Émile Coué facts for kids

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Quick facts for kids Émile Coué

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

Émile Coué de la Châtaigneraie (born February 26, 1857 – died July 2, 1926) was a French psychologist and pharmacist. He created a popular way to help people improve themselves. His method was based on being optimistic and using positive autosuggestion.

A writer named Charles Baudouin thought Coué represented a new way of thinking from the "Nancy School" of psychology. Coué helped many people in groups, often without charging them.

Life and Career of Émile Coué
- Early Discoveries as a Pharmacist
- Opening His Clinic in Nancy
The Coué Method: How It Works
Criticism and Legacy
- Medical Community Concerns
- Media and Other Views
Memorials
Works by Émile Coué
See also

Life and Career of Émile Coué

Coué's family came from the Brittany region of France. They were from a noble background but did not have much money. Émile was a very smart student. He first wanted to become a chemist.

However, his father, who worked on the railroad, was having money problems. So, Coué decided to become a pharmacist instead. He finished his studies in pharmacology in 1876.

Early Discoveries as a Pharmacist

From 1882 to 1910, Coué worked as a pharmacist in Troyes. He soon noticed something interesting, which is now called the placebo effect. He found that if he told his customers how well a medicine would work, they often felt better. He would even leave a small positive note with each medicine.

In 1886 and 1887, he studied with Ambroise-Auguste Liébeault and Hippolyte Bernheim. These two were experts in hypnosis in Nancy, France.

Opening His Clinic in Nancy

In 1910, Coué sold his pharmacy business. He moved to Nancy and opened a clinic. For the next sixteen years, he helped about 40,000 patients each year. These patients came from his local area, other parts of France, and even other countries.

In 1913, Coué and his wife started "The Lorraine Society of Applied Psychology." His book, Self-Mastery Through Conscious Autosuggestion, was published in England in 1920 and in the United States in 1922.

Coué's ideas were more popular in Europe during his lifetime. However, many Americans later used his methods. Famous people like Maxwell Maltz and Norman Vincent Peale helped spread his ideas in the United States.

The Coué Method: How It Works

The Famous Saying

The main part of Coué's method is a simple saying: "Every day, in every way, I'm getting better and better." In French, it is: Tous les jours à tous points de vue je vais de mieux en mieux. This method is often called Couéism or the Coué method.

Coué suggested repeating this phrase about twenty times a day. It was especially helpful to say it at the start and end of each day. When people asked if he was a healer, Coué would say, "I have never cured anyone in my life. All I do is show people how they can cure themselves."

He believed that to solve our problems, we need to change our unconscious thoughts. This can be done by using our imagination, not just strong willpower. Coué claimed that people could make real changes in their bodies through this method.

Understanding Self-Suggestion

Coué explained that there are two kinds of self-suggestion:

Intentional suggestion: This is when you try hard and consciously to suggest something to yourself.
Spontaneous suggestion: This happens naturally without you trying. It becomes stronger the more you pay attention to it.

A writer named Baudouin said that spontaneous suggestions come from three areas:

Things we think about, like feelings, images, dreams, and memories.
Our emotions, like joy, sadness, feelings, and desires.
Our actions, like movements, desires, and changes in our body.

The Power of Imagination

Coué noticed that if he praised a medicine's effectiveness, it worked better for patients. This made him explore how hypnosis and the power of imagination could help.

He first used hypnosis, but he found that its effects faded when people woke up. So, he turned to autosuggestion. He described autosuggestion as a tool we are born with. We use it without thinking, like a baby playing with a toy. But it can be dangerous if used carelessly. However, it can also save your life if you learn to use it wisely.

Coué believed that medicines were important. But he also thought that our mental state could make medicines work even better. By using autosuggestion, patients could heal themselves more effectively. They would replace "thoughts of illness" with "thoughts of cure." He believed that if you repeat words or images enough times, your subconscious mind will accept them. Healing happens when you use your imagination positively, without forcing it with willpower.

