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AUTOMATISM

Online Encyclopedia
Originally appearing in Volume V03, Page 48 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
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AUTOMATISM  . In philosophical terminology this word is used in two

main senses: (1) in ethics, for the view that man is not responsible for his actions, which have, therefore, no moral value; (2) in psychology, for all actions which are not the result of conation or conscious endeavour . Certain actions being admittedly automatic, Descartes maintained that, in regard of the
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lower animals, all
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action is purely
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mechanical . The same theory has since been applied to man, with this difference that, accompanying the mechanical phenomena of action, and entirely disconnected with it, are the phenomena of consciousness . Thus certain
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physical changes in the brain result in a given action; the concomitant
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mental
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desire or volition is in no sense causally connected with, or prior to, the physical change . This theory, which has been maintained by T . Huxley (Science and Culture) and Shadworth Hodgson (Metaphysic of Experience and Theory of Practice), must be distinguished from that of the psychophysical parallelism, or the " double aspect theory " according to which both the mental state and the physical phenomena result from a so-called " mind stuff," or single substance, the material or cause of both . Automatic acts are of two main kinds . Where the action goes on while the attention is focused on entirely different subjects (e.g. in
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cycling), it is purely automatic . On the other hand, if the attention is fixed on the end or on any particular
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part of a given action, and the other component parts of the action are performed unconsciously, the automatism may be called relative . See G . F .

Stout, Anal . Psych. i . 258

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foil . ; Wm . James, Princ. of Psych. i.
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chap . 5; also the articles PSYCHOLOGY,
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SUGGESTION, &c . Sensory Automatism is the
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term given by students of psychical research to a centrally initiated hallucination . Such hallucinations are commonly provoked by crystal-gazing (q.v.), but auditory hallucinations may be caused by the use of a shell (shell-hearing), and the other senses are occasionally affected . Motor Automatism, on the other hand, is a non-reflex
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movement of a voluntary muscle, executed in the waking state but not controlled by the ordinary waking consciousness . Phenomena of this kind
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play a large part in
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primitive ceremonies of divination (q.v.) and in our own day furnish much of the material of Psychical Research . At the lowest level we have vague movements of large groups of muscles, as in " bier-divination," where the murderer or his residence is inferred from the actions of the bearers; of a similar character but combined with more specialized action are many kinds of
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witch seeking . These more specialized actions are most typically seen in the
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Divining Rod (q.v.; see also TABLE-TURNING), which indicates the presence of
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water and is used among the uncivilized to trace criminals .

At a higher

stage still we have the delicate movements necessary for Automatic Writing (q.v.) or
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Drawing . A parallel case to Automatic Writing is the action of the speech centres, resulting in the production of all kinds of utterances from trance speeches in the ordinary language of the
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speaker to mere unintelligible babblings . An interesting form of speech automatism is known as Glossolalia; in the typical case of Helene Smith, Th . Flournoy has shown that these utterances may reach a higher
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plane andform a real Ianguage, which is, however, based on one already known to the speaker . See Man (1904), No . 68 ;
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Folklore, xiii . 134; Myers in Proc . S.P.R. ix . 26, xii . 277, xv . 403; Flournoy,
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Des lades d la planete Mars and in Arch. de Psychologie; Myers, Human Personality . (N .

W .

End of Article: AUTOMATISM
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AUTOMATON (from aurOs,self, and uiw, to seize)

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