Talk:Émile Coué

His Family Background

I'm only an amateur when it comes to such matters as French history, but saying someone is both Breton and a French aristocrat seems contradictory. I suppose there must have been a few over the last 1000 years, but a citation is in order. —Preceding unsigned comment added by JoshNarins (talk • contribs) 09:26, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

Orthography

There seems to be an error here -- which is both understandable, and quite widespread.

This man's name is Emile Coué [N.B. the "acute" accent is only over the last letter of his family name.

The issue is this: if his given name was to be written in lower case letters, it would -- according to the conventions of written French -- be written as émile. However, according to that precise, same set of conventions, the inital letter of a given name is (a) ALWAYS written with a capital letter, and (b) out of the fact that it is written with a capital letter, it NEVER has an accent over it.

Therefore, the form in which this article's title appears is very incorrect. in the -- unsigned comment by IP 129.94.6.28 06:52, 8 September 2005

Where did you get the idea that diacritics NEVER appear over upper-case letters in French? They're only somewhat optional in there... AnonMoos 22:12, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

(And it's worth noting that the French-language Wikipedia page gives his E an accent!)

Yes, but it's also worth noting that a Google search, including a Google search limited to the French language (done with the advanced search feature), shows no accent over Emile EXCEPT in French Wikipedia and Wikisource. I'm removing it on that basis, although I don't know French and perhaps someone who does should correct me. Just keep in mind that the French googling doesn't show it. TryCoolCareful 01:44, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

On second thought, no I'm not going to change it. I left a message at the Wikiproject:France talk page. My own google search isn't enough to make me certain I'm right. Let someone with expertise settle it. (The name of the article would need to be changed too.) TryCoolCareful 02:00, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

In fact, the rule would be to write Émile, BUT common practice (probably based on the fact that there is no way to write 'É' on a French keyboard) is to write Emile. Therefore if personally I'd write Émile, I don't know what's best... -- lucasbfr ^talk 10:14, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

2021

The Académie Française recommends writing accents on capitals [1] Jec (talk) 17:49, 3 April 2021 (UTC)

WikiProject class rating

This article was automatically assessed because at least one article was rated and this bot brought all the other ratings up to at least that level. BetacommandBot 08:28, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

Standard of article

At the moment this is written as if it is an advertisement for some sort of religious figure, and is extremely POV. It is beyond dispute that Coué was, and remains, a historically significant figure, and the article should reflect this fact.Lindsay658 22:23, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Citations needed in abundance

This article is a real mess. Apart from the fact that the standard of its poorly written English is of such a nature that many of the sentences are quite ambiguous in their meaning, there is claim after claim after claim, with no supporting evidence; for example Coué is allegedly quoted as saying so-and-so, but no source (author, work, edition, year of publication, and page number).

Anyone who has studied Coué and his work — and the publications of himself and those associated with him in the 1920s — will immediately recognize that much of this article seems to be based on fanciful "creation myths" that have been generated by some twenty-first century commercial organization, that is pushing some sort of therapeutic franchise that claims to have its roots in Coué's "Method", rather than it being based on an historical account of what Coué actually did, and what he actually said. Just for starters . . . .

• "many Americans who adopted his ideas and methods, for example, Norman Vincent Peale, Robert Shuler, and W. Clement Stone, became famous in their own right by spreading the "gospel" of his words."

No evidence is given in relation to Peale, or Shuler, or Stone ever studying with Coué (or even meeting with him). None of these men became famous by teaching Coué's techniques. Coué, who was a profoundly non-religious man would be appalled to hear his "Method" and its explanatory representation described as his "gospel". Also, a statement such as this relegates the significance of Coué to being just another promoter of nothing but a Pollyanna-like, one-size-fits-all positive mental attitude.

• "As Coué put it, "Autosuggestion is a weapon that one must learn to use. It's like a double-edged sword which when learned to use properly, one can save one's life, or otherwise end up injuring or killing oneself."

This statement, allegedly citing Coué directly, does not appear in any of Coué's own works. There is no source (author, work, edition, year, page number) cited for the statement.

• "By using autosuggestion consciously he observed that the subjects could cure themselves by replacing in their mind "thought of illness" with "thought of cure"."

Despite the assertion in this sentence, the terms "thought of illness" with "thought of cure" are not Coué's; and, in fact they totally misrepresent Coué, who simply held that certain particular thoughts were mutually exclusive of their polar opposites.

• Coué's "trick".

Except for a single use, in a lecture in the United States in 1923, Coué never used the word "trick" at all (so, no doubt, this is yet another twenty-first century anachronism). On the single occasion that he used the term it is abundantly clear that he was speaking to his audience of the manner in which the hand-clasp demonstration ever so clearly revealed just how powerful negative thinking was; and, it follows that the "trick" that he spoke of was using the term as a stage magician would (i.e, "a trick" = "a performance"), rather than as a confidence trickster would (i.e., "a trick" = "a deception"). However, it is very clear that he never referred to his "Method" as his "trick" — as this badly written article constantly asserts.

