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Autosuggestion is a psychological technique that was developed by apothecary Émile Coué from the late 19th century to the early 20th century.^{[clarification needed]}

Origins[link]

Coué graduated with a degree in pharmacology in 1876 and worked as an apothecary at Troyes from 1882 to 1910. When he began working at Troyes, he quickly discovered what later came to be known as the placebo effect. He became known for reassuring his clients by praising each remedy's efficiency and leaving a small positive notice with each given medication. Coué noticed that in certain cases he could improve the efficiency of a given medicine by praising its effectiveness to the patient. He realized that those patients to whom he praised the medicine had a noticeable improvement when compared to patients to whom he said nothing. This began Coué’s exploration of the use of hypnosis and the power of the imagination. In 1901, he began to study under Ambroise-Auguste Liébeault and Hippolyte Bernheim, two leading exponents of hypnosis. After completing his tutelage, he began relying on hypnosis to treat patients.

The birth of autosuggestion[link]

Coué discovered that subjects could not be hypnotized against their will and, more importantly, that the effects of hypnosis waned when the subjects regained consciousness.^{[citation needed]} He thus eventually developed the Coué method, and in 1920, released his first book, "Self-Mastery Through Conscious Autosuggestion in England, with the United States release coming two years later. He described the Coué method as

Coué still believed in the effects of medication, but he also believed that our mental state was able to affect and even amplify the action of these medications. He observed that his patients who used his mantra-like conscious suggestion, "Every day, in every way, I'm getting better and better", (French: Tous les jours à tous points de vue je vais de mieux en mieux), replacing their "thought of illness" with a new "thought of cure," could augment their medication plan. According to Coué, repeating words or images enough times causes the "subconscious" to absorb them. In contrast to Coué's opinion, Shultz, believed autogenic training was a method for influencing one's autonomic nervous system, not the so called "subconscious."

The Coué method[link]

The Coué method centers on a routine repetition of this particular expression according to a specified ritual, in a given physical state, and in the absence of any sort of allied mental imagery, at the beginning and at the end of each day. Unlike a commonly held belief that a strong conscious constitutes the best path to success, Coué maintained that curing some of our troubles requires a change in our subconscious/unconscious thought, which can only be achieved by using our imagination. Although stressing that he was not primarily a healer but one who taught others to heal themselves, Coué claimed to have effected organic changes through autosuggestion.^[2]

Underlying principles[link]

Coué thus developed a method which relied on the belief that any idea exclusively occupying the mind turns into reality, although only to the extent that the idea is within the realm of possibility. For instance, a person without hands will not be able to make them grow back. However, if a person firmly believes that his or her asthma is disappearing, then this may actually happen, as far as the body is actually able to physically overcome or control the illness. On the other hand, thinking negatively about the illness (ex. "I am not feeling well") will encourage both mind and body to accept this thought.

Willpower[link]

Coué observed that the main obstacle to autosuggestion was willpower. For the method to work, the patient must refrain from making any independent judgement, meaning that he must not let his will impose its own views on positive ideas. Everything must thus be done to ensure that the positive "autosuggestive" idea is consciously accepted by the patient, otherwise one may end up getting the opposite effect of what is desired.^[3]

Coué noted that young children always applied his method perfectly, as they lacked the willpower that remained present among adults. When he instructed a child by saying "clasp your hands and you can't the child would thus immediately follow.

Self-conflict[link]

Coué believed a patient's problems were likely to increase if his willpower and imagination (or mental ideas) opposed each other, something Coué would refer to as "self-conflict".^{[citation needed]} As the conflict intensifies, so does the problem i.e., the more the patient tries to sleep, the more he becomes awake. The patient must thus abandon his willpower and instead put more focus on his imaginative power in order to fully succeed with his cure.

