Hypnotism: Its History, Practice and Theory

 

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which go on without his knowledge the secondary consciousness. Thus in Barkworth's case the primary consciousness carried on the conversation, while the secondary one mechanically performed the addition.
From the above it will he seen that what we call primary consciousness has hitherto habitually been called consciousness. Generally speaking, "consciousness" means the mental processes that are subjectively perceived. In future we shall give it a wider meaning, so as to indicate the sum of all our mental processes. Consciousness thus falls into two halves, primary and secondary. To avoid confusion I shall in future only use the word "consciousness ' in this latter sense.
With regard to the existence of a secondary consciousness, much that is instructive may be learned from a study of automatic writing. I owe my knowledge of this to Dr. Max Dessoir, whom I again thank for his unselfish and scientific help in the preparation of the previous editions of this book. Automatic writing has also been observed among uncivilized peoples (Doolittle, Bastian). We will now proceed to examine it carefully.
There are men who habitually strum on the table or do something similar while they are talking or thinking. When such people take a pencil in their hand they make all sorts of scribbled marks without observing it. This scribbling may be regarded as the beginning of automatic writing. It may, however, develop into something more than mere scribbling. Schiller says that when reflecting he has often covered whole sheets of paper with little horses (Max Dessoir). Other

246 HYPNOTISM.
persons also automatically write letters and words, and this process is called automatic writing; it is evidently guided by a species of intelligence, as without it no rational words could be written. But this intelligence resides in the writer, though it may not be conscious in the ordinary sense of the word; it is the secondary consciousness which carries on movements and actions as does the primary consciousness, although the person concerned does not remark them. Spiritualists imagine that this writing, which they call mediumistic, is the work of some external force or spirit.

I now ask the reader to follow me through some experiments with automatic writing. I give X. a pencil and ask him to answer some question in writing—for example, what he had for dinner yesterday; he is, however, to leave his hand passive and not to write on purpose ; at the same time I put the point of the pencil

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