Group 2

Our discussion during the last class began to focus on the aspect of religion and a ‘mind over body’.  The cultural mixture of the New Thought movement and a splash of Calvinist religious thinking create an interesting mentality.

1.      It seems that the ideas about being able to ‘cure’ certain diseases like neurasthenia with positive thought could have worked. However, with such a deeply engrained Calvinist mentality, those who sought positive thought only became worse because of a kind of religious guilt….

2.      How does Mrs. Ehrenreich feel about the New Thought movement and its approach to alleviating symptoms of an almost imagined ‘disease’ during the early to mid-1800s?