Effectiveness[link]

With his method, which Coué once called his "trick",^[4] patients of all sorts would come to visit him. The list of ailments included kidney problems, diabetes, memory loss, stammering, weakness, atrophy and all sorts of physical and mental illnesses.^{[citation needed]} According to one of his journal entries (1916), he apparently cured a patient of a uterus prolapse as well as "violent pains in the head" (migraine).^[5]

Evidence[link]

In the early 20th century, Emile Coue used autosuggestion to cure patients; his work is evidence to support the existence of autosuggestion and the power of the human mind.^[6]

Clinical trials[link]

Autogenic training is an autosuggestion based relaxation technique influenced by the Coué method. In 1932, German psychiatrist Johannes Schultz developed and published on autogenic training. Unlike autosuggestion, autogenic training has been proven in clinical trials and, along with other relaxation techniques, such as progressive relaxation and meditation, has replaced autosuggestion in therapy. The co-author of Schultz's multi-volume tome on autogenic training, Wolfgang Luthe, was a firm believer that autogenic training was a powerful approach that should only be offered to patients by qualified professionals. Its effectiveness,^[7][8] has been confirmed in several studies.

Works[link]

• How to Practice Suggestion and Autosuggestion
• My Method: Including American Impressions
• Self Mastery Through Conscious Autosuggestion (Read)

See also[link]

• Mind-body intervention

References[link]

Napoleon Hill
Portrait of a young Napoleon Hill
Born	(1883-10-26)October 26, 1883 Pound, Virginia
Died	November 8, 1970(1970-11-08) (aged 87)
Occupation	author, journalist, attorney, lecturer
Nationality	United States
Period	1928–1970
Genres	non-fiction, how-to, treatise
Subjects	personal development, self-help, motivation, finance, investment
Literary movement	personal development, self-help
Notable work(s)	Think and Grow Rich The Law of Success Success Through a Positive Mental Attitude
Influences Andrew Carnegie, W. Clement Stone, Thomas Edison, John D. Rockefeller
Influenced W. Clement Stone Og Mandino
Signature
The Napoleon Hill Foundation naphill.org the napoleon hill foundation
Literature portal

Napoleon Hill (October 26, 1883 – November 8, 1970) was an American author who was one of the earliest producers of the modern genre of personal-success literature. He is widely considered to be one of the great writers on success.^[1] His most famous work, Think and Grow Rich (1937), is one of the best-selling books of all time (at the time of Hill's death in 1970, Think and Grow Rich had sold 20 million copies).^[2] Hill's works examined the power of personal beliefs, and the role they play in personal success. He became an advisor to President Franklin D. Roosevelt from 1933 to 1936. "What the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve" is one of Hill's hallmark expressions.^[3][4] How achievement actually occurs, and a formula for it that puts success in reach of the average person, were the focal points of Hill's books.

Life and works[link]

According to his official biographer, Tom Butler-Bowdon, Napoleon Hill was born in a one-room cabin near the Appalachian town of Pound, in Southwest Virginia.^[5] Hill's mother died when he was eight years old, and his father remarried two years later. At the age of 13, Hill began writing as a "mountain reporter" for small-town newspapers in the area of Wise County, Virginia. He later used his earnings as a reporter to enter law school, but soon he had to withdraw for financial reasons.^[6]

Influence of Andrew Carnegie (1835–1919)[link]

Andrew Carnegie

Hill considered the turning point in his life to have occurred in the year 1908 with his assignment, as part of a series of articles about famous and successful men, to interview the industrialist Andrew Carnegie. At the time, Carnegie was one of the most powerful men in the world. Hill discovered that Carnegie believed that the process of success could be outlined in a simple formula that anyone would be able to understand and achieve. Impressed with Hill, Carnegie asked him if he was up to the task of putting together this information, to interview or analyze over 500 successful men and women, many of them millionaires, in order to discover and publish this formula for success.^[7]

As part of his research, Hill interviewed many of the most famous people of the time, including Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, George Eastman, Henry Ford, Elmer Gates, John D. Rockefeller, Sr., Charles M. Schwab, F.W. Woolworth, William Wrigley Jr., John Wanamaker, William Jennings Bryan, Theodore Roosevelt, William H. Taft and Jennings Randolph. Hill was also an advisor to two presidents of the United States of America, Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Delano Roosevelt.^[8]

The Philosophy of Achievement[link]

Napoleon Hill holding his book Think and Grow Rich

As a result of Hill's studies via Carnegie's introductions, the Philosophy of Achievement was offered as a formula for rags-to-riches success by Hill and Carnegie, published initially in 1925 as a multi-volume study course called The Law of Success, later re-released in 1928 in an abridged version under the same title. The Achievement formula was detailed further and published in home-study courses, including the seventeen-volume "Mental Dynamite" series until 1941.

