Automatism

The words automatism and automatic are used in somewhat different senses by physiologists and psychologists. Thus Sir M. Foster says (Foster's Physiology, 5th edition, p. 920), " We speak of an action of an organ or of a living body as being spontaneous or automatic when it appears to be not immediately due to any changes in the circumstances in which the organ or body is placed, but to be the result of changes arising in the organ or body itself and determined by causes other than the influences of the circumstances of the moment. The most striking automatic actions of the living body [are] those which we attribute to the working of the will and which we call voluntary or volitional." That is to say, to the physiologist an action is "self-moved" when it is determined, not by the environment, but by the organism itself The word thus becomes hardly more than a synonym for spontaneous. The psychologist, on the other hand, regards an action as "self-moved" when it is determined in an organism apart from the central will or control of that organism.

Thus when an act at first needing voluntary guidance, by practice comes to need such guidance no longer, it is called "secondarily automatic." I have used the word in a wider sense, as expressing such images as arise, as well as such movements as are made, without the initiation, and generally without the concurrence, of conscious thought and will. Sensory automatism will thus include visual and auditory hallucinations; motor automatism will include messages written without intention (automatic script) or words uttered without intention (as in "speaking with tongues," trance-utterances, &c). I ascribe these processes to the action of submerged or subliminal elements in the man's being. Such phrases as " reflex cerebral action," or " unconscious cerebration," give therefore, in my view, a very imperfect conception of the facts.

Automnesia

Spontaneous revival of memories of an earlier condition of life.

Autoscope

Any instrument which reveals a subliminal motor impulse or sensory impression; e.g. a divining rod, a tilting table, or a planchette reveals by its visible motion the imperceptible, involuntary, and unconscious muscular action of the person holding or touching it; a crystal or other speculum externalises the subliminal impressions of the person who sees visions in it.

Bilocation

The sensation of being in two different places at once, namely, where one's organism is, and a place distant from it, involving some degree of perception (whether veridical or falsidical) of the distant scene.

Catalepsy

"An intermittent neurosis, characterised by the patient's inability to change the position of a limb, while another person can place the muscles in a state of flexion or contraction as he will." - (Tuke's Dict.) Catalepsy may also be induced as a stage of hypnotism; although Charcot's view, which erected catalepsy, lethargy, somnambulism (their relative positions sometimes varied) into three typical or necessary stages in a hypnotic trance, is now commonly considered to have been a too hasty generalisation from the habits - largely imitative - of the group of hypnotic patients at the Salpêtrière (a hospital in Paris).

Census Of Hallucinations

An inquiry undertaken to determine the frequency of hallucinations in sane and healthy persons; described in Proceedings S.P.R., vol. x. (See 612 A).

Centre Of Consciousness

The place where a percipient imagines himself to be. The point from which he seems to himself to be surveying some phantasmal scene.

Chromatism

See Secondary Sensations.

Clairaudience

See Clairvoyance.

Clairvoyance (Lucidite)

The faculty or act of perceiving, as though visually, with some coincidental truth, some distant scene; used sometimes, but hardly properly, for transcendental vision, or the perception of beings regarded as on another plane of existence. Clairaudience is generally used of the sensation of hearing an internal (but in some way veridical) voice. I have preferred to use the term *telcesthesia for distant perception. For the faculty has seldom any close analogy with an extension of sight; the perception of distant scenes being often more or less symbolical and in other ways out of accord with what actual sight would show in the locality of the vision. On the other hand, teloesthesia merges into telepathy, since we cannot say how far the perception of a distant scene may in essential be the perception of the content of a distant mind.

Caenesthesia

See Anoesthesia.

Coincidental

This word is used when there is some degree of coincidence in time of occurrence between a supernormal incident and an event at a distance, which makes it seem probable that some causal connection exists between the two. An apparition, for instance, seen at or about the time when the person whose phantasm is seen dies, is a coincidental apparition.

Collective

Applied to cases where two or more persons together perceive a hallucination or phantasm.

Control

This word is used of the intelligence which purports to communicate messages which are written or uttered by the automatist, sensitive, or medium. The word is used for convenience' sake, but should not imply that the source of the messages need be other than the automatist's own subliminal intelligence.

Cosmopathic

Open to the access of supernormal knowledge or emotion, apparently from the transcendental world, but whose precise source we have no means of defining.

Cryptomnesia

Submerged or subliminal memory of events forgotten by the supraliminal self.

Crystal-Gazing

The act of looking into a crystal, glass ball, or other speculum, or reflecting surface, with the object of inducing hallucinatory pictures. The person doing this is called a seer or scryer. The pictures, of course, exist in the mind and not in the crystal. See Shell-hearing.

Delusion And Delusive

Applied generally to all cases whether of hallucination or illusion, when there is no corresponding reality whatever; - i.e. when the case is not coincidental or in any other way veridical.

Dextro-Cerebral

Dextro-Cerebral (opposed to *Sinistro-cerebral); of left-handed persons, as employing preferentially the right hemisphere of the brain.

Diathesis

Habit, capacity, or disposition. (In Medicine, a permanent condition of the body which renders it liable to certain special diseases or affections; a constitutional predisposition or tendency.) See Psychorrhagic diathesis.

Dimorphism

In crystals, the property of assuming two incompatible forms; in plants and animals, difference of form between members of the same species. Used of a condition of alternating personalities; a kind of psychical dimorphism in which memory, character, faculty, etc, present themselves at different times in different forms in the same person. Similarly, polymorphism is the property of assuming many forms.