Automatic writing

Automatic writing is the process, or product, of writing material that does not come from the conscious thoughts of the writer. The writer's hand forms the message, and the person is unaware of what will be written. It is sometimes done in a trance state. Other times the writer is aware (not in a trance) of their surroundings but not of the actions of their writing hand.

Use in spiritual movements
Automatic writing is used in Spiritualism, Spiritism and the New Age movement as a form of channeling. One of the best-known automatic writers was Hélène Smith, an early 20th-century psychic who felt that her automatic writing was the attempt of Martians to communicate with Earth. She claimed she could translate their Martian language into French. Another well-known author, Neale Donald Walsch, wrote the book series Conversations with God, claiming to have used automatic writing to speak with God. The Brazilian medium Chico Xavier was probably the most prolific medium in the 20th Century and possiblly of all time, with more than 400 books written by him.

Use in therapy
Automatic writing is used as a tool in Freudian psychology and in related "self-knowledge" studies, where it is seen as a means of gaining insight into the mind of the automatic writer through their subconscious word choices.

It was primarily used by Pierre Janet in France, and later by Morton Prince and Anita Mühl in the United States.

Use in stimulating creativity
André Breton pioneered the use of automatic writing within the Surrealist movement and produced several important pieces while using the technique, most famously Soluble Fish. The ideas of Hélène Smith, the so-called "Muse of Automatic Writing", also influenced the Surrealist movement (in the Surrealist deck of cards, Smith is the "Genius of Knowledge").

Automatic writing became a part of the Surrealists' repertoire of games, and it soon developed into a number of other Surrealist games and tools that greatly influenced the movement, such as automatic drawing, automatic palimpsest, and a variety of marker-word games. (See Surrealist automatism.)

Free writing later gained popularity with writers and poets, both as a means of stimulating creative thought and as a technique for overcoming writer's block.