Automatic writing (from the Greek. Automatos - spontaneous) - the process (or result) of the letter, which is allegedly the result of unconscious activity of the writer. An individual may be in a state of hypnotic , mediumistic or meditative trance , or be fully conscious and control everything except the movement of his hand. It is used in some mystical practices (such as spiritualism ) for the supposed possibility of communication with the spirits of the dead, who are considered to be the directors of automatic writing [1] . It is also used by some psychotherapists [1] with the aim of disclosing and releasing from supposed hidden emotions and motives that create conflicts in the psyche.
Scientists have questioned both the mechanism of automatic writing, different from the ideomotor act [2] or the action based on the subconscious imagination [1] , and the scientific validity of the concept of " unconscious " used in psychotherapy [3] , as well as the therapeutic effectiveness of automatic writing [1 ] . The National Science Foundation of the United States considers belief in the ability to communicate with spirits to one of the most common pseudoscientific delusions among Americans [4] .
Content
Automatic Spiritual Writing
In spiritualism and spiritualism, a type of automatic writing, psychography , was used to receive messages from otherworldly sources. A kind of psychographic textbook is the "Book of Mediums" by Allan Kardek , who used two methods to receive messages from "spirits". Indirect psychography was carried out by experimenters using a material object, for example, the Ouija board . Direct psychography (without the mediation of any mechanical device) was a process of direct writing, carried out (as it was thought) under the influence of "spirit".
One of those who experimented with automatic writing was the priest and educator William Stainton Moses . Despite the fact that he himself adhered to the orthodox Christian faith, from his pen came out unusual messages, which gradually forced him to believe that the authors of them were the spirits of the dead. In 1882, the New York dentist John B. Newbrow wrote the book Oaspe , allegedly "dictated by ghosts." English housewife Rosemary Brown automatically recorded the notes (without knowing the musical notation) and thus created entire musical works (attributed to classical composers: Liszt , Chopin , Beethoven and others). In 1914, Elsa Barker published The Letters to the Dead (in 2004, the book was republished under the heading “Letters From The Afterlife: A Guide to the Other Side”), composed of a correspondence with the spirit of Judge David P. Hatch, which was also conducted according to her, by the method of automatic writing. Ability to "automatic writing" possessed Vl. S. Soloviev , who, according to contemporaries, was a “passive medium ”.
The automatic letter was owned by George Hyde Lees, the wife of the poet and playwright William Butler Yeats . In 1975, Wendy Hart from Maidenhead "automatically" compiled the biography of Nicholas Moore, the captain of the ship who died in 1642. Brazilian medium Chico Javier wrote over a hundred books this way.
It was thanks to the use of automatic writing in spiritualism that psychiatrists and psychologists , in particular, William James and Pierre Jeanne, drew the attention of themselves.
Psychiatry Use
Automatic writing was used by Freudian psychologists and their closest followers as a method of psycho- and self-analysis . Theorists of this method argued that “automatic writing” is an access to the content of the unconscious that arose in special states of consciousness, giving the researcher an insight into the underlying problems of the writer’s mind.
In 1896, a description of the experiment appeared that was conducted by L. M. Solomons and G. Stein: it showed that automatic writing is a motor skill. Due to the training, it was possible to achieve that Stein could read the text, which she wrote at the same time, with a lag of 3-4 words.
The apologists for automatic writing were Pierre Jeanne in France, Morton Prince and Anita Meul in the USA. The methodology was described in detail in the book “Self-Hypnosis” by Leslie M. Lecron (published in Russia under the heading “Self-Hypnosis: Good Power”).
The psychiatrist Carl Wickland ( en: Carl Wickland ), who used spiritualistic methods in his work for thirty years, nevertheless came to the conclusion that for some people the practice of spiritualism, and in particular automatic writing, can cause serious mental disorders [5] .
