Modern systems: the author

Joseph Murphy:
life, book, method

Joseph Murphy (1898-1981) was an Irish-born New Thought minister whose book The Power of Your Subconscious Mind (1963) taught that thoughts you repeat and believe shape your life. Below: the dates, the research and a five-minute evening practice.

Who was Joseph Murphy?

Joseph Murphy (1898-1981) was an Irish emigrant of 1922 who became a New Thought minister, led a Divine Science congregation in Los Angeles from about 1949 and died in Laguna Hills, California, in 1981.

Divine Science is a New Thought church begun by Malinda Cramer in San Francisco in 1888, with a Denver branch under Nona Brooks (Wikipedia); like other New Thought churches, it teaches that right thinking and prayer can heal. Murphy began his New Thought ministry in a sister movement, Religious Science: a 1946 book of his in the Library of Congress, Wheels of Truth, was issued by the Church of Religious Science in Rochester, New York (LoC).

What can be checked about his life, and what comes from biographies?

Library authority files fix the frame: the Library of Congress lists him as “Murphy, Joseph, 1898-1981”, and the German National Library (GND) gives 20 May 1898, 16 December 1981, Laguna Hills, and emigration to the USA in 1922.

The Spanish National Library dates his birth to 1891. The rest of the usual story comes from a Divine Science ministers’ association (DSMA), his estate’s licensee (JMW Group, 2014) and Wikipedia, which has flagged its own sources as unreliable since 2019, and they disagree.

Wikipedia says he left the Jesuits before ordination; the DSMA and the Catholic Herald say he was ordained a priest. Wikipedia calls Thomas Troward (died 1916) his mentor, though Troward died six years before Murphy reached America. A doctorate from the University of Southern California, meetings with Edison and Einstein, “millions” of copies in seventeen languages: we found no record for any of them.

When was The Power of Your Subconscious Mind published, and in how many editions?

The Power of Your Subconscious Mind first appeared in 1963 from Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey (224 pages); no full count of editions exists, but on 10 November 2026 the Library of Congress held 23 records of it under his name. Records we opened:

The Polish National Library holds six records of this translation (1996-2011); since 2012 Ewa Westwalewicz-Mogilska’s new translation from English (later with Arthur R. Pell’s revisions) has been reprinted to 2025. No audited sales exist; Penguin Random House says “one of the bestselling self-help books of all time”, without a figure.

How is Joseph Murphy connected to Neville Goddard and Abdullah?

Murphy and Neville Goddard (1905-1972) were near contemporaries who both, by their own accounts, studied in New York with a teacher called Abdullah.

Neville put Abdullah in print in 1954, with a lesson dated 1933. Murphy’s account is in an interview book, Bernard Cantin’s Joseph Murphy se raconte (1987), which Wikipedia’s Neville Goddard article cites and we have not seen; the DSMA biography adds that he met Abdullah while working as a pharmacist. The Power of Your Subconscious Mind does not name him. A 1929 ordination certificate signed “Abdoullah”, tied to Neville, is known to us only from Wikipedia; no identification is confirmed.

The shared core, imagining the result as already real, best when drowsy, is what Neville called the law of assumption; Murphy put it in the language of early suggestion psychology (Coué, Baudouin) and named health and wealth outright. On the line from the Hermetica to today (Modern systems), both belong to American New Thought, not to Hermetism.

What did Joseph Murphy teach?

Murphy taught that the conscious mind chooses and the subconscious mind accepts whatever it is given and brings it about, so you should feed it chosen thoughts by repetition, belief and mental pictures, best when drowsy. In his own images and terms (all from the 1963 book):

• The garden. “You are a gardener”, sowing thoughts as seeds; the subconscious is soil that grows good or bad seed alike.
• The ship. The conscious mind is the captain; the subconscious is the engine-room crew, which obeys without asking where the ship is going.
• Belief. “The law of life is the law of belief”, in every religion alike.
• Scientific prayer. Conscious and subconscious mind working together “for a specific purpose”, also called prayer therapy.
• Before sleep. Condense the wish into a few words and repeat them “as a lullaby” while falling asleep (he credits Charles Baudouin), or run a “mental movie” of the result.

He also makes claims of fact. In the preface he writes that over forty-two years earlier he “resolved a malignancy”, a sarcoma, through the healing power of his subconscious mind (a later chapter says “of the skin”); his chapters report healed illnesses, found wills and windfalls; “Sleep and Grow Rich” promises wealth “in avalanches of abundance”. These are his unchecked reports and promises, not facts.

Does Murphy’s method work? What research supports

Parts of Murphy’s method have support in a weaker form: self-suggestion can tint perception, rehearsing steps helps, and sleep favours what you expect to need. Repeated positive statements can backfire; nothing supports the health and wealth promises.

• Affirmations (Wood, Perunovic and Lee, 2009). A survey and two experiments: repeating “I’m a lovable person” left those low in self-esteem feeling worse and helped those high in it only a little (abstract read).
• Self-affirmation is a different thing: you write about values that matter to you, not a wish (Cohen and Sherman, 2014). Across 144 tests it had small effects on accepting health advice, intentions and behaviour, d = 0.14 to 0.32 (Epton and colleagues, 2015).
• Limits. The face study measured perception; the to-do list study had 57 young adults; the placebo review (7 trials, 703 people with back or knee pain) rated the self-reported gains as low-certainty evidence. None shows a thought changing outside events.

