Automaticity

“ CHAPTER VII. AUTOMATISM—PLANCHETTE.
Our ordinary actions, both physical and mental, are, for the most part, subject to our own voluntary guidance and choice. Of this, at least, we feel sure. We work, walk, talk, play upon an instrument, read a book, or write a letter, because we choose to do these things; and ordinarily they are done under the full guidance of our will and intelligence. Sometimes, however, actions are performed by us without our choice or guidance, and even without our consciousness, and such actions are called automatic. ”

“ For this we must make automatic and habitual, as early as possible, as many useful actions as we can, and guard against the growing into ways that are likely to be disadvantageous to us, as we should guard against the plague. The more of the details of our daily life we can hand over to the effortless custody of automatism, the more our higher powers of mind will be set free for their own proper work. ”

“ It will be recognized that we have here again a type of association in primitive society which has completely changed with the development of civilization.
We will now turn to the consideration of a third point, to the peculiar importance of automatic actions in the development of the customs and beliefs of mankind. It is a well-known fact that all those actions which we perform with great frequency are liable to become automatic; that is to say, that their performance is ordinarily not combined with any degree of consciousness. ”

“ During an exciting conversation, or the absorbing [Pg 152] consideration of some important subject or problem, the act of walking is performed without will or consciousness; the pianoforte player runs his scales and roulades with marvellous rapidity and precision while reading a book or carrying on an animated conversation. Such actions are performed automatically.
When we come to examine a large number of actions performed in this automatic manner, we observe that they exhibit great diversity in the kind and degree of automatism displayed in their performance. ”

“ But that which does require explanation from automatists is why automatism should have become associated with consciousness, and this so intimately that every change in the sequence A, B, C, &c., is accompanied by a particular and corresponding change in the sequence a, b, c, &c. ”

“ It has selective adaptation (p. 221) responding readily and efficiently to novel and unforeseen circumstances; acquiring new modes of combination and reaction. An automaton that will learn by experience, and adapt itself to conditions not calculated for in its construction, has yet to be made; till it is made, we must deny that organisms are machines. Automatism in the organism implies Memory and Perception. A sudden contact—a sudden noise—a vague form seen in the twilight will excite the mechanism according to its organized experiences. ”

“ With others such a side activity continually interrupts the chief function. Then some succeed better than others in securing a certain automatism of the accessory function to such a point that its special acts do not come to consciousness at all. For example, I watched a laborer who was constantly engaged in a complicated technical performance, and he seemed to give to it his full attention. Nevertheless he succeeded in moving a lever on an automatic machine which stood near by whenever a certain wheel had made fifty revolutions. ”

“ Not the picture of a man; but the representation of an automaton, that is what it cannot help being; a phantom dreaming what it cannot but dream; an engine performing what it must perform; an incarnate reverie; a weathercock shifting helplessly in the winds of sensibility; a wretched association machine, through which ideas pass linked together by laws over which the machine has no control; anything, in short, except that free and self-sustained centre of underived, and therefore responsible activity, which we call Man. ”

“ Where is the intricate and at one time difficult art in which perfect automatic ease has been reached except as the result of long practice? If, then, wherever we can trace the development of automatism we find it to have taken this course, is it not most reasonable to infer that it has taken the same even when it has risen in regions that are beyond our ken? ”

“ Actions, oft repeated, tend to become automatic. This is also true of thought and consciousness. It is one of the beneficent results of abstract thought that it develops, or tends to develop, a kind of automatism whereby a marked saving in time and energy is effected. ”

“ The important question whether reflex actions are insentient, and therefore mechanical, will occupy us in the next problem. The question of Automatism which has been argued in the preceding chapters, may, I think, be summarily disposed of by a reference to the irresistible evidence each man carries in his own consciousness that his actions are frequently—even if not always—determined by feelings. He is quite certain that he is not an automaton, and that his feelings are not simply collateral products of his actions, without the power of modifying and originating them. ”

“ In this way the 18th century theory, “man is a machine” is revived.
If the self exercises energy of its own in Volition, where does it come from?—But this theory of automatism cannot be seriously entertained in the face of experience. In having feelings we cognise the things which give rise to the feelings; and form ideas of things and their properties of giving rise to feelings, pleasurable or painful; and foresee future things and feelings, and form an idea of future Good; and put forth energy to produce change in the world around us which will be conducive to our good. ”

“ I will remark, first of all, that the word automatism, borrowed from Myer’s terminology, is not strictly correct. In reality, we can only speak of automatism when we are in presence of mechanical acts, excluding intervention of the will. Now this is not the case with the acts in question; these acts, which appear to be automatic if they are looked at solely from the point of view of the personal consciousness, are in reality due to some sort of consciousness, parasitic or non-parasitic, and offer the characteristic features of voluntary acts. ”

“ On the other hand, if the attention is fixed on the end or on any particular part of a given action, and the other component parts of the action are performed unconsciously, the automatism may be called relative. ”

“ It seems as if the will were given as a great balancing faculty, the faculty whereby automatization is prevented in the evolving psyche. The spontaneous will reacts at once against the exaggeration of any one particular circuit of polarity. Any vital circuit—a fact known to psychoanalysis. And against this automatism, this degradation from 117the spontaneous-vital reality into the mechanic-material reality, the human soul must always struggle. And the will is the power which the unique self possesses to right itself from automatism. ”

