Book Report: The Practice of Auto Suggestion by C. Harry Brooks (C) 1922

The Practice of Auto Suggestion by C. Harry Brooks (C) 1922

Background information: Taken from the foreword of the book written by Emil Coué:
"The materials for this little book were collected by Mr. Brooks during a visit he paid me in the summer of 1921. He was, I think, the first Englishman to come to Nancy with the express purpose of studying my method of conscious autosuggestion. In the course of daily visits extending over some weeks, by attending my consultations, and by private conversations with myself, he obtained a full mastery of the method, and we threshed out a good deal of the theory on which it rests.

The results of this study are contained in the following pages. Mr. Brooks has skilfully seized on the essentials and put them forward in a manner that seems to me both simple and clear. The instructions given are amply sufficient to enable anyone to practise autosuggestion for him or herself, without seeking the help of any other person." 

This book is a bigger, deeper dive into the famous methodology of Emil Coué's practice of autosuggestion. At the turn of the 20th century, Emil Coué, a medical practitioner and adherent of the Nancy school of hypnosis became famous for his use of affirmations to help his clients achieve the changes they wanted in their health. to his credit, Coué, had a very deep understanding of the psychology that motivates people, and developed a very workable method of using affirmations, that was claimed to have had great success with hundreds of people.
(See Coué's booklet here: https://successworkhypnosis.blogspot.com/2021/10/book-report-self-mastery-through.html)

Brooks seems to have had great faith in Coué's methods, and this book attempts to capture as much of the science of auto-suggestion as he could, even describing an average day at the clinic. He includes more techniques and applications including pain management, healing of physical issues, using affirmations with children and more. 

As with Coué's writings, there's a strong emphasis on NOT using will power, but instead, guiding the imagination to the desired goal. As brooks says, "Autosuggestion succeeds by avoiding conflict. 'Resist not evil, but overcome it with good.'" 

There are more psychological discussion about the ways suggestions, imagination, will power and the subconscious interact, and the techniques to best utilize them. 

Interestingly, Brooks compares Coué's approach to that of Charles Baudoin, a well known psychological researcher of the period who was also strongly interested in the curative powers of affirmations for his psychiatric patients, but had a different, more forceful approach. (I have not yet read anything by Baudoin, but apparently he had a lot of unique insights into psychology). 

For hypnotists, fans of affirmations and auto-suggestions and people interested in making persuasive suggestions, this will offer more great insights into making those suggestions work.

Interestingly, this books seems to be extensively available on the web in various downloadable forms on the web, possibly more than any of the other books I've reported on.

Book Report: Self Mastery through Conscious Autosuggestion by Emile Coué (c)1922

Self Mastery through Conscious Autosuggestion by Emile Coué (c)1922

 "Day by day, in every way, I am getting better and better."
                            --Coué's famous, all-purpose affirmation

Background Information: Emil Coué was the pioneer of positive affirmations, a practice that his been very popular with self-help folks for ages. He was an avid student of psychology and human nature and a pharmacist in the days when pharmacists not only dispensed drugs, but treated patients as well. He was a follower of the Nancy school of hypnosis in the 19th. century, and his practice became extremely popular and claimed many successes. His practice of autosuggestion did not require hypnosis or trance and was very flexible.
Despite his international popularity, he never charged for his services.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89mile_Cou%C3%A9

This is a small booklet, but dense with information. If you're interested in using affirmations for your own benefit, or you're a practitioner who wants to add autosuggestion to your box of tricks, this booklet will give you the basics, both for the practice and of the logic and psychology behind it. 

Before describing his practice, he explains the psychology behind his practice, and the importance of the imagination in affecting a person. His favorite example is how a person can fearlessly imagine walking along a 30 foot long plank on the ground, but when they imagine walking along the same plank placed between the tops of two tall buildings, they often experience fear and even vertigo. For Coué, there is no greater power than the imagination, and his method seeks to harness that power.

When he was practicing, "rational thought" was a hallmark of the modern age, and in the pop-psychology of the day, it was believed you could simply will yourself to change the things you don't do. Can't sleep? You must will yourself to sleep. Drink too much? You lack will-power! Will power was the solution to all man's problems.
Coué observed that will power was no match for the imagination, and that you couldn't will yourself to sleep or to drink less, but if you could imagine it, you could make it happen. He discusses this the psychology behind this in sensible and employable ways, and includes his famous "Four Laws" of how "In the battle between the will and the imagination, the imagination will always win." 

He includes ways that his principles can be applied covertly, and apparently he often did do that as a pharmacist, including positive suggestions and note with the medicines. 

The booklet also includes a few case-histories, testimonial letters from happy customers, and essays about his practice from experts of the day. 

Nowadays, people who follow the Law-of-Attraction, who believe that they can actually influence changes in their environment, like to use affirmations to reinforce their beliefs. Coué did not discuss anything of that nature, but for those people who do use affirmations in their LOA practice, I imagine that Coué's principles would be a powerful tool. 

Hypnosis... or WITCHCRAFT?

Or maybe witchcraft is just hypnosis? If you think we have a unique, modern understanding of the mind-body connection, consider this quote which is the opening of Compendium Maleficarum, a 17th century manual for witch hunters and exorcists: 

"MANY authors have written at length concerning the force of imagination.... All are agreed that the imagination is a most potent force; and both by argument and by experience they prove that a man's own body may be most extensively affected by his imagination. For they argue that as the imagination examines the images of objects perceived by the senses, it excites in the appetitive faculty either fear or shame or anger or sorrow; and these emotions so affect a man with heat or cold that his body either grows pale or reddens, and he consequently becomes joyful and exultant, or torpid and dejected. Therefore S. Thomas.has well said that a man's body can be affected by his imagination in every way which is naturally correspondent with the imaginative faculty..."

-- Fr. Francesco Maria Guazzo, "Compendium Maleficarum" (1608)*

Of course, being  a witch hunter,  the rest of Guazzo's book goes on to discuss how, while witchcraft is all of the imagination, the power behind it comes from the devil, and is evil by nature.

The book itself is quite an interesting read, and a real insight into the state of science and psychology of it's time. You can read stories of possessions and enchantments and consider how today we might understand those things to have psychological causes rather than Satanic ones. 

"Compendium Maleficarum, by Francesco Maria Guazzo, Translated by Montague Summers (1929), Republished by Dover Books