Experimentations in Creative Writing: Automatic Writing and The Aesthetics of Subconscious Processes

Abstract

Automatic Writing at first sight carries along with it meanings like free-writing or spontaneous writing. Indeed, both meanings qualify as descriptions for the discourse of automaticity. As convenient and easy as these may look in experimentation, Automatic Writing goes beyond merely writing on any thought or idea. The discourse has its roots in psychoanalysis where it is employed by psychologists as clinical tools for addressing medical issues like personality disorders of Dissociation, Hysteria, Amnesia and other psychotic related conditions. The recognizable beginnings of Automatic Writing is found in separate aspects of Spiritism and Possessions. Available resource on Spiritism are mere reportages or philosophical assumptions. Though manifestations of the Spiritism and communications/possession abound in almost all cultures, there is often no empirically proven fact for its existence. In this work, Automatic Writing is considered as an occult methodology for creative writing. Both psychological and spiritual automatic writing contents, there appears to be evidence of ideas usually beyond the sensory perception of the writer involved. This suggests that external forces were at play during writing. If the writer is in the unconscious state and the subconscious is at work, then Roland Barthes concept of Death of the Author is a valid argument under automatic writing. Since the extinction of automatic writing devices, the human hand has assumed the status of a machine that only takes dictations and traces as instructed either by subconscious processes or spiritual forces. Beyond the controversies, the discourse possess an appreciable aesthetic quality worthy to be probed into. Indeed, denial of authorship is a key characteristic of Automatic Writing because of the autobiographical appearance of the creative work. There certainly can be a case of supervisor/student experimental automatic writing discipline aside the usual experimenter/subject case. An altered state of consciousness is a key element in achieving a state of automaticity.