CHAPTER I - THE CLINIC OF EMILE COUE

The clinic of Emile Coue, where Induced Autosuggestion is applied to the treatment of disease, is situated in a pleasant garden attached to his house at the quiet end of the rue Jeanne d’Arc in Nancy. It was here that I visited him in the early summer of 1921, and had the pleasure for the first time of witnessing one of his consultations.

We entered the garden from his house a little before nine o’clock. In one corner was a brick building of two stories, with its windows thrown wide to let in the air and sunshine this was the clinic; a few yards away was a smaller one-storied construction which served as a waiting-room. Under the plum and cherry trees, now laden with fruit, little groups of patients were sitting on the garden seats, chatting amicably together and enjoying the morning sunshine while others wandered in twos and threes among the flowers and strawberry beds. The room reserved for the treatments was already crowded, but in spite of that eager newcomers constantly tried to gain entrance. The window-sills on the ground floor were beset, and a dense knot had formed in the doorway. Inside, the patients had first occupied the seats which surrounded the walls, and then covered the available floor-space, sitting on camp-stools and folding-chairs. Coue with some difficulty found me a seat, and the treatment immediately began.

The first patient he addressed was a frail, middle-aged man who, accompanied by his daughter, had just arrived from Paris to consult him. The man was a bad case of nervous trouble. He walked with difficulty, and his head, arms and legs were afflicted with a continual tremor. He explained that if he encountered a stranger when walking in the street the idea that the latter would remark his infirmity completely paralysed him, and he had to cling to whatever support was at hand to save himself from falling. At Coue’s invitation he rose from his seat and took a few steps across the floor. He walked slowly, leaning on a stick; his knees were half bent, and his feet dragged heavily along the ground.

Coue encouraged him with the promise of improvement. “You have been sowing bad seed in your Unconscious; now you will sow good seed. The power by which you have produced these ill effects will in future produce equally good ones.”

The next patient was an excitable, over-worked woman of the artisan class. When Coue inquired the nature of her trouble, she broke into a flood of complaint, describing each symptom with a voluble minuteness. “Madame,” he interrupted, “you think too much about your ailments, and in thinking of them you create fresh ones.”

Next came a girl with headaches, a youth with inflamed eyes, and a farm-labourer incapacitated by varicose veins. In each case Coue stated that autosuggestion should bring complete relief. Then it was the turn of a business man who complained of nervousness, lack of self-confidence and haunting fears.

“When you know the method,” said Coue, “you will not allow yourself to harbour such ideas.”

“I work terribly hard to get rid of them,” the patient answered.

“You fatigue yourself. The greater the efforts you make, the more the ideas return. You will change all that easily, simply, and above all, without effort.”

“I want to,” the man interjected.

“That’s just where you’re wrong,” Coue told him. “If you say ’I want to do something,’ your imagination replies ‘Oh, but you can’t.’ You must say ‘I am going to do it,’ and if it is in the region of the possible you will succeed.”

A little further on was another neurasthenic a girl. This was her third visit to the clinic, and for ten days she had been practising the method at home. With a happy smile, and a little pardonable self-importance, she declared that she already felt a considerable improvement. She had more energy, was beginning to enjoy life, ate heartily and slept more soundly. Her sincerity and naïve delight helped to strengthen the faith of her fellow-patients. They looked on her as a living proof of the healing which should come to themselves.

Coue continued his questions. Those who were unable, whether through rheumatism or some paralytic affection, to make use of a limb were called on, as a criterion of future progress, to put out their maximum efforts.

In addition to the visitor from Paris there were present a man and a woman who could not walk without support, and a burly peasant, formerly a blacksmith, who for nearly ten years had not succeeded in lifting his right arm above the level of his shoulder. In each case Coue predicted a complete cure.

During this preliminary stage of the treatment, the words he spoke were not in the nature of suggestions. They were sober expressions of opinion, based on years of experience. Not once did he reject the possibility of cure, though with several patients suffering from organic disease in an advanced stage, he admitted its unlikelihood. To these he promised, however, a cessation of pain, an improvement of morale, and at least a retardment of the progress of the disease. “Meanwhile,” he added, “the limits of the power of autosuggestion are not yet known; final recovery is possible.” In all cases of functional and nervous disorders, as well as the less serious ones of an organic nature, he stated that autosuggestion, conscientiously applied, was capable of removing the trouble completely.

