Joseph Murphy’s books: which to read first, and in what order

Which Joseph Murphy book should you read first?

Start with The Power of Your Subconscious Mind. Every idea people associate with Murphy is in it: what he calls the subconscious mind, the drowsy state before sleep, the mental movie, the thank-you technique, forgiveness, habit and fear. Chapter 6 alone contains 10 named techniques, from “the passing-over technique” to “the decree method”; we counted them in the 1963 text on 20 October 2026.

Penguin Random House, its current publisher, describes it as “selling millions in various editions since its original publication in 1963”. That is a publisher’s claim: no audited sales figure exists, and none of the sources we read gives one.

Judging by their catalogue subjects, his other books take these themes into a narrower field (prosperity, love, the Bible, the I Ching). If you read only one, read this one, and read it with a pencil.

Which edition: the 1963 text or a revised one?

Several texts are sold under the same title, and the copyright page tells you which one you hold. That matters if you want to quote Murphy, or simply to know whose sentences you are reading.

• Look for “revised by Ian McMahan” or “edited and revised by Arthur R. Pell” on the title or copyright page.
• To quote Murphy, quote the 1963 text and say so; revised editions change wording and some chapter titles.
• Small differences are normal: chapter 2 is headed “How Your Own Mind Works” in one text and “How Your Mind Works” in another.

His other books, dated from library catalogues

Murphy’s bibliography online is unreliable: Wikipedia’s list carries a warning that some dates are wrong, and it gives reprint years as if they were first editions. The table below uses the earliest record we found in Open Library, archive.org or the Library of Congress, read on 20 October 2026. Three titles are described by theme, because their titles make promises this site does not repeat.

We read the 1963 book in full. For the others, the last column says what the catalogue records, not a summary from reading them.

A reading order that respects your time

This order is our suggestion, built from the 1963 book’s structure. It puts first the chapters you can test against your own evenings, and last the ones that make claims we do not endorse.

• 1. Chapters 1 to 3: his model of two minds, the “conscious” and what he calls the “subconscious”. Read them to learn his vocabulary.
• 2. Chapter 6: the 10 techniques. This is the practical core of the book.
• 3. Chapters 13 to 19: sleep, marriage, happiness, relations with others, forgiveness, habit and fear. These are closest to daily life, and several can be read next to later research (table below).
• 4. Chapters 7, 8, 11, 12 and 20: on the “lifeward” tendency he sees in the subconscious, effort, success, scientists’ “hunches” and staying young in spirit. Useful for his tone, thinner on method.
• 5. Chapters 4, 5, 9 and 10: recoveries attributed to belief, and money. Read them as history of ideas, not as advice.
• 6. Then, only if you want more: Believe in Yourself (1955) or Peace Within Yourself (1956) for the minister’s earlier, more biblical voice; Secrets of the I-Ching (1970) and Telepsychics (1973) to see how far his interests went.

What to read with caution

Health. Chapters 4 to 6 tell of recoveries that Murphy attributes to belief acting on the subconscious. They are anecdotes, without records, and he treats them as proof of one universal principle. Nothing in this series takes them as advice: for anything that worries you about your body, see your doctor.

Money. Chapters 9 and 10 present prosperity as a conviction held in the subconscious, and two later books carry the theme further. Research on picturing a desired outcome points the other way: in four prospective studies, Gabriele Oettingen and Doris Mayer (2002) found that positive fantasies about the future predicted less effort and less success, the opposite of positive expectations.

Certainty. Murphy writes with no hedging. The last point in the summary of his chapter on marriage includes this sentence: “Scientific prayer solves all problems.” (1963, ch. 14). Read sentences like this as the voice of a preacher, not as findings.

Credentials. The 1960s title pages list several doctorates and a fellowship of an “Andhra Research University of India”. We found no record of that institution, and no record of the psychology doctorate some biographies mention. Neither changes what the book says, but it is worth knowing when a jacket presents him as a scientist.

Read his key chapters with the research next to them

Murphy made claims that later research can test. Reading the two side by side is the fairest way to keep what holds and drop what does not. One line per chapter, from the studies this series uses.

From the book to one evening: the practice that survives

Strip out the promises, and what remains of the 1963 book is a short evening routine: picture one concrete scene in the present tense, notice how it feels, and let it go before sleep. That is close to what Dream Architect does each night, without the claim that the scene causes anything.

In the app’s night ritual, you choose the moment (“Write my own moment”, with the hint “A few words, in the present tense.”), name the feeling that comes first, then reach “Sleep on it”. After “I close my eyes”, the screen goes dark and shows your moment, then a slow breathing ring. The next morning’s check-in opens with one question: “Last night you relived this moment. This morning, did anything remind you of it?”

Murphy would call that impressing the subconscious. We call it mental imagery: picturing one scene of what you want, then noticing what follows. Both readings fit the same few minutes, two at night and one in the morning.

Questions people ask next