Katherine Woodward Thomas

Calling in "The One" appeared in 2004 and lays out a seven-week, forty-nine-day schedule of daily lessons, journaling, meditation and visualisation for readers who want a lasting partnership. Its author, Katherine Woodward Thomas, is a licensed marriage and family therapist with a master's degree, practising in California. The programme rests on the law of attraction, the belief that thought draws matching circumstances to a person, which is a spiritual premise rather than a clinical finding. The book also functions as the entrance to a paid business: Thomas sells an online course built on the same forty-nine days and runs a training scheme that credentials other coaches to teach her material. Her method Conscious Uncoupling reached a wide audience in 2014, when Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin used the phrase to announce their separation; the book of that name followed in 2015. A revised and expanded edition followed.