Among all the changes which are taking place in our conceptions of
various parts of the universe, there is none more profound, or at
first sight more disquieting, than the change which, at the touch of
Science, is stealing over our conception of _ourselves_. For each of
us seems to be no longer a sovereign state but a federal union; the
kingdom of our mind is insensibly dissolving into a republic. Instead
of the _ens rationale_ of the schoolmen, protected from irreverent
treatment by its metaphysical abstraction; instead of Descartes’
impalpable soul, seated bravely in its pineal gland, and ruling from
that tiny fortress body and brain alike, we have physiologist and
psychologist uniting in pulling us to pieces,—in analyzing into their
sensory elements our loftiest ideas,—in tracing the diseases of memory,
volition, intelligence, which gradually distort us past recognition,—in
showing how one may become in a moment a different person altogether,
by passing through a fit of somnambulism, or receiving a smart blow
on the head. Our past self, with its stores of registered experience,
continually revived in memory, seems to be held to resemble a too
self-conscious phonograph, which should enjoy an agreeable sense of
mental effort as its handle turned, and should preface its inevitable
repetitions by some triumphant allusion to its own acumen. Our present
self, this inward medley of sensations and desires, is likened to that
mass of creeping things which is termed an “animal colony,”—a myriad
rudimentary consciousnesses, which acquire a sort of corporate unity
because one end of the amalgam has to go first and find the way.
Or one may say that the old view started from the sane mind as the
normal, permanent, definite entity from which insanity was the
unaccountable aberration; while in the new view it is rather sanity
which needs to be accounted for; since the moral and physical being of
each of us is built up from incoördination and incoherence, and the
microcosm of man is but a micro-chaos held in some semblance of order
by a lax and swaying hand, the wild team which a Phaeton is driving,
and which must needs soon plunge into the sea. Theories like this are
naturally distasteful to those who care for the dignity of man. And
such readers may perhaps turn aside in impatience when I say that much
of this paper will be occupied by some reasons for my belief that
this analysis of human consciousness must be carried further still;
that we must face the idea of concurrent streams of being, flowing
alongside but unmingled within us, and with either of which our active
consciousness may, under appropriate circumstances, be identified. Many
people have heard, for instance, of Dr. Azam’s patient, Félida X.,
who passes at irregular intervals from one apparent personality into
another, memory and character changing suddenly as she enters her first
or her second state of being. Such cases as hers I believe to be but
extreme examples of an alternation which is capable of being evoked in
all of us, and which in some slight measure is going on in us every
day. Our cerebral focus (to use a metaphor) often shifts slightly, and
is capable of shifting far. Or let me compare my active consciousness
to a steam-tug, and the ideas and memories which I summon into the
field of attention to the barges which the tug tows after it. Then the
concurrent streams of my being are like Arve and Rhone, contiguous
but hardly mingling their blue and yellow waves. I tug my barges down
the Rhone, my consciousness is a _blue_ consciousness, but the tail
barge swings into the Arve and back again, and brings traces of the
potential _yellow_ consciousness back into the blue. In Félida’s case
tug and barges and all swerve suddenly from one stream into the other;
the blue consciousness becomes the yellow in a moment and altogether.
Transitions may be varied in a hundred ways, and it may happen that the
life-streams mix together, and that there is a memory of all.
Moreover, there seems no reason to assume that our active consciousness
is necessarily altogether superior to the consciousnesses which are
at present secondary, or potential only. We may rather hold that
_super-conscious_ may be quite as legitimate a term as _sub-conscious_,
and instead of regarding our consciousness (as is commonly done) as a
_threshold_ in our being, above which ideas and sensations must rise if
we wish to cognize them, we may prefer to regard it as a _segment_ of
our being, into which ideas and sensations may enter either from below
or from above; say a thermometric tube, marking ordinary temperatures,
but so arranged that water may not only rise into it, by expansion,
from the bottom, but also fall into it, by condensation, from the top.
Strange and extravagant as this doctrine may seem, I shall hope to
show some ground for it in the present paper. I shall hope, at least,
to show not only that our unconscious may interact with our conscious
mental action in a more definite and tangible manner than is usually
supposed, but also that this unconscious mental action may actually
manifest the existence of a capital and cardinal faculty of which the
conscious mind of the same persons at the same time is wholly devoid.
For the sake of brevity I shall select one alone out of many forms of
unconscious action which may, if rightly scrutinized, afford a glimpse
into the recesses of our being.[27]
I shall take _automatic writing_; and I shall try, by a few examples
from among the many which lie before me, to show the operation,
_first_, of unconscious cerebral action of the already recognized
kind, but much more complex and definite than is commonly supposed
to be discernible in waking persons; and, _secondly_, of telepathic
action,—of the transference, that is to say, of thoughts or ideas from
the conscious or unconscious mind of one person to the conscious or
unconscious mind of another person, from whence they emerge in the
shape of automatically written words or sentences.
