Émile Coué

Émile Coué
Born	February 26, 1857(1857-02-26) Troyes, France
Died	July 2, 1926(1926-07-02) (aged 69) Nancy, France
Occupation	Pharmacist; psychologist
Spouse	Lucie Lemoine (1858–1954)

Émile Coué de la Châtaigneraie (February 26, 1857 – July 2, 1926) was a French psychologist and pharmacist who introduced a method of psychotherapy and self-improvement based on optimistic autosuggestion.

The application of his mantra-like conscious autosuggestion, "Every day, in every way, I'm getting better and better" (French: Tous les jours à tous points de vue je vais de mieux en mieux) is called Couéism or the Coué method.^[1] The Coué method centers on a routine repetition of this particular expression according to a specified ritual, in a given physical state, and in the absence of any sort of allied mental imagery, at the beginning and at the end of each day.^{[citation needed]} Unlike a common held belief that a strong conscious will constitutes the best path to success, Coué maintained that curing some of our troubles requires a change in our unconscious thought, which can only be achieved by using our imagination. Although stressing that he was not primarily a healer but one who taught others to heal themselves, Coué claimed to have effected organic changes through autosuggestion.^[1]

Life and career

Coué's family, from the Brittany region of France and with origins in French nobility, had only modest means. A brilliant pupil in school, he initially studied to become a chemist. However, he eventually abandoned these studies as his father, who was a railroad worker, was in a precarious financial state. Coué then decided to become a pharmacist, and graduated with a degree in pharmacology in 1876.

Working as an apothecary at Troyes from 1882 to 1910, Coué quickly discovered what later came to be known as the placebo effect. He became known for reassuring his clients by praising each remedy's efficiency and leaving a small positive notice with each given medication.

In 1901 he began to study under Ambroise-Auguste Liébeault and Hippolyte Bernheim, two leading exponents of hypnosis. In 1913, Coué and his wife founded The Lorraine Society of Applied Psychology (French: La Société Lorraine de Psychologie appliquée). His book Self-Mastery Through Conscious Autosuggestion was published in England (1920) and in the United States (1922). Although Coué’s teachings were, during his lifetime, more popular in Europe than in the United States, many Americans who adopted his ideas and methods, such as Norman Vincent Peale, Robert H. Schuller, and W. Clement Stone, became famous in their own right by spreading his words.

The Coué method

Hypnosis

Applications
Hypnotherapy Stage hypnosis Self-hypnosis
Origins
Animal magnetism Franz Mesmer History of hypnosis James Braid
Key figures
Marques of Puységur James Esdaile John Elliotson Jean-Martin Charcot Ambroise-Auguste Liébeault Hippolyte Bernheim Pierre Janet Sigmund Freud Émile Coué Morton Prince Clark L. Hull Andrew Salter Theodore R. Sarbin Milton H. Erickson Stephen Brooks Dave Elman Ernest Hilgard Martin Theodore Orne André Muller Weitzenhoffer Theodore Xenophon Barber Nicholas Spanos Irving Kirsch
Related topics
Hypnotic susceptibility Suggestion Post-hypnotic suggestion Age regression in therapy Neuro-linguistic programming Hypnotherapy in the UK
view · talk

Development and origins

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.^{[citation needed]} 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.^[2]

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,^{[citation needed]} although only to the extent that the idea is within the realms 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 to physically 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.^[3]

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 he or she tries 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".^{[citation needed]} 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 fully succeed with his cure.

Effectiveness

Thanks to his method, which Coué once called his "trick",^[4] 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.^{[citation needed]} 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).^[5]

C. (Cyrus) Harry Brooks (1890–1951), author of various books on Coué, claimed the success rate of his method was around 93%.^{[citation needed]} The remaining 7% of people would include those who were too skeptical of Coué's approach and those who refused to recognize it.^{[citation needed]}

Medicines and autosuggestion

The use of autosuggestion is intended to complement use of medicine, but no medication of Coué's time could save a patient from depression or tension. Coué recommended that patients take medicines with the confidence that they would be completely cured very soon, and healing would be optimal. Conversely, he contended, patients who are skeptical of a medicine would find it least effective.^{[citation needed]}

References in fiction

The mentally-ill Chief Inspector Charles Dreyfus, in the 1976 film The Pink Panther Strikes Again, repeatedly uses the phrase "Every day and in every way, I am getting better, and better" as directed by his psychiatrist.

The protagonist in Emir Kusturica's 1981 film Do You Remember Dolly Bell? often recites the mantra as a result of studying hypnotherapy and autosuggestion.

Works

• How to Practice Suggestion and Autosuggestion
• My Method: Including American Impressions
• Self-Mastery Through Conscious Autosuggestion (1922)

References

1. ^ ^{a b} "Émile Coué." Encyclopædia Britannica. 2008. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 26 Dec. 2008 [1]
2. ^ Coué, E: "Self Mastery Through Conscious Autosuggestion", page 19, 1922
3. ^ Brooks, C.H., "The practice of autosuggestion", p62, 1922
4. ^ Coué, E: "How to Practice Suggestion and Autosuggestion", page 45
5. ^ Wallechinsky , David. "Emile Coue (1857–1926) French Healer." The People's Almanac. 2nd Ed. 1975.

Further reading

• Baudouin, C. (Paul, E & Paul, C. trans.), Suggestion and Autosuggestion: A Psychological and Pedagogical Study Based on the Investigations made by the New Nancy School, George Allen & Unwin, (London), 1920.[2]
• Brooks, C. Harry, 1922. "The Practice of Autosuggestion by the Method of Émile Coué. George Allen and Unwin.[3]

External links

• Self-Mastery Through Conscious Autosuggestion (1922)
• Human Trinity Hypnotherapy – Biography of Emile Coué
• Self-Mastery Through Conscious Autosuggestion (1922)
• Emile Coue Non Profit Discussion Forum

Persondata
Name	Coue, Emile
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	February 26, 1857
Place of birth	Troyes, France
Date of death	July 2, 1926
Place of death	Nancy, France