Art Use
Subsequently, “automatic writing”, along with other similar phenomena (“automatic drawing”, “automatic playing music”), was used as a means of expressing the unconscious in the art of surrealism (in particular, in A. Breton ). First used by A. Breton and F. Supo ("Magnetic Fields", 1919). Many surrealists called their medium "medium" Helen Smith , who claimed to be the reincarnation of Marie-Antoinette , then the daughter of an Arab sheikh, who was in contact with the Martians and gave samples of the Martian writing [6] .
Psychology professor T. Flurnua , who studied Smith's abilities, came to the conclusion that the language of the “Martian” letter is close to her native French [8] , and that her revelations are nothing more than a subconscious imagination, based mostly on forgotten sources [1] . Subsequently, Flurnua proposed the term “ cryptomnezia ” to describe such a phenomenon.
Writer Bernard Weber used the automatic writing technique to write some episodes of the Tanatonauta dilogy (1994):
Some passages were written using automatic writing. This means that I had no intention of introducing any storyline into the narrative, my fingers ran along the keyboard, and only later did I read the text to find out what I had written. I almost did not change the structure of the first option. Just because I didn’t understand very well why I wrote this way, and it intrigued me. Only later did I understand why I wrote some phrases. Sometimes my readers tell me about the Tanakh, and it seems to me that they understood in my book more than I understood myself. It makes me very funny.Bernard Werber Note de l'auteur // Les thanatonautes |
See also
- Hypergraphy
- Parapsychology
- Medium
- "Spiritualism"
Notes
- 2 1 2 3 4 5 Carroll RT Automatic writing (trance writing) // The Skeptic's Dictionary: A Collection of Strange Beliefs, Amusing Deceptions, and Dangerous Delusions
- ↑ Randi J. Ideomotor effect // An Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural
- ↑ Carroll RT Unconscious mind / / The Skeptic's Dictionary: A Collection of Strange Beliefs, Amusing Deceptions, and Dangerous Delusions
- ↑ National Science Board . Chapter 7: Science and Technology: Public Attitudes and Understanding . Science and Engineering Indicators 2006 . National Science Foundation (2006). The circulation date is September 3, 2010. Archived August 22, 2011.
“... [A] bout three-fourths of Americans hold at least one pseudoscientific belief; ie, they believed in 10 survey items ... [29] "
"[29] Those 10 items were extrasensory perception (ESP), it can be haunted, it can be backed up in certain places / situations, telepathy / clairvoyance / the power It can be seen that it can be used to body after death, - ↑ Dr. Carl Wickland, Trente ans parmi les morts, Conditions La Pierre d'Angle Exergue, 1997, page 33
- ↑ Holtzman E. Pierre Jeanne, Sigmund Freud and multiple personalities // Science and Life , No. 6, 2002.
- ↑ Théodore Flournoy, Des Indes à la planète Mars, étude sur cas de somnambulisme avec glossolalie, Genève et Paris, Eggimann et Alcan, 1900
- ↑ Randi J. Automatic writing // An Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural
Literature
- Chulkov, GI. Automatic writing Vl. Solovyov (preface to the publication of M. V. Mikhailov) // Questions of psychology . - 1992. - № 8. - C. 121-132.
- Chénier-Gendron, Jacqueline . Automatic writing // Chénier-Gendron J. Surrealism. M .: UFO , 2002. - p. 89-108
- Carroll R. T. Automatic (trance) letter // Encyclopedia of errors: a collection of incredible facts, surprising discoveries and dangerous beliefs . - M .: Williams Publishing House, 2005. - 672 p. - ISBN 5-8459-0830-2 , ISBN 0-471-27242-6 .
- Sirotkina and . The theory of automatism to the formalists // Russian theory: 1920-1930-ies. Materials 10th Lotmanov readings. - M., 1994. - p. 295-303
- Virmo, Alain and Odette . Masters of world surrealism. - SPb .: Academic Project , 1996. - 268 p.