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Coué and conscious autosuggestion
Émile Coué taught a fixed phrase about getting better, repeated daily. His 1922 English book and 1923 American tour brought press coverage and crowds. The sources show anecdotes and testimonials, and no controlled trials.
- Where it sits
- Pop claimA popular book, media story or folk belief.
- Evidence level
- DocumentedThe event or practice is documented by primary or authoritative sources.
- Sources inspected
- 4 of 41 with the relevant text, company document or archive item checked, 3 as an abstract or reference article, 0 not verified.
What happened
Émile Coué worked in Nancy and taught a method he called conscious autosuggestion. His book Self Mastery through Conscious Autosuggestion was issued in New York with a 1922 copyright. Encyclopedia.com says he lectured in England regularly after 1921 and reached the United States in January 1923 for a tour with heavy press coverage. The sources differ on the arrival day, giving 2 or 4 January.
The psychological idea
Coué argued that when will and imagination conflict, the imagination always wins, so the method should train the imagination rather than the will. He defined autosuggestion as the implanting of an idea in oneself by oneself, and elsewhere as the influence of the imagination on the physical and moral being. Patients repeated a fixed formula twenty times each morning and evening, counting on a string with twenty knots.
In practice
The book's English formula says that every day, in every respect, the speaker is getting better and better. The book reports cures or improvements in conditions including asthma and paralysis, and says the method fails mainly with two groups, the mentally undeveloped and those unwilling to understand, who make up barely 3 per cent of the whole. The evidence offered is anecdote. A popular history of the tour says some six thousand New Yorkers lined up for treatment.
Why it mattered
In 1923 the tour drew heavy press coverage and large crowds, and it drew open opposition. The Journal of the American Medical Association warned physicians in October 1922, clergy criticized it, and a spokesman for the American Academy of Medicine threatened legal action that was never carried out. It is an early case of a repeat-a-positive-sentence technique spreading by lecture tour and press.
Limits and qualifications
No controlled trial is described in the part of the book read, and the cases cannot be checked. The cure claims are anecdote, not evidence of treatment effects. Wood, Perunovic and Lee (2009) tested a different statement, that the speaker is a lovable person: people with low self-esteem who repeated it felt worse than those who did not, and people with high self-esteem felt somewhat better. That study does not test Coué's method.
Evidence behind the claims
The English book Self Mastery Through Conscious Autosuggestion was issued by American Library Service, New York, with a 1922 copyright.
The book's formula reads 'every day, in every respect, I am getting better and better', repeated twenty times each morning and evening, counted on a string with twenty knots.
Coué states that when will and imagination conflict the imagination always wins, concludes the method should train the imagination rather than the will, and defines autosuggestion as the implanting of an idea in oneself by oneself.
The book reports cures or improvements in conditions including asthma and paralysis, says the method fails mainly with the mentally undeveloped and those unwilling to understand, who are barely 3 per cent of the whole; the cases are anecdotes and no controlled trial is described in the part read.
Encyclopedia.com says Coué lectured in England regularly after 1921 and arrived in the United States on 4 January 1923 for 81 sessions with heavy press coverage; Sander gives 2 January as the arrival date and says some six thousand New Yorkers lined up for treatment.
Sander reports a JAMA warning to physicians in October 1922, clergy criticism, and a threat of legal action from a spokesman for the American Academy of Medicine around 31 December 1922 that was not carried out; Encyclopedia.com notes opposition from orthodox religious leaders.
Wood, Perunovic and Lee (2009) report that people with low self-esteem who repeated 'I'm a lovable person' felt worse than those who did not, while people with high self-esteem felt somewhat better.
People involved
- Émile Coué. Teacher of conscious autosuggestion, Nancy
In the Psy101 course
- OpenStax Psychology 2e, section 4.6: Other States of ConsciousnessChapter 4, States of Consciousness. Context. The section discusses this topic.Describes hypnosis and suggestion, the tradition Coué came from; it does not discuss Coué.
This is course relevance only. It is not evidence for the historical or corporate claims on this page.See the full course map.
Sources and inspection
4 of 4 sources were opened and read at the level shown. A source marked as not verified supports no claim on this page by itself.
- [1]Self Mastery Through Conscious AutosuggestionCoué, E. American Library Service, New York (Project Gutenberg eBook 27203), 1922. Book. Primary source.Relevant text checkedRead the first 100,000 of about 177,000 characters as returned by the fetch tool: title page, main essay and cases. The end of the survey of sessions was not read.
- [2]Coué, Emile (1857-1926)Encyclopedia.com. Encyclopedia.com, 2026. Reference work. Secondary account.Reference article readRead the encyclopedia entry: England after 1921, US arrival date, 81 sessions, the formula in two variants, religious opposition.
- [3]Day by day (account of the Coué craze in America)Sander, G. gordonsander.com, 2026. News report. Secondary account.Reference article readRead a popular-history web essay on the American visit. It is a secondary account; it gives the arrival date, the crowd figure and the medical, clergy and legal opposition.
- [4]Positive self-statements: power for some, peril for othersWood, J; Perunovic, W; Lee, J. Psychological Science, 20(7), 860-866 (summary page at Association for Contextual Behavioral Science), 2009. Journal article. Critique or replication.Abstract or publisher record onlyRead the summary page of the study on a publication listing. Sample sizes and full text were not seen.
Access note: The formula is quoted from the 1922 English text; the encyclopedia and other accounts give variants. Arrival dates disagree between sources.
Independent source review: Claude review agent, independent of the research agent, 2026-10-21. Verdict: pass-with-edits.