It took Coue nearly forty minutes to complete his interrogation. Other patients bore witness to the benefits the treatment had already conferred on them. A woman with a painful swelling in her breast, which a doctor had diagnosed (in Coue’s opinion wrongly), as of a cancerous nature, had found complete relief after less than three weeks’ treatment. Another woman had enriched her impoverished blood, and increased her weight by over nine pounds. A man had been cured of a varicose ulcer, another in a single sitting had rid himself of a lifelong habit of stammering. Only one of the former patients failed to report an improvement. “Monsieur,” said Coue, “you have been making efforts. You must put your trust in the imagination, not in the will. Think you are better and you will become so.”

Coue now proceeded to outline the theory given in the pages which follow. It is sufficient here to state his main conclusions, which were these: (1) Every idea which exclusively occupies the mind is transformed into an actual physical or mental state. (2) The efforts we make to conquer an idea by exerting the will only serve to make that idea more powerful. To demonstrate these truths he requested one of his patients, a young anæmic-looking woman, to carry out a small experiment. She extended her arms in front of her, and clasped the hands firmly together with the fingers interlaced, increasing the force of her grip until a slight tremor set in. “Look at your hands,” said Coue, “and think you would like to open them but you cannot. Now try and pull them apart. Pull hard. You find that the more you try the more tightly they become clasped together.”

The girl made little convulsive movements of her wrists, really doing her best by physical force to separate her hands, but the harder she tried the more her grip increased in strength, until the knuckles turned white with the pressure. Her hands seemed locked together by a force outside her own control.

“Now think,” said Cone, “‘I can open my hands.’”

Slowly her grasp relaxed and, in response to a little pull, the cramped fingers came apart. She smiled shyly at the attention she had attracted, and sat down.

Coue pointed out that the two main points of his theory were thus demonstrated simultaneously: when the patient’s mind was filled with the thought “I cannot,” she could not in very fact unclasp her hands. Further, the efforts she made to wrench them apart by exerting her will only fixed them more firmly together.

Each patient was now called on in turn to perform the same experiment. The more imaginative among them notably the women were at once successful. One old lady was so absorbed in the thought “I cannot” as not to heed the request to think “I can.” With her face ruefully puckered up she sat staring fixedly at her interlocked fingers, as though contemplating an act of fate. “Voila,” said Coue, smiling, “if Madame persists in her present idea, she will never open her hands again as long as she lives.”

Several of the men, however, were not at once successful. The whilom blacksmith with the disabled arm, when told to think “I should like to open my hands but I cannot,” proceeded without difficulty to open them.

“You see,” said Coue, with a smile, “it depends not on what I say but on what you think. What were you thinking then?”

He hesitated. “I thought perhaps I could open them after all.”

“Exactly. And therefore you could. Now clasp your hands again. Press them together.”

When the right degree of pressure had been reached, Coue told him to repeat the words “I cannot, I cannot....”

As he repeated this phrase the contracture increased, and all his efforts failed to release his grip.

“Voila,” said Coue. “Now listen. For ten years you have been thinking you could not lift your arm above your shoulder, consequently you have not been able to do so, for whatever we think becomes true for us. Now think ‘I can lift it.’”

The patient looked at him doubtfully.

“Quick!” Coue said in a tone of authority. “Think ‘I can, I can!’”

“I can,” said the man. He made a half-hearted attempt and complained of a pain in his shoulder.

“Bon,” said Coue. “Don’t lower your arm. Close your eyes and repeat with me as fast as you can, ‘Ca passe, ca passe.’”

For half a minute they repeated this phrase together, speaking so fast as to produce a sound like the whirr of a rapidly revolving machine. Meanwhile Coue quickly stroked the man’s shoulder. At the end of that time the patient admitted that his pain had left him.

“Now think well that you can lift your arm,” Coue said.

The departure of the pain had given the patient faith. His face, which before had been perplexed and incredulous, brightened as the thought of power took possession of him. “I can,” he said in a tone of finality, and without effort he calmly lifted his arm to its full height above his head. He held it there triumphantly for a moment while the whole company applauded and encouraged him.

Coue reached for his hand and shook it.

“My friend, you are cured.”

“C’est merveilleux,” the man answered. “I believe I am.”

“Prove it,” said Coue. “Hit me on the shoulder.”

The patient laughed, and dealt him a gentle rap.

“Harder,” Coue encouraged him. “Hit me harder as hard as you can.”

His arm began to rise and fall in regular blows, increasing in force until Coue was compelled to call on him to stop.

“Voila, mon ami, you can go back to your anvil.”

The man resumed his seat, still hardly able to comprehend what had occurred. Now and then he lifted his arm as if to reassure himself, whispering to himself in an awed voice, “I can, I can.”