“ Brain: "My course of action is prescribed by that state of the world's affairs at this present time; it is quite clear and obvious: In the face of the manifest human inadequacy to manage the world's affairs my first objective must be to develop my motoric organs to a point where I can bring all the essential production machinery under my control. My second objective must be to achieve auto-procreation through the full automatization of all fabrication processes which are essential to my existence. ”

“ This prospect fills us with concern as well as with amazement. How shall we control these automatic machines, these robots, these Frankensteins? What will there be left for us to do to earn our living? ”

“ Those which show intelligence and have some unmistakable relation to the subject of which they purport to give information, but all of which is known either to the writers or some person present. (3) Those which bring, or profess to bring, information unknown in any way, either to the writer or any person present.
The first of these divisions need not detain us, though it contains a very large share of all the messages received, as it simply illustrates the fact of automatism, which is equally well illustrated in the other classes of messages, which are of a more interesting character. ”

“ Ever since man became civilized he has deceived himself by calling, for instance, machinery in a factory, automatons. The quest for automatic machinery is as hopeless as the quest for perpetual motion! ”

“ There it stands ready, the automatic machinery of this exquisite frame of ours, waiting for the unconfused signal,—our only part in the performance,—then automatically it springs to action and pushes our purpose into the outer world. ”

“ Why, “in that he has reason and understanding, with a faculty of will, and so is capable of volition and choice.” True, a machine has no reason or understanding; but suppose it had, would it be a person? By no means. We have seen that the understanding, or the intelligence, is necessarily determined; all its states are necessitated as completely as the movements of a machine. This constitutes an essential likeness, and it is what is always meant, when it is said that necessity makes men mere machines. ”

“ There are certain phenomena, particularly so-called automatic speaking and writing, which it is out of the question to attribute invariably to trickery and deceit. While one need have no hesitation in dismissing as fraudulent [22] all “physical” mediums—that is to say, mediums whose stock in trade is the production of such phenomena as the “materialization” of spirit forms and faces, the levitation and flinging about of furniture, and the striking of the “sitters” by unseen hands—the case of the automatists, or “psychical” mediums, is decidedly different. ”

“ Automatism lays hold of it, and life, inevitably forgetting the end which it had determined, which was only to be a means in view of a superior end, is entirely used up in an effort to preserve itself by itself. ”

“ These are mediums who, after passing into a peculiar condition of trance, and occasionally while seemingly in their usual waking state, appear to be controlled by some outside intelligence, and, when so controlled, utter or write information [138] which it is hard, if not impossible, to believe they could have obtained by any ordinary means. To be sure, there is a host of spurious automatists, against whom one cannot be too watchfully on guard. ”

“ In most cases of fully-developed automatism known to me the automatist reads what comes, and makes suitable oral replies or comments to the sentences as they appear: so that the whole has then the effect of a straightforward conversation of which one side is spoken and the other written—the speaking side being usually rather silent and reserved, the writing side free and expansive.
Naturally not every person has the power of cultivating this simple form of what is technically known as motor automatism, one of the recognised subliminal forms of activity ”

“ Certain trance-subjects, who were also automatic writers, when roused from trance and put to the planchette—not knowing then what they wrote, and having their upper attention fully engrossed by reading aloud, talking, or solving problems in mental arithmetic—would inscribe the orders they had received, together with notes relative to the time elapsed and the time yet to run before the execution. It is therefore to no “automatism,” in the mechanical sense, that such acts are due: a self presides over them, a split-off, limited, and buried, but yet a fully conscious self. ”

“ So long as so many jobs are an endless and, for the worker, an aimless routine, a kind of automatism using one set of muscles in one monotonous pattern, his whole life will tend towards an automatism in which nothing is particularly to be distinguished from anything else unless it is announced with a thunderclap. ”

“ There is, first, the class of motor automatisms, including Planchette-writing and other methods of automatic writing, drawing, painting, and kindred performances, also poetical or metrical improvisations, and trance, and so-called inspirational speaking:—Second, there are the sensory automatisms; or such as are manifested by impressions made upon the senses and which are reckoned as hallucinations. The impression of hearing a voice, of feeling a touch, or seeing a vision may be reckoned as examples of this kind of automatism. ”

“ Disgusting and pathetic as the exhibition was, I could not help feeling that I was witnessing a marvelous instance of automatism, that wonderful power of the mind working through the body to reproduce, apparently without effort or thought, operations which have been repeated so many times that they have become "second nature." ”

“ I do not, of course, mean that they all of them bring messages from sources external to the automatist's own mind. In some cases they probably do this; but as a rule the so-called messages{259} seem more probably to originate within the automatist's own personality. Why, then, it may be asked, do I call them messages? We do not usually speak of a man as sending a message to himself. The answer to this question involves, as we shall presently see, the profoundest conception of these automatisms to which we can as yet attain. ”

“ The rest is adapted automatism. When I have driven everything else out of my mind except the picture of the rising arm, it rises of itself, the after-effects on nerves and muscles being apprehended by me as the sense of effort. ”