How do you try Murphy’s bedtime method in five minutes?

Keep Murphy’s timing, the drowsy minutes before sleep, but replace the wish-phrase with a rehearsal of tomorrow’s first step, the form that research on planning and sleep supports. Steps 2 and 3 carry the weight.

1. Pick one aim (30 seconds). Something partly in your control that you can move tomorrow.
2. Write a specific to-do line (2 minutes). First step, time, place. In one lab study, more specific lists went with faster sleep (2018).
3. Name the snag (1 minute). Write “If [obstacle], then I [action]” under the to-do line.
4. One line you can believe (30 seconds). Not “I am rich”, but “I can do the first twenty minutes”.
5. Lights out: one short film (1 minute). Drowsy, watch yourself do the first step, seen from inside. Then let it go.

Example.
Aim: send the grant application by Friday.
To-do: tomorrow 8:30, kitchen table, write the budget paragraph.
If I open email first, then I close it and start the timer.
Line: I can do the first twenty minutes.
Film: coffee, laptop open, typing the first figure.

Why it should help. Our design, not a tested package: the list offloads tomorrow, the film rehearses a process, and if-then plans helped across 94 tests, d = 0.65 (Gollwitzer and Sheeran, 2006) and less across 642 tests, d = 0.36 (Sheeran and colleagues, 2024). More on human agency.

Where it stops. It prepares one step; it makes nothing happen. If rehearsing keeps you awake, write the thought down and stop.

What does this not promise?

Murphy’s method, in his version or ours, does not promise health, money, a partner or any change in outside events; at most it helps you aim, plan, start and fall asleep with less on your mind.

• Not a treatment. If you are ill, see a doctor; prayer or suggestion may go alongside treatment, never instead of it. If you feel low most days or cannot sleep for weeks, talk to a doctor or a licensed therapist.
• Not a verdict on you. If something does not happen, you did not “believe wrong”; outcomes also depend on other people and chance.
• Not a ruling on faith. We describe his church and his reading of prayer without endorsing or mocking either.

Key facts

Born	20 May 1898, Ireland; emigrated to the US 1922
Church	Divine Science, Los Angeles, from 1949 or 1950
Main book	The Power of Your Subconscious Mind, Prentice-Hall, 1963
Died	16 December 1981, Laguna Hills, California
Teacher he named	Abdullah, by his own account; identity unconfirmed
Research	Rehearsing steps helps; repeated positive statements can backfire
Checked	10 November 2026

Fair questions

Who was Joseph Murphy?

An Irish-born New Thought minister (1898-1981) who emigrated to the United States in 1922, led a Divine Science church in Los Angeles from about 1949 and wrote The Power of Your Subconscious Mind (1963). He died in Laguna Hills, California.

When was The Power of Your Subconscious Mind published?

In 1963, by Prentice-Hall in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey (Library of Congress 63014731). It has been reprinted many times, for example by Tarcher/Penguin and Dover in 2010, and appeared in Polish as Potęga podświadomości in 1996.

Did Joseph Murphy know Neville Goddard?

We found no document of the two meeting. Both said they studied in New York with a teacher called Abdullah: Neville in print in 1954 (dating a lesson to 1933), Murphy in a 1987 interview book cited by Wikipedia’s Neville Goddard article, which we have not seen.

Does The Power of Your Subconscious Mind work?

Partly, in a narrower form. Self-suggestion can tint perception and rehearsing the steps toward a goal helps, but repeated positive statements made low self-esteem people feel worse in a 2009 study, and no study supports his promises of healing or wealth.

What is Joseph Murphy's technique before sleep?

He advised condensing a wish into a few words and repeating them like a lullaby while drowsy, or running a mental movie of the result. A form with more research behind it is to rehearse tomorrow's first step and write a specific plan.

Sources & further reading

• Joseph Murphy, The Power of Your Subconscious Mind (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1963), LoC record, quoted from a later reprint of the 1963 text; reprints Tarcher 2010, Dover 2010 and Prentice Hall Press 2011.
• Library of Congress record 46015776 (Wheels of Truth, Rochester: Church of Religious Science, 1946).
• Deutsche Nationalbibliothek, GND authority record 115690107 (dates, Laguna Hills, emigration 1922).
• Biblioteka Narodowa, Potęga podświadomości, Warsaw 1996 and later records; Biblioteca Nacional de España, El poder de su mente subconsciente, 2000.
• Divine Science Ministers Association, “Rev. Dr. Joseph Murphy”, church biography.
• JMW Group (Murphy’s estate licensee), biography, 2014, archived.
• Wikipedia, Joseph Murphy (writer), Neville Goddard and Church of Divine Science, read 10 November 2026; manifest, Cantin 1987 and the 1929 certificate unseen.
• Charles Coulombe, “Heretic of the week: Joseph Murphy”, Catholic Herald, 2019.
• Studies linked in the text: Psychological Science, 2009; Annual Review of Psychology, 2014; Health Psychology, 2015; Cognition, 2025; American Psychologist, 1998; Journal of Neuroscience, 2011; JEP: General, 2018; Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 2006 (open copy); European Review of Social Psychology, 2024 (open copy); Scientific Reports, 2025. Abstracts read; the 2024 meta-analysis in full.