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AUTOMATIC writing and speaking are close of kin to so-called trances and visions. The study of multiple personality has shed much light on the psychology of automatic writing. When practising it, the patient may appear to be in his usual state; in fact, he may be conversing with someone in a perfectly natural manner, when, if a pencil is placed in his hand, he will begin to write continuously, writing long essays which are carefully composed, logically arranged, and sometimes extraordinarily fine in rhetorical expression; and all this is accomplished while the central consciousness is ignorant of everything that is going on.
The conditions governing automatic writing are in no essential different from those of crystal-gazing, shell-hearing, and hypnosis. The activities of the marginal consciousness are projected outward along the motor line of writing. In this case, the subconscious activities are not sensory; the primary cause rests neither in auditory nor in visual sensation, as in shell-hearing, and crystal vision, but in sensations of touch and movement - they are entirely motor. The central consciousness does not become aware of what is going on in the marginal consciousness until it sees the words that have been automatically written.
It will be apparent that to the central consciousness these messages would indeed appear as coming from another world; and thus many a psychically unbalanced person has been led to believe that these written messages were from the dead, or from spirits inhabiting other planets.
The phenomenon of automatic speaking occurs in the same way. It is another case of motor expression of psychic projection. This time the subject is concerned with spoken words instead of written words. The speaking may take the form of meaningless syllables, which may sound like a new tongue, or the language may be entirely intelligible and logical. These cases are illustrations of those peculiar and automatic talking performances which come to be regarded as the miraculous "gift of tongues"; and every syllable of their jargon is reverently listened to by their followers, who regard these mysterious utterances as messages from another world.
It is not necessary, in our study of abnormal psychology, to settle whether or not all of these automatic writers and talkers are self-deceived souls, or whether their writing and speaking has its origin entirely in an overactive subconscious mind which is able to eliminate its complexes in this peculiar fashion. I am not at all disposed to pronounce all these cases frauds, or even instances of self-deception. It may be altogether possible that some of them are manifestations of genuine activity on the part of actual spiritual forces, but that is not a point for further discussion in this connection6. The purpose of their recital here is primarily to call attention to the fact that, as they are commonly met with in our every-day life, their net result is to render those who tamper with them more and more susceptible to spiritualistic propaganda.
The automatic talkers and writers, those who "speak with tongues", etc., constitute the most interesting group of individuals who live their queer lives out on the borderland between the normal and the abnormal in psychology. I have recently been privileged to study not less than half a dozen men and women who are supposed to have the "gift of tongues", and who are prominently identified with religious movements that exhibit these gifts of the spirit as evidence of heavenly authenticity.
I have had some very interesting experiences in connection with the study of automatic writers. I remember one case which came under my observation many years ago; after this man had had a thorough course of instruction regarding the physiology and psychology of his strange performances, he gradually lost the power of automatic writing, and for the last six or eight years he has been wholly unable to indulge in this phenomenon. Years ago he was able to take a pencil in his hand, drop off into something approaching a passive dream-state, when suddenly the pencil would start to write messages, as he supposed, from the spirit world. In this connection let me record it as my opinion that automatic writing and the automatism manifested in the ouija-board performance are very nearly, if not quite, one and the same. That is, I regard them as identical in their psychological roots - in their psychic origin and direction.
I have found it exceedingly difficult to segregate the sincere and subconscious automatic writers from those who are to a certain degree consciously fraudulent. There seems to be an inherent tendency on the part of these psychic freaks and so-called "sensitives" to exaggerate their gifts and, childlike, magnify their performances. The mental attitude of the medium seems to be to try to outdo other "psychics", and so there is ever present this urge to the perpetration of fraud.
Notwithstanding the frauds to be found among automatic writers, there is, nevertheless, a residue who are wholly sincere; honest men and women who believe they are "spirit controlled", or that in some other way their automatic writings have a spiritual origin. It would appear that Mr. G. B. Shaw's mother was an automatic writer. I have a very good friend, a professional man, who is an automatic writer, but who no longer considers that his messages are dictated by discarnate spirits.
While Flammarion never became an out-and-out spiritualist, it is well known that he was a fluent automatic writer in his young days, as was also Sardou, the dramatist, who more largely indulged his gift along the line of automatic drafting. Flammarion, in reciting some of his own experiences, sheds an interesting sidelight on the performances of automatic writers when he explains how, after he had written out a considerable thesis on science, he subconsciously signed it "Galileo".
As indicating that all our experiences are conserved in memory7, and as a demonstration that anything in the memory - even in the unconscious - can be recalled and find expression in both thought and words, I would cite the case of a patient suffering from Jacksonian epilepsy, which I have reported elsewhere. This singular case is one of automatic talking.
