Question.--And outwardly, how is one to keep one's liberty?
Answer.--Self mastery applies just as much physically as mentally.
Question (Affirmation).--It is impossible to escape trouble or sadness, if we do not do as we should, it would not be just, and autosuggestion, cannot . . . and ought not to prevent just suffering.
M. Coué (very seriously and affirmatively).--Certainly and assuredly it ought not to be so, but it is so often . . . at any rate for a time.
Question.--Why did that patient who has been entirely cured, continually have those terrible attacks?
Answer.--He expected his attacks, he feared them . . . and so he provoked them; if this gentleman gets well into his mind the idea that he will have no more attacks, he will not have any; if he thinks that he will have them, he will indeed do so.
Question.--In what does your method differ from others.
Answer.--The differ not the will which rules us but the imagination; that is the basis, the fundamental basis.
Question.--Will you give me a summary of your "Method" for Mme. R----, who is doing an important work?
M. E. Coué.--Here is the summary of the "Method" in a few words: Contrary to what is taught, it is not our will which makes us act, but our imagination (the unconscious). If we often do act as we will, it is because at the same time we think that we can. If it is not so, we do exactly the reverse of what we wish. Ex: The more a person with insomnia determines to sleep, the more excited she becomes; the more we try to remember a name which we think we have forgotten, the more it escapes us (it comes back only if, in your mind, you replace the idea: "I have forgotten", by the idea "it will come back"); the more we strive to prevent ourselves from laughing, the more our laughter bursts out; the more we determine to avoid an obstacle, when learning to bicycle, the more we rush upon it.