I shall be able to cover a corner only of a vast and unexplored field.
I venture to think that the phenomena of automatic writing will before
long claim the best attention of the physiological psychologist. They
have been long neglected, and I can only conjecture that this neglect
is due to the eagerness with which certain spiritualists have claimed
such writings as the work of Shakespeare, Byron, and other improbable
persons. The message given has too often fallen below the known
grammatical level of those eminent authors, and the laugh thus raised
has drowned the far more instructive question as to _whence_ in reality
the automatic rubbish came. Yet surely to decline to investigate
“planchette” because “the trail of Katie King is over it all,” is very
much as though one refused to analyse the meteorite at Ephesus because
the town-clerk cried loudly that it was “an image which fell down from
Jupiter.”
Automatic writing in its simplest form is merely a variety of the
tricks of unconscious action to which, in excited moments, we are
all of us prone. The surplus nervous energy escapes along some
habitual channel—movements of the hand, for instance, are continued
or initiated; and among such hand-movements—drumming of tunes,
piano-playing, drawing, and the like—_writing_ naturally holds a
prominent place. There is incipient graphic automatism when the
nervous student scribbles Greek words on the margin of the paper on
which he is striving to produce a copy of iambics. If the paper be
suddenly withdrawn he will have no notion what he has written. And
more, the words written will sometimes be _imaginary_ words, which
have needed some faint unconscious choice in order to preserve a look
of real words in their arrangement of letters. A complete graphic
automatism is seen in various morbid states. A man attacked by a
slight epileptiform seizure while in the act of writing will sometimes
continue to write a few sentences unconsciously, which, although
probably nonsensical, will often be correct in spelling and grammar.
Again, in the case of certain cerebral troubles, the patient will
write the _wrong_ word—say, “table” for “chair;”—or at least some
meaningless sequence of letters, in which, however, each letter is
properly formed. In each of these cases, therefore, there is graphic
automatism. And they incidentally show that to write words in a sudden
state of unconsciousness, or to write words against one’s will, is not
necessarily a proof that any intelligence is at work besides one’s own.
Still further; in spontaneous somnambulism, the patient will often
write long letters or essays. Sometimes these are incoherent, like
a dream; sometimes they are on the level of his waking productions;
sometimes they even seem to rise above it. They may contain at any rate
ingenious manipulations of data known to his waking brain, as where a
baffling mathematical problem is solved during sleep.
From the natural or spontaneous cases of graphic automatism let us pass
on to the induced or experimental cases. I will give first a singular
transitional instance, where there is no voluntary muscular action, but
yet a previous exercise of expectant attention is necessary to secure
the result.
My friend Mr. A., who is much interested in mental problems, has
practised introspection with assiduity and care. He finds that if he
fixes his attention on some given word, and then allows his hand to
rest laxly in the writing attitude, his hand presently writes the
word without any conscious volition of his own; the sensation being
as though the hand were moved by some power other than himself. This
happens whether his eyes are open or shut, so that the gaze is not
necessary to fix the attention. If he wills _not_ to write, he can
remove his hand and avert the action. But if he chooses a movement
simpler than writing, for instance, if he holds out his open hand and
strongly imagines that it will close, a kind of spasm ensues, and the
hand closes, even though he exert all his voluntary force to keep it
open.
It is manifest how analogous these actions are to much which in bygone
times has been classed as _possession_. Mr. A. has the very sensation
of being possessed,—moved from within by some agency which overrules
his volition, and yet we can hardly doubt that it is merely his
_unconscious_ influencing his _conscious_ life. The act of attention,
so to say, has stamped the idea of the projected movement so strongly
on his brain that the movement works itself out automatically, in spite
of subsequent efforts to prevent it. The best parallel will be the
case of a promise made during the hypnotic trance, which the subject
is irresistibly impelled to fulfil on waking.[28] From this curious
transitional case we pass on to cases where no idea of the words
written has passed through the writer’s consciousness. It is not easy
to make quite sure that this is the case, and the _modus operandi_
needs some consideration.
