Emile Coue – Self Mastery Through Autosuggestion
Emile Coue (1857-1926) a physician, formulated the Laws of Suggestion. He is also known for encouraging his patients to say to themselves 20-30 times each night before going to sleep, “Everyday in every way, I am getting better and better”. He also discovered that when giving patients their medicine and delivering positive suggestion at the same time, proved to be a more effective cure than prescribing medicine alone. He eventually abandoned hypnosis in favour of just using positive suggestion and he thought that the hypnotic state impaired the efficiency of the suggestion.
Emile Coué’s was a French druggist who pioneered the method of self-hypnosis called autosuggestion during the 1920s.
Essentially, Coué in this work emphasizes the role of positive thinking in self-improvement. In this way he proposed bridging the gap between behavior and cognition, a concept offered over 250 years earlier by Blaise Pascal. But can reciting a mantra involving positive thoughts improve ones outlook? There is now much evidence that it can.
Emile Coué offers a number of practical suggestions for cognitive self-improvement in this readable work. This book gives specific guidelines to follow to indeed “turn your dreams into a reality”.
It is recommended for scholar and historian alike, as well as the everyday seeker looking for practical guidance on thought management.
Introduction
We possess within us a force of incalculable power, which, when we handle it unconsciously is often prejudicial to us.
If on the contrary we direct it in a conscious and wise manner, it gives us the mastery of ourselves. It allows us not only to escape and to aid others to escape, from physical and mental ills, but also to live in relative happiness, regardless of the conditions in which we may find ourselves.
The author, Emile Coue, exerted a profound influence on the beliefs of occultists and hypnotists concerning the nature of hypnosis and the suggestibility of the unconscious mind.
Emile Coue was a pharmacist. His great discovery came one day when a customer complained there was nothing in Coue’s pharmacy to relieve his chronic complaint.
Coue sent the complaining man off with a mystery potion that had no medicinal value. He said to the man: “Well, here’s something new from Paris that has just arrived. They say it’s powerful and I’m sure it will help you. Take it and it will do you good.”
A few days later the patient came into Coue’s pharmacy shouting and dancing with joy announcing that it was the most marvelous medicine he had ever swallowed. He claimed to be completely relieved from the chronic illness.
Coue was understandably amazed at the results. He thought about the conversation with the patient a few days previously and came to the conclusion that this miraculous cure was the result of his off-hand remark to the man.
This, he believed, produced the result and lead to a major breakthrough in his understanding of hypnosis and the power of suggestion.