The Absence of All Control: Automatism by Katie Doherty

‘Pure psychic automatism ... the dictation of thought in the absence of all control exercised by reason and outside all moral or aesthetic concerns’.

The word possession seems like a hard and frightening way to describe automatic writing - this possession does not come from an outward source - no demons were summoned and no spirits were called upon (some mediums use this to contact spirits but that is another conversation to be had) In this case we are talking about an interior force. A force that is both subjective and objective – a paradoxical magic that stirs within.

In simple terms, automatism is creating art without any conscious thought. We are not thinking about what we are creating, there is no plot line or character development – just pure unconscious thought. It was used by Sigmund Freud together with free association to explore the unconscious minds of his patients which ultimately led to it being discovered by Andre Breton of the Surrealist movement. Breton, of course along with other surrealists utilised it in their writings and artwork.

Les Champs magnétiques (The Magnetic Fields) is a 1920 book by André Breton and Philippe Soupault that employs automatic writing – they embarked on an experiment as they were sick of the well-written literature that surrounded them and they wanted to “create a new morality” and so the book was born – and it is a wonderful example of the unconscious in print. It is famous as the first work of literary Surrealism. Of course, many writers and artists used this method - employing elements of chance to create collages and paintings but if you want to delve into this world yourself - this book is a great starting point.

I began automatic writing or automatism about fifteen years ago but I did not keep at it for long.  At the time I was looking for a doorway into the world of poetry via traditional publishing. Surprisingly enough, this type of work was too esoteric for the world and so I stopped to pursue other avenues only to self-publish one volume of unconscious poetry and give it away for free around the literary cafes and book shops that shared my enthusiasm for underground work and Surrealist practices.

Fast forward to 2024/5, after struggling with conscious writing, my aim was to get back to automatic writing – just for fun, just to get my creativity flowing through my body again and fill up my notebooks again. After a few sessions I began to feel like I could not write any other way, and I continue to use it as my main practice when writing. It is a comfortable lack of control.

What surprises me after a session is the ability to make sense or maybe I should say some kind of connection between the sentences, the unconscious is not just a cacophony of randomness it seems – there is sense to the non-sense and a very personal one at that.

There is poetry in there that may not be replicated with the conscious mind and that is what makes automatism so exciting and integral to my practice as an artist.