A little further on was seated a woman who had complained of violent neuralgia. Under the influence of the repeated phrase “ca passe” (it’s going) the pain was dispelled in less than thirty seconds. Then it was the turn of the visitor from Paris. What he had seen had inspired him with confidence; he was sitting more erect, there was a little patch of colour in his cheeks, and his trembling seemed less violent.

He performed the experiment with immediate success.

“Now,” said Coue, “you are cultivated ground. I can throw out the seed in handfuls.”

He caused the sufferer first to stand erect with his back and knees straightened. Then he asked him, constantly thinking “I can,” to place his entire weight on each foot in turn, slowly performing the exercise known as “marking time.” A space was then cleared of chairs, and having discarded his stick, the man was made to walk to and fro. When his gait became slovenly Coue stopped him, pointed out his fault, and, renewing the thought “I can,” caused him to correct it. Progressive improvement kindled the man’s imagination. He took himself in his own hands. His bearing became more and more confident, he walked more easily, more quickly. His little daughter, all smiles and happy self-forgetfulness, stood beside him uttering expressions of delight, admiration and encouragement. The whole company laughed and clapped their hands.

“After the sitting,” said Coue, “you shall come for a run in my garden.”

Thus Coue continued his round of the clinic. Each patient suffering from pain was given complete or partial relief; those with useless limbs had a varying measure of use restored to them. Coue’s manner was always quietly inspiring. There was no formality, no attitude of the superior person; he treated everyone, whether rich or poor, with the same friendly solicitude. But within these limits he varied his tone to suit the temperament of the patient. Sometimes he was firm, sometimes gently bantering. He seized every opportunity for a little humorous by-play. One might almost say that he tactfully teased some of his patients, giving them an idea that their ailment was absurd, and a little unworthy; that to be ill was a quaint but reprehensible weakness, which they should quickly get rid of. Indeed, this denial of the dignity of disease is one of the characteristics of the place. No homage is paid to it as a Dread Monarch. It is gently ridiculed, its terrors are made to appear second-rate, and its victims end by laughing at it.

Coue now passed on to the formulation of specific suggestions. The patients closed their eyes, and he proceeded in a low, monotonous voice, to evoke before their minds the states of health, mental and physical, they were seeking. As they listened to him their alertness ebbed away, they were lulled into a drowsy state, peopled only by the vivid images he called up before the eyes of the mind. The faint rustle of the trees, the songs of the birds, the low voices of those waiting in the garden, merged into a pleasant background, on which his words stood out powerfully.

This is what he said:

“Say to yourself that all the words I am about to utter will be fixed, imprinted and engraven in your minds; that they will remain fixed, imprinted and engraven there, so that without your will and knowledge, without your being in any way aware of what is taking place, you yourself and your whole organism will obey them. I tell you first that every day, three times a day, morning, noon and evening, at mealtimes, you will be hungry; that is to say you will feel that pleasant sensation which makes us think and say: ’How I should like something to eat!’ You will then eat with excellent appetite, enjoying your food, but you will never eat too much. You will eat the right amount, neither too much nor too little, and you will know intuitively when you have had sufficient. You will masticate your food thoroughly, transforming it into a smooth paste before swallowing it. In these conditions you will digest it well, and so feel no discomfort of any kind either in the stomach or the intestines. Assimilation will be perfectly performed, and your organism will make the best possible use of the food to create blood, muscle, strength, energy, in a word Life.

“Since you have digested your food properly, the excretory functions will be normally performed. This will take place every morning immediately on rising, and without your having recourse to any laxative medicine or artificial means of any kind.

“Every night you will fall asleep at the hour you wish, and will continue to sleep until the hour at which you desire to wake next morning. Your sleep will be calm, peaceful and profound, untroubled by bad dreams or undesirable states of body. You may dream, but your dreams will be pleasant ones. On waking you will feel well, bright, alert, eager for the day’s tasks.

“If in the past you have been subject to depression, gloom and melancholy forebodings, you will henceforward be free from such troubles. Instead of being moody, anxious and depressed, you will be cheerful and happy. You will be happy even if you have no particular reason for being so, just as in the past you were, without good reason, unhappy. I tell you even that if you have serious cause to be worried or depressed, you will not be so.

“If you have been impatient or ill-tempered, you will no longer be anything of the kind; on the contrary, you will always be patient and self-controlled. The happenings which used to irritate you will leave you entirely calm and unmoved.

“If you have sometimes been haunted by evil and unwholesome ideas, by fears or phobias, these ideas will gradually cease to occupy your mind. They will melt away like a cloud. As a dream vanishes when we wake, so will these vain images disappear.

