Psychological Automatism

in a living being, the activity manifested outwardly through movement can be separated from a certain form of intelligence and consciousness that accompanies it within, and our goal is to demonstrate not only that there is a human activity deserving the name of automatic, but also that it is legitimate to call it a psychological automatism. The author, Pierre Janet, is defining "psychological automatism" as a state where complex, seemingly intelligent actions occur without the subject's conscious will.

The philosophers who have considered activity as a psychological phenomenon, but who have examined it only in its most perfect manifestations, have separated it very clearly from other phenomena of the mind and have considered it as a particular faculty distinct from intelligence and sensitivity. original: "sensibilité" – in 19th-century psychology, this refers to the capacity to perceive sensations and feel emotions. Undoubtedly, complicated phenomena which have acquired, as a result of their development, a host of precise characteristics, are clearly separated from one another, and it is certain that it would not be legitimate to confuse abstract reasoning with a practical resolution. But do these faculties, so different when they are complete, not draw closer to one another in their origin, and do they not spring from a lower form of life and consciousness where activity, sensitivity, and intelligence are absolutely merged? This is what we believe we can establish, and the study of elementary forms of activity will be for us, at the same time, the study of the elementary forms of sensitivity and consciousness.

Another character always attributed to higher activity is the character of unity: the power of will seems one and indivisible, like the person themselves of whom it is the manifestation. It is impossible to understand human actions if one wishes to represent all activities on this model. Unity and systematization seem to us to be the end point and not the starting point of thought, and the automatism we are studying often manifests itself through multiple feelings and actions independent of one another, before giving way to the single and personal will. It is this observation that allows us to establish the general divisions of our work. We will first study automatism in its simplest form when it is complete and occupies the entire mind, that is to say, when we observe in a person's mind only a single thought and a single automatic action. But we must then admit that, in many cases, automatism can be partial and occupy only a part of the mind, when several elementary activities can develop simultaneously within the same thought.

Finally, human activity sometimes presents itself in abnormal forms: incoherent and convulsive movements, unconscious acts unknown even to the one performing them, impulsive desires contrary to the will and which the subject cannot resist. These irregularities are inexplicable if one only knows the theory of a free and unified will. Do they become more intelligible thanks to the examination of the lower forms of activity? The study of these abnormal activities will allow us to complete and verify the solutions given to the preceding problems.

The method we have tried to employ, without claiming in any way to have succeeded, is the method of the natural sciences. Without bringing any preconceived opinion to this problem in advance, we have collected facts through observation—that is to say, the actions