Émile Coué de la Châtaigneraie (French: 26 February 1857 – 2 July 1926) was a French psychologist and pharmacist who introduced a popular method of psychotherapy and self-improvement based on optimistic autosuggestion.
Considered by Charles Baudouin to represent a second Nancy School, Coué treated many patients in groups and free of charge.
Coué identified two types of self-suggestion:
(i) the intentional, "reflective suggestion" made by deliberate and conscious effort, and
(ii) the involuntary "spontaneous suggestion", that is a “natural phenomenon of our mental life … which takes place without conscious effort [and has its effect] with an intensity proportional to the keenness of [our] attention”.
Baudouin identified three different sources of spontaneous suggestion:
A. Instances belonging to the representative domain (sensations, mental images, dreams, visions, memories, opinions, and all intellectual phenomena);
B. Instances belonging to the affective domain (joy or sorrow, emotions, sentiments, tendencies, passions);
C. Instances belonging to the active or motor domain (actions, volitions, desires, gestures, movements at the periphery or in the interior of the body, functional or organic modifications).
Two minds
According to Yeates, Coué shared the theoretical position that Hudson had expressed in his Law of Psychic Phenomena (1893): namely, that our "mental organization" was such that it seemed as if we had "two minds, each endowed with separate and distinct attributes and powers; [with] each capable, under certain conditions, of independent action".
Further, argued Hudson, it was entirely irrelevant, for explanatory purposes, whether we actually had "two distinct minds", whether we only seemed to be "endowed with a dual mental organization", or whether we actually had "one mind [possessed of] certain attributes and powers under some conditions, and certain other attributes and powers under other conditions".
Development and origins
Émile Coué (1857-1926)
Coué … had been operating a free clinic at his home in Nancy, France, [since
1910] where he used the psychological technique of non-hypnotic suggestion as
group treatment, not only for the supposed mental and physical healing of his
patients, but also for enabling them to improve their character and to attain a
confident self mastery.
He argued that no suggestion made by himself became a reality unless it was
translated by his patients into their own autosuggestion.
Hence they really healed themselves, and could do this even without his
presence if they used the formula "Every day, in every way, I’m getting better
and better."
Rather than making any effort of the will about it, they were to employ this
suggestion while in a state of passive relaxation, such as upon awakening or
just before going to bed at night.
At these times, they rapidly and ritualistically repeated it twenty times,
counting with a string of twenty knots which they slipped through the fingers
one at a time.
Used in this manner, Coué argued, the idea of the formula would penetrate
the unconscious mind, where it would bring about the desired changes in body
or mind.
This would happen, he believed, because the unconscious governed all our
thoughts, behavior, and organic functions.
Indeed, it was so powerful that it controlled us like puppets, unless we in turn
learned how to control it through the self-administration of autosuggestions
which, once accepted by it, would be realized by means of its special powers.
While Coué did not denigrate the conscious self and reason, he certainly
diminished its role, likening it to a little island on the vast ocean of the
unconscious.
But despite such an emphasis on the unconscious, he avoided any mental
analysis of it, arguing that it was better not to know the nature of its contents.
Rapp (1987), pp.17-18.
Coué noticed that in certain cases he could improve the efficacy of a given medicine by praising its effectiveness to the patient. He realized that those patients to whom he praised the medicine had a noticeable improvement when compared to patients to whom he said nothing. This began Coué's exploration of the use of hypnosis and the power of the imagination.
His initial method for treating patients relied on hypnosis. He discovered that subjects could not be hypnotized against their will and, more importantly, that the effects of hypnosis waned when the subjects regained consciousness. He thus eventually turned to autosuggestion, which he describes as... an instrument that we possess at birth, and with which we play unconsciously all our life, as a baby plays with its rattle. It is however a dangerous instrument; it can wound or even kill you if you handle it imprudently and unconsciously. It can on the contrary save your life when you know how to employ it consciously.
Coué believed in the effects of medication. But he also believed that our mental state is able to affect and even amplify the action of these medications. By consciously using autosuggestion, he observed that his patients could cure themselves more efficiently by replacing their "thought of illness" with a new "thought of cure".
According to Coué, repeating words or images enough times causes the subconscious to absorb them. The cures were the result of using imagination or "positive autosuggestion" to the exclusion of one's own willpower.
Underlying principles
Coué thus developed a method which relied on the principle that any idea exclusively occupying the mind turns into reality, although only to the extent that the idea is within the realm of possibility. For instance, a person without hands will not be able to make them grow back.
However, if a person firmly believes that his or her asthma is disappearing, then this may actually happen, as far as the body is actually able physically to overcome or control the illness.
On the other hand, thinking negatively about the illness (ex. "I am not feeling well") will encourage both mind and body to accept this thought. Likewise, when someone cannot remember a name, they will probably not be able to recall it as long as they hold onto this idea (i.e. "I can't remember") in their mind. Coué realised that it is better to focus on and imagine the desired, positive results (i.e. "I feel healthy and energetic" and "I can remember clearly").
Willpower
Coué observed that the main obstacle to autosuggestion was willpower. For the method to work, the patient must refrain from making any independent judgment, meaning that he must not let his will impose its own views on positive ideas. Everything must thus be done to ensure that the positive "autosuggestive" idea is consciously accepted by the patient; otherwise, one may end up getting the opposite effect of what is desired.
For example, when a student has forgotten an answer to a question in an exam, he will likely think something such as "I have forgotten the answer". The more they try to think of it, the more the answer becomes blurred and obscured. However, if this negative thought is replaced with a more positive one ("No need to worry, it will come back to me"), the chances that the student will come to remember the answer will increase.
Coué noted that young children always applied his method perfectly, as they lacked the willpower that remained present among adults. When he instructed a child by saying "clasp your hands and you can't open them", the child would thus immediately follow.
Self-conflict
A patient's problems are likely to increase when his willpower and imagination (or mental ideas) are opposing each other, something Coué would refer to as "self-conflict". In the student's case, the will to succeed is clearly incompatible with his thought of being incapable of remembering his answers. As the conflict intensifies, so does the problem: the more the patient tries to sleep, the more he becomes awake. The more a patient tries to stop smoking, the more he smokes. The patient must thus abandon his willpower and instead put more focus on his imaginative power in order to succeed fully with his cure.
Effectiveness
Thanks to his method, which Coué once called his "trick", patients of all sorts would come to visit him. The list of ailments included kidney problems, diabetes, memory loss, stammering, weakness, atrophy and all sorts of physical and mental illnesses. According to one of his journal entries (1916), he apparently cured a patient of a uterus prolapse as well as "violent pains in the head" (migraine).
C. (Cyrus) Harry Brooks (1890–1951), author of various books on Coué, claimed the success rate of his method was around 93%. The remaining 7% of people would include those who were too skeptical of Coué's approach and those who refused to recognize it.
Works
How to Practise Suggestion and Autosuggestion
A book about the life of Emile Coué by Charles Baudouin
My Method: Including American Impressions
Self-Mastery Through Conscious Autosuggestion (1922)
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89mile_Cou%C3%A9