Frank Channing Haddock

Frank Channing Haddock (1853–1915) was an American New Thought and self-help author best known for Power of Will (1907), the cornerstone of his popular Power-Book Library.

Trained first for the Methodist ministry and later admitted to the bar, Haddock eventually left the pulpit to write. Power of Will presented itself as a practical companion for the “unfoldment of selfhood through direct personal culture,” organized around themes such as will and success, mental regime, the destruction of bad habit, and conduct toward others.

His significance lies in treating the will as a faculty that can be systematically trained, like a muscle, through graded exercises. Where much New Thought emphasized healing or attraction, Haddock built a curriculum of deliberate self-discipline — drills for attention, decision, and self-command — positioning him at the seam between mind-cure metaphysics and the emerging success literature.

His will-training program prefigured the character-and-discipline strand of 20th-century self-development and the personal-power courses that followed.