Suggestion is as old as the world. Plato, Aristotle, and Hippocrates used verbal influence on the psyche of patients for therapeutic purposes. For a long time, suggestion was surrounded by a halo of mystery, mystery and mystical fear. Currently, the physiological basis of the mechanisms of suggestion and autosuggestion has been clarified. It is noted that the more actively a person reacts to emotional influences, the more impressionable he is, the easier he succumbs to suggestion. Children are extremely emotional, impressionable and suggestible. They are sensitive to the emotional environment in the family. Children, compared to adults, react more vividly to what is happening around them, they are more happy and upset. As G. Wright, a great expert on medicine in underdeveloped countries, writes, “the psychological enslavement of some people by others is as old as the world. There have always been people on earth who craved power. But the skillful, well—thought-out practice of mastering and controlling human consciousness, the practice of turning this consciousness into clay from which anything can be molded, is a contribution that society owes primarily to medicine men.” Whenever and everywhere, when people experienced a lack of knowledge, a healer appeared in their midst, who could at least fill in the gaping gaps in their ideas about nature. The main weapon of healers, which allows them to dominate the people around them, is the ability to suggest. By auto-suggestion and suggestion, it is possible to achieve objectively registered general changes in the body. This is how the composition of the blood changes in a person who is inspired by a feeling of hunger or satiety. Accordingly, the number of leukocytes contained in it decreases or increases. By instilling a feeling of hypothermia, you can cause the appearance of “goose bumps” and increased gas exchange. With some training, it turns out to be accessible to many. If you devote a significant amount of time to training, then, like yogis, you can learn to control many functions of your body. How is the phenomenon of autosuggestion explained from the standpoint of science? Autosuggestion is a self—directed suggestion process. Autosuggestion allows you to evoke certain sensations and perceptions in yourself, to control the processes of attention, memory, emotional and somatic reactions. The essence of autosuggestion, according to I. P. Pavlov, consists in concentrated irritation of a certain area of the cerebral cortex, which is accompanied by severe inhibition of the remaining parts of the cortex, representing the functions of the whole organism, its integrity and existence. In exceptional cases, with autosuggestion, even the destruction of an organism can occur without the slightest physical struggle on its part. The effect of autosuggestion, according to the theory of A. A. Ukhtomsky, is explained by the concentrated irritation of a certain area of the cortex, that is, the appearance of a dominant on the background of reduced cortical tone. Mental representations, images, emotions and attitudes have a significant and direct impact not only on the psychological state of a person, but also on his physiological and somatic processes. Images and thoughts (for example, thoughts of danger) cause the same reaction in the nervous system and further on the bodily level as objective situations of the same content. The technique of autosuggestion by Emile Coue The use of autosuggestion for medicinal purposes has become especially popular in Europe in the 20s of the last century. A lot of interesting things were published at this time by Coue, Baudouin and Pierce. As for Emile Couet, who became famous all over the world thanks to the successes of the autosuggestion clinic in Nantes, having started as a modest pharmacist, he then not only studied psychophysiology in depth, but also put forward a number of original concepts that had a wide resonance in Europe. He called his system of therapeutic techniques “a school of self-observation through conscious self-suggestion.” He lectured on these techniques in his homeland and in England, and later published his lectures in a small book. Coue noticed that even a suggestible person is not susceptible to suggestion if he resists it and does not translate it into autosuggestion. The main thesis of Coue is that there is no suggestion, there is only autosuggestion. He believed that the main cause of the disease is a morbid imagination, in which unconscious impulses manifest themselves. Coue compared the power of imagination to a mountain stream, which in its spontaneous unrestrainedness demolishes everything in its path, but which can be “tamed” — then it will be able to generate positive energy. He argued that all people are at the mercy of the power of their own imagination and that a sick person, “armed with the right idea, can achieve their mental balance again.” Conscious self—suggestion according to Coue is a therapeutic method that allows you to suppress painful, harmful ideas and replace them with useful and beneficial ones. Coue compared painful ideas to pins stuck in the unconscious Self, which can be gradually knocked out and eventually replaced with others corresponding to the desired ideas. In this way, for example, bile and grumpiness can be turned into their opposite — good-naturedness and peacefulness. Who didn’t want to “shine” in exactly the areas they’re afraid of? As you know, Demosthenes suffered from a speech defect (lisp), but wanted to become an orator. This man was full of self-confidence, took public speaking lessons, practiced with stones in his mouth and became, according to contemporaries, an unsurpassed speaker. His speech gave the audience the impression of a storm and a thunderstorm. The example of Demosthenes, according to Coue, vividly illustrates one of his important theoretical positions: “Success is brought not so much by willpower as by the power of one’s own imagination.” Indeed, as is well known from the treatment of speech disorders, the more conscious volitional efforts the patient spends to cure the disease, the worse the result. The famous St. Petersburg physician Georg Rauch spoke in this connection about the “error of willpower” and demonstrated this error with the help of the following example. One married couple exhausted themselves with mutual quarrels and claims. He usually started the quarrel, and she cried, defending herself with retaliatory reproaches, which only inflamed her choleric temperament. The wife tried to achieve mental balance with the help of willpower, inspiring herself: “I don’t want to quarrel with Oscar.” The result was the exact opposite: the more volitional efforts she made, the more quarrels there were, and it was she who inflamed the situation. This happened, according to the teachings of Kue, precisely because of her will. Rauch explained the mistake to her and advised her to inspire herself with a formula according to the Coue method: “I treat Oscar calmly.” After a while, the quarrels practically stopped. According to Kue, therapeutic representations are essentially a statement of fact. He called them the formula of auto-suggestion. This