Suggestion

Suggestion is the psychological process by which a person guides their own or another person's desired thoughts, feelings, and behaviors by presenting stimuli that may elicit them as reflexes instead of relying on conscious effort. Nineteenth-century writers on psychology such as William James used the words "suggest" and "suggestion" in the context of a particular idea which was said to suggest another when it brought that other idea to mind. Early scientific studies of hypnosis by Clark Leonard Hull and others extended the meaning of these words in a special and technical sense (Hull, 1933). The original neuropsychological theory of hypnotic suggestion was based upon the ideomotor reflex response that William B. Carpenter declared, in 1852, was the principle through which James Braid's hypnotic phenomena were produced. Émile Coué (1857–1926) was a significant pioneer in the development of an understanding of the application of therapeutic suggestion; and, according to Cheek and LeCron, most of our current knowledge of suggestion "stems from Coué" (1968, p. 60). With the intention of "saturating the cognitive microenvironment of the mind", Coué's therapeutic method approach was based on four non-controversial principles: suggestion can produce somatic phenomena; specific suggestions generate specific somatic outcomes; suggestions are just as efficacious in the treatment of physical or organic conditions as they are for functional or emotional conditions; and a successful suggestion-based intervention for a physical condition does not indicate that the original complaint was in any way imaginary. Coué's laws of suggestion. Ideomotor and ideosensory effect (Suggestion and Autosuggestion, Baudouin, c. 1920: 117).

1. The Law of Concentrated AttentionIf spontaneous attention is concentrated on an idea, this tends to become realized.
2. The Law of Auxiliary Emotion, also called the Law of dominant effect When a suggestion is supported by emotion it will become stronger than every other suggestion, given at the same moment.