Overview
Joseph Murphy explores how the subconscious mind influences every aspect of our lives and presents techniques to reprogram deeply held beliefs.
Murphy, a Divine Science minister trained in both Catholic and New Thought traditions, published The Power of Your Subconscious Mind in 1963. The book was an immediate hit and has sold tens of millions of copies, rooted in the New Thought tradition that the subconscious mind responds literally to what it is told and can reshape outcomes through belief. The tradition predates modern psychology and sits uneasily with it.
Key Ideas
The subconscious is literal
It accepts whatever you habitually think as truth and works to manifest those beliefs.
Sleep programming
The period before sleep is powerful for imprinting new ideas on the subconscious.
Belief precedes evidence
You must first believe in the possibility before your subconscious will organize to achieve it.
Who should read this
Readers drawn to the New Thought tradition or curious about its influence on the modern law-of-attraction canon. The book is a primary source for ideas that appear in later popular works including The Secret and countless manifestation coaches.
Who might skip it
Skip if you want evidence-based psychology. Murphy's claims about the subconscious are not psychology in any scientific sense, and the book's case studies often read as unfalsifiable. Skip also if the religious-spiritual register puts you off; Murphy writes in a Christian-adjacent voice throughout.
The verdict
A foundational text of modern manifestation culture, but not a useful primary source for understanding the mind. What Murphy calls the subconscious is partly memory, partly unconscious processing, and partly wishful thinking, and the book doesn't distinguish. Historically interesting, practically unreliable.
"Just keep your conscious mind busy with expectation of the best."
— Joseph Murphy, The Power of Your Subconscious Mind
If you liked this
The Science of Getting Rich by Wallace Wattles for the older root text. For evidence-based equivalents, look at Daniel Kahneman or Roy Baumeister.