Wayne Dyer

Wayne Walter Dyer was born on May 10, 1940, in Detroit, Michigan, the youngest of three sons. After his father abandoned the family, Wayne and his brothers spent much of their early childhood in foster homes and orphanages before rejoining their mother. He served four years in the United States Navy after high school, then attended Wayne State University, eventually earning a doctorate in counseling there in 1970.

Dyer taught at St. John's University in New York and built a private psychotherapy practice while writing academic articles on counseling. His first trade book, Your Erroneous Zones (1976), reframed cognitive therapy ideas for a popular audience. He left academia, drove the country in a station wagon promoting it on local radio and television, and turned the title into one of the bestselling self-help books of the twentieth century.

Over the next four decades he produced more than forty books, including The Sky's the Limit, Real Magic, The Power of Intention, and Wishes Fulfilled. He recorded dozens of audio programs and appeared on Public Broadcasting Service pledge specials so often that he became one of the network's most reliable fundraisers.

Dyer drew increasingly on Taoist and Hindu sources in later years, publishing a translation-commentary on the Tao Te Ching in 2007. He lived for many years in Maui, Hawaii, where he died of a heart attack on August 29, 2015, at age seventy-five, with leukemia in the background of his health.

The name Wayne is from an Old English occupational surname meaning a maker or driver of wagons, related to wægn, wagon. It became popular as a given name in twentieth-century America, encouraged by the actor John Wayne. He carried it with the steady, working-class plainness of its origin, the wagon-maker's grandson turned spiritual teacher.