Key Principles of the Method

Coué's method is based on a simple idea: any idea that completely fills your mind tends to become real. This is true as long as the idea is possible. For example, if someone believes their asthma is going away, it might actually happen. This is because the body can sometimes overcome or control illnesses.

On the other hand, thinking negatively, like "I am not feeling well," will make your mind and body accept that thought. If you can't remember a name, you probably won't recall it if you keep thinking, "I can't remember." Coué realized it's better to focus on positive results, like "I feel healthy and energetic" or "I can remember clearly."

Willpower and Self-Conflict

Coué found that willpower could sometimes get in the way of autosuggestion. For the method to work, you should not let your willpower fight against positive ideas. The positive idea must be accepted by your conscious mind. If not, you might get the opposite of what you want.

For example, if a student forgets an answer on a test, they might think, "I have forgotten the answer." The harder they try to remember, the more difficult it becomes. But if they replace this negative thought with a positive one, like "No need to worry, it will come back to me," they are more likely to remember.

Coué noticed that young children used his method perfectly. They don't have the strong willpower that adults do. If he told a child, "Clasp your hands and you can't open them," the child would immediately follow.

Problems can get worse when your willpower and imagination are fighting each other. Coué called this "self-conflict." If you try too hard to sleep, you might become more awake. If you try too hard to stop smoking, you might smoke more. To succeed, you need to let go of willpower and focus more on your imagination.

How Effective Was It?

Thanks to his method, which Coué sometimes called his "trick," many different kinds of patients came to him. They had problems like kidney issues, diabetes, memory loss, stammering, and various physical and mental illnesses. He even recorded curing a patient of a uterus prolapse and severe headaches.

C. Harry Brooks, who wrote books about Coué, claimed that his method had a success rate of about 93%. The remaining 7% were people who were too doubtful or refused to accept the method.

Medicines and Autosuggestion

Coué believed that autosuggestion should work with medicine, not replace it. He knew that medicines of his time couldn't cure depression or tension alone. He suggested that patients take medicines with confidence. They should believe they would get better soon, and this would help the healing process. On the other hand, he thought that patients who doubted a medicine would find it less effective.

Criticism and Legacy

Some people found Coué's method challenging because it was so simple. The idea that "self-mastery" could cure diseases was surprising to traditional doctors. Many doctors were used to complex medical treatments. Something as simple as Coué's autosuggestion often made them feel doubtful.

Medical Community Concerns

Some medical experts had concerns about Coué's method:

They doubted that serious diseases could be cured by "self-mastery." They thought any reported cures were either wrong diagnoses or natural healing.
They worried that people might delay important medical treatments by relying only on Coué's method. This could be dangerous.
Coué treated many different people in the same group sessions without detailed exams. Some experts thought this was not the right way to treat illnesses.
The idea of repeating a specific phrase a certain number of times, sometimes with a knotted string, seemed like old superstitions to some.

Media and Other Views

While many American reporters were impressed by Coué, some journalists and educators were skeptical. After Coué visited Boston, a newspaper checked on his "cured" patients six months later. They found that most had felt better at first but then returned to their original problems.

Few patients criticized Coué directly, saying he seemed sincere. However, the reporter concluded that any benefit from Coué's method was likely temporary. It might have been due to the excitement of being at one of Coué's events.

Some academic psychologists liked his work, but others did not. Experts in psychoanalysis also criticized Coué. They felt his method made people too dependent on a powerful idea, even if it seemed like self-reliance.

Memorials

On June 28, 1936, a monument was built in memory of Émile Coué. It was in St Mary's Park in Nancy, France. People from all over the world helped pay for it. The monument includes a bust (a sculpture of his head and shoulders) made by French sculptor Eugène Gatelet. The bust was kept safe during World War II and put back in its place in 1947.

Works by Émile Coué

How to Practise Suggestion and Autosuggestion (a book about Coué by Charles Baudouin)
My Method: Including American Impressions
Self-Mastery Through Conscious Autosuggestion (1922)