“I add that all your organs do their work perfectly. Your heart beats normally and the circulation of the blood takes place as it should. The lungs do their work well. The stomach, the intestines, the liver, the biliary duct, the kidneys and the bladder, all carry out their functions correctly. If at present any of the organs named is out of order, the disturbance will grow less day by day, so that within a short space of time it will have entirely disappeared, and the organ will have resumed its normal function.

“Further, if in any organ there is a structural lesion, it will from this day be gradually repaired, and in a short period will be completely restored. This will be so even if you are unaware that the trouble exists.

“I must also add and it is extremely important that if in the past you have lacked confidence in yourself, this self-distrust will gradually disappear. You will have confidence in yourself; I repeat, you will have confidence. Your confidence will be based on the knowledge of the immense power which is within you, by which you can accomplish any task of which your reason approves. With this confidence you will be able to do anything you wish to do, provided it is reasonable, and anything it is your duty to do.

“When you have any task to perform you will always think that it is easy. Such words as ‘difficult,’ ‘impossible,’ ‘I cannot’ will disappear from your vocabulary. Their place will be taken by this phrase: ‘It is easy and I can.’ So, considering your work easy, even if it is difficult to others, it will become easy to you. You will do it easily, without effort and without fatigue.”

These general suggestions were succeeded by particular suggestions referring to the special ailments from which Coue’s patients were suffering. Taking each case in turn, he allowed his hand to rest lightly on the heads of the sufferers, while picturing to their minds the health and vigour with which they would soon be endowed. Thus to a woman with an ulcerated leg he spoke as follows: “Henceforth your organism will do all that is necessary to restore your leg to perfect health. It will rapidly heal; the tissues will regain their tone; the skin will be soft and healthy. In a short space of time your leg will be vigorous and strong and will in future always remain so.” Each special complaint was thus treated with a few appropriate phrases. When he had finished, and the patients were called on to open their eyes, a faint sigh went round the room, as if they were awaking reluctantly from a delicious dream.

Coue now explained to his patients that he possessed no healing powers, and had never healed a person in his life. They carried in themselves the instrument of their own well-being. The results they had seen were due to the realisation of each patient’s own thought. He had been merely an agent calling the ideas of health into their minds. Henceforth they could, and must, be the pilots of their own destiny. He then requested them to repeat, under conditions which will be later defined, the phrase with which his name is associated: “Day by day, in every way, I’m getting better and better."

The sitting was at an end. The patients rose and crowded round Coue, asking questions, thanking him, shaking him by the hand. Some declared they were already cured, some that they were much better, others that they were confident of cure in the future. It was as if a burden of depression had fallen from their minds. Those who had entered with minds crushed and oppressed went out with hope and optimism shining in their faces.

But Coue waved aside these too insistent admirers, and, beckoning to the three patients who could not walk, led them to a corner of the garden where there was a stretch of gravel path running beneath the boughs of fruit trees. Once more impressing on their minds the thought of strength and power, he induced each one to walk without support down this path. He now invited them to run. They hesitated, but he insisted, telling them that they could run, that they ought to run, that they had but to believe in their own power, and their thought would be manifested in action.

They started rather uncertainly, but Coue followed them with persistent encouragements. They began to raise their heads, to lift their feet from the ground and run with greater freedom and confidence. Turning at the end of the path they came back at a fair pace. Their movements were not elegant, but people on the further side of fifty are rarely elegant runners. It was a surprising sight to see these three sufferers who had hobbled to the clinic on sticks now covering the ground at a full five miles an hour, and laughing heartily at themselves as they ran. The crowd of patients who had collected broke into a spontaneous cheer, and Coue, slipping modestly away, returned to the fresh company of sufferers who awaited him within.

CHAPTER II - A FEW OF COUE’S CURES

To give the reader a better idea of the results which Induced Autosuggestion is yielding, I shall here describe a few further cases of which I was myself in some part a witness, and thereafter let some of Coue’s patients speak for themselves through the medium of their letters.

At one of the morning consultations which I subsequently attended was a woman who had suffered for five years with dyspepsia. The trouble had recently become so acute that even the milk diet to which she was now reduced caused her extreme discomfort. Consequently she had become extremely thin and anæmic, was listless, easily tired, and suffered from depression. Early in the proceedings the accounts given by several patients of the relief they had obtained seemed to appeal to her imagination. She followed Coue’s remarks with keen interest, answered his questions vivaciously, and laughed very heartily at the amusing incidents with which the proceedings were interspersed. About five o’clock on the same afternoon I happened to be sitting with Coue when this woman asked to see him. Beaming with satisfaction, she was shown into the room. She reported that on leaving the clinic she had gone to a restaurant in the town and ordered a table d’hote luncheon. Conscientiously she had partaken of every course from the hors d’oeuvres to the cafe noir. The meal had been concluded at 1.30, and she had so far experienced no trace of discomfort. A few days later this woman returned to the clinic to report that the dyspepsia had shown no signs of reappearing; that her health and spirits were improving, and that she looked upon herself as cured.

