The power of self-suggestion
One of the classical methods in modern scientific psychotherapy, and a method which is also unconsciously employed by unscientific healing cults, is that which goes by the name of " suggestion."
This term is often used in a loose and vague way, even by good writers, to express the method by which one mind influences another, whether the method employed is argument or explanation or an idea offered in some indirect way, either through the personality of him who offers it or by some technical device.
The history of the word, however, as well as scientific convenience, indicates that it should be limited in psychotherapeutic usage to the psychical and physiological activity of ideas which work, not in the clear light of consciousness, but in the subconscious mental region that lies in the shadow. The word " suggestion " comes from Latin through French, and in its passage from one language to the other it took on a metaphorical meaning. The Latin verb meant originally " to put something under something else " ; then it came to signify in a general way " to offer " or " to provide " something.
The noun formed from it in French and taken over into English signifies an idea offered in an indirect or subtle manner. Finally, it is used by careful writers on psychotherapy to signify an idea offered not to the conscious but to the subconscious element in the mind.
When we try to persuade a person or to re-educate his reason or his will, we appeal to conscious, rational processes.
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