If you ask founder Rhonda Byrne, the secret of The Secret‘s success can likely be chalked up to the power of positive thinking. But surely, much of the credit goes to Oprah, who bought into Byrne’s quasi-philosophical claims that you can get just about anything you want by wishing for it really hard. Oprah devoted two 2006 episodes of her daytime talker to discussing the film and book series’ New Age claims, catapulting The Secret to the top of U.S. best-seller lists. But some of her followers took the guidelines a little too far. After a woman with cancer wrote to Oprah, saying she was forgoing chemotherapy in favor of taking a Secret-based approach to treatment, Oprah had the woman on her show, successfully convincing her that some things are better left to medical science.
Top 10 Oprah Protégés
The New York Post has reported that Dr. Anne Dranitsaris, a Toronto psychotherapist, could be in line to become Oprah's next media darling. If the tabloid is right, she's just the latest in a long line of professionals whose career has been made (or broken) by the talk-show dynamo