Automatic Writing As a Function of Creative Learning
From Enochian Magic to the Surrealist Unconscious, and Beyond
automatic writing
noun.
“Writing performed without apparent intent or conscious control, especially to achieve spontaneity or uncensored expression.”
From the early spirit (or Fuji) writing of the Song Dynasty in ancient China, right the way through to the Enochian Magic of 16th-century Britain—the tradition of automatic writing was, for a long time, one of spirituality.
In practice, what this meant was a person sitting there with his or her head tipped back, eyes rolling, pen in hand, scrawling—a “gifted” man or woman in a trance state, channelling the ethereal spirits of a realm beyond.
It wasn’t until 1895, in the clinics and laboratories of the fin-de-siècle, that Austrian physician Josef Breuer turned this spiritualism on its head. For Breuer, automatic writing was less spiritual than psychological. Scrawling away meant, for him, a therapeutic encounter with unconscious thoughts.
Picture the popular image of the psychoanalyst—Sigmund Freud, Breuer’s protégé—sitting there with his beard, his pipe and monocle, behind a blanketed chaise longue, honing his ear on the voice of a hysterical patient. Under Freud, automatic writing found a new form in the “talking cure.” Instead of writing, Freud believed in a cathartic method where free, rambling speech could leaven repressed traumas in a patient.
In the early 20th century—with the advent of, first, Dada (1915), and second, Surrealism (1917)—a vibrant cadre of eccentric and groundbreaking poets took Freud and Breuer’s theories and ran with them. For Surrealism’s founder, André Breton, automatism was an artistic endeavour that meant reproducing the “true photography of thought.” It wasn’t spiritual but—as with Freud—an oneiric encounter with the stuff of the unconscious mind.
Picture the paintings of Salvador Dalí: the strangeness of his melting clocks, the dream or nightmare of his towering, headless women, the whimsy of his lobsters and telephones. Think of Max Ernst and Giorgio de Chirico—their dreamy, nonsensical landscapes, limbless busts and mannequins, their inexplicable bananas.
The results in literature were no less fascinating.
The following is an excerpt—an example of automatic writing—from the very first work of literary Surrealism, Les Champs magnétiques, co-authored by André Breton and his fellow founder, Philippe Soupault:
It was the end of sorrow lies. The rail stations were dead, flowing like bees stung from honeysuckle. The people hung back and watched the ocean, animals flew in and out of focus. The time had come. Yet king dogs never grow old – they stay young and fit, and someday they might come to the beach and have a few drinks, a few laughs, and get on with it. But not now. The time had come; we all knew it. But who would go first?
As you can probably tell, Breton and Soupault are writing at speed—without forethought or direction—like the spiritualists and psychoanalytic patients who preceded them, just seeing where it goes. It may seem strange. Nevertheless, beautiful images appear to manifest in endless variety, from nothing, to weave a rich tapestry of exciting words, phrases, and unforeseen vocabulary.
It’s with this point, then—this manifesting from nothing, this flowing of vocabulary and ideas and images—that automatic writing finally finds its most useful form.
So—how do you make use of it?
In his 1924 Manifesto of Surrealism, Breton wrote of a language of “[p]ure psychic automatism ... the dictation of thought in the absence of all control exercised by reason.” He even gave a short guide for how best to begin the practice:
“After you have settled yourself in a place as favorable as possible to the concentration of your mind upon itself […] Put yourself in as passive, or receptive, a state of mind as you can. Forget about your genius, your talents, and the talents of everyone else […]. Write quickly, without any preconceived subject, fast enough so that you will not remember what you’re writing or be tempted to reread what you have written. The first sentence will come spontaneously, so compelling is the truth that with every passing second there is a sentence unknown to our consciousness which is only crying out to be heard.”
Breton’s instruction was prescient—and emblematic of the zeitgeist—for the same kind of writing could already be seen in some of the finer passages of Joyce’s Ulysses (1922), and would later influence the poetry of James Tate and John Ashbery in 1970s and ’80s America.
