It sometimes happens that a patient is so prostrated by pain or misery that he has not the energy to undertake even the repetition of the word "going." The pain-thought so obsesses the mind that the state of painlessness seems too remote even to contemplate. Under these circumstances it seems best to employ this strategy. Lie down on a bed, sofa, or arm-chair and relax both mind and body. Cease from all effort--which can only make things worse--and let the pain-thought have its way. After a time your energies will begin to collect themselves, your mind to reassert its control. Now make a firm suggestion of success and apply the method. Get another person to help you, as Coue helps his patients, by performing the passes with the hand and repeating the phrase with you. By this means you can make quite sure of success. This seemingly contradictory proceeding is analogous to that of the angler "playing" a fish. He waits till it has run its course before bringing his positive resources into play. Baudouin recommends an analogous proceeding as a weapon against insomnia. The patient, he says, should rapidly repeat the phrase, "I am going to sleep," letting his mind be swept away by a torrent of words. Once more the objection arises that the phrase "I am going to sleep" is not such as we can rapidly repeat. But even if we substitute for it some simple phrase which can be easily articulated it is doubtful whether it will succeed in more than a small percentage of cases. Success is more likely to attend us if we avail ourselves of the method of reflective repetition mentioned in the last chapter. We should take up the position most favourable to slumber and then repeat slowly and contemplatively the word "Sleep." The more impersonal our attitude towards the idea the more rapidly it will be realised in our own slumbers. CHAPTER X AUTOSUGGESTION AND THE CHILD In treating children it should be remembered that autosuggestion is primarily not a remedy but a means of insuring healthy growth. It should not be reserved for times when the child is sick, but provided daily, with the same regularity as meals. Children grow up weakly not from lack of energy, but because of a waste and misapplication of it. The inner conflict, necessitated by the continual process of adaptation which we call growth, is often of quite unnecessary violence, not only making a great temporary demand on the child's vital energy, but even locking it up in the Unconscious in the form of "complexes," so that its future life is deprived of a portion of its due vitality. A wise use of autosuggestion will preclude these disasters. Growth will be ordered and controlled. The necessary conflicts will be brought to a successful issue, the unnecessary ones avoided.