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:
- intentional, "_reflective autosuggestion_": produced with conscious and intentional effort, and
- unintentional, "_spontaneous auto-suggestion_": which 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".

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:
- "Instances belonging to the representative domain
   (sensations, mental images, dreams, visions, memories, opinions, and all intellectual phenomena)."
- "Instances belonging to the affective domain
   (joy or sorrow, emotions, sentiments, tendencies, passions)."
- "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)."

## 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

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:

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

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.