Émile Coué (1857 - 1926) was a French psychologist and pharmacist who pioneered “the “Coué Method” of auto-suggestion for the purposes of treating personal health issues.  The method is very simple, consisting of repeating the phrase “Every day, in every respect, I am getting better and better” (or, the modern equivalent “Every day, in every way, I am getting better and better”) twenty times every morning, noon and evening.

M. Coué earned a degree in pharmacology in 1876 and, in the course of his subsequent practice, noted what is now known as the “Placebo Effect” by which he noticed he could improve a patient’s response to a given medication by praising its effectiveness beforehand, as follows:

“... if a doctor, after examining his patient, writes a prescription and gives it to him without any comment, the remedies prescribed will not have much chance of succeeding; if, on the other hand, he explains to his patient that such and such medicines must be taken in such and such conditions and that they will produce certain results, those results are practically certain to be brought about”.

In fact, M. Coué goes so far as to state that a prescription should be given a patient regardless of whether it is needed so as to placate, or reassure, the patient that something is being doen to effect a cure:

“In my opinion, if the doctor only prescribes a regimen without any medicine, his patient will be dissatisfied; he will say that he took the trouble to consult him for nothing, and often goes to another doctor.  It seems to me then that the doctor should always prescribe medicines to his patient and, as much as possible, medicines made up by himself rather than the standard remedies so much advertised and which owe their only value to the advertisement.  The doctor’s own prescriptions will inspire infinitely more confidence than So and So’s pills which anyone can procure easily at the nearest drug store without any need of a prescription”.

M. Coué emphasizes that his well known phrase should be repeated, essentially, in the form of a mantra “Every day, in every respect, I am getting better and better” with no involvement of the will.  You must not make any judgment. The object is to imprint the phrase on the subconscious through a conscious process of repetition. In a conflict between imagination (i.e. the subconscious) and willpower, willpower will overpower the subconscious, preventing the message from being imprinted or, even worse, result in realization of the opposite effect to that desired.

M. Coué believed that the “Coué Method” was universal in its application, having potential to resolve (“Cure”) a wide and diverse range of health issues.  There were, however, two classes of people for which the “Coué Method” offered no potential for success, as follows:

1. “The mentally undeveloped who are not capable of understanding what you say to them.

2. Those who are unwilling to understand”.

On the basis of his work (research) over twenty years,  M. Coué believed he had been able to “...deduct the following conclusions, which I have summed up as laws:

1. “When the will and the imagination are antagonistic, it is always the imagination which wins, without any exception.

2. In the conflict between the will and the imagination, the force of the imagination is in direct ratio to the square of the will.

3. When the will and the imagination are in agreement, one does not add to the other, but one is multiplied by the other.

4. The imagination can be directed.

(The expressions “In direct ratio to the square of the will” and “Is multiplied by” are not rigorously exact.  They are simply illustrations destined to make my meaning clearer).