At the time when this patient, Mr. C., was operated upon, he was about thirty years of age. His general health was good; he had never passed through any severe illness. Four years before coming under our observation, he had been engaged in a scuffle with an armed man, who dealt him a severe blow on the head with a gun-stock. A short time after this accident he developed a typical case of Jacksonian epilepsy. Immediately after each epileptic attack he seemed to be in a dazed condition, during which he would often engage in extraordinary escapades, even to the extent of going out on the streets at night and holding up pedestrians at the point of a revolver. As time passed, these attacks of post-epileptic insanity grew more and more severe, and would last for longer periods of time.
During the periods of mental aberration following his seizures, the patient would wander away from home, sometimes being absent two or three days. It was during one of these wandering periods, in which he was only semi-conscious of what he was doing, that he was picked up and brought to the institution where I was enabled to make the observations here recorded.
Shortly after being placed in his bed, and under guard, the patient began to talk in an apparently rational and chronological manner. His eyes seldom moved, his gaze was fixed and concentrated straight ahead. It soon appeared that he was relating a section of his life experience in chronological order, hour by hour and day by day. All went well, as he talked hour after hour (only requiring that his lips be moistened now and then), until he came to the time in his life marked by the fight in which he was hit over the head with the gun-stock; whereupon he was immediately seized with a paroxysm of convulsions of extraordinary severity and duration. It required four powerful men to hold him in bed at this time, or rather on the bed, for the mattress and springs were quickly precipitated to the floor.
Immediately after one of these paroxysms, the patient would begin to talk in a moderate tone of voice, somewhat of a monotone, concerning his experiences, thoughts, and acts. He would begin with some Monday morning, stretching his arms as on awakening in bed. He would speak very distinctly when expressing his leading thoughts, while he would quickly slur over numerous unimportant matters. At one time, I remember, it required only about twenty minutes to pass through a day's experience, and during this brief time he repeated aloud his chief thoughts, and described or illustrated in abbreviated pantomime his chief acts. He would sometimes move his hands during these narratives, but never undertook to leave the bed, lying quietly on his back and talking continuously. He would pass through a day's experience in from ten minutes to half an hour, depending on how recent the events were; and upon completing the story of a day he would apparently grow sleepy, and after but a few seconds of silence, which seemed to correspond with the night's sleep, would awaken, yawn, stretch his arms upward, yawn again, and then immediately begin the narration of the next day's thoughts and actions.
During one of his longer recitals, lasting about thirty-six hours, he passed through three and a half years of his life, apparently relating all the leading thoughts and chief events. At another time he passed over a period of eleven days which were very thoroughly known to his attendants and observers, and his recital included every known conversation and experience of this period, each of which was very fully, accurately and chronologically repeated.
I remember, on one of these occasions, when he was approaching a point where he would soon be due to describe an interview with me, I told this experience, as best I could, in advance of his narrative. In fifteen or twenty minutes he reached the experience I had anticipated, and gave it just as accurately, filling in a number of details that had slipped my mind; but wherein the details of his story were different from mine, I was compelled in each case to recognize that he was right and I was wrong; thus it was demonstrated that his memory in the trance state was far more reliable than my normal memory.
In passing through an experience of this sort, ranging from two hours to almost two days, he never slept, but talked incessantly. He would take no nourishment during this time, but would sit up in bed and drink from one to three glasses of water, or allow his lips to be moistened from time to time. The drinking of water was all we ever discovered that would stop his talking. His expression was usually quite fixed, except on certain occasions when his face would grow pale and an angry look would come across it. At other times his countenance would light up somewhat while he was describing some ridiculous experience or relating some humorous episode.
Careful inquiry (after one of the attacks) showed that he possessed absolutely no memory of anything that had happened since the time of his seizure. He could always recall that his "mind was feeling queer" as he described it, and that he was afraid he was "going to have another spell". None of his various depredations (in one of these monologues he described holding up six men, and four strange purses were found on his person) could be recalled to his mind. He seemed to be blissfully ignorant of all that he had done and all that he had said. He apparently knew of these things only by quizzing his attendants.
Aside from the surgical aspects of this case, it demonstrated fully to my mind that human memory retains well-nigh everything which has passed through the state of consciousness. While the power of recalling facts or experiences may be incomplete, all the incidents - the neural patterns - exist in the so-called subconscious mind or marginal state, relatively perfect and complete. Further, it seems that this case demonstrates that the mind possesses an inherent chronological sense, that its memories are grouped and sorted in chronological order; that the marginal consciousness is in possession of all the memory data of the mind, and is able, under certain conditions, and within reasonable time limits, to recall and reproduce the same in logical order.
Observation of this patient could not fail to impress one with the fact that the human brain-memory, in its behavior, is in many respects analogous to a phonograph record, while the mind performs in the capacity of that power which operates, utilizes, reproduces, and otherwise manipulates those things recorded on the brain through the sensory receiving apparatus of the body. This case of automatic talking also serves to throw considerable light on the problem of automatic writing.
