SUGGESTION AND AUTOSUGGESTION (I)

Charles Baudouin ( 1893 –  1963) was a French-Swiss psychoanalyst.

Baudouin was born Nancy, France. In his work, he combined Freudianism with elements of the thought of Carl Jung and Alfred Adler. He died, aged 70, in Geneva.

Charles Baudouin published Suggestion & Autosuggestion (1920), based upon a series of university lectures of Émile Coué. Baudouin himself was an educationalist, psychotherapist and professor of philosophy at the Rousseau Institute and University of Geneva. Prior to the publication of Baudouin’s work in 1920, literature on the New Nancy School was scarce,

He [Coué] was written no more than a few articles in the bulletin of the school, and some papers for psychological congresses. Even scantier are the writings of his pupils. The New Nancy School supplied the elements of an entire psychology, but this psychology remains unwritten.

During his career, he was a Swiss psychoanalyst and Privatdocent at the University of Geneva (1920), founder of the International Institute of Psychagogy and Psychotherapy (1924), director of the review Action et Pensée (Action and Thought) (1931), Chevalier of the Legion of Honor in Paris (1950), and associate professor at the University of Geneva (1962).
Baudouin studied philosophy in Nancy, where he received his degree in 1912. He was a professor of philosophy at the school of Neufchâteau in the Vosges. In 1915 he traveled to Geneva, attracted by the success of the Jean-Jacques Rousseau Institute, where he taught. He wrote his doctoral dissertation, entitled Suggestion et Autosuggestion, at the University of Geneva in 1920.
Baudouin underwent three different analyses: One in 1917 with Dr. Carl Picht, a Jungian analyst, another, a training analysis, with Charles Odier, between 1925 and 1926, and a third with another Jungian, Tina Keller. Fluent in both French and German, Baudouin read the work of Freud and the first psychoanalysts early in his career. He met Freud in Vienna in 1926. In 1929 Baudouin applied for membership in the Société Psychanalytique de Paris, but his request was rejected because of pressure from Henri Flournoy, who insisted that he would join the organization only upon condition that Baudouin not be admitted.
Baudouin spent much of his career trying to reconcile the work of Jung, Freud, and Adler. His earliest work was devoted to suggestion and hypnosis. He later developed an interest in literature and the relation between psychoanalysis and education. Baudouin's literary output throughout his career was considerable.

SUGGESTION AND AUTOSUGGESTION

A PSYCHOLOGICAL AND PEDAGOGICAL STUDY BASED UPON THE INVESTIGATIONS MADE BY THE NEW NANCY SCHOOL

BY

CHARLES BAUDOUIN

Professor at the Jean Jacques Rousseau Institute and Occasional Professor at the University of Geneva

Author of Culture de la Force morale, Symbolisms

1920