On another occasion one of the patients complained of asthma. The paroxysms destroyed his sleep at night and prevented him from performing any task which entailed exertion. Walking upstairs was a slow process attended by considerable distress. The experiment with the hands was so successfully performed that Coue assured him of immediate relief.

“Before you go,” he said, “you will run up and down those stairs without suffering any inconvenience.”

At the close of the consultation, under the influence of the suggestion “I can,” the patient did this without difficulty. That night the trouble recurred in a mild form, but he continued to attend the clinic and to practise the exercises at home, and within a fortnight the asthma had finally left him.

Among other patients with whom I conversed was a young man suffering from curvature of the spine. He had been attending the clinic for four months and practising the method at home. His doctor assured him that the spine was gradually resuming its normal position. A girl of twenty-two had suffered from childhood with epileptic fits, recurring at intervals of a few weeks. Since her first visit to the clinic six months previously the fits had ceased.

But the soundest testimony to the power of Induced Autosuggestion is that borne by the patients themselves. Here are a few extracts from letters received by Coue:

“At the age of sixty-three, attacked for more than thirty years by asthma and all the complications attendant upon it, I spent three-quarters of the night sitting on my bed inhaling the smoke of anti-asthma powders. Afflicted with almost daily attacks, especially during the cold and damp seasons, I was unable to walk I could not even go down hill.

Nowadays I have splendid nights, and have put the powders in a drawer. Without the slightest hesitation I can go upstairs to the first floor.”

D. (Mont de Marsan.)
15 December, 1921.

“Yesterday I felt really better, that is to say, of my fever, so I decided to go back to my doctor, whom I had not seen since the summer. The examination showed a normal appendix. On the other hand, the bladder is still painful, but is better. At any rate, there is at present no question of the operation which had worried me so much. I am convinced that I shall cure myself completely.”

M. D. (Mulhouse.)
24 September, 1921.

“I have very good news to give you of your dipsomaniac she is cured, and asserts it herself to all who will listen. She told me yesterday that for fourteen years she had not been so long without drink as she has been lately, and what surprises her so much is that she has not had to struggle against a desire; she has simply not felt the need of drink. Further, her sleep continues to be splendid. She is getting more and more calm, in spite of the fact that on several occasions her sang-froid has been severely tested. To put the matter in a nutshell, she is a changed woman. But what impresses me most is the fact that when she took to your method she thought herself at the end of her tether, and in the event of its doing her no good had decided to kill herself (she had already attempted it once).”

P. (a Paris doctor.)
1 February, 1922.

“For eight years I suffered with prolapse of the uterus. I have used your method of Autosuggestion for the last five months, and am now completely cured, for which I do not know how to thank you enough.”

S. (Toul).

“I have a son who came back from Germany very anæmic and suffering from terrible depression. He went to see you for a short time, and now is as well as possible. Please accept my best thanks. I have also a little cousin whom you have cured. He had a nervous illness, and had become, so to speak, unconscious of what was going on around him. He is now completely cured.”

S. E. (Circourt, Vosges.)
19 October, 1921.

“My wife and I have waited nearly a year to thank you for the marvellous cure which your method has accomplished. The very violent attacks of asthma from which my wife suffered have completely disappeared since the visit you paid us last spring. The first few weeks my wife experienced temporary oppression and even the beginnings of an attack, which, however, she was able to ward off within a few minutes by practising Autosuggestion.

In spite of her great desire to thank you sooner my wife wished to add more weight to her testimony by waiting for nearly a year. But the bad time for asthma has not brought the slightest hint of the terrible attacks from which you saved her.”

J. H. (Saarbruck.)
23 December, 1921.

“All the morbid symptoms from which I used to suffer have disappeared. I used to feel as though I had a band of iron across my brain which seemed to be red-hot; added to this I had heartburn and bad nights with fearful dreams; further, I was subject to severe nervous attacks which went on for months. I felt as though pegs were being driven into the sides of my head and nape of my neck, and when I felt I could not endure these agonies any longer a feeling would come as if my brain were being smothered in a blanket. All these pains came and went. I had sometimes one, sometimes others. There were occasions when I wanted to die my sufferings were so acute, and I had to struggle against the idea with great firmness.

