Psychological Automatism

It is this opposition between the creative activity of the mind and the reproductive activity—which truly deserves the name automatism The author refers to "psychological automatism," where the mind repeats actions or thoughts without conscious will or creative input.—that we have attempted to clarify in our various works on aboulia A clinical term for a pathological inability to make decisions or act, often described as a "paralysis of will.", on suggestion, and on fixed ideas Obsessive or recurring thoughts that dominate a patient's mental state, often linked to past trauma..

Our study on the modifications of memory appears very incomplete to us today. It only describes the alterations of memory in relation to somnambulistic states, and only the simplest of these alterations. Although the somnambulistic states described in this work already seem quite varied, it is easy to see that others still exist. For instance, it would be necessary to emphasize more than we have done the "simply reciprocal" somnambulisms; in these, the subject in a somnambulistic state remembers only previous somnambulisms, linking all these abnormal periods together to form a continuous existence, but possesses no memory of the waking state. It would also be necessary to further study those cases to which we have merely alluded, in which the subject seems to have no memory at all during the somnambulistic state and forgets an event as soon as it has occurred. Finally, we have just observed a case that is, in a sense, intermediate between the two previous ones. A woman has attacks of spontaneous somnambulism lasting several days; during these attacks, she seems to have lost all memory not only of her waking life but even of previous somnambulisms. However, she possesses a certain memory—very limited, it is true—of the events of the current attack. On the third day of the attack, she remembers what happened on the first; she seems, through a kind of "re-education" that has often been noted, to be forming a new personality. But then the awakening occurs; these few new memories disappear completely and do not seem to be resurrected in the following attack. The formation of this new personality hardly progresses and remains always at its very beginning. These forms of amnesia, which at first glance are very complicated, seem to us to be linked to a phenomenon we recently described under the name of continuous amnesia ¹. This continuous amnesia, which consists of the subject's inability to become conscious of or perceive memories of recent events, comes in all these cases to mingle with the periodic amnesia of somnambulism. These new descriptions serve to complete those we had given in this work.

To interpret these amnesias, we also examined only the simplest and clearest cases; we studied the modifications of memory in their relationship with modifications of sensitivity—amnesia in its relationship with anesthesia In this context, a psychological lack of sensation or awareness rather than a medically induced state.. We still believe that these explanations apply to an entire group of patients, and that they account for the deepest amnesias and the most well-defined somnambulisms; but we are inclined today to emphasize amnesias already briefly noted in which the psychological modification is less profound ². Certain dreams, certain more or less subconscious fixed ideas, become a center around which are grouped a—

¹ Continuous Amnesia. General Review of Sciences, 1893, 167.
² Mental Stigmata of Hysteria, 120. Mental Accidents, 213.