Émile Coué and his Method (II): Hypnotism, Suggestion, Ego-Strengthening, and Autosuggestion

Abstract

The Coué method is routinely dismissed and universally trivialized as nothing more than a hand-clasp, unwarranted optimism, and a ‘mantra’. Rather than relying on incorrect, inadequate, misleading, and otherwise unreliable accounts, Coué’s own descriptions are exhumed, presented, examined, and employed to reveal the rational, systematic structure of top-down theories, concepts, explanations, terminology, and representations embedded within the complex aggregate of efficacious ego-strengthening activities called the Coué method. Consistent with Coué’s emphasis on orthopraxia, simple explanatory models are presented to facilitate a clearer, realistic, and far more productive understanding of the intricacies of the intellectual mechanism underpinning the remarkable approach that Coué conceived, meticulously developed, and incrementally refined over more than two decades of intense daily hypnotic and hypnotherapeutic experiences with a large population of subjects (severally and collectively) — and, further, as lecturer, teacher and demonstrator of his work to audiences of, often, many more than a thousand individuals.