At last, having spent five weeks at Nancy attending your kindly sittings, I have profited so well as to be able to return home in a state of normal health.”

N. (Pithiviviers lé Vieil.)
16 August, 1921.

“After having undergone four operations on the left leg for local tuberculosis I fell a victim once more to the same trouble on 1 September, 1920. Several doctors whom I consulted declared a new operation necessary. My leg was to be opened from the knee to the ankle, and if the operation failed nothing remained but an amputation.

Having heard of your cures, I came to see you for the first time on 6 November, 1920. After the sitting I felt at once a little better. I followed your instructions exactly, visiting you three times. At the third time I was able to tell you that I was completely cured.”

L. (Herny, Lorraine.)

“I am happy to tell you that a bunion that I had on my foot, which grew to a considerable size and gave me the most acute pain for over fifteen years, has gone.”

L. G. (Cauderan, Gironde.)

“I cannot leave France without letting you know how grateful I feel for the immense service you have rendered me and mine. I only wish I had met you years ago. Practically throughout my career my curse has been a lack of continuous self-control.

I have been accused of being almost brilliant at times, only to be followed by periodic relapses into a condition of semi-imbecility and self-indulgence.

I have done my best to ruin a magnificent constitution, and have wasted the abilities bestowed upon me. In a few short days you have made me and I feel permanently master of myself. How can I thank you sufficiently?

The rapidity of my complete cure may have been due to what at the time I regarded as an unfortunate accident. Slipping on the snow-covered steps of the train when alighting, I sprained my right knee badly. At the breakfast table, before paying you my first visit, a fellow-guest said to me: ‘Tell Monsieur Coue about it. He will put it all right.’

I laughed and said ‘Umph!’ to myself, and more for the fun of the thing than anything else did tell you. I remember you remarking ’That’s nothing,’ and passing on to the more serious part of our conversation, preliminary to commencing your lecture to the assembled patients.

I became more than interested, and when at the conclusion you suddenly turned round and asked me: ‘How’s your knee?’ (not having alluded to knees in particular), and I discovered there wasn’t a knee, I laughed again, as did those who saw me hobble into your room; but I laughed this time from a sense of bewildered surprise and dawning belief. This belief you very soon firmly implanted in me.”

G. H. (London.)
11 January, 1922.

CHAPTER III - THE CHILDREN’S CLINIC

In different parts of France a little band of workers, recruited almost exclusively from the ranks of former patients, is propagating the ideas of Emile Coue with a success which almost rivals that of their master. Among these helpers none is more devoted or more eminently successful than Mlle. Kauffmant. She it is who, at the time of my visit, was managing the children’s department of the Nancy clinic.

While Coue was holding his consultations on the ground floor, young mothers in twos and threes, with their babies in their arms, could be seen ascending to the upper story, where a little drama was performed of a very different nature from that going on below.

In a large room, decorated with bright pictures and equipped with toys, a number of silent young women were seated in a wide circle. Their sick children lay in their arms or played at their feet. Here was a child whose life was choked at the source by hereditary disease a small bundle of skin and bone with limbs like bamboo canes. Another lay motionless with closed eyes and a deathly face, as if pining to return to the world it came from. A little cripple dragged behind it a deformed leg as it tried to crawl, and near by a child of five was beating the air with its thin arms in an exhausting nervous storm. Older children were also present, suffering from eye and ear trouble, epilepsy, rickets, any one of the ailments, grave or slight, to which growing life is subjected.

In the centre of this circle sat a young woman with dark hair and a kindly keen face. On her lap was a little boy of four years with a club foot. As she gently caressed the foot, from which the clumsy boot had been removed, she told in a crooning tone, mingled with endearing phrases, of the rapid improvement which had already begun and would soon be complete. The foot was getting better; the joints were more supple and bent with greater ease; the muscles were developing, the tendons were drawing the foot into the right shape and making it straight and strong. Soon it would be perfectly normal; the little one would walk and run, play with other children, skip and bowl hoops. He would go to school and learn his lessons, would be intelligent and receptive. She told him too that he was growing obedient, cheerful, kind to others, truthful and courageous. The little boy had put one arm round her neck and was listening with a placid smile. His face was quite contented; he was enjoying himself.

