Autosuggestion

Autosuggestion developed by Émile Coué, a chemist, is a psychological strategy connected to the placebo effect, around the start of the 20th century. It is a type of self-induced suggestion where people direct their own emotions, ideas, or actions. The method is used frequently in self-hypnosis.

Typological distinctions

Émile Coué identified two distinct forms of self-suggestion:

Charles Baudouin (1920, p. 41), based on the sources from which Coué's group of "spontaneous auto-suggestions" originated, his pupil suggested three further helpful distinctions:

Émile Coué

In 1882, Émile Coué, who earned both a B.A. and a B.Sc. before turning 21, graduated first in his class (with First Class Honours) from the esteemed Collège Sainte-Barbe in Paris with a degree in pharmacology. He returned to Troyes, where he worked as a apothecary from 1882 until 1910 after completing a further six months as an intern at the Necker-Enfants Malades Hospital in Paris.

"Hypnosis" à la Ambroise-Auguste Liébeault and Hippolyte Bernheim

His studies of hypnotism and the power of the imagination started in 1885 with Ambroise-Auguste Liébeault and Hippolyte Bernheim, two prominent proponents of "hypnosis", of Nancy, who he trained with in 1885 and 1886, after taking a break from his business in Troyes). After this training, "he dabbled with ‘hypnosis’ in Troyes in 1886, but soon discovered that their Liébeault's techniques were hopeless, and abandoned ‘hypnosis’ altogether".

Hypnotism à la James Braid and Xenophon LaMotte Sage

Coué requested a free book from the United States in 1901, Hypnotism as It is (that is, Sage, 1900a), which claimed to reveal "secrets [of the] science that brings business and social success" and "the hidden mysteries of personal magnetism, hypnotism, magnetic healing, etc.". He bought the French translation of the related correspondence course after being greatly pleased by its contents (that is, Sage, 1900b, and 1900c), produced by an exceptional stage hypnotist, "Professor Xenophon LaMotte Sage, A.M., Ph.D., LL.D., of Rochester, New York" (who, in 1899, was accepted into the esteemed Medico-Legal Society of New York).

Xenophon LaMotte Sage was actually Ewing Virgil Neal (1868–1949), a multimillionaire, calligrapher, hypnotist, publisher, advertising/marketing pioneer (he started the career of Carl R. Byoir), pharmaceutical manufacturer, parfumier, international businessman, confidant of Mussolini, Commandatore of the Order of the Crown of Italy, Officer of the Legion of Honour, and fugitive from justice who relocated to France in the 1920s.

The missing element of the jigsaw, Braid-style hypnotic inductions, which had previously eluded Coué, was provided by Sage's course:

     "Coué immediately recognised that the course’s Braid-style of hypnotism was ideal for mental therapeutics. He undertook an intense study, and was soon skilled enough to offer hypnotism alongside his pharmaceutical enterprise. In the context of Liébeault’s ‘hypnosis’, Braid’s hypnotism, and Coué’s (later) discoveries about autosuggestion, one must recognise the substantially different orientations of Liébeault’s "suggestive therapeutics", which concentrated on imposing the coercive power of the operator’s suggestion, and Braid’s "psycho-physiology", which concentrated on activating the transformative power of the subject’s mind." — Yeates (2016a, p.13).

Despite Coué's abandonment of Liébeault's "hypnosis" in 1886, he adopted Braid's hypnotism in 1901; and, for the remainder of his career, Coué actually actively employed Braid's hypnotism in addition to—and frequently apart from—his auto-suggestive techniques.

Suggestion and Auto-suggestion

Brown's "Affections of the Mind",
as discussed in his Lectures on the Philosophy of the Human Mind.

