“Couéism”
Collins, Joseph, “Couéism,” The North American Review, August 1922, No. 801, p. 190-199.
Émile Coué (1857-1926) was a proponent of a type of mental treatment that emphasized the curative power of the human unconscious to correct and heal misfortunes or maladies manifested in the conscious human experience. This was done through coaching and autosuggestion. In this article, Collins, a neurologist and psychologist, claimed that Couéism was a product of the imagination and was an unscientific system according to the accepted psychological practice of the day. He objected to the mind-over-matter approach suggested by Coué and disagreed with the premise that the unconscious is the arbiter of human well-being. Collins referenced Christian Science as an example of a similar mental suggestion system that distrusted conscious human experience, science, and practical reality. A reply from the Christian Science church [Heitman], claimed that Christian Science was the opposite of Couéism or any form of hypnotism, willpower, positive thinking, or faith in the supernatural. Rather, Heitman made the case that Christian Science sought to follow the example of Christ Jesus in the healing of sin and disease not by auto-suggestion, but through yielding to “the natural operation of the corrective and curative power of divine Mind [God] in human consciousness.”
ISSN: 2329-1907
Print ISSN: 0029-2397
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