Philosophy – Page 58 – Donald J. Robertson

Excerpt: On Autosuggestion from The Philosophy of CBT

Émile Coué, Autosuggestion, and Ancient Philosophy

This is a brief (slightly modified) excerpt from my book, The Philosophy of Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy: Stoic Philosophy as Rational and Cognitive Psychotherapy, which is now in its revised second edition, from Routledge.

When the French pharmacist Émile Coué (1857-1926) was 28 years old he met one of the pioneers of hypnotism, a country doctor named Ambroise-Auguste Liébault (1823-1904), and assisted him for about two years in his hypnotic clinic at Nancy. However, by 1910 Coué had abandoned classical hypnosis in favour of his technique of “conscious autosuggestion”, in which subjects are taught how to use suggestion and imagination for themselves, without the use of a formal hypnotic induction.

Coué went on to found a movement he termed the “New Nancy School”, in reference to the Nancy School of hypnosis started by Liébault, who had passed away a few years earlier. Coué became one of the most influential “self-help” gurus of the twentieth century, touring America with his public seminars and attracting an international following.

Strikingly, Coué wrote, ‘Pythagoras and Aristotle taught autosuggestion’ (Coué, 1923, p. 3). Though his justification for this conclusion is left unstated, he could probably have found some material to explain and support it.

We know, indeed, that the whole human organism is governed by the nervous system, the centre of which is the brain – the seat of thought. In other words, the brain, or mind, controls every cell, every organ, every function of the body. That being so, is it not clear that by means of thought we are the absolute masters of our physical organism and that, as the Ancients showed centuries ago, thought – or suggestion – can and does produce disease or cure it? Pythagoras taught the principle of auto-suggestion to his disciples. He wrote: “God the Father, deliver them from their sufferings, and show them what supernatural power is at their call.” (Coué, 1923, pp. 3-4)

The practice of repeating aphorisms, short verbal “formulas”, seems to have been associated with the ancient mystery religions and oracles, and the philosophical-therapeutic sect of Pythagoras which evolved from them.

The Ancients well knew the power – often the terrible power – contained in the repetition of a phrase of formula. The secret of the undeniable influence they exercised through the old Oracles resided probably, nay, certainly, in the force of suggestion. (Coué, 1923, p. 27)

The most famous formulae associated with the Delphic Oracle of Apollo, the patron god of philosophy, were “Know thyself” and “Nothing in excess.” The Pythagoreans compiled lists of such aphorisms, which acquired cryptic symbolic meanings, and were referred to as akousmata, the “things listened to”, and symbola, the “symbols” or “watchwords.”

For example, according to Porphyry, the precept “poke not the fire with a sword” was a reminder that one should not further provoke an angry person by attacking them with verbal criticisms; “eat not the heart”, meant that one should not wallow in morbid emotions (Porphyry, 1988, p. 131). These Pythagorean sayings, and those derived from the Greek Oracles, may well be the precursors of the Stoic precepts (dogmata) which, as we shall see, appear to have performed a similar function.

This is a brief excerpt from my book, The Philosophy of Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy, published by Routledge and available to order online from Amazon, and everywhere they sell books.

Excerpt: Shame-Attacking Exercises

This is a brief excerpt from my book, The Philosophy of Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy: Stoic Philosophy as Rational and Cognitive Psychotherapy, which is now in its revised second edition, from Routledge.

In certain concrete practical respects, REBT also contains therapy interventions that resemble techniques familiar within ancient philosophical therapy. Ellis was known for what he described as REBT’s “trademark” use of various “shame-attacking exercises”. In order to help clients overcome self-consciousness, social embarrassment and inhibition, Ellis would prescribe changes in behaviour which were designed to forcefully and directly challenge their sense of shame. For example, he refers to the technique of asking clients to repeatedly stop a bus without getting off, or asking strangers in the street to give them money, etc.

I realised, soon after I started REBT in 1955, that what we call “shame” is the essence of a great deal of our emotional disturbance. […] Seeing this, I created my now famous shame-attacking exercise in 1968; and perhaps millions of people, especially psychotherapy clients, have done this exercise and trained themselves to feel shamed or sorry about what they did, and about the public disapproval that often went with it, but not to put themselves down and not to feel humiliated about their personhood. (Ellis & MacLaren, 2005, p. 95)

Ellis further explains the exercise as follows,

Here clients deliberately seek to act “shamefully” in public in order to accept themselves and to tolerate the ensuing discomfort. Since clients do best to harm neither themselves nor other people, minor infractions of social rules often serve as suitable shame-attacking exercises (e.g., calling out the time in a crowded department store, wearing bizarre clothes designed to attract public attention, and going into a hardware store and asking the clerks whether they sell tobacco). (Dryden & Ellis, 2001, p. 329)

This aspect of Ellis’ work is strikingly reminiscent of the practices of the ancient Cynic philosophers who appear to have adopted, albeit in a more extreme manner, controversial lifestyles and behaviours in order to liberate themselves from social conventions.

