Automatic writing
Automatic writing is the process, or product, of writing material that does not come from the conscious thoughts of the writer. The writer's hand forms the message, and the person is unaware of what will be written. It is sometimes done in a trance state. Other times the writer is aware (not in a trance) of their surroundings but not of the actions of their writing hand.
Case stories
Sometime prior to 1900, William Stainton Moses, a respected priest and teacher, experimented with automatic writing. His beliefs were orthodox Christian, but the messages from his automatic writing took a more open, undogmatic view, to which he "converted" over time. He believed the message originated from higher spirits.
John B. Newbrough was a New York dentist who wrote the book Oahspe through the process of automatic writing on the newly invented typewriter in 1882.
Rosemary Brown was an English housewife who automatically composed music. She could play the piano, though not very well. She felt that great composers were writing through her.
Use in spiritual movements
Automatic writing is used in Spiritualism, Spiritism and the New Age movement as a form of channeling. One of the best-known automatic writers was Hélène Smith, an early 20th-century psychic who felt that her automatic writing was the attempt of Martians to communicate with Earth. She claimed she could translate their Martian language into French. Another well-known author, Neale Donald Walsch, wrote the book series Conversations with God, claiming to have used automatic writing to speak with God. The Brazilian medium Chico Xavier was probably the most prolific medium in the XXth Century and possiblly of all times, with more than 400 books having been automatic written through by him.
Use in therapy
Automatic writing is used as a tool in Freudian psychology and in related "self-knowledge" studies, where it is seen as a means of gaining insight into the mind of the automatic writer through their subconscious word choices.
It was primarily used by Pierre Janet in France, and later by Morton Prince and Anita Mühl in the United States.
Use in stimulating creativity
André Breton pioneered the use of automatic writing within the Surrealist movement and produced several important pieces while using the technique, most famously Soluble Fish. The ideas of Hélène Smith, the so-called "Muse of Automatic Writing", also influenced the Surrealist movement (in the Surrealist deck of cards, Smith is the "Genius of Knowledge").
Automatic writing became a part of the Surrealist's repertoire of games, and it soon developed into a number of other Surrealist games and tools that greatly influenced the movement, such as automatic drawing, automatic palimpsest, and a variety of marker-word games. (See Surrealist automatism.)
Free writing later gained popularity with writers and poets, both as a means of stimulating creative thought and as a technique for overcoming writer's block.
Criticism
Skeptics such as James Randi note that there is little evidence distinguishing automatic writing claimed to be of supernatural origins from a parlor game that is little more than sparks of creativity in the minds of the participants. They assert that there is no evidence that there is anything more than the subconscious of those performing the writing influencing their actions and that there is no solid evidence that any messages are coming from anywhere other than the minds of the person holding the pencil. This is referred to as the ideomotor effect.
As there is no scientific evidence regarding the use of automatic writing in psychotherapy, its usage to release repressed memories is suspect as well. While unconscious ideas are expressed in automatic writing, skeptics question the likelihood that they are any more profound than the writer's conscious thoughts. Skeptics argue that there is no evidence that the "true self" lies in the unconscious any more than there is for it to lie in normal consciousness.
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