Table of ContentsGenevieve Behrend
Thomas Troward's only personal student, who turned his Mental Science into a daily practice of visualization and quiet expectation.
Lived
1881 – 1960
Nationality
French-born American
Tradition
New Thought; Mental Science (Trowardian lineage)
Known For
Your Invisible Power (1921), How to Live Life and Love It (1922), Attaining Your Heart's Desire (1929)
Tone
Light-Leaning2 / 6
Behrend writes in a bright, encouraging and practical register. Her teaching centres on joy, gratitude, order and calm expectation, and stays away from occult darkness or ascetic struggle. She does touch on the discipline of controlling the mind and on the deeper metaphysics she received from Troward, which lifts her slightly above pure inspiration. Even so, her work sits firmly toward the Light end of the scale.
Why Behrend Matters
Behrend is the living link between Thomas Troward and the practical tradition of creative visualization. Troward gave New Thought its most rigorous philosophy. Behrend, his only personal student, showed how that philosophy is lived: how a mental picture is formed, held and fed with feeling until it takes outward form. Her books keep the intimate tone of a teacher passing on a master's instruction. They connect the principle (the Reciprocal Action of the Universal and Individual Minds) to the practice (the daily picture, held calmly and with gratitude). Anyone who wants to understand Troward and put him into practice should read Behrend alongside him.
Start Here: The Reading Path
- Your Invisible Power1921Her best-known book and the clearest door into her teaching: a compact handbook on forming and holding the mental picture, lit up by her memories of Thomas Troward.Read it slowly, one section a day. Practise the picturing exercise each evening before going on to the next section.
- How to Live Life and Love It1922A warm companion volume that carries the method into the ordinary textures of life, showing that a joyful, ordered mind is the ground of every demonstration.Keep it near you as a daily reader, and turn to it when your practice feels dry or forced.
- Attaining Your Heart's Desire1929Her mature teaching on desire as Spirit's own urge toward expression, and on the union of feeling and faith that brings it into form.Read it after Troward's Edinburgh Lectures on Mental Science to see how pupil and master fit together.
Core Ideas in 60 Seconds
- The mental picture, clearly formed and steadily held, is the pattern that Spirit fills in outer form.Behrend teaches visualization as an exact practice. You see the desired condition in detail, as already present, and come back to it daily with quiet regularity. The picture is a mould, not a daydream. The creative energy of Universal Mind flows into it and takes its shape.Visualization
- Universal Spirit becomes specific and personal through the individual mind.Following Troward, Behrend holds that the Originating Spirit differentiates itself into particular forms and expressions. In the human being it reaches the level of conscious self-recognition, so that each person is a point where Spirit knows and expresses itself.
- The Universal Mind responds to the individual mind exactly according to the pattern it is given.Universal Mind is impersonal and creative. It works on whatever the individual consciously and steadily presents to it, so the relation between the two is reciprocal. As the individual thinks and pictures, the Universal Mind produces.Reciprocal Action of the Universal and Individual Minds
- Your mind is a centre of Divine operation.Behrend passes on Troward's teaching that the divine creative power works at the very point of individual consciousness. Knowing this, the student stops seeking power from outside and recognizes it as already operating within.
- Your habitual, dominant mental attitude draws to you the conditions that correspond to it.Like attracts like on the mental plane. Whatever the mind dwells on habitually, it draws into experience, so the practitioner sets the dominant tone of thought deliberately and on purpose.Law of Attraction
- True desire is Spirit seeking expression through you.Behrend teaches that the heart's real desire is the movement of the Universal toward fuller life in the individual. Desire is honoured and clarified rather than suppressed, and becomes the starting point of every creative act.Desire
- The picture is held without strain and in calm expectation.Anxious effort and forcing hold back the result. The student forms the picture, feels its reality, and then rests in the certainty that the Law is working, as a gardener trusts the seed in the ground.
