Portrait of Émile Coué

Émile Coué

French psychologist and pharmacist

Lived
1857–1926

Updated September 2026

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About Émile Coué

Émile Coué de la Châtaigneraie was a French psychologist, pharmacist, and hypnotist who introduced a popular method of psychotherapy and self-improvement based on optimistic autosuggestion.It was in no small measure [Coué's] wholehearted devotion to a self-imposed task that enabled him, in less than a quarter of a century, to rise from obscurity to the position of the world’s most famous psychological exponent. Indeed, one might truly say that Coué sidetracked inefficient hypnotism [mistakenly based upon supposed operator dominance over a subject], and paved the way for the efficient, and truly scientific.

Biography from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Photo via Wikimedia Commons.

Sources: book lists and dates from Wikidata and Open Library, ratings from Open Library readers, free texts from Project Gutenberg. Last updated September 2026.