While Mlle. Kauffmant was thus engaged, the women sat silent watching her intently, each perhaps mentally seeing her own little one endowed with the qualities depicted. The children were quiet, some dreamily listening, some tranquilly playing with a toy. Except for an occasional word of advice Mademoiselle was quite indifferent to them. Her whole attention was given to the child on her knee; her thought went out to him in a continual stream, borne along by a current of love and compassion, for she has devoted her life to the children and loves them as if they were her own. The atmosphere of the room was more like that of a church than a hospital. The mothers seemed to have left their sorrows outside. Their faces showed in varying degrees an expression of quiet confidence.

When this treatment had continued for about ten minutes, Mlle. Kauffmant returned the child to its mother and, after giving her a few words of advice, turned to her next patient. This was an infant of less than twelve months. While suffering from no specific disease it was continually ailing. It was below normal weight, various foods had been tried unsuccessfully, and medical advice had failed to bring about an improvement. Mademoiselle resumed her seat with the child on her lap. For some time the caresses, which were applied to the child’s head and body, continued in silence. Then she began to talk to it. Her talk did not consist of connected sentences, as with the elder child who had learned to speak, but of murmured assurances, as if her thoughts were taking unconsciously the form of words. These suggestions were more general than in the previous case, bearing on appetite, digestion, assimilation, and on desirable mental and moral qualities. The caress continued for about ten minutes, the speech was intermittent, then the infant was returned to its mother and Mademoiselle turned her attention to another little sufferer.

With patients who are not yet old enough to speak Mlle. Kauffmant sometimes trusts to the caress alone. It seems to transmit the thoughts of health quite strongly enough to turn the balance in the child’s mind on the side of health. But all mothers talk to their children long before the words they use are understood, and Mlle. Kauffmant, whose attitude is essentially maternal, reserves to herself the same right. She adheres to no rigid rule; if she wishes to speak aloud she does so, even when the child cannot grasp the meaning of her words.

This is perhaps the secret of her success: her method is plastic like the minds she works on. Coue’s material the adult mind is more stable. It demands a clear-cut, distinct method, and leaves less room for adaptation; but the aim of Mlle. Kauffmant is to fill the child within and enwrap it without with the creative thoughts of health and joy. To this end she enlists any and every means within her power. The child itself, as soon as it is old enough to speak, is required to say, morning and night, the general formula: “Day by day, in every way, I’m getting better and better.” If it is confined to its bed, it is encouraged to repeat this at any time and to make suggestions of health similar to those formulated in the sittings. No special directions are given as to how this should be done. Elaborate instructions would only introduce hindersome complications. Imagination, the power to pretend, is naturally strong and active in all children, and intuitively they make use of it in their autosuggestions. Moreover, they unconsciously imitate the tone and manner of their instructress.

But the centre of the child’s universe is the mother. Any system which did not utilise her influence would be losing its most powerful ally. The mother is encouraged during the day to set an example of cheerfulness and confidence, to allude to the malady only in terms of encouragement so renewing in the child’s mind the prospect of recovery and to exclude as far as possible all depressing influences from its vicinity. At night she is required to enter the child’s bedchamber without waking the little one and to whisper good suggestions into its sleeping ear. Thus Mlle. Kauffmant concentrates a multiplicity of means to bring about the same result. In this she is aided by the extreme acceptivity of the child’s mind, and by the absence of that mass of pernicious spontaneous suggestions which in the adult mind have to be neutralised and transformed. It is in children, then, that the most encouraging results may be expected. I will quote three cases which I myself investigated to show the kind of results Mlle. Kauffmant obtains:

A little girl was born without the power of sight. The visual organs were intact, but she was incapable of lifting her eye-lids and so remained blind to all intents and purposes up to her seventh year. She was then brought by the mother to Mlle. Kauffmant. After a fortnight’s treatment the child began to blink; gradually this action became more frequent, and a month after the treatment began she could see well enough to find her way unaided about the streets. When I saw her she had learnt to distinguish colours as my own experiments proved and was actually playing ball. The details supplied by Mlle. Kauffmant were confirmed by the mother.

A child was born whose tuberculous father had died during the mother’s pregnancy. Of five brothers and sisters none had survived the first year. The doctors to whom the child was taken held out no hope for its life. It survived, however, to the age of two, but was crippled and nearly blind, in addition to internal weaknesses. It was then brought to Mlle. Kauffmant. Three months later, when I saw it, nothing remained of its troubles but a slight squint and a stiffness in one of its knee-joints. These conditions, too, were rapidly diminishing.

Another child, about nine years of age, also of tuberculous parents, was placed under her treatment. One leg was an inch and a half shorter than the other. After a few months’ treatment this disparity had almost disappeared. The same child had a wound, also of tuberculous origin, on the small of the back, which healed over in a few weeks and had completely disappeared when I saw her.