Among British spiritualists, perhaps the most famous of the automatic writers was the Rev. Stainton Moses. But a careful study of his writings pertaining to history and other subjects shows that he must have been reexpressing the data found in the storehouse of his own memory. That some of the data of his subconscious mind were unreliable is proved by the fact that many of his statements concerning ancient Oriental races have been shown by subsequent discoveries to be entirely false. A careful scrutiny of his statements shows what books he had been reading - books that were a little out of date even in his day, and that have since been shown to be entirely untrue.
Most automatic writers insist that they have not read books whose contents would account for what they write. Andrew Jackson Davis, one of the early wizards of automatic writing, wrote much about evolution. He denied having read books on this subject, but examination of his writings shows so much in common with Chambers's work that one can only believe he had at some time read the book. In this connection we must remember that it is entirely possible for a normal person to read a book or magazine article, and to have its subject matter stored away in the subconscious archives of the brain, wholly forgotten by the normal consciousness, and yet to bring it all to light by means of hypnosis, dreams, or automatic writing.
Of the many thousands of pages of automatic writing left by the Reverend Mr. Moses, much was published after his death by trustees to whom he left his manuscript. These records are interesting, but far from convincing as proofs of anything supernatural. So far as we are aware, no message has ever been received by automatic writing that could not plausibly be shown to have had a natural and normal origin from well-known material which could easily have found its place, through ordinary channels of reading and observation, in the subconscious centers of the mind.
The study of automatic writings shows that they fall into two groups:
1. Those which are but a restatement of ideas and facts which the automatic writer has psychically assimilated in perfectly normal fashion through reading, attendance upon lectures, and otherwise mingling with his fellow men.
2. Those which are manifestly fraudulent on their face. About ten years ago a London paper offered a thousand pounds to any medium who would give proof, before a competent tribunal, of possessing telepathic power or of giving supernatural messages by means of automatic writing, etc. No one has ever appeared to claim the reward. Likewise, I think Rinn's offer of a thousand pounds, which he deposited with the American Society for Psychic Research, to be given for bona fide evidence of communication with the dead under proper conditions, has never been awarded. Most medium s prefer to work for smaller fees with a sympathetic audience. The five thousand dollar award of The Scientific American was not won by any of the mediums examined.
Spiritualists ordinarily maintain that the hand of the automatic writer is controlled by spirit forces, and that therefore the writing has little or no connection with the mind of the writer - that it is supernatural in origin and represents a message dictated by spirits. But there is no need of a spirit hypothesis to explain automatic writing. The explanation of the phenomenon is comparatively simple. A dissociation has taken place - one far more complete than those of ordinary hysteria. The field of consciousness is divided into two distinct parts, one engaged in ordinary conversation, perhaps, while the other is dealing with those ideas and complexes which are concerned in automatic writing.
In discussing the technique of automatic writing, one authority (Morton Prince) says:
"The recalled experiences being brought back by associative memories enter into the associations and become true conscious recollections, while in automatic writing the memories are reproduced in script without entering the personal consciousness at all and while the subject is still in ignorance. Often even after reading the script his memory still remains a blank. It is much as tho one's ideas had been preserved on a phonographic record and later reproduced without awakening a memory of their original occurrence."
In the investigation of Mrs. Holland's automatic writing there was found in one of her automatic scripts a statement in the exact words - as well as reproducing the sentimental context - of a letter which she had written twenty years before. This experience she had long since forgotten, but the original letter was accidentally discovered. In the automatic script, which purported to be a spirit message from a dead friend named Annetta, there was found this sentence: "Tell her this comes from the friend who loves cradles and cradled things". Now, the meaning of this enigmatic sentence was revealed by the discovery of the aforementioned letter of twenty years and more before, for the letter quoted an extract from Annetta's will, reading, "because I love cradles and cradled things". Undoubtedly, if more old letters could be unearthed, or if we could walk at will in the halls of our early memories, we could discover the origin of much that appears in our daily conversation, and in many cases the automatic writers would be able to trace out their alleged spirit-dictated writings to a perfectly normal, natural, and human source, among the rich deposits of past experiences conserved in the unconscious realms of the mind.
And so we must conclude that, in the case of both automatic writing and automatic talking, we now have a thoroughly scientific hypothesis which will account for all phenomena of this kind that deserve to be classified as genuine. Nothing as yet has ever come to us through automatic writing which bears any evidence of super-natural origin, or which contains authentic truths, facts, or principles heretofore unknown to the human race. The automatic writers have given us nothing but what is in every way consistent with our belief that such messages are only a rehash of the common elements of human experience stored away in the subconscious centers of the automatic writer's own mind.
The reader is referred to the Appendix for brief notice of a very unusual case of supposedly automatic writing associated with other psychic phenomena which came under my observation many years ago.