is Coue’s main formula: “I’m getting better and better every day in every way.” A suggestion formula is a sentence written in the present tense. Moreover, it does not matter at all whether it corresponds to reality, since the phrase is addressed to the subconscious “I”, which is characterized by gullibility. The subconscious self accepts this phrase as the truth and begins to implement it. You could even say that it perceives it as a task that needs to be completed. The subconscious self, which affects all the functions of our body, gets to work and as a result performs its task, paving the way to healing and speeding it up, but within the limits possible, that is, within the optimal limits set by nature itself. This is much more than what the unconscious self can do when influenced by willpower alone. Another example of Georg Rauch. A thirty-year-old draftsman suffered a broken leg while skiing, and underwent surgery. Since he had rickets as a child, the healing period was delayed, which for him, who lived only on wages, meant a financial disaster. As a result, he developed depression. Rauch advised him to mobilize his inner strength: “Now you have the whole day at your disposal to imagine the best course of healing your leg over and over again, to see yourself healthy and to remind yourself all the time that you will soon run well with the help of your inner strength. I am convinced that from now on, if you inspire yourself with pleasant thoughts as often as possible, for example, that you will soon be happily working in your office, then doctors will still be amazed at how quickly you managed to recover.” And so it happened. The cure was achieved in an astonishingly short time, and the doctors were amazed. The example shows how simple self-suggestion looks using the Coue method. The draftsman imagined how he would soon be working in the bureau again. He placed the future event in the near present, even closer than the doctors expected. His unconscious self accepted this idea as the truth and realized it. Coue was the first to thoroughly study the nature of suggestion and formulated a number of important principles, the main of which is called the “law of the reverse effect.” “If a person, dreaming of achieving some goal, thinks to himself: “it would be nice to achieve this, but … I probably won’t succeed,” then no matter how much effort he makes, the result will be zero,” the scientist wrote. Coue’s discovery fully explains the fatal role that the ill-fated “I will try” plays in the subconscious lexicon: doubt, expectation of failure, is inherent in this very word. Therefore, having set a goal, in no case “try” to get closer to it; believe — you will certainly achieve it! The law of the reverse effect is clearly demonstrated by a simple example. Imagine that there is a four-meter-wide board 30 cm wide on the ground; obviously, any of us will walk on it without batting an eye. Put the ends of it on two chairs: the task will become quite a bit more complicated, it will only require a little more caution. Now imagine that the same board connects the roofs of two ten-story buildings… the same thing: it will really be dangerous to step on it — the fear of heights will trigger the law of the opposite effect, which means that a fall is almost inevitable. Baudoin illustrates the law of the reverse effect with an example of a novice cyclist. Why is it that so often we bump into a tree or another seemingly insignificant obstacle? Yes, just because we are trying our best to avoid this particular obstacle! “When will and imagination come into conflict,” Coue wrote, referring to the age—old dispute between consciousness and the subconscious, “the latter invariably wins.” From a modern perspective, some of Coue’s theoretical arguments seem simplistic. Currently, the Kue method is more often used in combination with other methods of suggestive psychotherapy, but it is now rarely used on its own, since it is inferior in effectiveness to other methods of mental self-regulation that have replaced it. The technique of self-suggestion by Coue According to Coue, arbitrary autosuggestion is characterized by the absence of anything violent in it. Everything is very simple. The technique of suggestion is the same. It should be carried out “without any effort”, as “simple, childish, mechanical as possible.” The above Coue formula should be recited every morning after waking up and every evening, lying in bed with your eyes closed, and pronounced so that you can hear it. Coue considers this last condition indispensable. The formula should be repeated about 20 times. Pronounce it monotonously, without paying attention to what is being said. The formula must enter the subconscious Self completely mechanically through the ears, “and as soon as it gets there, it will start working.” In order not to distract your attention from counting when repeating the formula twenty times, Coue recommends using a cord with twenty knots that are counted like a rosary. Working out the formula “I’m getting better and better every day in every way” takes about one minute. The formula is general in nature, and although Coue recommends pronouncing all words monotonously, with the same stress, he nevertheless considers it necessary to place an internal emphasis on the semantic group “in all respects.” This is necessary to avoid such a phenomenon: a person has somewhere in a remote corner of the brain, for example, the thought: “Yes, this will help me in all respects, but my liver – there’s nothing you can do with it anyway.” Having felt unwell, it is necessary to find the most secluded place, close your eyes and repeat extremely quickly: “My disease is passing, passing, passing …” etc. After several workouts, it is possible to make a nervous breakdown or physical pain disappear in 25-30 seconds. Along with general formulas, there are a large number of representations designed to treat specific diseases. According to Rauch, these are short formulas for suggestion that program our unconscious selves to perform a specific task. For example, to strengthen self-confidence: “I can, I can, I can,” or to overcome a speech defect: “I speak fluently and fluently, remaining calm.” V. M. Kandyba recommends more extended formulas in some cases. For example, in the context of group dependence on alcohol or drugs, the patient suggests to himself: “My decision to overcome the craving for alcohol (drugs) is final. No matter what excuse my friends make and no matter how they try to persuade me, in any case, I will not be persuaded, I will not change my mind.” All these formulas are suggested in the same way as the general Coue formula. They are recited in the morning and evening, and if necessary, throughout the day, monotonously, with eyes closed, secluded in a quiet place. Formulas should be “childish,” as Coue said. They are not intended for our conscious, critical Self, but solely as a representation, as a program for the unconscious Self. It prefers just children’s formulas. Author: Arthur Alexandrovich Alexandrov, MD, Professor, Head of the Department of Medical Psychology at the St. Petersburg Medical Academy of Postgraduate Education. Source: Elitium