You can see its influence even later than this—in an excerpt from Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison’s Beloved (1987), where the narrator undergoes something like the rambling, self-speaking-self we considered earlier, in the Freudian vein. Morrison’s narrator says:
I am alone I want to be the two of us I want the join I come out of blue water after the bottoms of my feet swim away from me I come up I need to find a place to be the air is heavy I am not dead I am not there is a house there is what she whispered to me I am where she told me I am not dead I sit the sun closes my eyes when I open them I see the face I lost .
Like Breton and Soupault, Morrison’s writing here seems to mimic a thought process. But this time, it even forgoes punctuation—using repetition, indentations, and the nominative pronoun “I” to create a relentless referral to self. These techniques conspire to evoke a perception—one that is startled and busy in the happening of thought, in search of sense and clarity.
This is an example of how automatic writing can be taken and finessed—to show a person, a character in a story or novel, thinking through the trials of their endeavour(s).
It’s perhaps finally interesting, then, to explore how precisely the practice can be of use to you—with your everyday concerns and ambitions, academic or otherwise.
The simplicity of the practice of automatic writing means it really is available to everyone. For evidence, just look around. Its most compelling use today is arguably in the world of self-improvement and mindfulness: in the journal writing and creative workshops you hear about on social media, from friends, in cities and towns of every size.
In her book The Artist’s Way (1992), author and filmmaker Julia Cameron suggests automatic writing in the form of “Morning Pages”—“three pages of longhand writing,” done first thing in the morning, that are “strictly stream of consciousness.” For Cameron, these pages can help you:
“Clarify your yearnings. They keep an eye on your goals. They may provoke you, coax you, comfort you—even cajole you—as well as prioritize and synchronize the day at hand. If you’re drifting, the pages will point that out. They will point the way True North.”
For Cameron, automatic writing is a valuable tool. Her pages are the plans, the blueprints, the diary entries and footnotes of strategic and emotional thinking. They create a profound imaginative space—where you, the author or diarist, can heighten your personal experience and productivity.
You can find a similar sentiment in Journal to the Self, by Kathleen Adams, who writes:
“There is a friend at the end of your pen which you can use to help you solve personal or business problems, get to know all the different parts of yourself, explore your creativity, heal your relationships, develop your intuition.”
Much like Cameron, Adams offers a vision of automatic writing as a kind of personal assistant. With her “friend at the end of your pen” metaphor, she encourages you to cultivate—on the page—an internal agony aunt, coach, therapist, teacher, parent, lover… someone you can turn to with any thought, any question, any idea.
A whole host of practising academics, psychologists, workshop hosts and individuals now use automatic writing in precisely this way—as a vital engine for personal and academic growth. It’s become the very thing that helps you explore and clarify what you're thinking, what you’ve learned, what latent ideas, quotes, visions and images are buried deep in the unconscious mind.
At various points while writing this essay, I’ve paused to use automatic writing myself. I’ve used it to clarify: What comes next? What is the structure doing? What should I say now? What was that word?
I write on—at speed. I ramble:
Indeed. What was that word, again—the one I was thinking about a minute ago? A word about learning, about grounding perception, a word about an idea suddenly manifesting, a thing suddenly being realised—that moment when you’re learning and you come across the absolute perfect bit of phraseology or vocabulary or image and—what was it—yes—epiphany! Yes! The word I was looking for was epiphany!
Whether you're writing poetry, planning your day, building a business, or revising for an exam on Macbeth or The Great Gatsby—the profound, automatic genius of scrawling your thoughts on a page cannot be underestimated.
Try it. Right now.
Follow Freud or Breton, Cameron or Adams. Let yourself loose.
All you need is a pen and some paper. Time yourself for ten minutes.
Take a subject you're struggling with (a poem? A novel?). Or take a random thought. Write whatever comes into your head. Write at speed. Don’t worry about punctuation or planning. Let your thoughts write you.
If you find yourself stopping to think—speed up!
Just constant. Rambling. Thoughts.
To write automatically is to clarify—to unearth hidden feelings and motives, hidden passions, quotes, idioms, images, symbols, metaphors. It’s to elevate the subterranean and let the mighty scroll of your intellect see the light of day.
Whatever you’re studying—whether you’re a spiritualist, a surrealist, or just a regular person—automatic writing will surprise you.
No experience necessary.