[Mel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Each Mind a Kingdom is an intellectual and cultural history in which Satter draws on primary and secondary sources in New Thought, Christian Science, and nineteenth and early-twentieth century United States history to examine how the meanings attached to mind, matter, self, and desire morph within New Thought in the context of social Darwinist debates about the “evolutionary progress” of the Anglo-Saxon race and “ideal” womanhood and manhood. Her methodology includes close readings of memoirs, articles, novels, and personal correspondence produced by prominent New Thought leaders. This is a critical intervention in the historiography in that Satter is challenging dominant accounts of New Thought as a “fundamentally economic” religious movement that helped Americans deal with the transition from producer capitalism to consumer capitalism at the turn of the twentieth century. These dominant accounts range from A. Whitney Griswold’s “New Thought: A Cult of Success” (1934) to more recent scholarship such as Gail Thain Parker’s Mind Cure in New England (1973), and they neglect the movement’s early years. In contrast, Satter focuses on the period 1870 to 1920 and argues on the basis of her analysis of this period’s concerns about “racialized, gendered selfhood” that changes in New Thought after the turn of the twentieth century are better understood as the ascendance of pro-desire attitudes that had been present from the beginning of the movement, rather than as an abrupt (and crassly motivated) shift from a healing to a prosperity-focused movement.

[Chandra Powers Wersch · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really benefited from reading this book as I aim to strengthen my lectures on the social purity movement, Progressives, and Victorian era gender history. This book is a staple for anyone who studies American gender/women's history. My favorite chapter was on neurasthenia and "American nervousness." She uses literature and medical studies as the bulk of her evidence, and I thoroughly enjoyed her approach. I appreciated how she weaved the suffragists, together with Social Gospel Christians & "liberal Protestants," with her chapter on neurasthenia, and then ending with the generations of Progressives and the rise of consumer culture in the early 1900s. I'm definitely assigning sections of this book to my students. Satter's writing is readable (a good balance between formal academic and conversational), energetic, and clear.

[Ernie · Rating 3 out of 5]

While I came to this book not particularly interested in nor knowledgeable about New Thought/Christian Science, Satter made the topic quite interesting, and succeeded in capturing the complexity of a wide-ranging movement while also situating it within the context of American fin-de-siécle culture. Her linkage of the movement with gender studies was particularly interesting, as were her suggestive readings of New Thought's broad impact on early 20th century mainstream American culture.

[Stefanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting read on the Christian Science movement and the New Thought Movement. Polar opposite thinking to today's feminist ideology. Created a very interesting discussion at my book club.