- Feeling gives the picture its life.A picture without feeling stays inert. Behrend teaches that the joy and thankfulness of possession, felt now, charge the image with creative power and join the individual's emotion to the Universal's response.Feeling
- Gratitude for the good not yet seen completes the act of faith.Giving thanks in advance for what has been pictured is the mark of real faith. It shows that the mind accepts its desire as already accomplished in the invisible, and so its outward appearance follows.Gratitude
Major Works
| Title | Year | What It Teaches | Best For |
|---|---|---|---|
| Your Invisible Power | 1921 | The working method of mental picturing. Every visible thing starts in the invisible. The individual mind is the point through which Universal Mind becomes specific, and a picture held clearly, felt as present and kept with calm expectation is the pattern Spirit fills in outer form. The book includes her account of studying with Troward and the demonstration that brought her to him. | Beginners and practitioners who want a short, clear method for visualization rooted in Troward's principles. |
| How to Live Life and Love It | 1922 | The everyday application of Mental Science to happiness, health, work and relationships. It shows how a cheerful, ordered and expectant mind shapes conditions, and how joy itself is a creative state. | Readers looking for encouragement and practical guidance in bringing the teaching into daily life. |
| Attaining Your Heart's Desire | 1929 | Desire as the movement of Spirit within the individual. The book teaches how to clarify a desire, unite it with feeling and faith, and hold it without strain until it is fulfilled. It is her fullest treatment of the bond between the heart's longing and the Law. | Readers who have absorbed the basic method and want to go deeper into desire, feeling and fulfilment. |
Lineage & Influence
Influenced By
Thomas Troward, The Hebrew and Christian Scriptures, Hermetic philosophy, Early New Thought and Mental Science
Influenced
Twentieth-century creative visualization teachers, Later Law of Attraction literature, Students of Trowardian Mental Science
Parallel Thinkers
Ernest Holmes, Neville Goddard, Emmet Fox, Florence Scovel Shinn, Wallace D. Wattles, Charles F. Haanel
The Story
A young woman reads a book of lectures by a retired Indian-service judge and knows at once that her teacher has been found. Genevieve Behrend, born in Paris in 1881, pictured the means of reaching Thomas Troward with such settled faith that the means appeared. She crossed to England and became his only personal student. For about two years she sat with him, asking questions and writing down answers, and learned that the individual mind is the point where Universal Spirit becomes specific. She brought this back to America and spent decades lecturing, teaching and writing. In Your Invisible Power she passes on what she received as a working method: make the picture, feel it as present fact, and rest in the certainty that the Law fulfils it. She died in 1960. Through her, Troward's lofty Mental Science became something any earnest seeker could practise at the kitchen table.
In Their Own Words
The law of attraction will certainly bring to you the things, conditions, and experiences of life that correspond with your habitual, dominant mental attitude.
Your Invisible Power (1921)
Everything you see in the visible world has its origin in the invisible world.
Your Invisible Power (1921)
Your desire is the Universal Mind seeking expression through you.
Your Invisible Power (1921), paraphrasing the teaching received from Troward
Order is Heaven's first law, and the mind that would create must first be orderly.
Your Invisible Power (1921)
Frequently Asked Questions
Who was Genevieve Behrend?
Genevieve Behrend (1881–1960) was a French-born New Thought teacher and author. She was the only personal student of Thomas Troward, and she spent decades in America lecturing on and writing about the creative power of the mental picture.
What is Your Invisible Power about?
Your Invisible Power (1921) teaches the method of mental picturing. Every visible thing starts in the invisible, the individual mind is the channel through which Universal Mind becomes specific, and a clear picture held with feeling and calm expectation takes outward form.
What was her relationship with Thomas Troward?
After reading his Edinburgh Lectures on Mental Science, Behrend went to England and studied personally with Troward for about two years. She was the only pupil he accepted, and her books pass on his teaching in practical form.
How does Behrend's teaching relate to the Law of Attraction?
Behrend teaches that the habitual, dominant mental attitude draws matching conditions into experience. She grounds this in Troward's principle of the reciprocal action between the Universal and individual minds, and so gives the Law of Attraction both a philosophical root and a working method.
Should I read Behrend or Troward first?
Many students start with Behrend's Your Invisible Power for its clarity and warmth, then turn to Troward's Edinburgh Lectures for the full philosophy. Others read the two side by side, with Troward giving the principle and Behrend the practice.
What is the core practice she teaches?
Form a clear, detailed picture of what you desire, see it as already present, feel the joy and gratitude of having it, and hold it daily without strain, trusting the Law to bring it about.
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