Psychological Automatism

apparently paralyzed, the development of subconscious phenomena that tend to form a personality—all these facts are found in the observations of Mr. James ¹.

The interpretation of all these facts, and their classification into sufficiently clear and comprehensive hypotheses, is far from finished. The suppositions we have presented are only summaries, abbreviated expressions of facts that it was first important to verify. In our more recent works on the anesthesia Loss of sensation or feeling, often observed in patients without a physical cause of hysterics, we have reproduced these theories and diagrams, perhaps with a little more precision.

The at least relative unity of the mind seems to us, on the contrary, to be realized more or less completely in the phenomena of the will and of attention. We did not have to study here the nature of these phenomena, which are the opposites of the facts of automatism Automatism: actions performed without conscious intent or awareness. We have only sought to mark their main characteristics to create a sort of contrast. This is not a metaphysical study on the will, its nature, and its relations with the essence of the human person; it is a much more precise psychological problem. By what psychological character is a voluntary act actually recognized? We had answered that voluntary action is an act determined by a judgment: "The subject," we said, "utters such a word simply because it crosses his mind without thinking of anything else; we speak to ourselves in this way because we judge that it is true." This remark still seems correct to us, but we believe it can be refined and that other briefly indicated characteristics must be added. Thus, we have made a new effort to clarify the psychological definition of the will. In our various works on aboulia A pathological inability to make decisions or act independently; a "paralysis of will", we have shown how the novelty of acts and the conscious, personal character of the action should be considered essential elements of the will. These new studies seem to us to have somewhat completed the previous ones.

Our work on automatism was not only a study of psychology; it was also a medical study, for automatism only manifests itself in such a clear and exaggerated manner in pathological states. Our descriptions relate to several mental illnesses: toxic deliriums, neurasthenic states A condition characterized by chronic fatigue and weakness, often associated with emotional stress, obsessions, and impulses; but one particular mental illness was above all the object of our studies: hysteria. It is in hysterics that we have studied these cataleptic and somnambulistic states, these complete and sudden modifications of memory and sensitivity, these subconscious acts, etc.

We have tried to show that somnambulism Sleepwalking or a trance-like state was not an isolated accident, but that it had its roots in a pathological state of the waking state itself; that this state had the closest relationships with convulsive and delirious attacks; that it disappeared when

¹ William James. Notes on automatic writing. Proceed. of the American soc. of Psychol. research, 1889, 542, and Principles of psychology, 1890, I, 208.