First we have to find an automatic writer. Perhaps one person in a
hundred possesses this tendency; that is, if he sits for half an hour
on a dozen evenings, amid quiet surroundings and in an expectant
frame of mind, with his hand on pencil or planchette, he will begin
to write words which he has not consciously thought of. But if he
sees the words as he writes them he will unavoidably guess at what is
coming, and spoil the spontaneous flow. Some persons can avoid this
by reading a book while they write, and so keeping eyes and thoughts
away from the message.[29] Another plan is to use a _planchette_; which
is no occult instrument, but simply a thin piece of board supported
on two castors, and on a third leg consisting of a pencil which just
touches the paper. A planchette has two advantages over the ordinary
pencil; namely, that a slighter impulse will start it, and that it is
easier to write (or rather scrawl) without seeing or feeling what you
are writing. These precautions, of course, are for the operator’s own
satisfaction; they are no proof to other people that he is not writing
the words intentionally. That can only be proved to others if he writes
facts demonstrably unknown to his conscious self; as in the telepathic
cases to which we shall come further on. But as yet I am only giving
fresh examples of a kind of mental action which physiology already
recognizes: examples, moreover, which any reader who will take the
requisite trouble can probably reproduce, either in his own person or
in the person of some trusted friend.
I lately requested a lady whom I knew to be a careful observer, but
who was quite unfamiliar with this subject, to try whether she could
write with a pencil or planchette, and report to me the result. Her
experience may stand as typical.
“I have tried the planchette,” she writes, “and I get writing,
certainly not done by my hand consciously; but it is nonsense,
such as _Mebew_. I tried holding a pencil, and all I got was _mm_
or _rererere_, then for hours together I got this: _Celen, Celen_.
Whether the first letter was C or L I could never make out. Then I got
_I Celen_. I was disgusted, and took a book and read while I held the
pencil. Then I got _Helen_. Now note this fact: I never make H like
that (like I and C juxtaposed); I make it thus: (like a printed H). I
then saw that the thing I read as _I Celen_ was _Helen_, my name. For
days I had only _Celen_, and never for one moment expected it meant
what it did.”
Now this case suggests several curious analogies. First, there is an
analogy with those cases of double consciousness where the patient in
the “second state” has to learn to write anew. He learns more rapidly
than he learnt as a child, because the necessary adjustments do already
exist in his brain, although he cannot use them in the normal manner.
So here, too, the hidden other self was learning to write, but learnt
more rapidly than a child learns, inasmuch as the process was now
but the transference of an organized memory from one stream of the
inner being to another. But, secondly, we must observe (and now I am
referring to many other cases besides the case cited) that the hidden
self does not learn to write just as a child learns, but rather by
passing through the stages first of _atactic_, then of _amnemonic_
agraphy. That is to say, first, the pencil scrawls vaguely, like the
patient who cannot form a single letter; then it writes the wrong
letters or the wrong words, like the patient who writes blunderingly,
or chooses the letters JICMNOS for James Simmonds, JASPENOS for James
Pascoe, &c.; ultimately it writes correctly, though very likely (as
here, and in a case of Dr. Macnish’s) the handwriting of the _secondary
self_[30] (if I may suggest a needed term) is different from the
handwriting of the _primary_.
Once more: the constant repetition of the same word (which I have
seen to continue with automatic writers even for months) is more
characteristic of aphasia than of agraphy. And we may just remark
in passing that vocal automatism presents the same analysis with
morbid aphasia which graphic automatism presents with morbid agraphy.
When the enthusiasts in Irving’s church first yelled vaguely, then
shouted some meaningless words many hundred times, and then gave
a “trance-address,” their _secondary self_ (I may suggest) was
attaining articulate speech through just the stages through which an
aphasic patient will sometimes pass.[31] The parallel is at least a
curious one; and if the theory which traces the automatic speech of
aphasic patients to the _right_ (or less-used) cerebral hemisphere
be confirmed, a singular light might be thrown on the _locus_ of the
second self.
But I must pass on to one more case of automatic writing, a case which
I select as marking the furthest limit to which, so far as I am at
present aware, pure unconscious cerebration in the waking state can go.
Mr. A., whom I have already mentioned, is not usually able to get any
automatic writing except (as described above) of a word on which his
attention has been previously fixed. But at one period of his life,
when his brain was much excited by over-study, he found that if he held
a pencil and wrote _questions_ the pencil would, in a feeble scrawling
hand, quite unlike his own, write _answers_ which he could in nowise
foresee. Moreover, as will be seen, he was not only unable to foresee
these answers, he was sometimes unable even to comprehend them. Many
of them were anagrams—transpositions of letters which he had to puzzle
over before he could get at their meaning. This makes, of course, the
main importance of the case; this proof of the concurrent action of a
secondary self so entirely dissociated from the primary consciousness
that the questioner is almost baffled by his own automatic replies.
The matter of the replies is on the usual level of automatic messages,
which are apt to resemble the conversations of a capricious dream. The
interest of this form of self-interrogation certainly does not lie in
the wisdom of the oracle received.
“The things, we know, are neither rich nor rare,
But wonder how the devil they got there.”