Hill later called his personal success teachings "The Philosophy of Achievement", and he considered freedom, democracy, capitalism, and harmony to be important contributing elements to this philosophy. Hill claimed throughout his writings that without these foundations upon which to build, successful personal achievements were not possible. He contrasted his philosophy with others' and thought that the Achievement Philosophy was superior. He felt that it was responsible for the success Americans enjoyed for the better part of two centuries. Negative emotions such as fear, selfishness, etc., had no part to play in his philosophy. Hill considered those emotions to be the source of failure for unsuccessful people.^[9]

The secret of achievement was tantalizingly offered to readers of Think and Grow Rich, but Hill felt readers would benefit most if they discovered it for themselves. Although most readers feel that he never explicitly identified this secret, he offers these words about 20 pages into the book: If you truly desire money so keenly that your desire is an obsession, you will have no difficulty in convincing yourself that you will acquire it. The object is to want money, and to be so determined to have it that you convince yourself that you will have it. . . You may as well know, right here, that you can never have riches in great quantities unless you work yourself into a white heat of desire for money, and actually believe you will possess it.

He presented the idea of a "Definite Major Purpose" as a challenge to his readers in order to make them ask themselves, "In what do I truly believe?" According to Hill, 98% of people had few or no firm beliefs, and this alone put true success firmly out of their reach.^[10]

One of Hill's most moving stories was about his own son, Blair. He tells how his son was an inspiration to him, because although Blair was born without ears, without any normal hearing organs at all, even though his doctor told Hill that his son would neither be able to hear nor speak, Blair grew up to be able to hear and speak almost normally. Hill tells how his son, in his last year of college, picked up the manuscript of chapter two of Think and Grow Rich, discovered Hill's secret for himself and went on to be an inspiration for hundreds and thousands of people who could not hear or speak.^[11]

From 1952 to 1962, Hill taught his Philosophy of Personal Achievement – Lectures on "Science of Success" in association with W. Clement Stone.^[12] In 1960, Hill and Stone co-authored the book, Success Through A Positive Mental Attitude. Norman Vincent Peale stated "These two men [Hill and Stone] have the rare gift of inspiring and helping people...In fact, I owe them both a personal debt of gratitude for the helpful guidance I have received from their writings." ^[13]

Think and Grow Rich remains the top seller of Napoleon Hill's books – a perennial best-seller after 70 years (Business Week Magazine's Best-Seller List ranked Think and Grow Rich as the sixth best-selling paperback business book 70 years after it was first published).^[14] Think and Grow Rich is listed in John C. Maxwell's A Lifetime "Must Read" Books List. ^[15]

Hill's numerous books have sold millions of copies, showing that the secret of achievement is still highly sought-after by many today. Hill dealt with many controversial subjects through his writings including racism, slavery, oppression, failure, revolution, war and poverty. Persevering and then succeeding in spite of these obstacles using the Philosophy of Achievement, Hill stated, was the responsibility of every human.^[10]

Today's philosophy-of-success teachers still use the research formulas taught by Hill to expand their students' knowledge of personal development.^[15]

Bibliography[link]

• The Law of Success (1928)
• The Magic Ladder To Success (1930)
• Think and Grow Rich (1937)
• How to Sell Your Way through Life (1939)
• Success Through a Positive Mental Attitude (1960)
• You Can Work Your Own Miracles (1971)
• Napoleon Hill's Keys to Success: The 17 Principles of Personal Achievement
• Grow Rich!: With Peace of Mind
• The Master-Key to Riches
• Succeed and Grow Rich Through Persuasion
• Outwitting the Devil (2011) ISBN 978-1-4027-8453-8

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Napoleon Hill

• Napoleon Hill Quotes
• Article on Hill's life from Success magazine
• Napoleon Hill (1883–1970) – Find A Grave Memorial