Émile CouéDied 2 Jul 1926 at age 69 (born 26 Feb 1857).French pharmacist and advocate of optimistic autosuggestion. He was not trained in medicine or psychology, but in 1920 at his clinic in Nancy, Coué introduced a method of psychotherapy characterized by frequent repetition of the formula, je vais de mieux en mieux, "Every day, and in every way, I am becoming better and better." He counseled people to repeat this 15 to 20 times, morning and evening. This method of autosuggestion came to be called Couéism, and was very popular in the 1920s and 1930s. Rev. Charles Inge (1868-1957) expressed this simplistic method in this limerick (1928): "This very remarkable man / Commends a most practical plan: / You can do what you want / If you don't think you can't, / So don't think you can't think you can." |