Bernheim's conception of "suggestive therapeutics," which is essentially "an imperfect re-branding of the 'dominant idea' theory that Braid had appropriated from Thomas Brown," greatly impressed Coué. — that, He developed the habit of reassuring his customers by praising each remedy's efficacy after returning to Troyes following his (1886–1886) interlude with Liébeault and Bernheim. He noticed that, in specific cases, he could increase a medicine's efficacy by praising its effectiveness. He discovered that individuals to whom he complimented the medication showed a discernible improvement as compared to those to whom he said nothing (this is suggestive of what would subsequently be defined as a "placebo response").

     "Around 1903, Coué recommended a new patent medicine, based on its promotional material, which effected an unexpected and immediate cure (Baudouin, 1920, p.90; Shrout, 1985, p.36). Coué (the chemist) found “[by subsequent] chemical analysis in his laboratory [that there was] nothing in the medicine which by the remotest stretch of the imagination accounted for the results” (Shrout, ibid.). Coué (the hypnotist) concluded that it was cure by suggestion; but, rather than Coué having cured him, the man had cured himself by continuously telling himself the same thing that Coué had told him."

The birth of "Conscious Autosuggestion"

More significantly, Coué found that the effects of hypnotic suggestion diminished when the participants regained consciousness. He also found that subjects could not be hypnotized against their will. As a result, he eventually created the Coué method and published his first book, "Self-Mastery Through Conscious Autosuggestion," which was first published in England in 1920 and then in the US two years later. He defined autosuggestion as follows:

“ ... 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 never questioned pharmaceutical medicine and continued to support its use, but he also began to think that a person's mental state may influence and even intensify the pharmacological effects of drugs. He saw that patients who applied his conscious suggestion, which resembled a chant, "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; lit. 'Every day, from all points of view, I'm getting better and better') — he believed that substituting a fresh "thought of cure" for their "thought of illness" may effectively supplement their medication regimen.

The Coué method

La méthode Coué

    Continuously, unjustly, and mistakenly trivialised as just a hand-clasp, some unwarranted optimism, and a ‘mantra’, Coué’s method evolved over several decades of meticulous observation, theoretical speculation, in-the-field testing, incremental adjustment, and step-by-step transformation.
    It tentatively began (c.1901) with very directive one-to-one hypnotic interventions, based upon the approaches and techniques that Coué had acquired from an American correspondence course.
    As his theoretical knowledge, clinical experience, understanding of suggestion and autosuggestion, and hypnotic skills expanded, it gradually developed into its final subject-centred version—an intricate complex of (group) education, (group) hypnotherapy, (group) ego-strengthening, and (group) training in self-suggested pain control; and, following instruction in performing the prescribed self-administration ritual, the twice daily intentional and deliberate (individual) application of its unique formula, "Every day, in every way, I’m getting better and better".
                 Yeates (2016c), p.55.

The Coué approach focuses on repeating this specific expression at the start and end of each day in accordance with a predetermined ritual, in a particular bodily state, and without any kind of associated mental imagery. According to Coué, employing our imagination is the only way to alter our subconscious and unconscious thoughts, which is necessary to solve some of our problems. Coué claimed to have influenced organic changes through autosuggestion, albeit emphasizing that he was not mainly a healer but rather someone who taught others how to cure themselves.

Underlying principles

Consequently, Coué created a technique based on the conviction that any idea exclusively occupying the mind turns into reality, but only to the degree that the concept is feasible. A person without hands, for example, cannot force them to grow back. As long as the body is able to physically overcome or regulate the sickness, this may truly occur if a person has a strong belief that their asthma is going away. Conversely, thinking negatively about the sickness (e.g., "I am not feeling well") will encourage the body and mind to embrace this idea.

Willpower

Coué noted that willpower was the primary barrier to autosuggestion. The patient must refrain from forming any autonomous judgments in order for the procedure to be effective, which means that he must not allow his will to force its own opinions on constructive concepts. Therefore, every effort must be made to guarantee that the patient consciously accepted the positive "autosuggestive" concept; otherwise, the desired outcome may be reversed.

Young children, Coué observed, always used his method flawlessly since they lacked the willpower that adults still possessed. A child would quickly obey his instructions and be unable to unclasp their hands if he told them to "clasp your hands" and then "you can't pull them apart."

