At that point of time, hypnotherapy had already been discovered and become an accepted medical practice. Dr Coue was a student of two of the leading exponents of medical hypnotism in France.
He discovered what is now called the placebo effect, and basically combined that with hypnotherapy to form a method of self-healing he called autosuggestion.
There is no doubt that autosuggestion works. There have been more than enough successful documented cases even in those early days. Dr. Emile Coue's simple formula of Day by day, in every way, I am getting better and better (or the more widely seen translation Everyday I am getting better and better) have helped many people.
Among his better-known spiritual disciples are/were the famous self-help authors Norman Vincent Peale, Robert H. Schuller, and W. Clement Stone. Although there are now many more sophisticated techniques of self-improvement and Dr. Coue's autosuggestion formula is no longer in vogue, there is some benefit in going back to basics.
Reports on Dr. Emile Coue's treatments at his clinic claimed a 93% success rate. However, there are five caveats:
- The first is that Dr. Coue convinces his patients that they can hypnotize themselves to get better.
- The second is that his treatments take place in a group setting, where he starts off by healing (through hypnosis) the most suggestible patients. This helps to set the stage for his more difficult patients.
- The third is that he teaches his patients to follow up his treatment with his now-famous self-hypnotic formula.
- The fourth factor is that many of Dr Coue's patients had already gone to regular doctors but failed to find relief. Arguably, that meant his patients most likely did not have a real physical illness but a psychosomatic disease (i.e. that illnesses were all in the mind).
- The fifth important factor is that his patients lived in simpler times and were a less sophisticated and skeptical people than modern men and women. They also had fewer distractions and environmental stressors than those living today.
So, would Dr. Emile Coue's autosuggestion formula still work today? There is no reason why not. However, his prescribed self-treatment is to repeat the formula twice everyday after waking up and before going to bed. In the less stressful times in which he lived, this worked well because these two times are when people are most relaxed and open to suggestion. However, nowadays, modern humans are under so much stress that they wake up stressed and go to bed stressed. For greatest effect, some simple relaxation exercises done before repeating the formula would produce stronger results.
Let's move on to Dr. Coue's actual work.
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