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Autosuggestion
Autosuggestion is a psychological technique related to the placebo effect, popularized internationally by pharmacist Émile Coué in the 1920s. It is a form of self-induced suggestion in which individuals guide their own thoughts, feelings, or behavior. The technique is often used in self-hypnosis.
While Émile Coué created an autosuggestion craze in America in the 1920s, the technique had already been developed and widely taught by Dr. Herbert A. Parkyn through experimentation at his Chicago School of Psychology and in his 1906 book Auto-Suggestion: What It Is and How to Use It for Health, Happiness and Success.
In Porphyry's Treatise on Abstinence, a certain Rogatianus, a Roman Senator, was cured of an articular disease of eight years' duration "by negligence of terrene concerns and a contemplation and intuition of such as are divine".
Starting in 1896 at the Chicago School of Psychology, Dr. Parkyn taught that auto-suggestion was the key principle underlying both mental and physical transformation. He defined it as the process by which an individual consciously or unconsciously directs influence upon the involuntary mind. Students learned that every change in thought, emotion, or bodily function begins with suggestion, and that auto-suggestion is the means by which this universal law operates within oneself.
Students were taught the dual-mind theory of the objective and subjective minds first outlined by Thomson Jay Hudson, though Parkyn described the two aspects as the voluntary and involuntary parts of a single mind. The involuntary mind, he explained, governs every function of the body, serves as the seat of the emotions, and holds the complete record of experience. It operates automatically and cannot reason independently, yet remains open to the influence of the voluntary mind, which is the conscious and reasoning faculty. Through repetition and focused attention, the voluntary mind can stimulate, restrain, or completely alter the operations of the involuntary mind. In this way, the thoughts held most persistently become the dominant forces shaping both mental and physical states.
According to Parkyn, auto-suggestion operated through three distinct forms: voluntary, involuntary, and involuntary-voluntary. Voluntary auto-suggestion referred to the conscious and deliberate repetition of constructive thoughts or affirmations intended to reshape habits, behavior, or bodily function. Involuntary auto-suggestion occurred automatically, through impressions absorbed from one's surroundings, experiences, and emotions, without any deliberate effort. The third form, which Parkyn called "involuntary-voluntary auto-suggestion," combined both processes. It arose when a person consciously performed an action or followed instructions that unconsciously reinforced a mental impression. Parkyn illustrated this with the example of a patient who takes medicine prescribed for sleeplessness. Each time the dose is taken, the thought arises, "This medicine will quiet my nerves and help me sleep," regardless of whether the patient is aware of using suggestion. Similarly, individuals receiving "absent treatment" or "magnetic healing" engage in the same process by expecting beneficial results, thereby producing the therapeutic effect through their own suggestive belief.
Parkyn explained that this hybrid form of suggestion could be deliberately employed to achieve results even with skeptical patients. By assigning simple daily tasks, such as sipping water slowly or performing physical exercises, while emphasizing that these actions would bring improvement, the practitioner caused the patient to generate involuntary-voluntary auto-suggestions each time the task was performed. In this way, Parkyn showed that suggestion could operate at multiple levels of awareness and that much of what appeared to be external healing was, in fact, the individual's own mind responding to inner conviction.
Parkyn’s teaching marked the earliest systematic methods for consciously using auto-suggestion as a scientific tool. He taught that "anything that suggests is a suggestion," meaning that every sensory perception, spoken word, or environmental influence affects the subconscious mind. Because of this, he cautioned against the use of negative suggestions, explaining that repeating what one wishes to avoid, such as "I will not fail" or "I cannot be nervous," tends to reinforce the very condition one intends to overcome. Instead, he urged his students to affirm what they desired directly, using positive, rhythmic statements such as "I can and I will."
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Autosuggestion
Autosuggestion is a psychological technique related to the placebo effect, popularized internationally by pharmacist Émile Coué in the 1920s. It is a form of self-induced suggestion in which individuals guide their own thoughts, feelings, or behavior. The technique is often used in self-hypnosis.
While Émile Coué created an autosuggestion craze in America in the 1920s, the technique had already been developed and widely taught by Dr. Herbert A. Parkyn through experimentation at his Chicago School of Psychology and in his 1906 book Auto-Suggestion: What It Is and How to Use It for Health, Happiness and Success.
In Porphyry's Treatise on Abstinence, a certain Rogatianus, a Roman Senator, was cured of an articular disease of eight years' duration "by negligence of terrene concerns and a contemplation and intuition of such as are divine".
Starting in 1896 at the Chicago School of Psychology, Dr. Parkyn taught that auto-suggestion was the key principle underlying both mental and physical transformation. He defined it as the process by which an individual consciously or unconsciously directs influence upon the involuntary mind. Students learned that every change in thought, emotion, or bodily function begins with suggestion, and that auto-suggestion is the means by which this universal law operates within oneself.
Students were taught the dual-mind theory of the objective and subjective minds first outlined by Thomson Jay Hudson, though Parkyn described the two aspects as the voluntary and involuntary parts of a single mind. The involuntary mind, he explained, governs every function of the body, serves as the seat of the emotions, and holds the complete record of experience. It operates automatically and cannot reason independently, yet remains open to the influence of the voluntary mind, which is the conscious and reasoning faculty. Through repetition and focused attention, the voluntary mind can stimulate, restrain, or completely alter the operations of the involuntary mind. In this way, the thoughts held most persistently become the dominant forces shaping both mental and physical states.
According to Parkyn, auto-suggestion operated through three distinct forms: voluntary, involuntary, and involuntary-voluntary. Voluntary auto-suggestion referred to the conscious and deliberate repetition of constructive thoughts or affirmations intended to reshape habits, behavior, or bodily function. Involuntary auto-suggestion occurred automatically, through impressions absorbed from one's surroundings, experiences, and emotions, without any deliberate effort. The third form, which Parkyn called "involuntary-voluntary auto-suggestion," combined both processes. It arose when a person consciously performed an action or followed instructions that unconsciously reinforced a mental impression. Parkyn illustrated this with the example of a patient who takes medicine prescribed for sleeplessness. Each time the dose is taken, the thought arises, "This medicine will quiet my nerves and help me sleep," regardless of whether the patient is aware of using suggestion. Similarly, individuals receiving "absent treatment" or "magnetic healing" engage in the same process by expecting beneficial results, thereby producing the therapeutic effect through their own suggestive belief.
Parkyn explained that this hybrid form of suggestion could be deliberately employed to achieve results even with skeptical patients. By assigning simple daily tasks, such as sipping water slowly or performing physical exercises, while emphasizing that these actions would bring improvement, the practitioner caused the patient to generate involuntary-voluntary auto-suggestions each time the task was performed. In this way, Parkyn showed that suggestion could operate at multiple levels of awareness and that much of what appeared to be external healing was, in fact, the individual's own mind responding to inner conviction.
Parkyn’s teaching marked the earliest systematic methods for consciously using auto-suggestion as a scientific tool. He taught that "anything that suggests is a suggestion," meaning that every sensory perception, spoken word, or environmental influence affects the subconscious mind. Because of this, he cautioned against the use of negative suggestions, explaining that repeating what one wishes to avoid, such as "I will not fail" or "I cannot be nervous," tends to reinforce the very condition one intends to overcome. Instead, he urged his students to affirm what they desired directly, using positive, rhythmic statements such as "I can and I will."