The Practice of AutosuggestionBrooks, C. Harry (Cyrus Harry)
Science
The Practice of Autosuggestion
Brooks, C. Harry (Cyrus Harry)
Coué, Emile, 1857-1926; Mental suggestion
But the centre of the child's universe is the mother. Any system which
did not utilise her influence would be losing its most powerful ally.
The mother is encouraged during the day to set an example of
cheerfulness and confidence, to allude to the malady only in terms of
encouragement--so renewing in the child's mind the prospect of
recovery--and to exclude as far as possible all depressing influences
from its vicinity. At night she is required to enter the child's
bedchamber without waking the little one and to whisper good
suggestions into its sleeping ear. Thus Mlle. Kauffmant concentrates a
multiplicity of means to bring about the same result. In this she is
aided by the extreme acceptivity of the child's mind, and by the
absence of that mass of pernicious spontaneous suggestions which in the
adult mind have to be neutralised and transformed. It is in children,
then, that the most encouraging results may be expected. I will quote
three cases which I myself investigated to show the kind of results
Mlle. Kauffmant obtains:
A little girl was born without the power of sight. The visual organs
were intact, but she was incapable of lifting her eye-lids and so
remained blind to all intents and purposes up to her seventh year. She
was then brought by the mother to Mlle. Kauffmant. After a fortnight's
treatment the child began to blink; gradually this action became more
frequent, and a month after the treatment began she could see well
enough to find her way unaided about the streets. When I saw her she
had learnt to distinguish colours--as my own experiments proved--and
was actually playing ball. The details supplied by Mlle. Kauffmant
were confirmed by the mother.
A child was born whose tuberculous father had died during the mother's
pregnancy. Of five brothers and sisters none had survived the first
year. The doctors to whom the child was taken held out no hope for its
life. It survived, however, to the age of two, but was crippled and
nearly blind, in addition to internal weaknesses. It was then brought
to Mlle. Kauffmant. Three months later, when I saw it, nothing
remained of its troubles but a slight squint and a stiffness in one of
its knee-joints. These conditions, too, were rapidly diminishing.
Another child, about nine years of age, also of tuberculous parents,
was placed under her treatment. One leg was an inch and a half shorter
than the other. After a few months' treatment this disparity had
almost disappeared. The same child had a wound, also of tuberculous
origin, on the small of the back, which healed over in a few weeks and
had completely disappeared when I saw her.
In each of the above cases the general state of health showed a great
improvement. The child put on weight, was cheerful and bright even
under the trying conditions of convalescence in a poverty-stricken
home, and in character and disposition fully realised the suggestions
formulated to it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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