Psychiana

In his Strange Autobiography, p. 207, Dr. Robinson relates how he arrived at a name for his teaching. In a dream he entered "a room about twelve feet square painted black and in the middle of it was a Helen Gould canvas army cot. On the cot was a male corpse with hands folded across his breasts. Standing over the head of the corpse and making downward motions with his hands was a man I had never seen before." After watching this procedure for a time Dr. Robinson asked the man what he was doing and received the reply:

"You ought to know. This is Psychiana, the Power which will bring new life to a spiritually dead world."

Several months after this dream, as Dr. Robinson was passing a clerk's desk, he happened to notice a photograph of a student on the desk--a photograph of the same man he had seen in the dream. He learned this man was Geoffrey Peel Birley, of Alexandria, Egypt, and immediately wrote him asking for $40,000, a sum which Mr. Birley sent within three weeks. Robinson visited Birley in 1934 and in November 1936 Geoffrey Birley spent several days in Moscow visiting the Robinsons [News-Review (Moscow, Idaho) November 2, 1936].

Psychiana was a denomination created in 1928 by Frank Bruce Robinson (1886–1948), with headquarters in Moscow, Idaho. It began and largely remained a mail-order enterprise, recruiting people through advertising in popular magazines and through direct mail solicitations. Robinson adopted concepts such as affirmations, positive thinking, self-help and mental healing into Psychiana's lessons and emphasized health and material prosperity as possible rewards for dedicated and hardworking Psychiana students. Similar to New Thought.

The first advertisement for Psychiana, which Robinson himself penned and took around to local publishers in Spokane, Washington in 1929, featured a picture of Robinson with the headline, "I TALKED WITH GOD (yes I did, actually and literally)." Those who expressed an interest in Robinson's promises of health, wealth, and happiness by responding to one of his ads were offered a series of bi-weekly lessons by mail on a subscription plan. Robinson had his own printing presses and started a small publishing company, which offered many of his own books on various spiritual themes, as well as his memoir, The Strange Autobiography of Frank B. Robinson.

At its peak Psychiana was reported to be the seventh largest religious organization; it employed nearly one hundred people, mostly women, and handled up to 50,000 pieces of mail per day. In 1950 a large multi-story building was being planned, but it was never built.
In addition to the lessons, Dr. Robinson also developed a series of radio programs which were broadcast nationwide in the mid 1930's. He attracted large crowds whenever he lectured and was also invited to speak to classes in religion at several college campuses, most notably to Dr. Marcus Bach's classes at the University of Iowa.