observed at the beginning of intellectual phenomena a relatively large number of completely meaningless words, also often a series of meaningless single letters. Later on all kinds of absurdities are produced, e.g. words or entire sentences with the letters irregularly misplaced or with the order of the letters all reversed—a kind of mirror-writing. The appearance of the letter or word indicates a new suggestion; some sort of association is involuntarily joined to it, which is then realised. Remarkably enough, these are not generally the conscious associations, but quite unexpected ones, a circumstance showing that a considerable part of the speech-area is already hypnotically isolated. The recognition of this automatism again forms a fruitful suggestion, since invariably at this moment the feeling of strangeness arises, if it is not already present in the pure motor-automatism. The question, “Who is doing this?” “Who is speaking?” is the suggestion for the synthesis of the unconscious personality which as a rule does not like being kept waiting too long. Any name is introduced, generally one charged with emotion, and the automatic splitting of the personality is accomplished. How accidental and how vacillating this synthesis is at its beginning, the following reports from the literature show. Myers[1] communicates the following interesting observation on a Mr. A., a member of the Society for Psychical Research who was making experiments on himself in automatic writing.
Third Day.
Question: What is man?
Answer: TEFI H HASL ESBLE LIES.
Question: Is that an anagram? Yes.
How many words does it contain? Five.
What is the first word? SEE.
- ↑ Proceedings of S.P.R., 1885. “Automatic writing.”
