Norman Vincent Peale

Dr. Norman Vincent Peale was a minister and author (most notably of The Power of Positive Thinking) and a progenitor of the theory of "positive thinking".

Peale and Smiley Blanton, a psychoanalyst, established a religio-psychiatric outpatient clinic next door to the church. The two men wrote books together, notably Faith Is the Answer: A Psychiatrist and a Pastor Discuss Your Problems (1940). The book was written in alternating chapters, with Blanton writing one chapter, then Peale, and so on. Blanton espoused no particular religious point of view in his chapters. In 1951 this clinic of psychotherapy and religion grew into the American Foundation of Religion and Psychiatry, with Peale serving as president and Blanton as executive director. Blanton handled difficult psychiatric cases and Peale, who had no mental health credentials, handled religious issues.
When Peale came under heavy criticism from the mental health community for his controversial book "The Power of Positive Thinking," (1952) Blanton distanced himself from Peale and refused to endorse the book. Blanton did not allow Peale to use his name in "The Power of Positive Thinking," would not publicly endorse the book, and declined to defend Peale publicly when he came under criticism. As scholar Donald Meyer describes it: "Peale evidently imagined that he marched with Blanton in their joint labors in the Religio-psychiatric Institute. This was not exactly so."[2]:266 Meyer notes that Blanton's own book, "Love or Perish, (1956), "contrasted so distinctly at so many points with the Peale evangel," of "positive thinking" that these works had virtually nothing in common