Self-conflict

Coué thought that if a patient's imagination and willpower were at odds with one another, the patient's difficulties would probably worsen—a phenomenon he called "self-conflict." The issue worsens as the struggle does; that is, the more the patient consciously desires to sleep, the more awake he becomes. To properly achieve his treatment, the patient must therefore give up his willpower and concentrate more on his creative abilities.

Effectiveness

With his technique, which Coué named, "un truc," he received visits from a wide range of patients. Kidney issues, diabetes, memory loss, stammering, weakness, atrophy, and many physical and mental diseases were among the conditions listed. He reportedly cured a patient of "violent pains in the head" (migraine) and a uterus prolapse, according to one of his journal entries from 1916.

Evidence

Autosuggestion proponents point to brief case studies written by Émile Coué that detail how he used autohypnosis to treat conditions including enteritis and paralysis from spinal cord injuries.

References

  1. ↑ Maki, David. Henry Bluestone. David Maki.
  2. ↑ Baudouin (1920), pp.33-34.
  3. ↑ Yeates (2016a), pp.6-7.
  4. ↑ See Yeates, 2016a, 2016b, and 2016c.
  5. ↑ As distinct from Braid's hypnotism, Liébeault and Bernheim's hypnosis "used a laborious, monotonous, 'sleep, sleep, sleep' hypnotic induction — thus, his inappropriate, misleading, and ambiguous term ‘hypnosis’ — to produce [what Bernheim called] a “charme” (‘spellbound’) state" (Yeates, 2016a, pp.11-12).
  6. 1 2 Yeates, 2016a, p.12.
  7. ↑ Given that Coué could read Latin and was fluent in both German and English meant that an English language book presented no difficulty.
  8. ↑ It is significant that the career of the French parapsychologist Michel Moine also began with Sage's course.
  9. ↑ p.399 of Medico-Legal Society of New York (1899), "Transactions: Annual Meeting, December 1899", Medico-Legal Journal, 17(3), pp.399-402.
  10. ↑ See Conroy (2014), passim.
  11. ↑ For more on Braid's overarching conceptualization, "psycho-physiology" — "the whole of [those] phenomena which result from the reciprocal actions of mind and matter upon each other" — see Braid (1855), p.855.
  12. ↑ Baudouin (1920), pp.257-258; Orton (1955), p.48; Yeates (2016a, 2016b, 2016c).
  13. ↑ Yeates (2005), p. 119.
  14. ↑ For more on Brown and "dominant ideas", see Yeates (2005), and (2016b), pp.30-35.
  15. ↑ Yeates (2016c), p.63.
  16. ↑ Coué, E: "Self Mastery Through Conscious Autosuggestion", page 19, 1922
  17. ↑ "Émile Coué." Encyclopædia Britannica. 2008. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 26 Dec. 2008
  18. ↑ Daitch, Carolyn; Lorberbaum, Lissah (1 December 2012). Anxious in Love: How to Manage Your Anxiety, Reduce Conflict, and Reconnect with Your Partner. New Harbinger Publications. ISBN 9781608822331 – via Google Books.
  19. ↑ Brooks, C.H., "The practice of autosuggestion", p62, 1922
  20. ↑ Coué, E: "How to Practice Suggestion and Autosuggestion" page 45. "un truc ou procédé mécanique" ('a trick, or mechanical process'). Note that when Coué referred to his "trick", he was speaking of the mechanism, or "the secret", that was responsible for the approach's success (as in, say, "the trick to the hook shot is …"), he was not speaking of deceiving his subject.
  21. ↑ Wallechinsky, David. "Emile Coue (1857-1926) French Healer." The People's Almanac. 2nd Ed. 1975.
  22. ↑ Self Mastery Through Conscious Autosuggestion:Emile Coue Archived 2016-03-03 at the Wayback Machine. Psychomaster.com. Retrieved on 2013-07-28.