A first book in psychology / by Mary Whiton Calkins.

  • Mary Whiton Calkins
Date:
1910
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A first book in psychology / by Mary Whiton Calkins. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    (2) Not only hypnotic and hysteric subjects, but many well and apparently normal people, exhibit the phenomena of auto¬ matism,, that is, relatively complex bodily movement executed without the knowledge, or at least without the after-memory, of the normal waking self. The best-known form of automatism is automatic writing, and is of the following nature: * the subject provided with a pencil, and so placed that the hand which holds the pencil is hidden from his eyes, unconsciously responds to stimulation of the hand. If the hand be pressed three times, it will make three marks when these pressures are over; if the hand is guided and made to draw a single letter, it may go on to complete a word. Normal persons possess the rudiments of automatic writing, passively repeating uniform movements when the experimenter has initiated them, following the rhythm of a metronome, or even outlining imagined figures, and writing im¬ agined names. The significant feature of this experience is the subject’s entire unconsciousness of the movements of his own hands. (3) In the waking life, as in dreaming and in hypnosis, dissocia¬ tion, that is, the loss of the old memories of the normal life, sometimes seems to involve a so-called loss of personality; and the new complexes of imagination which replace the old seem to make up a new personality or self. Often the two personalities alternate; sometimes the new one supplants the old. An early instance is that of Ansel Bourne, a Rhode Island carpenter who disappeared in January, 1887, just after drawing five hundred dollars from a bank. In March of the same year a man who called himself Brown, and who, for six wTeeks, had been intelligently carrying on a small fruit and candy store in Norristown, Pennsyl¬ vania, waked as Ansel Bourne, in frightened ignorance of his surro undings, f A more recent and more complicated case is that of Dr. Prince’s neurasthenic patient, Miss Beauchamp, who comes to herself after longer or shorter periods of forgetfulness to find that she has done * Cf. A. Binet, “Double Consciousness,” pp. 80 ff. f W. James, “The Principles of Psychology,” I., p. 391.
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