• "C. Harry Brooks puts it in another way : "Idea in the mind is inversely proportional to the square of willpower".

Where? What page?

• "C. Harry Brooks has mentioned a pendulum experiment in his book."

Where? What page? What did the "experiment" involve? What type of pendulum was it? A Chevreul pendulm? What was the experiment designed to test or demonstrate?

• "Coué recommended that patients take medicines such as antibiotics with the confidence that they would be completely cured very soon, and healing would be optimal."

Antibiotics did not exist in Coué's lifetime.

• "As per Coué . . ."

Although there are many claims within this article that Coué said this or Coué said that, there are no sources (author, work, edition, year, page number) cited for any of these assertions; and, moreover, a citation must be provided, in order to distinguish between the twenty-first century "creation myth" and the veridical facts of the historical account of the real Coué and his actual work.

• "A person with serious accident or injury would would not be treated by autosuggestion first. The surgeon will have to the needful. The healing can be made fast by use of autosuggestion."

What on earth do these three sequential sentences actually mean?

I hope that somebody can do something with this article.Lindsay658 (talk) 22:17, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Cleanup

I have now done some major editing on this article, mainly aimed at removing OR and POV junk which initially littered the article. All of my edits are open to discussion, so feel free to modify any of it – but remember to state your sources. I hope this will improve the article's general quality. --m3taphysical (talk) 17:49, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

Addendum to clean up: I'm not sure the word "routine" quite describes how the phrase is supposed to be repeated. The French text (livre de poche, la méthode Coué) says "machinalement" – I understand this to mean robotic-like, or mechanically. "Routinely" is just too flimsy a word: doesn't have the same nuance as the word "mechanically". This is supported by listening to the early recording of Coué at one of his conventions. Towards the end of the recording, he repeats the phrase like a robot. I think it's really important to mention this: it is key to the method. Listen to the early recording: even if you don't understand French, you can understand the tone of voice and the tempo to be used.

And... Accents on capital letters – I understood the rule to be no accents on capital letters. However, in publishing, capitals with accents are regularly used, particularly in titles. Don't we flout English grammar rules all/some of the time...?? --Brisco Morland (talk) 09:18, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

Request as a reader!

Can someone add pronunciation of Émile Coué's name please? --Tito Dutta ✉ 01:50, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

I assume the French would be [emil kwe]; the English approximation is [eɪmiːl kuːeɪ] (see American Heritage Dictionary, etc.)... AnonMoos (talk) 12:12, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

French Wikipedia

Article seems based on fr wiki (see sources section): am adding acknowledgement Jacobisq (talk) 08:39, 22 June 2012 (UTC)

"All is well"?

An editor is wanting to insert the following material and is insisting:

'2009: In the Indian film 3 Idiots, the character Rancho, played by Aamir Khan, mutters the phrase "All Is Well" under his breath while tapping his heart during stressful times.

The problem with this is that I don't see, right off, any connection between Émile Coué and the phrase "All is well". That phrase is not mentioned in this article, and Google doesn't find any connection right off. Granted that it does seem the sort of thing Coué might recommend, I suppose.

In the 3 Idiots article it does say Robert Abele of Los Angeles Times wrote that there's an "unavoidable joie de vivre (symbolized by Rancho's meditative mantra '"All is well', an example of the Émile Coué Method) and a performance charm that make this one of the more naturally gregarious Bollywood imports". It does quote Abele as saying "All is well" == Émile Coué. Abele does write for the Los Angeles Times so he's not just a bum, but he could also just be riffing -- it reminded him of Coué.

Buuuut... there's no ref for the quote in that article, and I can't find it online right off, but I found three excerpts -- here, here, and here -- and all three omit the Coué reference and give Abele's passage as just "There's an unavoidable joie de vivre (symbolized by Rancho's meditative mantra 'All is well') and a performance charm that make this one of the more naturally gregarious Bollywood imports" which makes me highly suspicious that someone original-researched the Coué reference in -- an especially poor idea for direct quotes. Given all that I've redacted the addition again (and removed the Coué reference from Abele's quote in the 3 Idiots article) and before restoring it I'd like to see some demonstration that Abele really did say "an example of the Émile Coué Method" and also some demonstration Abele has standing to say this, e.g. that he's familiar with Coué's works and is not a laymen just thinking "Gee, that kind of reminds me of the sort of thing Émile Coué went for", or else some demonstration that Coué used that phrase or that filmakers intended a Coué reference, or something. Herostratus (talk) 01:09, 9 October 2014 (UTC)

By far Coué's most famous slogan is "Every day in every way I'm getting better and better". If there were any others, then I'm not sure how they would have influenced recent Bollywood movies, or been notable if they did. "All is well" sounds like something a heart doctor might tell a patient to say in order to help the patient relax. AnonMoos (talk) 14:02, 17 October 2014 (UTC)