In each of the above cases the general state of health showed a great improvement. The child put on weight, was cheerful and bright even under the trying conditions of convalescence in a poverty-stricken home, and in character and disposition fully realised the suggestions formulated to it.

Since the suggestions of Mlle. Kauffmant are applied individually, the mothers were permitted to enter and leave the clinic at any time they wished. Mademoiselle was present on certain days every week, but this was not the sum of her labours. The greater part of her spare time was spent in visiting the little ones in their own homes. She penetrated into the dingiest tenements, the poorest slums, on this errand of mercy. I was able to accompany her on several of these visits, and saw her everywhere received not only with welcome, but with a respect akin to awe. She was regarded, almost as much as Coue himself, as a worker of miracles. But the reputation of both Coue and Mlle. Kauffmant rests on a broader basis even than autosuggestion, namely on their great goodness of heart.

They have placed not only their private means, but their whole life at the service of others. Neither ever accepts a penny-piece for the treatments they give, and I have never seen Coue refuse to give a treatment at however awkward an hour the subject may have asked it. The fame of the school has now spread to all parts not only of France, but of Europe and America. Coue’s work has assumed such proportions that his time is taken up often to the extent of fifteen or sixteen hours a day. He is now nearing his seventieth year, but thanks to the health-giving powers of his own method he is able to keep abreast of his work without any sign of fatigue and without the clouding of his habitual cheerfulness by even the shadow of a complaint. In fact, he is a living monument to the efficacy of Induced Autosuggestion.

It will be seen that Induced Autosuggestion is a method by which the mind can act directly upon itself and upon the body to produce whatever improvements, in reason, we desire. That it is efficient and successful should be manifest from what has gone before. Of all the questions which arise, the most urgent from the viewpoint of the average man seems to be this Is a suggester necessary? Must one submit oneself to the influence of some other person, or can one in the privacy of one’s own chamber exercise with equal success this potent instrument of health?

Coue’s own opinion has already been quoted. Induced Autosuggestion is not dependent upon the mediation of another person. We can practise it for ourselves without others being even aware of what we are doing, and without devoting to it more than a few minutes of each day.

Here are a few quotations from letters written by those who have thus practised it for themselves.

“For a good many years now a rheumatic right shoulder has made it impossible for me to sleep on my right side and it seriously affected, and increasingly so, the use of my right arm. A masseuse told me she could effect no permanent improvement as there was granulation of the joints and a lesion. I suddenly realised two days ago that this shoulder no longer troubled me and that I was sleeping on that side without any pain. I have now lost any sensation of rheumatism in this shoulder and can get my right arm back as far as the other without the slightest twinge or discomfort. I have not applied any remedy or done anything that could possibly have worked these results except my practise of Coue.”

L. S. (Sidmouth, Devon).
1 January, 1922.

“At my suggestion a lady friend of mine who had been ill for a good ten years read La Maîtrise de soi-meme. I encouraged her as well as I could, and in a month she was transformed. Her husband, returning from a long journey, could not believe his eyes. This woman who never got up till midday, who never left the fire-side, whom the doctors had given up, now goes out at 10 a.m. even in the greatest cold. Other friends are anxiously waiting to read your pamphlet.

L. C. (Paris).
17 December, 1921.

“I am very much interested in your method, and since your lecture I have, every night and morning, repeated your little phrase. I used to have to take a pill every night, but now my constipation is cured and the pills are no longer necessary. My wife is also much better in every way. We’ve both got the bit of string with twenty knots.”

H. (a London doctor).
7 January, 1922.

“Your method is doing me more good every day. I don’t know how to thank you for the happiness I now experience. I shall never give up repeating the little phrase.”

E. B. Guievain (Belgium).
23 November, 1921.

“I have followed your principles for several months and freed myself from a terrible state of neurasthenia which was the despair of my three doctors.”

G. (Angoulême).
23 January, 1922.

“My friend Miss C. completely cured herself of a rheumatic shoulder and knee in a very short time, and then proceeded to turn her attention to her eyesight.

She had worn spectacles for 30 years and her left eye was much more short-sighted than her right. When she began she could only read (without her glasses and with her left eye) when the book was almost touching her face. In six weeks she had extended the limit of vision so that she saw as far with the left as formerly with the right. Meanwhile the right had improved equally. She measured the distances every week, and when she was here a few days ago she told me she had in three days gained 4 centimetres with her left and 6 centimetres with her right eye. She had done this on her own.”

G. (London).
5 January, 1922.