SELF MASTERY through conscious autosuggestion (Illustrated)

Emile Coué wrote one of the world’s first ever self-help books, Self Mastery Through Conscious Autosuggestion, in which he argued that people could improve their mental and physical health by a form of self-hypnosis. This edition of Self-Mastery Through Conscious Autosuggestion includes the illustrations from one of the first English editions of his work.

Coué first became interested in the idea of “mind over matter” whilst working as an apothecary in the Champagne region of France. He noticed that patients seemed to get better more quickly when he made optimistic and encouraging remarks at the same time as dispensing medicine to them.

Having identified what we now know as the placebo effect, Coué went on to develop a fully-worked out theory of autosuggestion. Coué was responsible for the phrase “Every day, in every way, I am getting better and better”. He believed that simple repetition of an optimistic mantra of this sort could be used to influence the unconscious mind.