The Cynics break with the world […] was radical. They rejected what most people considered the elementary rules and indispensible conditions for life in society: cleanliness, pleasant appearance, and courtesy. They practiced deliberate shamelessness – masturbating in public, like Diogenes, or making love in public, like Crates and Hipparchia. The Cynics were absolutely unconcerned with social proprieties and opinion; they despised money, did not hesitate to beg, and avoided seeking stable positions within the city. […] They did not fear the powerful, and always expressed themselves with provocative freedom of speech (parrhesia). (Hadot, 2002, p. 109)

Ellis seems unaware of this precursor to his “shame-attacking” exercises. However, the Cynics themselves specifically refer to the deliberate practice of “shamelessness” (anaideia) as a psychotherapeutic exercise. In the case of Diogenes, this was referred to metaphorically as his “defacing the coinage” of social conventions, which inevitably shocked others. So notorious were the shameless acts of Diogenes that Plato allegedly called him “Socrates gone mad”.

According to the Greek biographer Diogenes Laertius, the famous Cynic, Crates, who trained Zeno the founder of the Stoic school, was nicknamed “Door-opener” because of his habit of inviting himself into people’s houses to lecture them somewhat abrasively on philosophy(Laertius, 1853, p. 250). He also mentions another practice of Crates which sounds like an even more provocative version of Ellis’ shame attacking exercises, ‘He used to abuse prostitutes designedly, for the purpose of practising himself in enduring reproaches’(Laertius, 1853, p. 251). Epictetus seems to imply that Diogenes and the other Cynics, whom he greatly admired, deliberately broke wind in front of people, presumably also as part of their practice of shamelessness (Discourses, 3.22.80). Indeed, I am indebted to Still and Dryden for the following illustration drawn from Montaigne’s account of a quite surprising Stoic anecdote,

In the midst of a discussion, and in the presence of his followers, Metrocles let off a fart. To hide his embarrassment he stayed at home until, eventually, Crates came to pay him a visit; to his consolations and arguments Crates added the example of his own licence: he began a farting match with him, thereby removing his scruples and, into the bargain, converting him to the freer stoic school from the more socially oriented Peripatetics whom he had formerly followed. (Montaigne, in Still & Dryden, 1999, p. 157)

Crates’ exercises in shamelessness, or the overcoming of social anxiety and inhibition, can be seen as a practical training in his maxim, ‘That a man ought to study philosophy, up to the point of looking on generals and donkey-drivers in the same light’ (Laertius, 1853, p. 252). Zeno appears to have assimilated some aspects of his mentor’s philosophy into Stoic therapeutics, although moderated by a greater respect for society than the Cynics allegedly displayed.

Like Crates, Diogenes the Cynic, who was revered as a Sage by some Stoics, reputedly tested prospective students by instructing them to follow him around carrying a salted fish, or a piece of cheese, in their hands. When some refused, out of embarrassment, he would chide them: “See how a piece of salted fish was enough to dissolve our friendship!” (Laertius, 1853, p. 230). Notoriously insolent and iconoclastic, he once asked the Athenians to erect a statue to him, and when asked why he had done so, replied, “I am practising disappointment.” (Laertius, 1853, p. 235). These and many similar popular philosophical anecdotes illustrate the striking parallel between the ancient Cynics’ psychotherapeutic technique of anaideia, or shamelessness, and the “shame-attacking” exercises made famous by Albert Ellis within REBT, precursors of certain more modest “behavioural experiments” used to challenge social anxiety and inhibition in modern CBT. Beck and his colleagues also refer to “anti-shame exercises” and observe that cognitive therapy provides opportunities for clients to deliberately expose themselves to feelings of shame in order to conquer them (Beck, Emery, & Greenberg, 2005, p. 282). Indeed, there are many more parallels which can be drawn between the principles of REBT and those of Stoicism.

Addendum

I didn’t spot this quotation in time for the book but Diogenes Laertius writes:

Some one dropped a loaf of bread and was ashamed to pick it up; whereupon Diogenes, wishing to read him a lesson, tied a rope to the neck of a wine-jar and proceeded to drag it across the Ceramicus.

The Ceramicus was the busy potter’s district of Athens, as the name implies, but also the location of a major cemetery. This exercise in shamelessness clearly anticipates Ellis’ “trademark” REBT technique of taking a banana for a walk on a string through a shopping mall, as if it were a dog on a leash.

This is a brief excerpt from my book, The Philosophy of Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy, published by Routledge and available to order online from Amazon, and everywhere they sell books.