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.

Autosuggestion may very well begin before the child is born. It is a
matter of common knowledge that a mother must be