When I was in 1st grade, there was a sentence written on the classroom wall: “Shoot for the moon, even if you miss you’ll land among the stars.” For the longest time, I thought this was just a generic quote. To my surprise, it’s actually by Norman Vincent Peale.
A Protestant clergyman, Peale became famous for selling positive thinking and relentless self-confidence. Known as “God’s salesman,” he spread his message through evangelical Christianity. His book The Power of Positive Thinking (1952) quickly became one of the bestselling self-help guides of all time.
Today, his words are still common in American classrooms and beyond. “Expect great things and great things will come,” reads one quote. “Empty pockets never held anyone back, only empty heads and empty hearts can do that,” reads another.
Peale was a confidant of many American elites in his long career. Five U.S. Presidents knew him personally and spoke highly of him.1 Practically all the most popular televangelists—like Billy Graham, Jerry Falwell, Robert Schuller, and Pat Robertson—saw themselves as his successor.2
But most famously, Peale made Donald Trump who he is. Trump considered himself to be Peale’s “greatest student of all time.”3 He often attended Peale’s church in Manhattan, whose book was commonly read in Trump’s home growing up. Peale also officiated Trump’s first marriage to Ivana, and Trump later co-hosted Peale’s 90th birthday.
Peale’s popularity is part of a larger story of how Americans came to understand themselves, which was then exported to the entire world. It’s a story of repression, then radical self-acceptance, and now confusion as places of belonging have suffered. It’s given way to a myriad of morbid symptoms: unhealthy parasocial attachments, neuroticism, a loss of meaning, and loneliness.
Suppressing the Self
When World War II ended, veterans came back to the United States victorious but also deeply disturbed. They now had to return to normal civilian life in what would become suburban America. Traumatized and anxious, this proved more difficult than many expected.
On the face of it, there was no reason to worry. The United States was a global superpower and booming economically. Everything at home seemed stable. But many elites privately feared that World War II had demonstrated a dark truth—that deep inside, the average person possessed nefarious desires which could explode again and upend society.
Such ideas had currency in the aftermath of World War II. Social theorists commonly speculated that it was the unleashing of unconscious desires that destroyed Europe.4 It was believed that the masses were excited to a frenzy, lost all reason, and so they became susceptible to fascism and communism. And the worry was, if left unchecked, something similar could take root again.